4.1 metres wide, it depicts a battle scene at the Nakdong River near the Busan perimeter during the Korean War, when the Northern forces had pushed southwards as far as they were ever going to. A heroic DPRK brass band is playing as shells explode around them. Trombones are wielded like grenade-launchers (in fact I was reminded of the story of the beer-bottle VC. Having run out of ammo, were the north Koreans trying to breach the perimeter with only their trumpets, like Joshua at Jericho?). A bandaged horn player bravely continues playing despite his right arm being in a sling. These guys could teach the Brits a thing or two about keeping a stiff upper lip.

But while the scene is arresting, the composite authorship shows. The musicians all have crazed expressions in their eyes. It looks as if they are reacting to an horrific scene somewhere, but they are all looking in slightly different directions, albeit vaguely to the right. They’re certainly not looking at the conductor, who is waving his arms more in shock than in time to the music. But there’s nothing particularly horrific depicted in the picture in the general direction they’re looking. Yes, a shell has landed some 50 yards from them, but in the other direction. Anyway, it’s a fun picture if you’ve got the wall space.

As I was immersed in the picture, one of the gallery attendants started playing with the audio-visual system. When I had gone in, a DVD of Dan Gordon’s A State of Mind was in the machine, waiting at the menu page. To liven things up, the attendant swapped the disk for a karaoke VCD. A demurely dressed woman strolled along beside a Pyongyang fountain singing heart-rending songs of loss and yearning, while under her feet the words she was singing were progressively illuminated to encourage you to join in. Somewhat incongruous, in the same room as the dramatic battlefield painting.

The LCD monitor had been chosen with a great sense of diplomacy. How many manufacturers of flat panels TVs can you think of which aren’t Japanese or South Korean? The gallery had managed to find one with an Elonex brand name on the front.

Alongside the screen is a display of celadons and other ceramics, including some by the now deceased U Chi Son (above right). These will undoubtedly become collectors’ items in the future.

Propaganda posters always provide a lively display, but when the exhibition started most of them were laid out for sale on a large surface in front of the large battle scene. By now a lot of them have been sold (a major UK museum is rumoured to have bought one or two), though many still remain. The nice touch is that all these posters are hand-painted. Copies, yes, but done by humans rather than machines. A cost-effective way to decorate a wall.

Other works are the familiar mountain scenes by Son U Yong (above) and Ri Chang, whose watercolour of Mt Baektu now has a red blob beside it. Son U Yong’s paintings of Mt Kumgang are reminiscent of the typical mountain scenes you see on Chinese wall hangings. Somehow however they manage to be more real and yet at the same time more mysterious, with the mountain peaks floating magically among the clouds.

Never having been one for flower paintings, I was surprised to find myself drawn to Jung Chang Mo’s Magnolia. Jung is, I understand, one of the most senior of the artists on display, and it is said that the years are beginning to take their toll on his health. Having previously come across this painting when plundering the internet for materials to illustrate my report from Koen De Ceuster’s talk, it was a great pleasure to see it in real life. The technique as the artist allows the dark watercolour paint of the tree branch to run into the paler background paint, thus gently blurring the edges, is not something that you can see in an internet reproduction, nor the gradations of white paint depicting the blossoms.

Nearby is another flower painting (below left), possibly my favourite from the whole exhibition, by Kim Chok Hak, while next that that was formerly a watercolour which slightly jars upon western eyes: a familiar chosonhwa watercolour of a plum tree — very nice and pretty — but underneath is a beaming figure of a young lady from the People’s army. Clearly the contrast appealed to someone, because that is now gracing the walls of a purchaser somewhere.

Which brings us to the more unusual items in the collection. First, the “jewel paintings”. Sometimes called “mineral paintings”, these are made of crushed rock ^[2]. Close up, the texture of these works look as if they’re painted on sponge. But if you have the right collection of crushed minerals there’s the occasional sparkle as a particularly reflective particle catches the light. In one quiet image of a girl reading a book (unfortunately damaged in transit from Pyongyang — you’ll have to ask the gallery to bring it up from the basement) the sparkle is silver. But in the rather more triumphal image of a red army girl looking optimistically into the Juche future, the sparkle is golden and more prominent — almost like glitter on a christmas card. It’s this picture which started the exhibition hung in the window, issuing a challenge to the fusty Institute of Directors on the other side of Pall Mall.

More intimate are the small drawings executed in ball-point pen — an idealised drawing of a soldier, or a happy grandfather smiling benevolently on the grandchildren which surround him.

The embroideries, too, are a surprise. In the basement in the gallery opposite is a large embroidered picture of a woman in traditional costume, while in the main gallery is a very vivid depiction of a river flowing through woodland. From afar, it looks like an oil painting (above). Up close (right - click to enlarge), you can appreciate the needlework. The stitching is fluid, the direction and length following demands of the picture, rather than being all the same size and direction. This picture is the only one in the exhibition to have been kept in the original frame — all the others were framed on arrival in London - and if you lift it away from the wall you can see the intricacy of the work on the back. This embroidery, alas, is now making its way across the Atlantic to a lucky purchaser across the seas. Tucked away downstairs is a particularly unusual creation - an embroidery of swimming fish designed to be looked at from both sides, perhaps as a centrepiece on a table. A nightmare to frame.

In the gallery opposite the dramatic animal paintings by Pak Hyo Song dominate. More restrained in real life than is suggested by their reproductions on the internet, these are nevertheless in a completely different style from most of the other paintings in the exhibition. More puzzling to me is the subject matter. I understood that there was a certain range of subjects which were acceptable for North Korean artist to cover. Maybe the People’s artist has more freedom, but Pak, as a merit artist (the next tier down) seems to have the freedom to paint scenes which surprisingly escapist from the North Korean perspective. But the subject matter reflects Pak’s stay in Zimbabwe so perhaps he has been given the freedom to record the sights he saw there.

Not much on show were the oil paintings, though the style can be seen on La Galleria’s website. Indeed, reviewing the website and comparing it with what has been on show, it is clear that the shipment from Pyongyang exceeded the space available to exhibit it, and it is therefore to be hoped that any other opportunity might be found to put the work on show. The quality of the work, and the subject matter whether propagandist or more traditional, deserves the exposure.

1. perhaps as a result of some of the prices having been dropped
2. a technique also used in some of Seunghee Kang’s works

“But is it Art”?: that was the question posed by Koen De Ceuster on Friday night at SOAS, as part of the series of talks held by the Centre for Korean Studies.

The talk started from the premise that the view of North Korean art held in the West is that it is bombastic Socialist Realism: propaganda pictures of the Leaders giving advice to rosy-cheeked workers building a Juche paradise. And that’s predominantly what you see, for example, in Jane Portal’s book, in the British Museum, and in numerous holiday snaps of North Korea. The almost unspoken presumption is that techniques and subject-matter are stuck in a socialist time-warp, with no scope for experimentation by the artist. And that therefore the art is not worthy of attention.

However, the pictures one tends to see as typical of North Korean art — the propaganda pictures — are not necessarily the ones that are most popular in North Korea. While depictions of the Leaders, of the guerrilla struggle, of construction of a socialist paradise, and less favourable pictures of life in the South, are all the most officially sanctioned, landscapes are also safe, and in fact are the most popular in the DPRK itself for domestic consumption.

De Ceuster has been working with a Belgian TV crew on a documentary on North Korean art (don’t expect this to come out in the immediate future) and as part of this exercise has been to the DPRK to meet some prominent artists.

Some of the key artists De Ceuster met, having achieved a certain status in the DPRK art hierarchy (a few good propaganda pictures gets you there) are allowed to do non-propaganda stuff: more traditional ink painting, or ink and colour painting, known as Chosunhwa (조선화). Within the confines of Chosunhwa there’s a certain amount of freedom. For example, a fairly abstract portrayal of a real place can qualify as realist and hence acceptable.

A problem which De Ceuster faced in preparing his talk was the scarcity of source material. The painters he met didn’t possess many of their own paintings: the works had been shown in / donated to public exhibitions and not been seen since. And reproductions of their work are hard to come by. My own internet searches of the artists De Ceuster mentioned came up with little, but what I could find I have loaded onto my flickr pages. And in fact, consistent with DeCeuster’s comments about the popularity of landscapes, pictures of Mount Kumgang seemed to be fairly common.

One of the more interesting painters De Ceuster introduced was Seon Woo Yeong (선우영) (born 1946), known as the Rock Painter. An example of his work is above. Note the extremely careful and detailed work. A slightly less detailed, but more emotive, picture of Dokdo is shown to the right.

Probably the top artist in the North is Jong Chang Mo (정창모) (born 1931), originally from Chongju in the South ^[1]. His themes tend to be flower paintings (example below).

De Ceuster discussed a number of images by his chosen artists, pointing out the variety of techniques — careful delineation of key figures in a picture (particularly the Leaders) but also more traditional single-stroke brushwork in the background. Similar variety can appear within the more traditional (non-propaganda) pictures. In fact North Korean artists are known for the strength of their technique: China sends many students there to study.

In a country where artists are effectively employed by the state — even the railways and major corporations have their in-house artists — clearly art is to a certain extent “under control” ^[2]. But talking to the artists, De Ceuster came to the view that things were not frozen in time; that diversity both in subject matter and style was developing, and that there was a certain flexibility — albeit within bounds — that makes strands of North Korean art, building on past tradition, worthy of attention. Just because an artist works within certain constraints does not mean that the work he produces is worthless: an artist can produce a work of genuine worth by excelling within a particular style and technique.

Links:

• The Chosun blasts the British Museum for showing DPRK propaganda
• Start your own collection of DPRK propaganda works direct from Pyongyang’s Mansudae studio, courtesy of the Epicentre Gallery
• More Chosunhwa images at Kyorehsarangteo (scroll to the bottom of the page for links to 8 more pages)
• Another article on this lecture over at Ringisei

1. in fact a number of the South’s most talented artists ended up in the North
2. the title of Jane Portal’s book