By Seo Dong-shin
Staff Reporter
Method 1: Draw countless black lines on a white paper using a pencil, until the lines cover the entire paper so thickly that the black surface of the paper mirrors your face. It's good for boosting your confidence in drawing and improving your arm's strength.
Method 2: Put a transparent paper on a selected ``exemplary'' sketch of a plaster bust. Carefully copy the lines beneath the paper until you have completely memorized the sketch and can perfectly reproduce it.
These seem grueling methods to enhance one's creativity, the key virtue in the genre called art. But these are in fact orthodox methods that are being used to develop student's art skills to help them qualify for entrance to one of the prestigious art colleges such as those at Seoul National University or Hongik University. While high school students hoping to study humanities or social sciences cram for university entrance exams, those who want to enter art schools ``learn'' art in this way at private institutions, or hagwons.
``Paintings should be diverse; they are not objects to be compared against each other. But in our country, it matters whether you do it the right way or not,''' says Jin Hoon, an artist who graduated from Seoul National University himself.
In the exhibition room at the Ilmin Museum of Art, Jin hung up some of the black papers from method 1 done by students he teaches at hagwons, along with worn out pencils and erasers used in the procedure.
He is one of the six artists who decided to disclose what paths they have taken, and how they still struggle to maintain being artists at the exhibition titled ``The Horns of a Dilemma.'' It opens on Friday.