On the Path

Energy — Calling Blessing

1989 · 100×70 cm · Mixed Media

Image size 4.0 MB

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Mixed Review 1989 · Choi Tae-man

"Searching for the Pulse of Tradition" — Choi Tae-man Critique (1989)

The Question of Tradition in Korean Art
The question of tradition in Korean art is not a simple one. Across not only the visual arts but Korean culture as a whole, the problem of the "creative inheritance" or "contemporary recreation" of tradition has continued to be discussed as if it were a self-evident imperative. Yet such a problem-consciousness, the more it stands on a doctrinal ground, is apt to treat tradition not from a historical and social vantage but as something mystical, transcendent, and eternally immutable—something beyond logic.
The problem of tradition cannot be reduced to vague idealism or to a nominalism that holds it must simply "be such-and-such." Sunk in the abstract slogan of "succeeding tradition" or in nominalism, one risks letting the rich possibilities of tradition lie dormant—merely chewing over what was past or borrowing its surfaces—and thereby rendering tradition itself hollow. To duplicate what existed in the past cannot be called the proper inheritance of tradition: this much is self-evident. Tradition is not something absolute existing beyond eras and history, but something that reflects the needs, demands, tastes, and purposes of its own time.
Then what is tradition?
By dictionary definition, tradition refers to what, within custom, possesses historical background and is transmitted forward bearing particularly high normative significance.
Cultural tradition, in particular, is the accumulated body of values created by human beings—that is, the substance in which material culture and intellectual culture have been integrated, conserving each other, an actual and living entity. It is the fruit of human intellectual and physical labor accumulated and developed by the spiritual values that flowed through long history and the consciousness of communal life, and further, an asset that enriches and elevates the quality of life. Yet doctrinaire traditionalists, refusing to grasp tradition as something dynamic, disguise conservative and archaic academicism as tradition; eclecticists, regarding it only as a static object, gather this and that to fashion hybrids and misconstrue this as tradition.
These outcomes spring from the worship of false idols in a consciousness that lacks awareness, and at the same time from the trap of disguising subjective notions as tradition while abandoning practical inquiry.
Discussion of tradition in Korean art has, broadly, proceeded along two perspectives. First, the position that honors the elevated tastes and aesthetic consciousness of the ruling class; second, the attitude that delves into the aesthetic tradition of the common people, rooted in the substratum of our nation's thought—shamanism, the yin-yang and five-elements thought, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. Both perspectives accept that our nation's self-identity has been maintained without being lost. The former inherits Chinese painting theory together with the academic foundation of the learning of Zhu Xi and Neo-Confucianism imported through China; the latter rests upon shamanism—our indigenous folk faith—while drawing on foreign religions that, though imported, became indigenized. Particularly worth noting is that within the so-called Minjok/Minjung art of the 1980s, efforts have been made to overcome these two perspectives and to recover the tradition of an autonomous, era-responsive, practical, and exuberant art produced by the people themselves.
In any case, the aesthetic expressions appearing in the implements used for shamanism, divination, prophecy, geomancy, and prognostication, and the aesthetic forms and tastes appearing in the various instruments and tools used in the play of the common people—who, even amid the toil of labor and the calamities of nature, sought to overcome them through play—were, as we know, distinct from the contemplative and speculative tradition of the ruling class. Yet relative to the evaluation and education of the ruling class's lofty artistic tradition, the tradition of the substratum culture, made out of the urgent necessities of life, was not treated with comparable importance. And even where discussion of folk arts such as was active, it was often in a quasi-mythic vein of veneration. The problem lies in the attitude of viewing and grasping tradition as something fixed; when this limit cannot be overcome, the discussion of tradition only circles at the level of generalities. In this sense, the awareness that tradition is useful even in the present, sufficiently productive and a real asset of the national community, must lead to a practical effort to reproduce it in concrete terms.
Searching for Tradition: Its Possibilities and Limits
What lies at the core of Shin Jang-sik's work is "finding our own." For one educated and grown within the conventions and institutions of modern art, this is no small adventure. During his college years he faithfully studied the various norms and rules of so-called modernism and produced his student work within those frames. That such an artist has turned his gaze to tradition and sought to discover his own language within it is an encouraging fact.
The decisive impetus that turned Shin Jang-sik's interest toward tradition was the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Working as a member of the art staff for the opening and closing ceremonies, he began his investigation and study of Korean traditional art. Those who prepared and ran this event with him are known to have reached a consensus that, at this festival of the peoples of the world, something most Korean must be shown, and to have labored to realize this.
In that process they set out to find what was distinctive in our national tradition, and on the basis of what they gathered they prepared the opening and closing ceremonies. Yet over a year's work, what he could prepare remained largely within the scope of documentary materials. The decisive limit that a study of tradition through documents can incur is that it may confine tradition to a fixed mold—shifting traditional subjects, rather than considering their utility or content within the traditional context, into a merely aesthetic, decorative register. Even if his participation in the Olympic events provided a turning point that shifted his thinking and direction, the fact that this took place in a highly bureaucratic and quantity-driven, state-led form also lets us measure the limits of his work.
Still, even before his work on the Olympic ceremonies, Shin Jang-sik had attempted, in his own way, sketches of traditional motifs and of various images named "Korean." Though these were no more than a search in the literal sense, not yet a serious undertaking, this exploration of tradition gave him an inkling that it suited his temperament better than the elaborate and refined logics of modern art. In any case, while still at the stage of merely searching out traditional forms and content, he was able—through consulting with various folk scholars, frequenting museums and private studios, and gathering materials in the course of the great Olympic event—to gain the confidence to draw out his present work.
What Shin Jang-sik has investigated above all, and applied to his own work, are flags. The flag was chosen during the process of "finding our own," but the special attachment he holds for it comes from discovering in the very forms of various traditional flags—used for many purposes in the past—an inherent force of condensation and emission, and a robust vigor. From the agricultural flags (nonggi) used when the farming economy was central to the social order, to the military banners and the various flags carried in royal processions, each was made and used according to its own reasons, content, and conventions. The question is in what way and within what context such relics of the past can be recalled within an industrial—even post-industrial—modern society. Carelessly, this could remain at the level of nostalgia or reminiscence. But he believes that these flags, along with the various square images our ancestors made, carry a sufficient spiritual background and bear the possibility of developing into new symbols. He invests this belief in the content of his works.
Take, for instance, the work that is at once most visually compelling and most multivalent in symbol at this solo exhibition: 〈Arirang — Morning〉, in which one feels where his belief is grounded. At the center of the picture, around a resplendently rising sun, sit the colors blue, white, red, and black—signifying the four cardinal directions—wrapped by the flame-tipped form (hwayeomgak; in nonggi this pattern is also called "centipede legs") found in traditional flags. The four directional colors plus yellow—the symbol of the human—are called , a symbol of the cosmological view grounded in yin-yang and five-elements thought. The bird ascending within the blazing sun also expresses the consciousness of soaring, whose archetype the artist finds in Goguryeo tomb murals—the murals depicting a celestial maiden holding the sun and ascending; he cites their content and form. The work, then, evidently depicts the majesty of sunrise. The will and the radiation of force to open a new day are crucial features of Goguryeo art, and the same forward-moving and active force is also to be found in Joseon-era works such as 〈Ilwol Busangdo (Sun, Moon, and Mythical Tree)〉. The rising sun above the legendary Obong Mountains makes us feel that hwayeomgak is not a merely decorative element but an iconography symbolizing the emission and absorption of qi. The work, then, is at once a great flag and a symbol of force, and further, a multilayered meaning-structure organized as a wish for an affirmative, active life. Its bright, vivid colors and the form that bears simple yet clear content show, unmistakably, the characteristics one sees in .
In this respect, an important driver of Shin Jang-sik's work is, evidently, —not the dark and negative kind, but the bright, positive, future-oriented kind. Within his flag paintings appear not only such minhwa iconography but also gogok (curved jade beads) that form the (the most primal form and the law that governs all things in the cosmos, the very source of all things), and shamanic and folk-religious icons such as the rooster and the bangsangsi face, drawn with apotropaic intent. The do (an instrument used to wish for abundance under the agricultural economy) and the humorously reconfigured 〈Tal〉 derived from the lion of the Eunyul Saja-nori can be read in the same vein.
The generous and affirmative vision in his works yields a delight different from what works born of suffering and anguish convey. That his work does not stop at mere interest but also lets us infer more meaningful content is where his strength is to be found. Moreover, his criticism of reality is expressed by hidden means—through satire and humor—which is also worth noting. The only problem is that his work too strongly carries a diagrammatic aspect. Because of this, one cannot quite shake the impression that the intended content is not fully and dimensionally embodied but laid out in a flat, explanatory enumeration. Such an impression is also to be felt in the slight protrusion of the flag from the picture plane, with its background handled in a contemporary-feeling drawing. The pencil-drawn backgrounds and the overly decorative addition of tree branches likewise seem to carry the limit of a certain eclecticism. The real question is, however: how much persuasive power can the iconography he seeks to express carry within this modern social life of an industrial society? Since this is what he himself regards as the task he sets himself, no clear conclusion can be expected at once. We can only say that we must together study how a developed seedling method might be found—reflecting upon what easily forgotten soil and constitution remain in this vast field of modern art, and then growing them again—and how a result fit for our climate and environment might be brought forth.

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