KJCKorea
Journal Central

The late 1930s was when the avantgarde photography was first introduced to Korea. The avantgarde artists, Youngkuk Yoo, Ushik Cho and Joo Hyun submitted their works including photogram, photomontage and straight photos to Jiyu Bijutsuka Kyokaiten, the association of Japanese avant-garde artists founded in 1937. While most of these works are not sure of their existence, what we have is the sketche photos and documents of Yoo’s works submitted to the sixth Jiyu Bijutsuka Kyokaiten in 1942. The interesting thing is that these photos display historical remains and statues of Buddha in Kyungju, where Korean Buddhism tradition flourished the most. This paper aims to prove the relationship between the photos of Kyungju and the nationalism in the Pacific War era (1941-1945). The avantgarde movement arose in Japan in the late 1930s when surrealism and constructivism started to spread. Jiyu Bijutsuka Kyokai is the earliest group that denied the academism in Japan and claimed to support avantgarde art. In its exhibition were painting, relief, print, drawing as well as object and photography, all submitted without regard to its medium. This became the fine platform for avantgarde photograper including Aikyu and Nagoya photo avant-garde. Among the Korean members of the association was Ushik Cho, who actively worked on photograms and introduced surrealism photography to Korea. After the Pacific War, however, he became a pro-Japanese artist denouncing avantgarde art while cooperating in war heavily. Meanwhile, Youngkuk Yoo rather kept the distance with politics while switching to photography after the suppression on abstract art went stricter in Japan. In the 6th Jiyu Bijutsuka Kyokaiten, 1942, he submitted seven of his photography works. Five of them were the photos of Kyungju. <No. 3> is an abstract photomontage that eliminated the politics of Berlin Dada, the religious symbolism and the function of representation in typical straight photos while relying on the traditional imagery of Kyungju with photography instead of abstract painting. The other two were reportage photos of air defense training in Japan. The instablity among the reportage photos of war and avantgarde photos in Yoo’s work mirrors the context that forms the Japanese avantgarde art where early Korean abstract artists emerged from.

Avantgarde Art, Avantgarde Photography, Hasegawa Saburo, Jiyu Bijutsuka Kyokaiten, Joo Hyun, Takekuchi Shuzo, the photos of Kyungju, Ushik Cho, Youngkuk Yoo