Russian-ness, Korean-ness, global art

By Kate Lim

The Korean art community took part in the development of contemporary art as a latecomer. Just as modern Korean economic development is regarded as “compressed,” the evolving course of contemporary Korean art has been different from that of Western art. It occurred within a short frame of time and simultaneously, it was with the imperative to interact with the West that Korean art has been challenged to formulate its own creative language. In comparison, Western art progressed over a much longer span of time, without the need to interact with “the East.” Thus, the Western artistic precedents are not really applicable to Korean art although Korean artists have been much influenced by the Western art practice. No direct relationship between the two exists.

It seems to me that it is more appropriate to compare the development path of Korean art with that of other latecomer countries that have faced similar needs for compression and interaction with “the West.” Russian Constructivism, though it emerged much earlier than Korea’s earnest participation in contemporary art, has circumstantial resemblances to Korean art at a particular phase, offering us an enticing vantage point from which we can make a comparative understanding of the art of Korea and Russia.

Russian Constructivism started as Russian artists’ creative response to the social call for a new state-building initiated by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Russian artists were inspired and encouraged by Lenin’s dictum: “Those who have the best technology, organization, discipline and the best machines emerge on top…It is necessary to master the highest technology or be crushed.” The organic identification between art-making and revolutionary vision was transferred into a new synthesis of art and technology. The famous constructivist Vladimir Tatlin was supposed to make a model of the “Monument to the Third International” in 1920 using wood. The tower was meant to consist of three great rooms of glass, erected with a complicated system of vertical pillars and spirals. The forms of the rooms were all to be different, harmonically corresponding to each other and revolving at different speeds. The fascinating aspect of the tower was how the different moving speeds of the rooms symbolized components of the revolutionary social system. Although the project was never realized, one can vividly imagine that Tatlin was envisaging a tower constructed from an intense concentration of technology and new industrial materials that would construct a new artistic language. His counter-relief, another Constructivism-orientated example on a much smaller scale, is an exquisite building using a variety of materials such as iron, aluminum, zinc, wire and fastening components. Through this artistic construction, the entirety of the work liberates the constraints of materials, subtly playing out the tension, harmony and interaction with all parts involved.

This emergence of Constructivism was a great leap from the preceding state of the Russian art scene that was a continuation of the late 19th century. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, the Russian art community had been passionately engaged with the artistic judgement of Western art and its applicability to Russian art. While artists were experimenting with various re-organization of Western styles, Russian critics and intellectuals admired, heavily criticized and rigorously analyzed Western art styles one after the other: Symbolism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Futurism. At the same time, serious discussions on “the national” or “the Russian”took place, comparing their works directly with the Western art and simultaneously trying to define Russia’s cultural identity in the context of their dialogue with the West. In the wake of all such animated and experimental practices and discourse, the Russian artists encountered a critical juncture in their history. With the Revolution and the social milieu of new optimism, their artistic confidence grew substantially and they embarked on a new artistic configuration, immersed in an unexpected constructive drive in spite of the scarcity of materials at the time. The echoes of Russian Constructivism elevated the sense of Russian-ness that is was charged with artistic experiments, and became a common ground for all artists across the national border.

The emergence of Dansaekhwa in the mid-1970s bore some resemblance to that of Russian Constructivism. Between the late-1950s and the 1960s, Korean artists were engaged with various new artistic explorations in a constant dialogue with Western art. The late-1960s, in particular, saw the explosion of experimental art in the Korean art scene, acting as a catalyst for debate on the potential of conceptual art. The piecemeal economic improvement was creating a situation where even the devastating memory of the Korean War was being relegated to the faint past. In the early 1970s, the debate on Korean-ness similarly broke up within the Korean art community. It was trying to move beyond the mere technical implementation of foreign artistic style to the making of an authentic artistic formulation. This artistic desire that was being coupled with a sense of artistic confidence was generating a lot of positive energy among the artists of 1970s’ Korea.

With all of this happening, a group of artists were unexpectedly driven to look for a formulation of a new artistic language by liberally focusing on the potential of the medium. Thus, the Dansaekhwa artists arrived at a surprising artistic re-configuration of the medium by intensely involving themselves with the material with their hands and body. Just like the Constructivists, they emphasized the artistic faktura (Russian for facture).They poured their artistic exertion– drawing repeatedly on wet paint, creating different kinds of surfaces of the canvas with wet hanji, pushing the paint through the fissure of the canvas, and so on –for the “construction” of new imagery. It was an artistic break-through achieved by the evolving course of conversations with Western art in search for a “creative and experimental” focus on Korean-ness. Now,Dansaekhwa art is gaining a belated respect and acknowledgement in the global art world. Although the specific contents of the historic juncture encountered by Dansaekhwa artists and Russian Constructivists were different, the relatively similar genesis of their art should be what we must pay attention to in their position in global art.

Kate Lim is director of Art Platform Asia, an independent curator and art writer.