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The Asian Modern, Volume II © John Clark, 2013

Park Seo-Bo, (1931 - ) Korean

Notes: Teachers Lee Ung-no/Eungro 1904-1989 Eastern art is much more spiritual than Western art, and as such, it has been unable to reach true popularity. As we revive past traditions and push for creative Eastern painting through hard work, our art should surpass the art of the world. (cited by Kim Youngna, 2005, 30).

Lee Ung-no’s technique: He selected sheets of traditional, handmade Korean paper, with which he was so familiar, tore and ripped them by hand, and attached them to his canvas. His collage work, irregular and texture –focussed, was his own reaction to the Art Informel movement sweeping Paris at the time. His work differed from Western artists in that they cut out the desired forms and placed them on the canvas, but Lee used a variety of novel methods like affixing pieces to his canvas and then tearing them again, scraping the pieces he had placed one over the other to reveal paper underneath, and coloring the paper with India ink or other pigments. (Kim Youngna, 2005, 31)

Korean Informel or Abstraction?

Manifesto of 1957 Modern Art Association Our Association shall deliberate as to how the art of the past ad present must change, and all the antitheses of feudalistic elements that stand in the way of cultural progress shall be our model. We shall start from an individual understanding of these two tasks. Whether our works will realize this ambition and whether we will have fruitfully communicated with the high-brow Formalists will be determined only by time, toil, and a sense of reality. (cited in Lee Yongwoo, Information and Reality: Korean Contemporary Art, Edinburgh: Fruitmarket Gallery, 1995, 17)

Park Seo-bo wrote in 1979: One day [around 1957] I destroyed all the forms on the canvas. I poured water on the canvas and rubbed it with a piece of laundry soap; as I scratched the surface with a pommel, the underlying colours floated up like gemstones. I felt an instinctive pleasure from unexpected effect. Sine I wasn’t comp0letely satisfied, however, I continued with meaningless actions, splattering, dripping, scraping and staining, in an intuitive way. I couldn’t tell what was what. Regretting what I had done, and feeling discontent and unresolved, I went to a drinking hole and downed quite a bit of rice wine. I walked back to the studio, quite inebriated, turned on the light and at that moment I thought, yes, this is it. Perhaps one might say I felt liberation in a world with no narratives, just pure actions. This was the beginning of my work that would later be called informel. (cited by Kim Youngna, 20th century Korean Art, 2005, 206)

Park Seo-bo in an interview with the critic Lee Kyung-sung, speaking of lack of international influence in 1957, said in 1979: I would like to claim that Korean society in the 1950s was so closed that there was practically no access to international information. It was even impossible to buy a book. As I have said earlier, my new work started with the act of destroying a pre-existing value system which had grown impotent. One cannot claim, therefore that the Korean informel was directly related to internationalism. I supposed it could be argued, however, that 2

The Asian Modern, Volume II © John Clark, 2013

internationalism came in on the boots of United Nations troops and indirectly infected our consciousness. (cited by Kim Youngna, 20th century Korean Art, 2005, 207)

Bang Geun-taek wrote in November 1959: We are grappling with a vocabulary of certitudes for a new future that will shine, in the midst of the present confusion, directly on the desire for life. Breaking away from all rationalist things of the precise intellectual systems until yesterday, we endorse the beginning of a new world where the desire for life comes from the self. We acknowledge that there is not only the discovered but also an enormous remainder in the world that has not yet been treaded upon. (cited in Kim Young-na, 20th century Korean art, 2005, 211).

We must demand originality and one’s own subjectivity from artists…The issue is what kind of statement we will provide for art within international trends. (Kim Byoung-ki, ‘Demanding one’s own Subjectivity’, Sasanggye (Thought World) May 1961 cited by Kim Young-na, 2005, 38).

Manifesto for October 1961 exhibition: Thus all things are in a state of dissolution. ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Now’, ‘You’ and ‘I’ and ‘Things’, have all melted, flowed together, and gathered in one place. All the fragments of ‘I’ that have dissolved are bumping and floating with other particles here and thee. Those fragments that have not yet completely melted away are struggling to stay afloat. And this is the meaning of creative acts. It thus cannot be fixed. It is nothing but a movement in transit. It is but heat and light that is being emitted. This is all the freedom permitted to ‘I’. The absolutes of today may someday crystallize into a core. Now ‘I’ am but hot. We are all sizzling and burning. (cited in Kim Young-na, 20th century Korean art, 2005, 214).

These abstract artists are attached simply to the influence or imitation of Expressionist form. It is absurd that, as they engage in unoriginal imitation, they wield power as the avant-garde, spearheading a new movement. (Yi Yeol-mo, ‘Abstraction is not art’, in Sedae (Generation) November 1963, cited by Kim Young-na, 2005, 38)

Many informel works no longer survive especially due to the economic constraints of 1957- 60 when informel was being formed. At the time, a camera cost almost as much as an apartment does now. It was so consuming just to paint, overcoming all kinds of obstacles; when paintings were done, we were exhausted. As soon as the paintings were hung, we would dart to drinking holes. It seems that there was a widespread tendency to deride the idea of preserving the shit we made through photographs, seeing it a reflection of institutional thinking. Since most of us were living in tiny rooms, moving from place to place, and there was no space to put the paintings, you put them outside and neighbourhood kids would play with them and tear them up. You considered yourself lucky if you managed to save the frames. Sometimes we didn’t even return to claim dozens of works submitted to exhibitions, and they got lost. (Kim Tschang-yeul in a 1987 letter to Kim Young-na and cited in her 20th century Korean Art, London: Laurence King, 2005, 200)

Miyakawa Atsushi, ‘Anfuorumeru igo’, [After Informel], Bijutsu Techô, May 1963 [winner 4th Art Criticism Contest] In the moment of simply reacting against academicism in abstract art, however, informel may be defined as nothing but ‘art terrorism’ that denies all the languages of modern art and seeks a pure, complete expression, but such a conception would be a miscarriage of 3

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the true possibilities of contemporary life contained in it. Contemporaneity is thought of only in terms of style, but the contradiction between the contemporary as a concept of style and modernity as a concept of value inevitably makes itself manifest sooner or later. This is probably the true reason for the early disenfranchisement of informel. The fact that the act of expression had become an end in itself became clear to everyone, but in the modern context, this act becomes empty when it is seen as a ‘vehement confrontation’ and can only become a gratuitously eloquent expression. All that was left after the bankruptcy was anti-art. (translated by Stanley Anderson in Shimbata Yasuhide et al, 20 seiki Furanzu kaiga no chôsen: Inforumeru to ha nanika? / Postwar Abstract Painting in France and Art Informel, Tokyo: Bridgestone Museum of Art, 2011, 170)

Tansaekhwa or Monochrome School The essential issue concerns what new possibilities the flat canvas work as a work of art can present. Painting, which reduces itself to a flat canvas, must assume a painted texture on that flat surface. Texturing of the plane, whether or not you fill the canvas with colour or form, means that the color, form, and canvas exist on the same level so they enjoy a unified reality (Lee Il in 1975 cited by Kim Young-na, 2005, 48)

Monochrome artists also surpassed the material, tactile world of the canvas in order to locate themselves within a space spreading to infinity. This space, they claimed, was a mental space as well as an origin, or a return to nature and a world born of nature’s creation and assimilation. (Kim Young-na, 2005. 50)

…In sum, to us white is not accepted as a physical form…our white suggests all possible existences of light. Our ancestors who pained landscapes in ink did it not, of course, because they could only see nature in black and white because they could draw it that way. Rather, they did it because they believed the essence of nature could be better expressed that way .. We become one with nature in a spiritual space. In a word, white on its own embodies all possible creation. (Lee Il in foreword to 1975 exhibition at Tokyo Gallery Five Korean Artists, Five Kinds of White. Cited by Kim Young-na, 2005, 50).

Kim Young-na (2005, 51) associates rise of monochrome school in the 1970s which an interest in cultural identity once the difficulties of the war’s aftermath had in some degree been overcome.

Monochrome art is the first movement to be fully conscious of tradition. It can be evaluated positively as the first art movement in which Koreans sought out their own art that differed from the West, even as they participated in international trends. (Kim Young- na, 2005, 51-52)

Monochrome aesthetics had a distinctive set of terms such as ‘naïve and spontaneous’, ‘surrender to nature’, and ‘the use of white’. It may also be linked to writings of Yanangi Sôetsu in 1930s and Ko Yu-seop in 1940s who described Korean art has having a ‘sense of warmth and generosity’ and ‘not striving for elaborate perfection’. (Kim Young-na, 20th century Korean art, 2005, 258). Correlation between monochrome and post-1960s resurgence in interest in Korean culture. The connection that Monochrome artists drew between their art and the spiritual aspects of the East Asian philosophical paradigm, and the link that critics made to the indigenous nature of Korean art played important roles in the expansion of this art movement. ..it can be said that the theporetical justification of relying on transition was an effective cultural 4

The Asian Modern, Volume II © John Clark, 2013

strategy to distinguish Korean art from Western art and bring the originality of Korean art to the fore. [This was simultaneous with the rise of mono-ha in Japan and its leading theoretician Lee Ufan who first came back to Korea in 1970]. (Kim Young-na, 20th Century Korean art, 2005, 259).

After Tansaekhwa and Minjung Academic circles argued over the definitions of Modernism in Korea, whether Modernism had been realized in Korea, whether Korean culture had truly entered a post-modern phase, and whether Post-Modernism itself was merely a concept derived from Western culture. Regardless of the debate, it became clear, through the partial disappearance of many taboos in the 1`990s, that Korea was manifesting post-industrial societal symptoms. In what was once a unifo9rm society there now existed an assortment of values. And the society became increasingly consumption-oriented. With influence of the mass-media, the distinction between high and popular culture began to disappear. Thus, it appears that before Modernism had run its course, Korean society had already arrived at Post- Modernism. (Kim Young-na, 20th century Korean Art, London: Laurence King, 2005, 269).

Park Seo-bo Interviews’ Extracts These interviews were conducted by John Clark with Yim Yunshin as interpreter on 28th and 29th June 2010 in the artist’s studio in Seoul and at a restaurant.

From Part I, 28.6.2010 I said to him [Nikos Papastergiadis in 2007] …I usually try to empty things. How I began the Écriture series is, before, I tried to express the hardships of the era, the experience of the war. I tried to express all that but at some point, I felt that it wasn’t right. I am an Asian, but before, I wanted to overcome the west by learning their ways even if I had to steal their grammar. That’s what I had thought but I realized that even if I learned their grammar completely and used it to stand against the west in contemporary arts, I would lose a hundred times. So I should find something else. I asked myself what I am, who I am, where I am, and what is happening. The answer was that I was a Korean and an Asian. When I went deeper, I found problems. I tried to dig in to find the origin of the Asian spirit but I realized that I was ignorant, that I knew nothing. So I read books, had more experiences. During those times, I started to be immersed in Laozi and Zhuangzi, their world.

From Part I, 28.6.2010 I started it in 1967-hardening clothes. I would wear the clothes and lather chemical products on my body. I had itches and blisters all over my body for 20 years after that. If I get a student to model for me, he would say, I’ll do it all for you, professor, but after one try, wouldn’t come back. So later, I was in a hurry to finish them on schedule. It was in the 1970 Osaka Expo-dozens of clothes that looked like they were running in a dark room. I put 5 watts red light inside the clothes so that the light would seep out through necks and arms of the running clothes. I did that for a while but at that time, I was moving every 3 months and just couldn’t carry around with me something that big. So I had to destroy them all. I didn’t even take any pictures. I had exhibited them in Osaka. Also, I buried clothes in a coffin that you bury people in when they are dead. I half-buried them in the coffins to make it look like dead bodies. They were my Illusion series.

From Part I, 28.6.2010 5

The Asian Modern, Volume II © John Clark, 2013

Also, the idioplasmic series. It was an interest in the traditions. You can see the [Korean] colourful lines in the books. In one work of the series, I mounted bandages and made it look like a human form but empty inside-I scraped the inside out. And sliced the empty ones, like doughnuts. I made human forms like that, too. At the time, seeing America and USSR send humans to the moon, I got much interested in the ‘zero-gravity’. So I threw away the brush to express that. Brushes are flexible and that means resilience. So I sprayed the oil colours through the air. That way, there is no resistance. The zero-gravity. On one hand I continued that and….And that was when Park Jeong-Hee was the president. Every broadcast, every radio was talking about ‘Korean way of Democracy’, That the western democracy was built upon hundreds of years of history, and that we couldn’t possibly have it overnight without such past and experience. It makes sense in a way but I heard it too much that I felt sick of it and resentful. But at the same time, I began to adopt Korean colour stripes in my idioplasmic series, all unconsciously. Without my knowledge, I had learned the colour systems seen in old palaces.

From Part I, 28.6.2010 In the beginnings of the écriture series, there’s this picture. This is like doodling [my son did] on a notebook, but without emotion. This only mimics the form. The form of resignation. And it changes as my series continues. So this only took the concept.

From Part I, 28.6.2010 Traditional stories. I saw many Seonangdangs [Shrines dedicated to local deities] in the country where they have mounted stones and tied [ribbons] to the trees for their rites…I drew this picture with that memory in mind. Yim: What was the turning point that made you move away from these kind of pictures? Park: Well, I didn’t like that I was becoming fettered by the narratives, I was sick of it.

From Part I, 28.6.2010, Writers with whom Park Seo-bo connected: Lee O-Young asked me to draw the cover for his first book, Literature of Resistance, a collection of criticisms. The novelist Lee Ho-Chul, Park Hee-Jin the poet who’s now a member of the National Academy of Arts. Song Chang-Kyoung, he was a professor at Sungkyunkwan University and now a member of the National Academy too. Min Jae-Shik, he’s close with me, too. I used to be a member at the society some of them, including Ho-Chul

From Part I, 28.6.2010 We didn’t have any hope for the future. Poverty, injustice, and fear of war…the whole society was destroyed and we didn’t have a single ray of hope. The only way to survive was complete resistance. Defiance against, and destroying the existing order, to do something new, that was all we had.

From Part I, 28.6.2010 The naming of the Écriture Series I named it in French because, I couldn’t find the right word in English. Then someone advised me that the word écriture is more suitable for my idea. So I thought the French word would be better. Bang Geun-Taek, he told me that the French écriture would be better than English words. Yim: And Myo-bup? [usual Korean term for Écriture] 6

The Asian Modern, Volume II © John Clark, 2013

Park: I had a few options that I reviewed. I think that my name, Park Seo-bo is only to distinguish myself from others. My original name is Park Jae-Hong but the name is to differentiate me from my brothers-Won-Hong, Shi-Hong, Park Hong- and doesn’t have any significant meaning itself. So I named it Myo-bup to tell the difference. That’s how it should be basically. If I think too much or pick a strange name, people try to find the meaning of the title in the painting and get more and more confused. There’s no need for it. Myo-bup fits my idea so I named the series just like I would name my dog. I didn’t think too much about it. It’s a way of writing, a way of drawing so I named it that. Then I would be telling nothing.

From Part I, 28.6.2010 the traditional dance in Buddhist costume. I used to reprimand our ancestors when I saw it. They covered up the beautiful female body with cloth, the hand, the body,…I thought it barbarian when I was young and didn’t know much. But in western dances, everything stops when the body stops. Just stop. But in our dances, the clothes still spins even when the body has stopped moving. So, the west is a culture that is dominated by human rule and us, on the contrary, our culture starts where human dominance cannot reach anymore. I became more interested and concentrated on it. I thought to follow the world that starts beyond the human dominance, the world of spirituality

From Part II, 29 June 2010 When he was an art school teacher Park Seo-bo wrote three phrases on his class room wall 1. Do not take after your teacher, never take after me. 2. Do not take after history. That means never repeat what was already done. 3. Do not take after yourselves.

From Part II, 29 June 2010 In 1950s there were ten women in twenty art students. Now there are five-six men in fifty.

From Part II, 29 June 2010 After graduation I suffered my whole life for my artistic views. After I made the Anti-Kukjeon manifesto in 56, I couldn’t get a job. At the time, as there weren’t many graduates who had majored in fine arts, there were many posts as school teachers. Yet I couldn’t get a job for two reasons. To work at a school, I would have an interview with the head teacher, the deputy head or the board chairperson. After the interview, everyone would say that I’m quite clever, but when they ask their friends about me – at their age, the friends would mostly be artists or judges at Kukjeon- the friends would say don’t hire him. Because every year, I criticized Kukjeon, they would show allergic response to my name, without ever having met me. They thought me a monster. So I couldn’t work. Another thing is, I told you that the Liberal Party government recruited students to be trained and said that they wouldn’t be called in unless a war happened, yet took them on the graduation day. That was a lie. The government had lied to its people. So, I’m not a person to just sit and bear it out. I stood up against them so they tried to arrest me. I was evading military service without meaning to do so. I had work at Baewha Girls’ high school but they came to catch me there so I ran away over the school fences.

From Part II, 29 June 2010 On Pop Art …my [late 1960s’] illusion series had nothing to do with Pop-art. I don’t like to do what others have done. I just stop when I see someone else doing something that I do. I stop 7

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working when I see someone else’s influence in it. In the late 60s, every radio or TV stations were talking about history seen from Korean perspective, democracy that fits our situation….I scorned it but unknowingly, I began to pay attention to our nation and its traditions. This is what I worked on the side. I used spray to paint this, not brushes. It doesn’t have any hands and so on. It’s like the installation work I did with clothes. There are places for hands but I smeared the paint on the places, it doesn’t have any details. And this too was from Korean tradition that…I don’t think that traditions are inherited like one would inherit material properties. It should come in creative forms, in accordance with the age. So I don’t exhibit these paintings anywhere, I don’t like them.

Influence on younger artists From Part II, 29 June 2010 I think that I gave Kim Sooja a lot of help. When she first came with the sewing she had done with wrappings, cloths and beddings…other teachers all scolded her that it couldn’t be an artworks. She was really put down but when she showed them to me, I told her that I liked it and she should do as she wanted. It doesn’t have to be on a canvas to be an artwork. That gave her courage and she continued on to make the Bottari series. And Choi Jeong Hwa, do you know Choi Jeong Hwa? He makes moving sculptures, of cloths, flowers, trees with fruits on them

Importance of monochrome movement From Part II, 29 June 2010 …the 70s was the greatest age in the Korean art history. I headed the monochrome movement. I felt that Korea needed to come into the modern age quickly. I started with…The Kukjeon had moved to the provinces but that was wrong. Then the people of the provinces would close their mind and look at art only in a passive way. I felt that I needed to stop the centralization of cultural power, and started having lectures all over the country. Every capital of each province, each big city should become a centre for cultures. I wanted to make a federal state of cultures and worked at it actively. For example, in Kwangju, Jeolla-do, they have pictures on the wall in even the shabbiest pubs. The city loves art. But Pusan, in contrast, doesn’t have any pictures even in buildings. That seemed like a problem to me. Kwangju wouldn’t accept anything else as art except oriental paintings. But Pusan, although it doesn’t know about art compared to Kwangju, the city has possibilities. After a few lectures I realized that if the people of Kwangju organized a contemporary art exhibition for themselves, they would see things differently. So I persuaded other artists. In the 70s, I had three goals; dispersion, discovery, dispersion of contemporary art on a national level. So every important city of Korea would become a center for contemporary art. And the other thing was to liberate the young artists…when they enter competitions and such, they never win, because the judges’ perspectives are restricted. But if the works are hung on the wall, people would develop taste for it. So I created the indépendants exhibition and there…Before, we selected famous artists go to global exhibitions. But I decided to select based on works, so that even if the artists were students, they could exhibit internationally. So people like Lee Sang-Nam went to San Paolo.

Working process: Through a labor-intensive, multi-step process, the artist creates Minimalist paintings with complexly textured surfaces. Several layers of mulberry paper – known in Korea as hanji – acrylic paint, and ink are built up onto each canvas. Before the layers dry, Park uses a pencil or a narrow bamboo stick to incise thin parallel lines across the entire surface. In each painting, rectangular spaces are strategically carved away, revealing a vivid under layer 8

The Asian Modern, Volume II © John Clark, 2013

of paint and creating what Park calls "Breathing Spaces" amidst the sea of lines. In keeping with Park's understated style, these new works juxtapose pattern and emptiness, restrained form and exuberant color, and Eastern and Western aesthetics. (from the artist’s website, 2009).

Park Seo-bo notes the hi kumuru (off-white) of Choson porcelains. He creates a ku kumuri [sooty black] from Chinese ink, acrylic paint, mineral dye, tobacco. (Soon Chun-cho in Cho, Soon-chun; Bloemink, Barbara, Empty the mind: The Art of Park Seo-Bo, New York: Assouline Publishing, in association with Seoul: The Seo-Bo Foundation, 2009, 79.

Park seo-bo created some of his works by placing the canvas on the floor and then lying in front of it on a plank, on which he would gyrate his entire body, allowing the movement to extend through his hands to the canvas. He asserted that through this kind of repetitive motion he would empty himself, and as he entered a transcendent mental state, he and the work would become one. This is indicative of a certain mental state of nothingness, or unity with nature (Kim Youngna, 2005, 49)

My biggest interest is living by pure action for nothingness, like reciting a chant or meditating, entering a transcendent mental state through repetition, becomes an act of emptying myself. (Park Seo-bo in ‘Random Notes’, Space, July 1977, cited by Kim Young- na, 20th century Korean Art, 2005, 256-257)

As I strongly express the inner qualities of the materials, naturalness is achieved by my process of uniting my will with them, which can be compared to the blending of our everyday lives with nature, with no sense of denial (Ha Choung-hyun cited by Kim Youngna, 2005, 49)

Park Seo-bo I do this absolutely ridiculous act of acting upon something and leaving a trace, and then to go back and erase what I have done. And in that, Ido nt gain or lose naything. If there is anything that I do gain, it is that I am shedding myself or emptying myself or neutralizing myself through it. (cited in Oh Kwang-su, ‘The Methods and Times of Park Seo-bo’ in Papastergiadis, Nicos; Oh Kwang-su; Morgan, Robert C.; Park, Seo-Bo¸ Beijing & Seoul: Arario, Gallery, 2007, 125)

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The Asian Modern, Volume II © John Clark, 2013

Text by Park Seo-bo “Experiential Korean Avant-Garde Art,” Space, 1966 November. [translated by Yim Yunshin]

When the Second World War drew to an end with the defeat of those who have initiated the war, the world had been touched in several ways, irreparably by the war. Although Korea had been freed by the Allied Forces, the happiness of regaining our country from the Japanese was soon shadowed by another hardship for our nation. For we had been liberated by alien forces without first establishing the concept of Korean nation as a unified and independent body, we had to suffer the fate as an ideological experimental ground for the foreign powers. This tragedy led to the unnatural divide of the country and the nation and eventually the War between brothers. Between 1945 and 1950, in the turmoil before the war, the artists did not form groups based on an artistic ideology - of course, the very idea of artistic ideology may have been a luxury then but came together and apart again in a conflicts or struggles on half-formed ideas. They continued to adhere to the realism, a relic from the Japanese colonial era policy and senten, as the sole value. As we were thus approaching self-destruction in the confusions of the society, unable to break the thick and hard ice, and to find a way of self-expression, the contemporary painting that can distinguish this century came into full bloom in Paris and New York. In 1945, the year after Paris was liberated from the Nazis, portrait of an unknown resistance member was exhibited in the René Drouin Gallery under the title Head of a Hostage. Although Andre Malraux lauded [Jean Fautrier] as “an artist without any debt to history” and that “his paintings were pictograms of sufferings,” the public was angered by the painting and criticized it vehemently. However, this anger and rejection was but another form of expressing the experiences from the war and Head of a Hostage, as well as successfully demonstrating a new technique, made a psychological reaction possible. It was at the same time an image of a historical and artistic situation. At the bottom of this ardency was a fierce rejection of the traditions. Fautrier, together with Wols and Dubuffet was a sort of a trigger in Michel Tapié’s essay, Art of Another Kind; he was responsible for making a new adventure available for the new generation feeling lost after the war. While the creative participation in the new history, the new adventure was igniting its fire in Paris in 1945, the cultural influence of Europe and the colonial rule was coming to an end in New York. By 1948, American contemporary art reached its full blossom. Since 1947, Jackson Pollock had started his incredibly journey with the new technique of dripping paint and De Kooning, who in time became one of the leading artists of America, held his first individual exhibition. It was also in 1948 that Gorky committed his tragic suicide. This was the time when the American contemporary art became the pioneer of the international art scene. In contrast to the currents in the global art world, the realism, so far perceived as the only ideology of any value, has turned kukjeon into a shrine dedicated to protecting their superiority and the realism painters who have lorded over others have tried to put a stop to the new generation. However, even in our underdevelopment and old-fashioned environment, the young people’s determination for a new artistic movement continued to grow. Several factors can be stated as the reason for this determination. The determination comes from the Korean War, the tragic war that the young people had to suffer as adolescents. The rules and values of society were turned into ashes, losing all trust. Accordingly, reason also fell to danger. The poverty and the hunger that followed the outbreak of the war in 1950 took away all dreams even from the survivors and forced them to give up their existence. Therefore, in the situations during and after the war, the disbelief in the heaven and the earth that the ancestors had worshipped and the distrust against the values of the older generation only exacerbated. Finally, the disbelief and distrust led to a realization of the spiritual 10

The Asian Modern, Volume II © John Clark, 2013 debt that had gathered. As if navigating through a channel of death, the younger generation chose to race against a current full of live screams of agony rather that escape the reality. In such desperate situation of co-dependence, they could not live for their ideals but had to gamble everything for the life itself. What they experienced as adolescents in the war – the physical and psychological agony, intellectual loneliness, and the human dignity standing in the middle of all the blood, the acute consciousness and awareness to protect human life – had filled the younger generation with miraculous yearning for life and had given them eyes filled with curiosity about glory and darkness. With such basis from the war experience, the younger generation began to protest against the art world that still singularly favoured realism and the un-educated older generation who followed it blindly, still immersed in medieval and traditional ways of kukjeon with self-satisfaction. The younger generation’s determination accumulated and met the new art movements of the west that came to Korea on the heels of the UN army. The result was the “Exhibition of Four Artists” that opened on 16th May, 1956 in the gallery on the 3rd floor of Donga Cultural Center, organized by Kim Chung-sun, Moon Woo-shik, Kim Young-hwan and myself. Through a manifesto, we declared a rebellion against kukjeon, the fortress of the ancien régime, and vowed to participate with creativity in organizing a new, honorable and innovative society that respects liberal imagination and discovery of a novel and innovative perspective suited to the new age. Of course, even if the paintings of this era were only of symbolic design or a new realism movement had come before them, their importance is in the fact that they made a frontal-attack on kukjeon and its mighty powers. The manifesto that we, the four artists made demanded both directly and indirectly for outsiders – who had not been able to from an anti-kukjeon group because of the social ambience where people were easily accused of being a ‘red’ – to come forth. If 1956 was the year when the new method for painting was conceived, 1957 was the year when it was born. This means that in a strict sense, the avant-garde art of Korea started in 1956 and became active in 1957. From 9th to 15th April 1957, a founding exhibition of the Modern Art Association was held jointly by Yoo Young-guk, Han Mook, Lee Kyu-sang, Hwang Yeom-su and Park Go-suk at the Dongwha Gallery. Founding exhibition of the Contemporary Artist Association by Kim Young- whan, Lee Chul, Kim Chong-hui, Jang Seong-soon, Kim Chung-kwon, Moon Woo-shik, Kim Tsang-Yeul and Ha Yin-doo followed from 1st to 9th May, in the USIS Gallery. From 27th June to 4th July, the Neo-plasticism Group also held its founding exhibition at the Dongwha gallery with Byun Hee-chun, Cho Byung-hyun, Kim Gwan-hyun, Lee Sang-soon, Son Gye-poong and Byun Young-won. From 19th November of the same year, the first invitation exhibition of contemporary arts by Chosun Ilbo was held on the second floor of the Deok-su palace museum. The three group exhibitions and one invitation exhibition that I have listed formed an anti- kukjeon front and were thus able to open the age of avant-garde art for Korea. In addition to them, there was a group of kukjeon artists who formed the ‘Artistic Creation Association’ and also a few more groups of close artists who formed an association in 1957. If the Modern Art Association, Contemporary Artist Association and the Neo-plasticism Group can be described as formed by anti-kukjeon powers, the Chosun Ilbo exhibition was an exhibition of contemporary artists in a wider sense, embracing the outsider-avant-garde artists, the eclectic art and the art in the process of modernizing for the kukjeon. While the Modern Art Association consisted of older generation modernism artists whose art were a mix between abstract art with an emphasize on intellectuality and design that did not forgo nature, the Contemporary Artist Association had a clear standing as an anti-kukjeon association made up of artists in their 20s (Lee Yang-no, Lee Soo-hun, Chung Gun-mo and myself have participated in their second exhibition held from 2nd to 14th December 1957 at the Whashin Gallery. From their third exhibition, held 15th-23rd May 1958 at the same gallery, the informel aesthetics was manifested by late Kim Chung-gwan, Ra Byung-rae and I.). Although this 11

The Asian Modern, Volume II © John Clark, 2013 movement cannot be compared to the events of 1907 (Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon) or of 1924 (Surrealism manifesto), considering the demographics of our painters, it was a memorable event. In fact, although the group was eager for new adventures but they had no Marinetti, Apollinaire, or Breton but they moved forward toward the freedom of creative energy with liberty that precedes all theory. The act of painting itself was a way of expanding oneself in the present, and a way of accidental self-realization. It was definitely a painting of freedom and liberation. The 4th Contemporary Art Exhibition held in the Deok-su palace museum from 28th November to 8th December 1958, was an opening en masse for an age of painting that never before existed in the history of Korean art. This exhibition determined the character of the Contemporary Art Association. In contrast to the other anti-kukjeon associations who had no uniform opinion and experimented with contemporary art in a broader sense, the Contemporary Art Association practiced a form of avant-garde art that was informel- this was like holding up a torch in the history of art. Now let us consider the manifesto made by the Contemporary Art Association. The following is a part of the introduction. In painting and the art movement that follows, we have considered how the past and today’s works and the thoughts behind them should differ, and took as a morale the anti-these to old-fashioned factors that block the cultural development; thus, our ideology was established. Although we have made our start by self-reflection on two urgent projects, we believe that the explanation of whether every one of our pictures have expressed this ideology and made connection with the ‘high-brow’ spirit that seeks contemporary plasticism can come only with time, effort, and lessons from the reality. The first manifesto made in the fifth exhibition held at National Press Center from 11th to 17th November 1959 states that, In this chaos, when we should be declaring passion for life and confidence for the future, we are stuttering upon such speech. Casting aside every rationality that has been built flawlessly until yesterday, we are again declaring our passion for life to the indispensible I, and to start from myself. We admit that the world is a bigger place than we know of and have traveled to. This acknowledgement gives us a responsibility to widen the freedom. In a brilliant excavation that comes from an irresistible urge for creation, we endlessly search for the vein of ore. In the first and last contest for ready participation in the ephemeral moment of eternally creative possibility, I am witnessing the defeat of the world by my innovation which holds enough inspiration for unknown consideration in the substantial coincidence. We believe in the success of today through what we have offered for tomorrow. While the former states the reason for the group’s establishment and the latter explains plainly the united ideology of the group seen through the 4th exhibition of 1958, what to expect next and the ideology of contemporary art. With this as the second turning point, the abstract art came into a blooming period. At this time, there were some individual artists who did not directly join in the artistic movements and were standing on the edges of this adventure of abstract art, or the fever of it: Kim Seung-ki, Kim Sang-dae, Lee Jong-hak who held an individual oil painting exhibition from 4th to 11th April 1958 at Dongwha gallery, Lee Sae-deuk and Kim Young-joo who held solo exhibitions 14th-19th May and 3rd-9th November respectively in the National Press Center, Ham Dae-jung who had held an exhibition at Dongwha gallery 1st-11th May while in France, Kim Hoon who held an exhibition 1st-9th October 1959 at Dongwha gallery when leaving for USA, and Kwon Ok-yeon who held a returning exhibition from France at the National Library gallery from 28th October to 6th November 1960. The older generation artists, surprised by the younger generation, or the war generation, and their vigor strong enough to shake the heaven, began to break in links. To stop this, they held the founding exhibition for Mokwoo Association from 10th to 16th November in the 12

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National Press Center. On the other hand, the artists in the middle-land who adopted compromise artistic style or the artists who were band-wagoners were consumed by the artistic fever and had become contemporary artists without any substance. As it is certain that for a tree to live long, there must be the sacrifices of many scrubs, without the historical sacrifices in the artistic fever, the energy of it will dry up to leave many heroes of the fever in malnutrition. When the time had passed and turned the war generation into their 30s, Contemporary Art Association. The open air exhibition of the Artist Association of the Year 60, held from 5th to 14th October 1960 by Kim Dae-woo, Yoo Young-yeol, Kim Bong-tae, Choi Kwan-do, Lee Joo- young, Kim Ung-chan, Park Jae-gon, Kim Ki-dong, Son Chan-sung, Yoon Myung-ro, Kim Jong- hak and Song Dae-hyun held by the wall of the Deok-su palace near the British embassy drew the public’s attention. Also, the 6th exhibition of Contemporary Artist Association was held 4th- 20th December in the Kyung-bok palace museum by ten artist (Kim Yong-sun, Kim Tsang-yeul, Park Seo-bo, Lee Myung-ui, Lee Yang-no, Chang Seong-soon, Chun Sang-soo, Chung Sang-hwa, Cho Dong-hoo and Cho Yong-ik) with the subtitle “Fund-raising exhibition for Korean pavilion in the Venice Biennale” and the struggle for advancement into the global art world was rolling around the courtyard of the palace in disdain, ridicule, jeering and curses like the fallen leaves in bone-freezing wind. As the Contemporary Artist Association and the Artist Association of the Year 1960 realized they shared the same idea about painting, they had a joint-exhibition from 1st to 7th October 1961 at the Kyung-bok palace museum as the starting point for the unification to come. In their second manifesto, they stated that “Everything has been melted together. Yesterday and today, I and you, every existence has melted down and has run down to gather in one place. My other selves now broken down in pieces are colluding and rolling with other substances elsewhere. Shapes that had not melted down completed are swimming together. This is the act of my creation. So it cannot have a fixed form. It is the act itself as a course of movement. It is the heat and light coming from the movement. It is all of the liberty allowed to me. This absoluteness of today may someday come together to form a centre. Right now, I am in fever. We are boiling over.” In time, the aesthetics of informel lost its spirit as the society changed, and the idea became generalized internationally in its saturated form. In an age completely different from when they had first made the manifesto of informel aesthetics overwhelmed in the postwar fever, and in the inevitability of the struggle between a group’s environment when founding and when expanding as water festers when it cannot flow away to find an exit, they first had to forsake the long tradition and say farewell to old friends who had lost their spirit. The example of this can be seen in the formation of Actuel by Ha Yin-doo, Yoon Myung- ro, late Son Chan-seong, Chun Sang-soo, Chung Sang-wha, Kim Bong-tae, Chang Seong-soon, Kim Dae-woo, Cho Yong-ik, Kim Tsang-yeul, Kim Jong-hak, Lee Yang-ro and I. We held the first exhibition from 18th to 24th August 1962 at the National Press Center and announced the third manifesto. It states, “Here burn the old dignities. Thus they laugh together, embracing each other in the darkness. Why do we itch like this when all are so wise? We always come back empty handed although we have sacrificed and gone through light and darkness. What we have earned, is the madness. The reason we regard this condition neither new nor unique as a harvest is because this is the base for forming a new value.” But we could not form a group – not having any new aesthetic discoveries or advancement, they had imploded after the second exhibition in 63. Around this time, many tried to form a group and some imitated a group for contemporary aesthetics but also ceased to exist quietly. While the avant-garde artists acted without any success, the Korean Headquarters of the World Cultural Liberty Society held its first exhibition from 21st to 27th June 1962 at the National Press Center, inviting some avant-garde artists (Kwon Ok-yeon, Kim Ki-chang, Kim Young-joo, Kim Tschang-yeul, Park Rae-hyun, Seo Sae-ok, Yoo Young-guk and I) with the motto of “walking in step with the world in the innovative contemporary art, developing Korean art 13

The Asian Modern, Volume II © John Clark, 2013 culture based on creativity, discarding regionalism to evaluate the interaction of tradition and influence through international exchange and realizing the cultural participation in plastic arts”. This exhibition, in only a short time, became the exhibition with the most proud spirit. In the 4th exhibition, held in Yechong centre 14th-20th November 1965, Kwon Ok-yeon, Kim Young-joo, Byun Jong-ha, Yoo Young-guk, Yoon Myung-ro, Chun Seong-woo, Ha Jong-hyun and myself participated with oil paintings, Yoo Kang-ryeol with prints and Park Jong-bae and Choi Ki-won with sculptures. We made the following first manifesto in 1965 at the Exhibition for Cultural Liberty. We do not wish to revive the dying aesthetics that are losing light and disappearing into the history. We seek an alternative exit in the present, acerbating situation when the international generalization of informel aesthetics and the excess of it have brought despondency and boredom. The reactions without any new development to the aesthetics, that are like foam, or every regressive phenomenon coming from anachronism are the self-consolation of those unable to create anything new and we repeal the support and defense to them. Our actions are not a unified argument to a style. Our discourse is to change the phenomena, not to make a new discovery or a change on the surface, but national pride that can help the establishment of our creative tradition through re-discovering today’s realities, the situation of surrounding world, pursuing of inner intensification, and obtaining our independent view. Since the first and dramatic participation of Korean artists in an international exhibition - in the second Paris Biennale in 1961 - by myself (residing in France at the time), Choi Wan-bok (then councillor to the Korean Embassy in France), Shin Young-chul (editorial writer to Chung Ang Ilbo, then the president of the Korean Student Association in France) and Lee Yil (full-time lecturer to Hongik University, art critic), avant-garde art which was almost in a hiatus participated in the 1st San Paolo Biennale of 1963 and to the Tokyo Biennale in 1965 albeit somewhat lamely, as if trying to find a light hole in a darkroom. It is not surprising that even those who were indifferent to international exhibitions were fighting to breathe through the hole as if asphyxiated. If 1956 can be called the year when the history first conceived a new painting movement, the contemporary Korean avant-garde art was born in 1957 to form a new era resembling the time when pioneers were riding through the wilderness of Texas. If it can be said that the abstract art of Europe and America that came to Korea with the US army in the 1950’s Korean war and blossomed its flowers in the barren lands in cooperation with the Korean war generation’s feverish emotions, the naturalization, the international generalization and excess of this aesthetics in a sense signified the end of the colonial age by Europe and America. The silence is now changing from colonial or pioneer era to a research into a new border area. I believe that it will change into an elaborate silence, resembling the appearance of Tàpies and his contemporaries whose rise through the Spanish hot soil was like the rise of the quiescent silence that was present ever since Picasso and Miro. However, we must remember that the history has protected those who have made ingenious discoveries but not those who seek opportunities.

In the mid-1980s..The main issues were whether Korean society had in fact become a post-modern society, or whether the post-modernist debate itself was not just another instance of dogged obedience to Western culture. (Kim Young-na, 2005, 66) Term post-modern used in Korean art world from about 1985 for some characteristics of the minjung movement, and US’ postmodernist work was exhibited variously in Seoul in 1988 and 1993. From the 1990s emerged an international clique of Korean artists including Jheon Soo- choen, Yun Dong-gu, 14

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Chronology of Park Seo-bo

1931 Born in Hari-Myeon, Yécheon-gun, Kyunsangbuk-do, Korea. Real name is Jae-hong which used until 1954. Father’s first wife died and he re-married someone from Yechon, Kyoungsangbuk-Do, daughter of a rich landowner, where his father was head of the Yechon police station. She had three sons, the third of whom was Jae-hong. Father was a policeman and sincere Buddhist but clashed with his Japanese superiors and stopped working. 1933 moved to Ansung, Kyunggi-do. Did not see work in Senten [Chôsen Fine Arts Exhibition run by Japanese]. School art education consisted of copying illustrations of Japanese colour prints. He did not know any Japanese artists and was not interested in art at that time. 1946 entered national poster competition of theme of unification. In Middle School dreamt of becoming a ‘revolutionist’. Met painter Kim Eun-ho when he came to Ansung, Park Jae-hong also borrowed and copied his paintings which were available locally after the liberation. Did hwatu illustrations for the backs of playing cards to be complimented locally, so thought he would try painting. 1950 Park Jae-hong was in first year at Hongyik University as an Oriental Painting student, the second intake at the art college of Hongyik which itself had started in 1946. Went to Ansung but caught and enlisted by North Koreans but avoided service because of self- inflicted wound to his buttocks. 1951 January 4, North Koreans retreated taking him with them but he escaped when US’ 1st Armoured Division came. After retreat forcibly recruited to South Korean territorial army but avoided service by running away through help of a commander who was his elder brother’s friend. 1952 went to Daegu, changed to Western painting because his two teachers had not arrived. One was Lee Ung-no / Lee Eungro (1904-1989), in hiding at Sudeok-sa Chungnam, because had collaborated with North Korean army. In 1958 Eungro moved to Paris, was kidnapped by KCIA under suspicion of espionage in 1967, released under French government intervention two years later, and became a French citizen in 1983 [see Wikipedia under this spelling]. Park Seo-bo’s other teacher was Lee Sang-beom who did illustrations for Donga Ilbo. His first teachers of oil painting were Kim Hwan-ki [whose moon-jar paintings had apricot flowers on the poems of Seo Jeong-ju] and Lee Jong-woo. 1954 Graduated, Painting Dept. of Hong-Ik University, Seoul, Korea. There were only three graduates in this second cohort, all the remainder having been killed in the war. One graduate was the woman sculptor Yoon Young-ja. Changed his name from Jae-hong to Seo-bo to confuse draft officers who were searching for him when he fled to avoid army service after graduation. 1956 May 16, Exhibition of Four Artists, Kim Chung-sun, Moon Woo-shik, Kim Young-hwan, Part Seo-bo declare their rebellion against National Fine Arts Exhibition, kukjeon [J: Kokuten, the successor to the former Senten] for which his employment suffered until 1962. Read a lot of existentialism, like Camus’ L’étranger. November 13-25, actual works by French informel artists shown by Okamoto Tarô in a mixed show at Takashimaya, Nihonbashi, Tokyo 1957 April, Eight American Artists including Mark Tobey and Morris Graves exhibited at National Museum. May, [twice annually until 1960] Hyeodae Misulga Hyeophoe, Contemporary Artists’ Society Exhibition held at USIS in Seoul. Appeal of informel partly due to use of calligraphic abstraction rather than strong colours claiming local heritage. Articles also indicated influence of Eastern Art on Abstract Expressionists (Kim Youngna, 2005, 37). 15

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Early summer, critic and defendant of future informel Bang Geun-taek, met Park Seo-bo where he was working at Lee Bong-sang Art Studio. This became a centre for informel and also for diffusion of information about European and US’ art which was seen through reproductions on the walls (Kim Young-na, 20th century Korean Art¸2005, 210) Bang, a trained philosopher, was well informed about contemporary US’ art and art criticism (See Kim Youngna, 20th century Korean Art, 2005, 208). June-July Neo-plasticism group holds first exhibition. August-September a wide range of informel related activities took place in Japan including a visit by Michel Tapié and the Contemporary Art World exhibition at Bridgestone Art Museum from October 11. A book, What is Art Informel? With texts by Tapié, Tominaga Sôichi, Takiguchi Shûzô, and Imai Toshimitsu published in Japanese on October 8. December, 2nd Contemporary Artists’ Society Exhibition held at Hwashin Gallery. Park Seo-bo now joined the group which changed its name to Hyeondai-jeon ( Contemporary Exhibition). First time Park Seo-bo heard the word informel was from friends who visited the exhibition. Also was lent by Lee Sae-deuk (1920-2001) a copy of Mizue with article in it by Michel Tapié Un Art Autre. [Park says he had not seen the article of Gutai in Life of 1956]. The Korean Contemporary Artists Exhibition, World House Gallery, New York. 1958 March 11 & 12, Bang Geun-taek published ‘The Problem of Modernization in Painting’ in Yeonhap Sinmum (United Newspaper) through Park Seo-bo’s introduction. Japanese books could be imported. Park Seo-bo had no knowledge of French art before this year and could not go to any exhibitions because of risk of forced recruitment to Army. This year Park Seo-bo married. December, 4th Contemporary Art exhibition, Park Seo-bo expelled from group because of his egotism. 1959 November, 5th Contemporary Exhibition, manifesto of Bang Geun-tak published. 1960 6th Contemporary Art exhibition includes re-admitted Park Seo-bo, Kim Tsang-yeul. Purpose was via an exhibition of reproductions of works by six foreign artists including Karel Appel and Antoni Tápies to raise funds for Korean pavilion at Venice Biennale. 1961 January 4, Park Seo-bo arrived in Paris where he found that UNESCO exhibition to which he had been invited was postponed until November. Went to Asia Foundation and received financial support from them. Other Korean artists already in Paris included Lee Seong-Ja, Nam Kwan, Lee Ung-No, Kim Soo (Kim Heung-su, 1919- ), others having passed through or been resident earlier. October, in Gyengbok Palace Museum, Contemporary Artists Association and 1960 Artists’ Association hold joint exhibition. November, 1st Prize, Jeunes Peintres du Monde organized by UNESCO in Paris. Park Seo-bo also exhibits with four other Korean artists including Lee Yil (d.1997) at 2nd Paris Biennale. Visited Arles to see Van Gogh’s tomb with Austrian artist Alfred Frohner and also went with him to Wien on way back to Korea from Paris. This year National Art Exhibition which had a new generation of judges appointed who chose an informel-style artist’s work for the Presidential Prize. This exhibition divided sculpture in 1969 into representational and non-representational works. (Kim Youngna, 2005, 43) 1962 Actuel exhibits, a group of informel artists dissatisfied with its loss of spirit and seeking to form new values. Park Seo-bo became a teacher at Hongyik University, becoming a contracted professor in 1963, and worked there until his retirement in 1997. One-person exhibition in National Central Library Gallery, Seoul. 16

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August, group Actuel joins with Contemporary Artists Association and 1960 Artists’ Association, for joint exhibition. One person exhibition at Ina Gallery, Tokyo (and 1970). One person exhibition at Tokyo Gallery, Tokyo (and 1975[?], 1991, 1996, 1997). 1963 3rd Biennale de Paris. Four Young Korean Artists Exhibition, Galerie Lambert, Paris. From about this year was able to us electric light in his studio. From circa 1963-1965 engaged on Primordialis series of semi-abstract forms on blackish-red or black monochrome grounds. 1965 8th Biennale de São Paulo 1967 experimented with hardening clothes and exhibited these at Expo ’70 but destroyed them subsequently. Park Seo-bo also claims the Écriture series started in this year [interview 29 June 2010] based on child-like, emotionless doodling like his son. 1960s late, Park Seo-bo could afford to buy Bijutsu Techô but stopped subscribing after two or three years because he felt he was being too influenced by it. 1972-71 Korean Contemporary Painting Exhibition, France & West Germany. About this time met Minemura Toshiaki who persuaded him there was something genius- like in the quality of his work not falling off with age. 1973 Park Seo-bo’s first exhibition in Japan at Muramatsu Gallery [report in Bijutsu Techô]. This was also the first year he sold a painting, from his house in Hapjung-dong, an écriture where he had only drawn on the edges with a pencil. 1974 returned for 2nd visit to France. Knew Pierre Restany, who also visited his studio in Seoul, the art writer for Libération, Debailleux, but Park Seo-bo didn’t like Nuridsany because he was too mercenary in spirit. 1975 13th Biennale de São Paulo. 1975 Five Artists, Five Kinds of White exhibition at Tokyo Gallery, curated by Nakahara Yûsuke, preface by Lee Il, with Park Seo-bo, Lee Dong-yeop (1946-), Hur Hwang (1946-), Sur Seung-won (1942-), Kwon Young-woo (1926-). First official use of term ‘monochrome’. 1976 The 2nd Joong-Ang Cultural Grand-Prize (Joong-Ang Daily News). 1976 Joseph Love then a teacher at Sophia University in Tokyo published ‘The Way of Korean Contemporary Art’ in Art International. 1977 or 1978 Minjung Misul, People’s art movement, began according to Park Seo-bo. 1979 The 11th Culture and Art Prize the Republic of Korea (Ministry of Public Information). 1984 Korea Contemporary Fine Art Exhibition: The Stream of the 70's, Taipei Fine Art Museum, Taipei. [seen by John Clark]. He gave a four-hour lecture on his work and was applauded at the end by a curator who had trained at Columbia University. 1985 Park Seo-bo became Dean of Hongyik graduate school. 1986 - 1990) Park Seo-bo was Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Hongyik University. 1987 The National Medal of Korea (Seokryu Medal). 1988 first retrospective Park Seo-bo’s painting: its forty years, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul. 43rd Venice Biennale. Park Seo-bo on selection committee for Olympics Contemporary Art Exhibition 1989 NICAF Yokohama. This year visits Los Angeles and admires works shown at ACE Gallery on recommendation of Kim Tsang-yeul. Park Seo-bol has one person show at Jean Art Gallery. 1990 Contemporary Art of 80’s: 100 Forms, curated by Nakahara Yûsuke, Inax Gallery, Tokyo. Begins to use coloured grounds resonating against monochrome lattice slots of scraped colour. 1994 Order of Cultural Merit of Korea. 17

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This year founded Park Seo-Bo Art and Cultural Foundation, became its President. 1995 Seoul Metropolitan Cultural Award. This year begins to work with vertical lattice designs of applied solid pigment. 1997 Park Seo-bo retired from Hongyik University. He has a one-person exhibition at ACE Gallery, Los Angeles. 2000 Honorary Doctoral Degree, Hong-Ik University, Seoul Professor Emeritus, Hong-Ik University, Seoul. 2000 Declined to visit an exhibition of Zao Wouki [Zhao Wuji, his retrospective at Jeu du Paume was in 2003] in Paris, as recommended by Kim Tshang-yeul, and thinks his works and those of Zhu Dequn [Chu Teh-chun] third-rate. 2000 October, exhibits paintings with colour at Tokyo Gallery. 2001 He begins to use colour for vertical strips, often with rectangular scraped-through spaces to a different pigment underneath. Sometimes uses edges of scraped-through profile to provide a linear shadow in part of rectangle. 2002 Gallery Samtuh, at Melbourne Art Fair (also with this gallery in other overseas sites in 2002, 2005, 2006, 2007) 2007 at his big retrospective in Kyonggi introduced to Australian Professor and critic Nikos Papastgeriadis by Kim Hong-hee. 2007 Poetry in Motion, Galerie Beyeler, Basel. 2007 Elastic Taboos-Within the Korean World of Contemporary Art, Kunsthalle, Wien. 2008 joint exhibition with Kim Tshang-yeul, & Lee Ufan at Johyun Galery Busan. joined Arario Gallery with spaces at Seoul, New York, and Beijing. Korean Abstract Painting 1958-2008, Seoul Metropolitan Museum, of Art, Seoul 2009/2010 Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston manifest a separation from the monochrome school among US’ curators to exhibit Your Bright Future: 12 Contemporary Artists from Korea ‘all of whom work on the cutting-edge of international art trends and within a distinctly Korean context: Bahc Yiso, Choi Jeong- Hwa, Gimhongsok, Jeon Joonho, Kim Beom, Kimsooja, Koo Jeong-A, Minouk Lim, Jooyeon Park, Do Ho Suh, Haegue Yang and the collaborative, Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries’ [from Art News, Saturday, April 26, 2014]. [http://www.parkseobo.com/html/english.html has further details of solo & group exhibitions] 18

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Some Works of Park Seo-bo 1950s Sunny Spot, 1955, oil on canvas, 117x 61 cms, Maek-Hyang Gallery, Taegu Painting no.1, ca 1957, oil on canvas, 95 x m82 cms, Collection of Yoo Teuk-han, Seoul. Self-Portrait, 1957 oil on canvas, Private Collection. KYN-2005 Work no.18-59, 1959, cement, hempen cloth, oil on canvas, 61 x 50 cms, Coll. Mr and Mrs Lee Gu-yeul.

1960s Primordialis no.1-62, 1962, mixed media and oil on canvas, 161 x 131, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea. Primordialis no.62-3, 1962, oil on canvas, 162 x 130cms, Leeum Samsung Museum of Art. Primordialis no.18-64, 1964 oil on canvas, 180 x 180 cms, Walker Hill Art Center, Seoul. Primordialis, no.21-65, 1965 oil on canvas, 162 x 130 cms, Collection of Artist. Écriture no.2-67, 1967 pencil and oil on canvas, 91 x 64.8 cms, Seo-Bo Foundation. Écriture no 1-68, 1968, pencil and oil on canvas, 100x 81 cms, Collection of Artist.

1970s Écriture no.15-70, 1970, pencil and oil on canvas, 100 x 79.5, Collection of Artist. Écriture no 51-71,1971, pencil and oil on canvas, 80 x 100 cms, Collection of Artist. Écriture no.10-72, 1972, pencil and oil on canvas, 182 x 260 cms, Collection of Artist. Écriture no.6-73, 1973, pencil and oil on hemp cloth, 162 x 130 cms, Park Seo-bo Arts and Culture Foundation. Écriture no.71-74, 1974, pencil and oil on canvas, 193 x 259, Collection of Artist. Écriture no.29-75, 1975, 195 x 195, Collection of Artist. Écriture no.37-75-76, 1976 pencil and oil on canvas, 194.5 x 300 cms, Private Collection, Seoul. Écriture no.41-78, 1978, pencil and oil on hemp cloth, 194.5 x 300 cms, Leum Samsung Museum of Art. Écriture 1978, oil and pencil on canvas, 193.3 x 260.2 cms, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea.

1980s Écriture no.16-78-81, 1981, pencil and oil on hemp cloth, 130 x162 cms, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul. Écriture no.228-85, 1985 pencil on oil on cotton, 165 x 260 cms, Collection of Artist. Écriture no.359-86, 1986, mixed media on Korean hanji paper, 182 x 227.5 ms, Leum Samsung Museum of Art. Écriture no.355-86, 1986 mixed media on Korean hanji paper, 195 x 330 cms, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul.

1990s Écriture no 991004, 1999, mixed media with Korean hanji paper on canvas, 330 x 220cms, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul.

2000s Écriture no 011107, 2001, mixed media with Korean hanji paper on canvas, 225 x 300 cms, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul. 19

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Bibliography of Park Seo-bo

Artist-specific, by year of publication Park Seo-bo, [text by Nakahara Yusuke, see Jo Hyun Gallery 1999], Tokyo: Tokyo Gallery, 1978. Park Seo-bo, [text by Minemura Toshiaki], Tokyo, Tokyo Gallery, 1986. Park Seo-bo, [texts Lee Yil, Kim Bok-yung, Minemura Toshiaki], Seoul: Hyundai Gallery, 1988. Park Seo-bo, [text Lee Yil], Seoul: Jean Art Gallery, 1989. The Seo-Bo Arts and Cultural Foundation, ed., Park, Seo-bo, Seoul: The Seo-Bo Arts and Cultural Foundation, 1994. Park Seo-bo, [text by Minemura Toshiaki], Tokyo: Tokyo Gallery, 1994. Park Seo-bo, [text Pierre Restany], Daegu: Ci-Gong Gallery, 1996. Park Seo-bo,[text by Pierre Restany], Busan: Jo Hyun Gallery, 1996. Park Seo-bo, [text Chiba Shigeo], Tokyo: Tokyo Gallery, 1998. Park Se-bo, [text of Nakahara Yusuke, 1978], Busan: Jo Hyun Gallery, 1999. Park Seo-bo, Tokyo: Tokyo Gallery 2000. The Seo-Bo Arts and Cultural Foundation, ed., Park, Seo-bo, Esquisse-Drawing 1996-2001, Seoul: Jae Won Publishing Co., 2001. The Seo-Bo Arts and Cultural Foundation, ed., Park, Seo-bo, Ecriture 1994-2001, Seoul: Jae Won Publishing Co., 2001. Park Seo-bo, Écriture, [text by Ahn En-young], Daegu: Ci Gong Gallery, 2002. Park Seo-bo, Écriture, [text by Lee Jae-yon], Seoul: Park Ryu Sook Gallery, 2002. Park Seo-bo, Écriture, [text by the artist], Seoul: Jo Hyun Gallery, Busan, 2002. White Spectrum: Joseon White Porcelain and Korean Contemporary Art, [text by Oh Kwang-su], Joseon Royal Kiln Museum, 2003 Park Seo-bo, The Small, Seoul: Gallery Que Sais-je, 2004. Park Seo-bo, Écriture, [text by Ahn En-young], Gyunggi-do: Gallery Sam-tuh, 2005. ‘Park Seo-bo’, Asian Art City, quarterly, vol.2, 2006. Park Seo-bo, Cabinet des dessins, [texts in French by Lórànd Gegyi, Henri François Debilleux, Jo Kwang-suk], Saint-Étienne Metropole, Musée d’Art Moderne, 2006. Papastergiadis, Nicos; Oh Kwang-su; Morgan, Robert C.; Park, Seo-Bo¸ Beijing & Seoul: Arario, Gallery, 2007. Park Seo-bo Today, Playing with Color, [essays by Nicos Papastergiadis, Song Mi Sook, Hong Kai] Gyeonggido: Gyeonggido Museum of Art, 2007. Cho, Soon-chun; Bloemink, Barbara, Empty the mind: The Art of Park Seo-Bo, New York: Assouline Publishing, in association with Seoul: The Seo-Bo Foundation, 2009. 20

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Outline Chronology of Modern Korean Art 1881 Koreans selected for draughtsmanship training in China. 1885 US' missionary school introduced Western drawing. 1895 modern prints illustrate translation of Pilgrim`s Progress. 1899 Dutch painter Bosch [?] does portraits of Korean King. 1900 Ceramics teacher from Sévres, called Remion,[returns 1906] involved in French plan to establish school of arts and crafts. 1905 1st exhibition of Western painting at French legation. 1910 Ko Ui-dong [1889-1965] goes to Japan, enters Tokyo School of Fine Arts under Nagahara Kôtarô, also taught by Kuroda Seiki, Fujishima Takeji. Returned in 1915, later changed back to traditional painting. Followed by Kim Kwan-ho [1890-?], Kim Chanyong [1893-?], Yi Chong-u [1899-1981, after Tokyo SFA to France in 1925, exhibited at Salon d'automme in 1926], Na Hye-sok [1896-1946, woman], Kim Pok-chin [1901-1941, sculptor]. Japanese painter offers short course on Western painting in Seoul. 1910 Japan annexes Korea. 1911 Founding of Academy of Painting and Calligraphy, Sohwa misulwon, by artists associated with former court An Chung-sik [1892-1878], Cho Suk-chin [1853-1920]. Also taught Western painting. Produced Kim Un-ho [1892-1978], Yi Sang-bom [1897-1972], No Su- hyon [1899-1980], Yi Yong-u [1904-1952]. There are basically two tendencies in traditional painting to 1945; monochrome landscape around Yi Sang-bom, No Su-hyon, Ho Paek-ryon; decorative painting including nihonga type portraiture around Kim un-ho. Another was academy founded by painter Haegang who had trained in China. 1913 Na Hye-sok enters Tokyo Women's College of Fine Arts, 1st Korean woman to study Western painting in Japan. She graduates in 1918. Sogong-dong, 1st modern art gallery, opened in Seoul. 1915 Japanese Western-style painters in Korea organize exhibition Sohwa Yon'gu Hoe, also established to teach traditional painting and calligraphy. 1916 Japanese painter, Takagi Haisui, who had been in London 1910-1912, established a studio in Korea Kim Kwan-ho graduates from Tokyo School of Fine Arts, wins prize at Bunten, has 1st one-man shown in P'yongyang. 1918 Sohwa Hyophoe, Calligraphy and Painting Society, is 1st modern organization embracing nationalist calligraphers and painters. It holds first group exhibition in 1921 and is discontinued after 15th exhibition in 1936. 1919 March 1syt, Samil Independence movement breaks out with savage Japanese repression.. 1921 Sohwa misulwon starts annual exhibition Hyopchon, to 1936. 1922 Chôsen Bijutsu Tenrankai organized by Japanese Government-General, known as Sonjon in Korean. This was the equivalent of Teiten in Japan, and continued with 23 annual exhibitions until 1944. There are an increasing number of small artists' groups formed. 1925 Korean Fine Arts Society organized by Korean art students in Japan. Yi Chong-u [b.1899] goes to Paris and in 1927 is 1st Korean artist to exhibit at Salon d'Automme. Also abroad: Paek Nam-sun [1904-], Yim Yong-ryon [1901-1950], Chang Pal [1901-]. 1930 Im Yong-sun [ex. Art School of Chicago and Yale U.] and his wife Paik Nam-sun return from Paris. The 1930s will see two main streams of modernist artists: the fauvists, Ku Pon-ung, Yi Chung-sop [1916-1956], graduate of Aoyama Bunka Gakuin], and the non-figurative, Kim Hwan-gi [1913-1974, to Paris in 1956, to New York 1964-74], Yo Yong-guk [1916-], Yi Kye-sang. Cubism and Surrealism are introduced via art magazines but do not take firm 21

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hold. There is also an increasing number of painters of ‘homeland’ themes like Pak Su-gun [1914-1965]. 1939 Kyongbok Palace Museum of Fine Arts dedicated, hereafter will be a venue for annual Government-General exhibitions. 1940 Pae Un-song, active in Germany since 1922, returns. 1941 Mogil-hoe closed. Tan-gwang-hoe organixed to utilize painters as war artists. 1944 Chôsen Bijutsu Tenrankai closed. 1945 August 15, Korea becomes independent. 1945 Fine Arts Department established at Ewha Women's College Korean Art Construction Headquarters established and soon breaks up due to conflicts between left- and right-wing artists. Leftists organize Choson Proletarian Misul Tongmaeng, rightists organize Choson Misul Hyophoe [pres. Ko Ui-dong] 1946 Fine Arts Department established at Seoul National University. 1947 Choson Proletarian Misul Tongmaeng splits with New Western Painting Society, Shinje Yanghwa Hyophoe. 1948 August 15, Republic of Korea declared. 1948 Leftist art organizations banned. 1949 1st Republic of Korea National Art Exhibition [restarts 1953]. 1950 June 5, Communist forces attack the South, war continues until 1953. 1950 Like several other artists [Lee U-fan, Yi Chung-sop] family of Paik Nam-jun leave Korea for Hong Kong and Tokyo. Fine Art Department founded at Hongyik College, later University, one which was to be in continuous rivalry and conflict with the Fine Arts Department of Seoul National University. 1953 July 27, Korean war ends with signing of an armistice. 1956 Capital of ROK returned to Seoul from Busan in the South. 1956 Paik Nam-jun graduates from Tokyo University with degree in aesthetics. Goes to München and Freiburg for graduate work in music. 1957 Modern Art Association formed with Yi Kyu-sang, Han Muk, Pak Ko-sok, Yu Yong-guk, and Hwang Ryom-su as members. Also formed at this time were Creative Art Association, New Plastic Group, Contemporary Artist Society, Hyondae misulga hyophoe. Newspaper Chosun Il-bo sponsors an invitation exhibition of modern artists [until 1969]. 1958 Exhibition of Modern Korean Art at World House Gallery, New York. later 1950s Innovations among traditional painters Pyon Kwan-sik [1899-1976], Pak Nae- hyon [1921-1979, woman]. Innovative group founded of graduates from Seoul National University Mungnim-hoe with So Se-ok [1929-], Chang Un-sang [1921-1980], Min Kyong- gap [1933-]. This year Lee Ung-no left to live in Paris. 1960 April 9,Yi Sing-man [Singman Rhee], 1st President, forced to step down after student revolution, followed by a figurehead Yun Bo-seon, 2nd President. 1960 May 16, Military coup by Park Chung-hee to become 3rd President. 1961 Paik Nam-jun part of Fluxus Group in Köln, Germany. Korean artists participate in 2nd Paris Biennale 1961 Federation of Korean Artists' Associations organized to replace now defunct All-Korea Federation of Cultural and Artistic Organizations [since 1945]. 1963 Korean artists participate in Sao Paolo Biennale early 1960s Rise of Korean Art Informel movement around Pak So-bo [1931-], Kim Ch'ang- yol [1929- , later to Paris]. Also active in new sculpture were Pak Chong-bae [1935-], Ch'oe Ki-won [1935-], Ch'oe Manrin [1935-]. Small artists' groups proliferate, some following 22

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modified surrealism after Paris, some following abstract expressionism after New York, there being substantial Korean artist communities in both cities. 1963 first showing of Paik Nam-jun's video work at Galerie Parnass, Wuppertal. late 1960s ‘École de Seoul’ emerges among artists working between painting and sculpture including installation: Kim Kurin [1939-], So Sung-won [1941-], Kim Cha-sop [1940-], Sim Mun-sop [1942-],Yi Sung-t'aek [1932-], Ch'oe Myong-yong [1941-] and associated art critics Yi Il [1932-], O Kwang-su [1938-]. 1968 Korean Modern Art Exhibition in Tokyo (seen by Lee U-fan) 1970 1st Hankook Grand prize Fine Art Exhibition. Dong-A Ilbo [Newspaper] Print Biennial. 1970 Video-synthesizer developed by Paik Nam-jun and Abe Shûya since 1965 and earlier, first used on broadcast TV in 4-hour live program Video Commune for station WGBH, Boston, USA. 1971 Lee Ufan work sent to Paris Youth Biennial. Possible debt to Kwak In-sik [also written Quac] (died ca. 1998) who also did an abstract painting under glass which had then cracked glass (Park Se-bo interview 2009, also book from Yôbisha, 1984). 1972 Park Seobo was vice-director of Korean Art Association and gave Lee Ufan corresponding membership to facilitate travel to Korea. 1973 August 8, opposition politicians Kim Dae-jung kidnapped by KCIA agents in Tokyo, later released in Busan after US’ intervention. 1970s rise of Tansaekhwa monochromatic tendencies in paintings and works on paper led by Pak Seo-bo, Ha Chong-hyun [1935-], Yun Hyong-gun [1928-] 1979 October 26, President Park Chung-hee assassinated by head of KCIA. 1980s revival in ink painting associated with group Sumukhoe and artists Song Su-nam[ 1938-], Hong Sok-chang [1940-]. Rise of a political and popular people's art, Minjung misul 1980 Minjung misul forerunner, the anti-modernist group Hyunshil-gwa Balun [Reality and Utterance], begins reflection on Korean modernism. Minjung misul includes O Yun [1946- 1986], Yim Ok-san [1950-], Sin Hak-ch'ol [1943-], Kwon Sun-ch'ol [1944-]. 1980 May 18, Gwangju uprising commences. Around 183 people killed in suppression by army. 1980 September 18, Chun Doo-hwan becomes 5th President of Republic of Korea. 1985 Groups Nanjido and Metavox attempt to overcome limitations of Korean minimalism.Himjon [Power] exhibition by Minjung misul artists results in seizure of works and imprisonment of artists by the police. 1987 in first democratic election Roh Tae-wu becomes 6th President. 1993-1998 Kim Young-sam serves as 7th President. 1998-2003 Kim Dae-jung serves as 8th President. ------Sources chiefly used for this chronology: Ahn, En-Young, Translatability, Modernism, and Postmodernism, Master of Visual Arts Thesis, Sydney College of the Arts, 1994. ‘Introduction to the Modern Oriental Painting of Korea’, Han'guk Kundae Tongyanghwa, Seoul, Hwarang Namkyong, 1976. Kim, Young-na, ‘Modern Korean Painting and Sculpture’, in Clark, J., ed., Modernity in Asian Art, Sydney, Wild Peony Press, 1993. Kim, Young-na, Tradition, Modernity, and Identity: Modern and Contemporary Art in Korea, Seoul & New Jersey: Hollym with Korea Foundation, 2005. Kim Young-na, 20th Century Korean Art, London: Laurence and King, 2005. The Korean Art Gallery, Pyongyang, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1985. Tomkins, C., ‘Video Visionary’, [on Paik Nam-jun], in The Scene: Reports on Post-Modern Art, New York, Viking Press, 1976. 23

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Wikipedia for political dates. Yi Kyong-song, ‘Sixty years of Modern Korean Art’, and accompanying chronology by Yi Ku- yol, English texts in the Korean catalogue Han'guk Kundae Misul, Seoul, National Museum of Modern Art, 1973. Yi Kyong-song, Modern Korean Painting, Seoul, Korean National Commission for UNESCO, 1971.

General Bibliography on Modern Korean Art in English ‘Hoon Kwak’, Asian Art News, 2, no.3, May June 1992. Chiba Shigeo, Ohno Ikuhiko [texts] Ichikawa Masanori, Chiba Shiego, Nakabayashi Kazuo, cur. 90-nendai no Kankoku bijutsu, Tokyo: National Museum of Modern Art, 1996. Kee, Joan, Contemporary Korean Art, Tansaekhwa and the urgency of method, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013. Lee Yil et al, Working with Nature: traditional thought in Contemporary Art for Korea, Liverpool: Tate Gallery Liverpool, 1992. Lee Yongwoo, Information and Reality: Korean Contemporary Art, Edinburgh: Fruitmarket Gallery, 1995. Modern Korea Art Exhibition for the Past 60 years, Seoul, Ministry of Information, 1973 [bilingual catalogue] Oh Kwang-su, Kim Whanki: A Critical Biography, Seoul: Youl Hwa Dong Publisher, 1998. Pak Syeung-gil, ed., Modern Korean Painting, Seoul, Korean National Commission for UNESCO, 1971. Paik Chun-young, et al, eds., Korean Artists Today, Seoul: Arts Council Korea, 2011. Selected Works of 100 Modern Korean Sculptors and Painters, Seoul, 1965, [series of one volume per artist in Korean with some details in English] Roe, Jae-Ryung, The representation of national identity in Korean Art Exhibitions, 1951-1994, Ph D thesis, New York University, 1995. Selz, P.ed., Contemporary Korean Painting, Berkeley, Asian Humanities Press, 1979. Yoo Jin-sup, Kim Hyoung-mi, Dansaekhwa: Korean Monochrome Painting, Seoul: National Museum f Contemproary Art, 2012.

1980s and 1990s Ahn, En-Young, Translatability, Modernism, and Postmodernism, Master of Visual Arts Thesis, Sydney College of the Arts, 1994. Bonami, Francesco, ‘Kwanju (Korea): “By the Borders, our Borders”, Flash Art, XXVIII, no.185, Nov/Dec, 1995. Choi, Tae-man, ‘Min Joong Art and its Testing Ground’, Art & Asia Pacific, vol.1, no.4, 1994. Choi, Tae-man, ‘Min Joong art in Korea: Realism as a communication’, in Fukuoka Art Museum, 4th Asian Art Show Fukuoka: Realism as an Attitude, Fukuoka, Fukuoka Art Museum, 1994. Focus on Korea, Art AsiaPacific, vol.3, no.3, 1996 Fouser, Robert J., ‘Duck-Hyun Cho and the art of “Memories”’, Third Text, no.33, Winter 1995- 1996. Fouser, Robert J., ‘Canned ambiguity: an exhibition of Korean art in Tokyo, Art AsiaPacific, no.16, 1997. Fouser, Robert, ‘Therapy and Psyche’ [Cho Duck-hyun], Asian Art News, vol.6, no.2, Mar/Apr 1996. Hasegawa Yuko & Carol, Isabel, ‘Last words on the Biennial”’, Flash Art, XXVIII, no.185, Nov/Dec, 1995. Heartney, Eleanor B., ‘More on the Kangju Biennale’, Art & Asia-Pacific, vol.3, no.1, 1966. Jung Hun Yee, ‘The Ssack exhibition at the Sonje Museum’, Art & Asia Pacific, vol.3, no.2, 1996 Kim Hyun-do, ‘Videomatic, beauty kitsch and politics in contemporary Korean art’, Art AsiaPacific, vol.3, no.3, 1996. 24

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Kim Hyun-do, ‘Disrupture: Politics and history in the art of Kim Ho-suk’, Art AsiaPacific, no.14, 1997 Kim Soun-gui, ‘The Emptiness of Emptiness, Dream of the Butterfly’, Art & Asia Pacific, vol.1, no.4, 1994 Kim Sun-jung ‘Bauble, Bangles and beads’, [Kim Soo-ja, Cho Kyung-sook, Yi Bul, Yun Suk- nam], Art AsiaPacific, vol.3, no.3, 1996 Lee, James B., ‘Performance Art takes a stand' Asian Art News, vol.4, no.6, Nov-Dec, 1994. Lee, James B., ‘Yi Bul: the aesthetics of cultural complicity and subversion’, Art & Asia Lee, James B. ‘The year of art’, Art & Asia Pacific, vol.2, no.3, 1995. Lee, James B., ‘Desire under siege’, [Lee Bul, Park Hae-sang], World Art, no.3, 1995. Lee, James B., ‘The inaugural Kwangju Biennale’, Art & Asia Pacific, vol.3, no.2, 1996. Lee, James B., ‘You are not here’ [Korean art at Edinburgh], Art AsiaPacific, vol.3, no.3, 1996 Lee, James B., ‘Flim-flam and fabrication: an interview with Korean artist Choi Jeong-hwa’, Art Asia Pacific, vol.3, no.4, 1996 Lee Hwaik, ‘Painting Nothing’ [monochome painting], Art AsiaPacific, vol.3, no.3, 1996. Lee Yongwoo, Information & Reality: Contemporary Korean Art, Edinburgh, Fruitmarket Gallery, 1995. Rhee Jong-soong, ‘Portapaik, Nam June Paik interviewed’, Art AsiaPacific, vol.3, no.3, 1996, Rhee Jong Soong, ‘Clay Idols: The new Korean pavilion at the Venice Biennale’, Art & Asia- Pacific, vol.3, no.1, 1966. Roe Jae-ryung, ‘Korean Art at Home and Abroad: Staging a Culture’, Art & Asia Pacific, vol.1, no.4, 1994 Roe Jae-ryung, ‘From Chosun Dynasty to Segehwa’, Art AsiaPacific, vol.3, no.3, 1996. Roe Jae-ryung, ‘Novel exposure’ [Korean photography], Art AsiaPacific, no.13, 1997. Seo Sounjpu, ‘Choi Hyunsoo, a Korean artist in Paris’, Art AsiaPacific, vol.3, no.3, 1996. ‘Supplement: Korea’, Asian Art News, vol. 5, no.1, Jan-Feb 1995.

Some related texts on Euramerican art Morris, Frances, Paris Post War, Art and Existentialism, 1945-55, London: Tate Gallery, 1993. Shimbata Yasuhide et al, 20 seiki Furanzu kaiga no chôsen: Inforumeru to ha nanika? / Postwar Abstract Painting in France and Art Informel, Tokyo: Bridgestone Museum of Art, 2011.