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Sculpture from the Soviet Union in Seoul. Artistic and Political Contexts of the International Sculptural Events during the Olympiad of Art , 1987-1988

  • Journal of History of Modern Art
  • 2024, (55), pp.221-244
  • Publisher : 현대미술사학회
  • Research Area : Arts and Kinesiology > Art > Arts in general > Art History
  • Received : April 30, 2024
  • Accepted : May 28, 2024
  • Published : June 30, 2024

Przemysław Strożek 1

1Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The Olympiad of Art (1987-1988) was the first government-backed set of exhibitions in South Korea, which officially included sculptures from the Soviet Union. They were created by the following artists: Alexander Rukavishnikov, Marina Romanovskaya, Lazar Gadaev, Leonid Berlin, Boris Orlov, and Han Te Von Macumara. I claim that the inclusion of Soviet sculpture in the Olympic Park in Seoul needs to be studied in the socio-political contexts of striving for cultural rapprochement between the Soviet Union and South Korea around the 1988 Olympic Games. In my study, I reveal that the intention of exhibiting sculptures from the Soviet Union was to show to the South Korean audience that artists from the USSR did not adhere to communist state propaganda and were, in some cases, even against communist doctrines. The selection of the six sculptures proved to the South Koreans that the work by artists from the Soviet Union fundamentally differed from the official Socialist Realism associated with the oppressive communist system and, therefore, more general, with state art from North Korea. Ultimately, the Olympiad of Art and the 1988 Olympic Games became the first official Soviet-South Korean artistic exchanges before establishing diplomatic ties between both countries in 1990.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.