The construction of national identity in South Korea and the tradition of masculinity in Korean Abstract Painting

ABSTRACT Korean Modern Art History began to be produced in the 1970s, when Western Modernist Art History, based on Formalism, was introduced as a matrix to map the ‘evolution’ of 20th century Korean Art. Korean modern art history is based in the same paradigm as the West, beginning with Impressionism and ‘ending’ with Abstract Expressionism. First introduced to the country from the West immediately after the Korean War, Korean Abstract Expressionism is now deemed as South Korea’s ultimate ‘progressive’ and ‘modern’ art form, a ‘Korean’ painting style combining the Western art form with traditional artistic concepts of ‘Scholarly Painting’ (muninhwa). Japanese‐influenced painting styles originating in the colonial period (1910–45) are rejected as ‘non‐authentic.’ The problem is that Scholarly Painting was a gender and class specific art born from the rigid Confucian culture of pre‐modern Korea, and thus its revival as an ‘ultimate modern’ and ‘Korean’ form has the consequence of locating traditionally‐gendered notions of art and artist at the core of the South’s modern art. This essay uses a Semiotic approach to deconstruct this gendered modernist rhetoric by tracing the emergence of the sign ‘Koreaness’ in South Korean modern art, showing how it is defined within Korean Abstract Painting as an ‘ultimate Korean sign’ and how its use of anti‐Japanese rhetoric covers up the traumatic history of the Korean War. Keywords: KoreanesssemioticsAbstract ExpressionismfeminismCold WarScholarly PaintingdeconstructionnationalismKorean woman artistRed Complex Notes 1. See also Ku‐il Lee (Citation1999: 185). 2. See Jung‐seok Seo (Citation1999: 754). 3. ‘We are born in the nation with the responsibility to restore our nation. Armed with strong anticommunism, let us be devoted to our nation. It is the only way to survive and to contribute to the Free World…. With strong belief and pride in ourselves, let us construct a new history’ (Park Citation1968). 4. Kyeong‐syeong Lee, Kwang‐su Oh are the precursors of Korean modern art history. Their books are published in 1976 and 1979.