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Korean Sculpture
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Modern Period Sculpture (1923-)
Modern Korean sculpture was introduced to Korea in 1923 by young artist named Kim Pok-chin. He entered the Tokyo School of Fine Art in 1919, and won a entrance prize at competition which was held by the Japanese government in 1923. He returned home to become the first Korean ever to be trained in the sculptural art of the Western style. A few other students then enrolled in the same Japanese institution in order to study modern sculpture. Those artists, including Kim Chong-yong, Kim Kyong-sung and Yun Hyo-jung soon joined Kim Pok-chin in introducing sculpture influenced by European traditions to Korea. They were mostly absorbed with sculpting portions of the human body such as heads, torsos and costumes in a realistic manner, which they had learned in Tokyo and where academic realism prevailed. These sculptors were active in presenting works at national art exhibitions held annually under government sponsorship both in Seoul and in Tokyo. This early stage of modern sculpture suffered from a lack of creative inspiration despite the pioneering zeal of these early artists, who were largely obsessed with imitating Western sculpture and transplanting it to Korea's cultural soil.
These artistic limitations were also aggravated by the colonial situation. Since Korea's colonization by Japan in 1910, Koreans link to the outside world was largely colored by Japanese will. It is from this general perspective that the overall background and development of sculpture as a major aesthetic movement in modern Korean history should be viewed.
By the 1930s, however, the national circumstances were far from conducive to lively activity among artists, as Japan was pulling its colonial reins ever more tightly in preparation for World War II. In 1945 Korea was liberated, but the overall situation did not improve and actually became even more hostile for aesthetic creation, as the southern half of the peninsula headed into ideological conflicts and military confrontation with the northern half.
Admiration of Western sculpture breathed some life into the activities of Korean sculptors during this unstable period, however. Yun Hyo-jung met Marino Marini in Venice in 1952, and was greatly influenced by the famous sculptor and his works. Futhermore, in 1954, the work of Kim Chong-yong was selected by the international sculpture competition which was held in England. It was the first time in the 20th century that Korean sculpture was introduced to the Europe. Kim Chong-yong, although in many ways a traditional scholar-artist well-trained in the Confucian classics, also became the pioneer of Korean abstract sculpture.
After the Armistice Agreement which brought the three-year Korean War to a cease-fire in 1953, art circles began to regain some vitality. A few large-scale exhibitions were organized by private organizations, and these helped encourage a remarkable diversity in style and technique most visible in the fields of painting and sculpture. Among the exhibitions of notable significance were the annual membership show sponsored by the Korean Fine Art Association, and the Contemporary Korean Art Exhibition for Invited Artists sponsored by the leading daily newspaper Chosun Ilbo. The latter deserves special note for providing emerging artists of avant-garde tendencies the chance to display their works.
Modern Korean sculpture became firmly established by the end of the 1950s. As the conflict between the opposing schools of realism and abstractionism was increasing, sculptors began to employ a greater diversity of materials, including assorted metals and stone, thus breaking with their traditional reliance on plaster and wood.
Between the 1960s and the 1970s, Korean sculpture made impressive progress due to the country's rapid economic development. Dominating the Korean sculptural arts during this period of dramatic change were two major international modern art movements. The first of these was the so-called "antiformal abstractionism," first introduced to Korea in the early 1960s. The movement, which acquired a major impetus with the creation of the Korean Avant-Garde Art Association, breathed new life into the world of Korean sculpture throughout this period. Sculptors of this vein repudiated all natural forms respected by the traditional school of academic realism. They sought to give spontaneous expression to their emotions through nonrepresentational shapes. In the following decade of the 1970s, this emotional abstractionism faced a strong challenge from another new art movement that opposed its conception and style, called "sculptural conceptualism."
Sculptural conceptualism pursued "pure" abstraction, free from all emotional binds and connotations. In terms of style, artists of this movement favored simple and daring forms in contrast to those of the previous generation of antiformal vanguardism which tended to be complex and intricate. The 1980s experienced an unprecedented burgeoning of sculptors and sculptural activity. A number of young artists became nostalgic about past trends of a more humane nature, in reaction to the cold intellectualism of the previous decade.
Since the 1980s, Korean sculpture has embarked upon new and culturally diverse trends. Foremost among them is the establishment of a new realistic tendency by artists primarily concerned with restoring the communication between artists and the public. Genre boundaries between sculptures and other forms of arts were also being broken down. In addition, technology became a very important element in the sculptural art of this period. The video sculpture of Paik Nam-june was a starting point for these artistic movement. These trends all reveal the extent to which traditional concept of sculpture in Korea has been recast by the introduction of new media, which in turn has brought about a newer and more socially diverse relationship between the artist and the public.
Information provided by the Korean Embassy