Pen/Insular_Notes

Check out Jane Portal’s article on North Korean art at OpenDemocracy. There is also a nice slide show to accompany it.

One aspect of North Korean art I’m interested in is book cover design, probably because I’ve had plenty of chances to look at them in the library at SOAS. Unlike a lot of North Korean ‘Juche Art’ which tends to give kitsch a bad name I actually think some of the book covers from the 50s and 60s are rather nice and accomplished pieces of work. It also interests me that they often depict nature or reflect nostalgically on the themes of ‘hometown’ and rural life. My impression is that this sort of nostalgic view of nature and the rustic life only became common in South Korea somewhat later. Perhaps this reflects the 10-20 year difference in large-scale industrialisation between the two Koreas (ie North Korea began in the late 50s, South Korea in the late 60s - 70s). Here is what Jane Portal says about the representation of nature in North Korean art:

The subjects originally required by Juche art were limited to such themes as: portraying the General, the relationship of the military and the people, the construction of socialism, National Pride and such like. However, in the 1970s landscape was also approved, when Kim Jong-il instructed: “The idea of describing Nature in a socialist country is to promote patriotism, heighten the national pride and confidence of the public in living in a socialist country.” The result has been a huge increase in the production of oil paintings of natural scenes.

I just found out last night that Korean-born video artist Nam June Paik (백남준) died on Sunday at the age of 74. Antti has already commented on this.

I went to see the major exhibition of Paik’s work in Seoul a few years ago and became quite fascinated by the man and his work. I think before that I had just assumed he was a video artist who put together lots of old TV’s into sculptures (which of course he did), but I discovered that he had also been closely involved in a number of interlinked 20th century art movements which I find interesting: Stockhausen’s electronic music, John Cage’s avant garde music of chance and the Fluxus movement.

One thing I remember clearly about the exhibition was how the reality of Nam June Paik’s life as a cosmopolitan 20th century artist jarred so much with some of the commentary dotted around the place by a Korean art critic (I can’t remember who unfortunately). I remember specifically that the critic tried to link Paik’s messy and cluttered style of art to the ‘Korean psyche’ in general and its apparent affection for disorder and earthiness. There had to be, of course, something ‘essentially Korean’ about his art. Hmmm…. I thought it was a bit of a shame really that the critic had to be reduced to finding things in his work that were emblematic of things Korean, and that a man who was so clearly broad in his interests and life experience should need to be narrowed and pinned down. As Antti points out, there is no doubt about the fact that Paik was a Korean, but he was also (to use a bit of clunky phrase) a citizen of the world who had lived and studied in Hong Kong, Japan, Germany and the US.

Here is a nice appreciative opinion piece on Paik from the Korea Times that takes some of his Korean critics to task and an entry in Wikipedia that will hopefully be expanded in the near future. There was also an AP obituary in the Washington Post. Apparently, Paik’s ashes will be buried in a number of countries, including the US, Germany and Korea.

By the way, the pictures are from flickr, more here.

Went to the Banksy exhibition this evening. People queueing out the door and up the street for 20 minutes to get into a small shop-sized gallery containing 164 live rats running around and shitting everywhere. The paintings were fun, and so were the rats. But it didn’t half whiff in there. During the ten days of the exhibition one rat had died, apparently due to boredom.

More pics, including the disclaimer everyone had to sign before entering the gallery.