Rise: late 1960s – 1970s Broader historical context Dansaekhwa artists were born during
Japan's occupation of Korea, and began building their careers during the turmoil of multiple military conflicts (most significantly the
division of Korea and the
Korean War), and authoritarian regimes of the 60s and 70s. Joan Kee emphasizes the importance of understanding this context in relation to Dansaekhwa, arguing that the artists' emphasis on objecthood was informed by both a history of material dispossession during the Korean War and anxieties around further loss with the suspension of civil liberties in postwar Korea. Dansaekhwa's questions around form grappled with the limits of representation and agency under the
Yushin Constitution.
Art historical context The tumult of postwar Korea was in some ways mirrored in the discourse around art, especially in discussions on the role of abstraction. Experimental and avant-garde artists clamored for institutional support that would reflect the major changes occurring in the Korean art world, and provide emerging artists a platform to show their work. But unlike the contemporary artists who sought to change the Korean art world through organized
collectives and
manifestos, Dansaekhwa artists did not band together to create a new
artistic movement. A number of Dansaekhwa artists were active in the late 1950s - mid 1960s
Art Informel movement in Korea, and
Park Seo-Bo traces the tendency to use a limited color palette in Dansaekhwa back to the movement. However, after the Korean Art Informel movement, many of the artists did not participate in
avant-garde movements that followed in the late 1960s and 70s initiated by groups like the 1967 Young Artists Coalition, and later A.G. (Avant-garde) and
S.T. (Space & Time). Without, as
Lee Ufan describes an "-ism," or movement, to guide it, Dansaekhwa artists instead busied themselves with formal concerns that unsettled the boundaries between abstraction and figuration, painting and sculpture, tradition and modernity, and local and global. Their focus on material rejected these sharp aesthetic divisions. A few artists who spent time abroad like Kwon Young-woo argued for the deemphasis of the distinction between painting from the East versus the West, arguing that attempts to distinguish paintings as belonging to one or the other usually rely on superficial differences based on medium or the image in the work. Some of the earliest Dansaekhwa artists began experimenting with a wide range of materials that rejected painterly traditions, but also emerged out of a lack of resources in postwar Korea and
rising oil prices. Oh later declared the "École de Seoul" exhibitions at the
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art beginning in 1975 as best representing Dansaekhwa. These exhibitions featured artists who would later be identified as part of Dansaekhwa, and evinced a shift in Korean contemporary art towards the style of Dansaekhwa. Curators and art historians often credit "Five Korean Artists, Five Kinds of White," a 1975 group show held at Tokyo Gallery organized by director Yamamoto Takashi with the support of Kim Mun-ho, the owner of Myeongdong Gallery, art critics
Nakahara Yusuke and
Lee Yil, and
Lee Ufan, as the first major exhibition of works that were later identified as part of Dansaekhwa. and expansive understanding of color that is distinct from Euro-American modern art movements. Yisoon Kim on the other hand attributes the origins of Dansaekhwa to the solo shows of
Park Seo-Bo, Kwon Young-woo,
Yun Hyong-keun, and
Ha Chong Hyun at Myeongdong Gallery from 1973 to 1974. After moving to Japan in 1956, and living between Paris and Kamakura from the early 1970s onwards, Lee played a significant role in promoting Dansaekhwa artists so that they could show their work in Japan and France. But Lee claims that Dansaekhwa would have been impossible without Park's mediation between institutions and artists to allocate resources from the former to the latter. Many Dansaekhwa artists were regularly showing in institutions outside of Korea by that time. A number of Dansaekhwa artists also spent time abroad, including
Lee Ufan who went to Japan in 1956,
Kim Tschang-yeul who went to
New York in 1965 and then
Paris in 1969, and
Chung Sang-Hwa who moved to Paris in 1967, Japan in 1969, and then back to France in 1977. Their work abroad, and for figures like Lee, promotion of Dansaekhwa art abroad, led to Dansaekhwa's growing international popularity.
Institutionalization and popularization: 1980s By the 1980s, Dansaekhwa became the face of Korean modern art, resulting in a number of the artists taking on leadership and teaching roles in art associations and universities, and being spared from government censorship. Dansaekhwa's preeminence was propelled by Korea's rapid economic growth that allowed for the expansion of the Korean domestic art scene with new museums, galleries, arts publications, and fairs, and by the increase in international visibility with the
Asian Games and
Olympics held in the country in 1986 and 1988 respectively. The Ministry of Culture and Information sponsored Dansaekhwa artists for shows like the 1978 "Secondes Rencontres Internationales d'Art Contemporain" in
Paris. In addition to Kim Tschoonsu, Yoon Jin Sup counts Koh Sankeum, Noh Sankyoon, Moon Beom, Cheon Kwangyep, Nam Tchunmo, Jang Seungtaik, Lee Kang-So, Kim Tae-Ho, Kim Taeksang, Park Kiwon, Ahn Jungsook, Lee Bae, and Lee Inheyon among late Dansaekhwa artists.
Historicization Since the early 2000s, scholars and curators have attempted to construct a history for Dansaekhwa. Art historian Chung Moojeong has identified one show and text in particular as marking the beginning of these efforts: "The Age of Philosophy and Aesthetics" (
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, 2002) and the foreword to this exhibition, "Korean Monochrome and Its Identity," by Oh Kwang-su. The show and essay are two of many offering their own timelines and cast of characters. Some have sought to draw new connections or find predecessors for Dansaekhwa, including
Kim Whanki and identify the main actors in promoting the movement. Yoon Jin Sup claims that rather than a native Korean, a foreigner, Tokyo Gallery director Takashi Yamamoto, was the first to discover Dansaekhwa. In 2013, the
University of Minnesota Press published the first English-language academic book on Dansaekhwa:
Contemporary Korean Art: Tansaekhwa and the Urgency of Method by Joan Kee. Kee employs formalist readings of Dansaekhwa work to show how these artists were engaged with the outside world, challenging aesthetic parameters that were indelibly marked by the rapid social and political changes in Korea during the time:Tansaekhwa was not about the mastery of technique, the transmission of meaning, or even the manipulation of materials. Its makers were primarily concerned with bringing together certain materials and material properties so as to break the painting down. Potentially this opened up room for the reconstruction of a different narrative of painting, one less indebted to reified sets of distinctions founded on particular systems of order and belief repeated over a given period. Thus, in calling tansaekhwa works 'methods,' critics like Lee and Yi inadvertently called for viewers to recognize the degree to which these works were themselves methods of being present outside those systems of order whose seeming dominance relied on their dual claims to historicity and perpetuity. In response to curatorial and art historical attempts to identify Dansaekhwa artists, some artists have pushed against their inclusion. Lee Kang-so and Choi Byung-so have rejected the association, stating that the categorization misunderstands both their own work and characteristics of Dansaekhwa. == Some shared characteristics ==