Park, Su-Geun(1914~1965) is the most famous artist of western painting in Korea. We can feel very modern in the modest colors, simple figures and many piled unique matieres of his work. Although his paintings were drawn in the Japan's colonial rule an...
Park, Su-Geun(1914~1965) is the most famous artist of western painting in Korea. We can feel very modern in the modest colors, simple figures and many piled unique matieres of his work. Although his paintings were drawn in the Japan's colonial rule and 1950's Korean War, it represents modern sense and characteristics except traditional subject matters. This means that we feel the modernism in his work. The modernism is very ambiguous and flexible, so we hardly define it as a word. Therefore we are trying to study what the modernism means and a link between his paintings and modernism in this thesis.
His paintings have been evaluated and held in high esteem mainly in terms of his life and work itself. Just a few art critics reported that some characteristics of his work are on the modernism way.
Generally, Korean modernism is divided into two periods. The one is the early modernism in 1930's and another is abstract expressionism in the before and after of 1957 including avant-garde art after that. And the western painting trend of 1930's and 1940's is also divided into two parts. The one is fauvism by Gu, Bon-Woong and Lee, JungSeob and another is abstractionism by Kim, Hwan-Ki and Yoo, Young-Guk. It was affected by western impressionism and abstract expressionism. Park, Su-Keun had worked from 1930's to 1960's and his early paintings were academic and traditional things. Because he could be enrolled in authorized artists through contest which focused on academic painting trend and was educated in art institute. People and shape of house was simplified in 1940's. In 1950's, the simple figures and space became more sophisticated and modern and it would make his own and unique art area.
In second chapter, we will study lexical meaning of modernism and the modernism which is defined by Clement Greenberg who is the most famous modern art critics.
The modernism covers whole art area which is related with modernity, especially it means sensuous, abstract and surreal movements like expressionism, futurism, and formalism. Those movements is called the modern art in EU and America, but it is a kind of resistance against the realism which is the root of 19th century arts and avant-garde art after the World War I. Clement Greenberg combined aesthetics of formalism which is called the modernism with history of progressivism and his theory is based on autonomy of arts and made special area. He said that the all elements of drawings were passive factor but it was recognized as active factor in modernism era. It means that the limited elements of draws like plat surface, shape of canvas and feature of paints was accepted as active factor. So paintings deviated from the custom like describing some objects and moved to "The flat features can not be compared and shared with any other arts."
Greenberg made the principle of modern abstract art by combining the descriptive factors of romantic paintings with pure concept. In the Park, Su-Geun's movement from academic drawing to simple and abstract drawing, we can see a modernism way like the flat features of Greenberg and Paul Jackson Pollock's 'All over painting'. The simplify of images, flat features and deep matieres of informel paintings is the similar characters with the characteristics of abstract expressionism which is supported by Greenberg. Park, Su-Guen used limited colors including matiere and represented monochrome features to express traditional sense and emotion of Korea by eliminating useless image and thought. It is hard to say that he is a modernist, but he overcame the imitation of modernism and expressed ethnic characteristics and left his own mark on the history of Korean fine art. He described common people's life before and after the liberation and 1950's Korean War and made the western modernism into traditional aesthetic consciousness.
Park SuGeun's work is being revaluated in terms of Korean modern art and world art history, therefore this thesis will consider his work in the two respects.