The building itself is very spacious, and has three main sections. Older artworks are displayed in the galleries around the Guggenheim-style teacup-shaped atrium (left - complete with spiral walkways): Koryo and Chosun ceramics, including many national treasures, ink paintings, and Buddhist artefacts. The second section is devoted to modern and contemporary works, both Korean and international, while the third section, under the main entrance, is set aside for special exhibitions.

Currently on show are late Chosun dynasty ink paintings. You are greeted by some masterpieces by Owon (Jang Seung-eop, 장승업 - the subject of Im Kwon-taek’s Chihwaeseon). Seeing these works up close and life-size is a completely different experience from seeing them reproduced in a book. You can see the individual brush strokes and appreciate the deftly skilled work involved.

The gallery is well laid out, with effort taken to provide descriptions in English for many of the exhibits.

Gallery 2 has three floors: the top floor is devoted to post-war Korean art. Out of the lifts you are faced with a large blue Kim Whanki, and the standard is maintained throughout the space. There is a good collection of figurative works from the 50s and 60s, including Chung Kyung-ja (Delight, an unusual picture of a bridal party in pastel colours) and Chang Uc-chin (whose naively styled works have achieved considerable popularity). And as you leave, a large Suh Se-ok ink painting, Dancers (1989). Two of the pictures which most stick in the memory are the non-abstract works from the 80s. Interesting because one thinks of the 80s as the decade of minjung art, and these are not minjung works. There’s a very bold ink painting of temples and mountains by Kim Ki-chang (Mountain Temple), obviously reminiscent of more classical works but interesting for the randomness of the orientation of the different temples — some are slightly skewed, giving a disturbing effect of things not being quite right — while the hills are little more than big green splodges of paint. The other is a 1984 work by Park Saeng-kwang of a shaman. Vibrant bright blues and reds. Comical little dokkebi lurk in the bottom of the picture. Both works revisit Korea’s classical genres in a reaction against the abstract monochrome movement which dominated the 1970s.

The next floor down contains foreign art of more or less the same period. The most eye-catching work is the one you first see as you enter: Aanish Kapoor’s untitled dark laquered mirror (left) which draws you in to contemplate it. Other interesting works are a sketch study by Christo for his orange “Gates” project in New York’s Central Park, and Cy Twombly’s Untitled (right) which seems superficially to be the inspiration for Park Seo-bo’s ecriture series.

The lowest gallery contains a mixture of Korean and foreign contemporary work. Among the Korean works are a Lee Bul cyborg, a video installation by Paik Nam-June and a large sculpture by Suh Do-ho — Some/one: a life-size armoured warrior (below) whose over-long chain-mail spreads out on the floor all around him is constructed of individual military ID badges.

Coffees in the museum cafe cost 6,000 Won.

Well worth a visit, but you need to book in advance as the entry is controlled, ensuring that the gallery is never over-crowded.

Links:

• Article on Suh Do-ho in JoongAng daily (9 Nov 2006)
• Chang Uc-chin foundation
• Leeum website
• More pics and a visit report over at Jon Allen’s blog, Seoul-man

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A collection of articles, turned into a book. As I’m neither an art critic nor an art historian I’m going to restrict myself to a chapter-by-chapter summary of the ground covered.

1. A useful overview of colonial period art. Highlights the difficulty of studying & researching the art history of the period, in part because of the interconnectedness with Japanese art history, the complications of colonialism, and also because of more practical considerations that much of the artwork has disappeared or been destroyed, and that many of the artists ended up in the North and so it has been difficult to get access to them and their works. One thing to come across quite strongly is the fact that, at least initially, Korea was getting a rather second-hand view of western modernity in general and modern trends in Art in particular: everything they saw was introduced via Japan as part of that country’s colonialist/modernising agenda.
2. Slightly off-topic, but nevertheless interesting, this chapter describes Korea’s encounter with the west via participation in international expositions. There are some interesting eye-witness accounts (an interesting snippet: the Korean delegation seemed to get hold of the wrong end of the stick in one of the shows: in an expo devoted to modern manufactures, the Koreans brought along a 400-year-old cannon to their pavilion); and some quotes from the official court records - the king interrogating the leader of the delegation as to how the show went.
3. A chapter about modern women - how they were depicted in the media and in art, and how they participated in art, and how women generally were portrayed in art. A chapter which I shall go back to. Image (above right): Yu Yi-tae “Research” (1944) from WolganMisool. Slightly off-topic, but while writing this post I came across this article in the Chosun Ilbo about the changing role of women as shown in Choseon dynasty genre paintings.
4. A puzzling chapter which discusses the influence on high art of the immensely popular works by Millet. The conclusion is: they had no influence.
5. By far the most absorbing chapter of the first half of the book discusses the genre of Korean painting known as “local colors”, and the discussion highlights the difficulty of untangling the complex strands of nationalism and colonialism at work here. The Japanese liked to think of Korea as an exotic, primitive “other”, and so encouraged the painting of “local color” works - which generally involved pictures of pretty peasant women working in the fields; while a slightly sympathetic school of thought in Korean art also supported the depiction of uniquely Korean themes, which coincidentally included landscape and farm scenes. (Image: Autumn, by Kim Ki-chang, 1935, Ho-Am Art Museum, Korea)
6. A necessary but rather pedestrian chapter cataloguing the works of Korean artists who studied and worked in Japan. This chapter is the first which deals with Korean artists experimenting with abstraction.
7. Highlighting how sculpture had been a neglected art in the Choseon period (watercolour painting was seen as a suitable pastime for one of the yangban literati, while sculpture was definitely seen as something a bit grubby and working-class)
8. Introduces the post-liberation trends in Korean art. Freed from colonial oppression and the horrors of the Korean War, Korean art blinked in the sunlight. There seemed a lot of catching up to do with what was happening in the West, and for the first time Korean artists were able to engage directly with Western influence without the mediation of Japan. Experimentation with various styles and forms of abstraction followed, but ultimately there was a feeling that the work was derivative, despite some groups’ exploration of traditional folk-painting themes or use of traditional techniques such as ink painting.
   The reaction was two diametrically opposed schools which Kim sees as both attempting to portray essential Koreanness: Monochrome painting and minjung art, the latter of which arose out of protest at the oppressive developmental policies of Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan.
9. Chapter 9, which covers the post-war Informel artists, presents a bewildering array of artists’ names, small artists’ collectives, different styles, and baffling manifestoes. The pace of the chapter possibly reflects the energy and experimentation of the time. Kim laments the lack of primary material which survives from the time: this is in part because the artists were too busy getting drunk to look after their canvasses:
   

   As soon as the paintings were hung, we would dart to drinking holes…Since most of us were living in tiny rooms, moving from place to place, and there was no space to put the paintings, you put them outside and neighborhood kids would play with them and tear them up. You considered yourself lucky if you managed to save the frames. Sometimes we didn’t even return to claim dozens of works submitted to exhibitions, and they got lost. (Kim Tschang-yeul)

10. Chapter 10 comes as a blessed relief after the previous chapter’s assault. It focuses on the work of probably Korea’s leading 20th Century artist, Kim Whanki. Finally a collection of pictures which are deeply pleasurable to look at, in whatever phase of his life. Pictures you would want to possess, look at every day, have at home rather than appreciate on an intellectual level in a gallery. Enough said. (Image to the right is from 1974, the last year of Kim’s life. Image from the Whanki museum, Seoul)
11. Chapter 11 spends more time on the movements of the 70s and 80s which sought to reunite Korean art with some of its past traditions. Kim places these movements in the context of the nation-building atmosphere of the Park Chung-hee era. The minimalist “monochrome” artists sought harmony with nature in the creative process, while the simple colours evoked the purity of Choseon porcelain. The Minjung artists, however, sought to revive more populist forms, folk art, Buddhist art, as a way of communicating with people and mobilising sentiment against the oppressive growth-led economic policies of the dictatorship: particularly powerful illustrations are the works of Lim Ok-sang - Earth IV, which shows a bloody wound made in the countryside by construction or quarry work, and Barley Field II, which shows traumatised and haggard factory workers returning to the fields like automata. Image: Lim Ok-sang: Barley Field II, 1983, from Darmstadt Kunsthalle.
12. The final chapter, written in 1998, pulls together some observations from the post-democratisation period.

Overall a very user-friendly introduction to the topic. I leave it to others to opine as to whether its coverage is balanced and its assessments fair. But from my perspective it was a good buy.

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