Chapter1

old newspapers and magazines piling up in
their homes. A voice calls out, "No matter theamount, if you have any 100-yen coins, 100yen notes or 1000-yen notes that you areusing at home, you can exchange them with
us for 0-yen notes!"In April of that year, the Supreme
Court had declared Akasegawa guilty in the"Thousand-yen Note Trial," but that did notdissuade him from making further provocations of paper currency. Next to the image of
the B-52s is a tactically placed "0-yen Note
Poster." Alongside details about exchanging
300-yen for a 0-yen note, the slogan "v narod,"or "to the people," also appears. This is truly
an appropriation of the propagandistic means
for inciting the masses.
Moreover, as a kind of meta-text, phrases
added to the margins of the illustrations selfreferentially allude to the multi-layered andconvoluted structure of fictionality which ultimately serves as an elaborate device for questioning the authenticity of journalism itself.
The margin text on the page with the B-52s
reveals Akasegawa's attempts to overthrow
the system: "Yes, you too-scrape together all
the money you've got and send it to the 0-yen
printing office for 0-yen exchange. Get it while
it's good! Get it while it's bad, too!"
The association of Vietnam War imagery
and the attempt to invalidate paper currency
carries with it a critique against Japan and theother Asian countries that enjoyed the economic benefits of the Vietnam War. Nor canit be denied that the stability of Asia was insome ways predicated on the war. Occupying
mainstream media to perpetrate the intellectual "crime" of exposing the complicity
between war and the capitalist system is aprime example of Akasegawa's unique strategy of media hijacking.
3 I Tomatsu Shomei: Asia as Archipelago
The photographerTomatsu Shomei has
left a major mark on the history of photography in post-war Japan. Among his diverse
projects, the one that represents his work of
the 1960s is the Occupation series, which elicits the reality of post-war Japan from both the
U.S. military bases spread across the country
and the Americanization of culture.
As part of this series, in 1969 Tomatsu
finally made it to Okinawa. The only territory inJapan to experience a land offensive during
the war in the Asia-Pacific-resulting in tremendous loss of life for its residentsOkinawa was partitioned from the country
after the war and placed under U.S. administration. In the 1950s, U.S. military bases were
DAY 1 September 30

015

scattered across Japan . They gradually underwent reconsolidation and contraction throughthe end of the 1960s, but the expansion ofbases only intensified on Okinawa, which wasa critical pivot in America's Asia strategy.
The return of Okinawa's administrative
rights became a serious political issue in thelate 1960s. What caught Tomatsu 's attention during his 1969 visit was , of course, theareas around the U.S. bases, and he focusedhis camera on the landscape of the bases in
the midst of the Vietnam War, as well as soldiers, prostitutes, mixed-race children anddemonstrations by the islanders. This work
was collected in the photobook, OKINAWA
OKINAWA OKINAWA, published that same
year. Notably, the book's subtitle read, "It is
not the bases that are in Okinawa-Okinawa
is in the bases."
Tomatsu's photographs of Okinawa
would change dramatically in 1971, when hevisited the remote Hateruma Island . There,
standing before the views of nature and island
life of an Okinawa without U.S. bases, he discovered a completely different Okinawa that
he had not been able to see through the bases.
Even as he ruminated over ethical questions
about whether it was permitted for a photographer who came from the mainland-which
had forced Okinawa under many sacrificesto turn his camera onto the islands, Tomatsu
was mesmerized by the subject . He put upon
himself the goal of shooting "photographs
for Okinawa." It was already obvious that the"return" of Okinawa to Japan would be full of
deceit, with the bases remaining as they were .
Having moved to the main island of
Okinawa in 1972, Tomatsu subsequently
moved to the remote island of Miyakojima,
where he observed Okinawa from the viewpoint of a resident . A few years later, in 1975,
he published his struggles with Okinawa as
the photobook The Pencil of the Sun, a subtitleof which reads Okinawa and S. E Asia.
The
150 photographs in the "Okinawa section" inthe book's first half are monochrome shots of
the remote islands, and do not include a single
shot of the main island .
Nor is there a single motif that hints at the U.S. bases.
Tomatsu himself once explained, "morethan being an 'occupation' zone, what is soenthralling for me about Okinawa is the powerful, broad, spiritual zone that continues toresist Americanization and has never yet been'occupied:"
The latter half of the book, the "Southeast
Asia section," comprises 80 photographs,
mainly taken on assignments to Taiwan,
Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, theImagining CuJturalSolidarity in Asia Now

016

Cullur al l\ebdli on in \., ia 1960 1989

ArtStudies_Ol

li~.,.X
Tamatsu Shame,.Mr;ako Island,
from ThePencilof the Sun,1972

Ii~.•jTomatsu Shame,, ThePenal of theSun, 1975
photabook cover

Suzuk Katsuo

Chapter1

Philippines and Indonesia. In contrast 1 here
the photographs are shot in color, with thebright colors of the tropics and expressions of
the people, so full of vitality even when theirliving conditions are hard-pressed, captured insquare-format prints .
Into this " Southeast
Asia section ," Tomatsu randomly intersperses
photographs of Okinawa, including views of
the areas around the bases on the mainland,
which do not appear in the first half of thebook . In his travels around the other islands of
Okinawa, Tomatsu became aware of the cultu re's southern roots , saying that the islands
suggested a kind of "land -bridge"{j itsuzuki)
that one could follow all the way to Southeast
Asia . What Tomatsu discovered after passing through the depths of Okinawa was the
expanded " Southeast Asia " that extends
across the Pacific Ocean.
We can interpret Tomatsu's editorial
intent as follows : this photobook was made asa reaction to the return of Okinawa's admin istrative rights to Japan, and is an attempt
to provide a new viewpoint for perceiving
Okinawa . In other words , Tomatsu clearly
aimed to sever its ties with Japan, and release
Okinawa into the Pacific Islands. Even withregard to the connections between Okinawa
and Southeast Asia, Tomatsu was not simply
looking for atmospheric resemblances . He
was surely also concerned with the histori cal experiences of colonization and the current postcolonial conditions they both shared.
The vision at which Tomatsu arrived was theimage of a cross-border archipelago networkthat would dissolve the rigidity of the nation
system , as well as the vision of the solidarity of the people of Southeast Asia that would
make this possible.
This shares overlaps with the oppositional world model proposed by the Third
World discourse, as discussed previously .
However, to that abstract idea, Tomatsu
added the concrete , visual image of an Asianarchipelago linked by the "sea." This photo book was produced as a response to thechallenge Tomatsu set for himself of making"photographs for Okinawa," and it was also a
gesture of reciprocation to the Okinawa that
he loved to the very end.

017

Tomatsu Shome,. Zamboanga. thePhi/1ppmes. from 77,ePenc,loftheSun.

1974

considered their counterpart s.
Apprehended from differ ing perspectives, Asia 's reality can prove to be mutually
illuminating for us, produc ing diverse encounters, comparisons and contr asts, and prompt ing the discovery and constr uct ion of a new,multi-dimensional subjectivi ty. In strategically theorizing this kind of "Asia" and "Third
World" as a transnational referent ial axis, we
can cast off Western theory 's binary structure for measuring the Asian experience, andwork toward a new theory from within a "Non Western" practice. It is my hope that this seminar can be the first step in th at direction .
This paper could not have been completed
without the guidance of Professor Ma rukawa
Tetsushi of Me iji Universi ty. I am gratef ul for
his generos ity.
Translated by Andr ew M aerkle

4Conclusion
These works are the rare cases inJapanese art that make direct reference toAsia . I am interested to see whether there areworks from the other countries that could be
DAY 1 September 30

Imagining Cultural Solidarity in -\s ia -.;O\\

ArtStudies_Ol

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019

Chapter1

C11lt11ral
lklwllion i11\.,ia '!)60 1!)89

Day2
Session I
In the Case of East Asia......
Suwki ""atsuo
Pi Li
Right is Wrong: Chinese Art before 1989

Park l l_wsnng
Boundary Riders of Korean Art in 1960s-1970s

I,ai \ ing-ying
Art into Action: Taiwanese Activists from 1960s to 1980s

I larnshi \lichio
Cultural Rebellion: Japan from the 1960s to the1980s

Cull ural l\ rlw llion iu \s ia i1960 1989020

Art Studies_Ol

Right isWrong:Chinese Art before1989
Pi Li
Sigg Senior Curator, M+

Th e o Iame Gro up an d
Soc ialist Realjsm

Zhang Wei, Fusuijing Building, 1975,
011on paper, 26 x 19cm

In the evening of the last day of 1974, agroup of young people in their 20s, wearing
thick cotton jackets and nervous expressions,arrived at a room on the third floor of a Sovietstyle collective housing complex on the westside of Beijing. Only with a special knock,agreed upon in advance, could they enter. Theapartment belonged to Zhang Wei and his
mother, a teacher of Russian. Later, in 1975,
Zhang Wei would document the sceneryoutside the windows of this apartment in themarkedly warm color palette of a landscapepainted from nature .'" A passionate depictionof the urban landscape, the work is notablebecause its line of sight is not exactly alignedwith the framing of the window, but rather
shifts slightly to the left, as if the painter werestanding in the cool shade of the room andpeeping out toward the warm sunshine
beyond-an appropriate reflection of the"underground" to which these artists
belonged. In those wild times, painting on thestreet without government approval would
draw the suspicion of the "revolutionary
masses." This simple fact goes a long way
towards explaining why the works of these
artists often depicted bland scenery devoid ofpeople, only occasionally manifesting humantraces like traffic lights or signs . Namelesslandscapes in a gray palette, these works
diverged drastically from the garishly colored
portraits drawn from revolutionary themes
popular at the time. That modest apartment
was filled with landscapes and sketches of thisvariety, none of them large, most similar inscale to the Little Red Book, Quotations fromP, L,

Chairman Mao, present in every household at
the time. Numbering around a dozen, the otherartists were similar to Zhang Wei in age. It was
only a single evening, but this gathering represented the first exhibition initiated by artists
without the permission of the government
since the founding of New China in 1949.
Later, during their first public exhibition in
1979, the artists of this event would call themselves the No Name Painting Association .
Like most members of the No NameGroup (1Wi~@f.),Zhang Wei's family wasmarked as wealthy or bourgeois in 1949 andtherefore subject to criticism and discrimination. With the arrival of the Cultural Revolution
in 1966 they would have experienced evenmore serious condemnation and exile, sent
to factories or villages to engage in hard labor
after their graduation from high school. This
peripheral status generally caused them tolinger beyond the grasp of collective life, either
intentionally or unintentionally, and the lonely
avocations of writing and painting were able
to offer solace for the spirit. Due to their livesof labor, however, they were only able to paintin their rare stints of free time, and, because of
the decentralized surveillance engendered by
the household registration system, the detailsof their daily lives were constantly monitoredby their neighbors. Outdoor sketching on
the weekends made for a rare diversion, but,because of the military restrictions then inplace across the country, this too had its risks.
Young artists were forced to invent ways toescape the inspections of bands and militias
organized by unions and work units. They produced tiny boxes which were the same dimensions as the Little Red Book for their canvases
and paints, which they could then casually
Presentation1

Chapter1

carry in satchels or even in the pockets of
their coats without attracting notice. That also
explains, in part, the diminutive dimensionsof most of the works that emerged from the
No Name Group in the 1970s. Gradually, thepractice of outdoor sketching became a collective behavior for marginal individuals of similar backgrounds, introduced through mutual
acquaintances over time, forming a groupof amateur artists active on the edges of thecity . So when, in 1979, they came upon theopportunity of a space for their own exhibition,
they proudly, if painfully, called themselves
the No Name Painting Association, a namethat expresses both a style that would otherwise be difficult to categorize and an identity
simultaneously marginalized and ordinary. The
Cultural Revolution had so fully obliterated thefamilies and relations of these artists-teenagers at the time-that they were left as orphansin the city, while their covert painting gatherings functioned as a way to come together for
warmth and comfort. In a time without freedom of expression, that a group of outsiders
might organize an underground exhibition wasa natural choice.
It was also a dangerous one. Since the1950s, virtually all literary and artistic activities
had been drawn into the scope of government
management. Following the disappearance ofthe market economy, artists had been forced
to affiliate themselves with institutions likeschools, publishing houses, and painting
academies in order to become eligible forsocial welfare benefits like salary and accommodation. Semi-official institutions like artists
associations organized artists professionally inorder to accept projects commissioned by thegovernment, and exhibitions could only occur
if they were organized and executed by thegovernment. During the course of the Cultural
Revolution initiated by Mao Zedong, evenwork in exhibitions orchestrated by the government was subject to critique. Because of thepolitical risk inherent to artistic practice, many
chose to give up public exhibitions in the interest of personal safety.
That the young people of the No NameGroup decided to make their gamble in 1974 isparticularly significant. From the beginning of
the Cultural Revolution in 1966 until 1969 wasa time of crazed violence during which the Red
Guards were encouraged to destroy all socialorganizations and national institutions outsideof the military . Beginning in 1969, young students were sent to villages in the countrysidein order to engage in a militarized system ofagricultural labor, with the twin goals of ending
the reign of chaos in the cities and solving the
DAY 2 Octobe r 1

021

crises of unemployment and faltering production caused by violent struggle. In 1971, Mao's
political partner in the Cultural Revolution, Lin
Biao, fled suddenly under mysterious circumstances and was killed in a plane crash. A year
later, Zhou Enlai was diagnosed with terminal
cancer, allowing Deng Xiaoping to return toBeijing to assist the work of the central leadership. The bizarre death of Lin Biao changed
the outlook of the hot-blooded youth of the
moment seemingly overnight, forcing them toreconsider the rationality of this political struggle in the midst of their hardships in the countryside. Many would later become pioneers of
the resurgence and liberalization of art and culture . More importantly, the military management of daily life and ceaseless political study
began to loosen, allowing young people moretime and space to themselves. Urban factories
began to require a larger workforce with theresuscitation of the economy, allowing many
artists to return to the city. However briefly,
1974 marked a pause during which ideologicalpressure dissipated, drawing forth independent thinking and, for many young people, thepossibilities of reading, writing, painting, andphotography.
If a careful art historical analysis might
posit the work of the No Name Group as apractice of landscape sketching that synthesized stylistic influences from Japanese
Impressionism and Soviet Eastern European
Realism, it would nonetheless appear difficult
to consider it in relation to the "avant-garde,""modern," and "contemporary" art to come .
In order to appreciate its exigencies, onemust first understand the question of style in
Chinese art after 1949. There can be no doubtthat the most important element in this field
was Mao Zedong . In contrast to the utilitarianism of Deng Xiaoping that would emerge later,
Mao believed in a romantic form of art thatwould play a significant role in the revolutionof culture and construction of a new China,
and that the core role of art would be to serve
the people-to serve politics . As soon as it was
assigned this function, the content of art was
required to override its style . On the questionof the revolution in culture, Mao diverged from
Lenin . Lenin believed that any new culturenecessarily splintered off of an older culture,for instance, that Marxism was a fragment ofHegelianism, and realism of classicism. Mao
in his later years, on the other hand, held that
only through the total destruction of old culture
could a new culture in the service of the people
be constructed. From the onset of the Cultural
Revolution, the art academies were closed
even as institutions such as the Children's
Right is \Vro ng: Chin ese .A.itbefore 1989

022

Cultu ral Hebelli on in \sia 196o 1989

n-e dee -,,verricmArit

re1ers t0

part1rUldl MCrT 81lt dt W 11 t-,E IE rr-eri~ inc ud

ir g 'or .,ont,:ept1on,
v0111pos1•,on,hght. Pd event,dll perfrctly CC'lnClde
Her" C rt,e, Bresscn e•dborated thisph nomenon II Thf Dec1S1VeMomer,tr berdmr c'ef,n,ng rl SSIC ')f doc.imnr,tdry ..,,,ctcgrdl-JI y. "'949 h, exe·ri,tedarge nu, 1ber of phC'tograpr,
Jw rg' e I, ~t six rrcnths cf th,WI "Kuo, ,mt<-,c;, Jle vn the Mainlandar dth fl~t s,x nor,trs of Power for• e
Ccrrrrurn ,t P, r'y " lP.1Jing,h bethpnotogrnphed •t,e last eunuchs andwItn
d e e.t blishlT ent of a new
owr Ig11powPr F'Jr •his reason, the· dee.s,ve IT cme• t bee.. ea !~sting
pnrc,r,lr cf 'X>tt-l-h1resc and global
ealist pllotc,grnphy anc' ,-)Poto1ourraI
sr , Henn Cartier Bressu11,Tho 0euSJVf'
l\t1omwr (NewYc,1< S,rror & Schuster"-lewY0ri< 1%2

Palaces, factories, and villages established avariety of artistic training courses . In line withthe slogan "Let a hundred flowers bloom anda thousand schools of thought contend, " theart of the New China involved a process of theeradication of difference: what was eliminatedfirst was the traditional literati style, whichclashed with the "mass line," followed laterby the strands of modernism introduced toChina in the 1930s and, after the break with
the Soviet Union in the 1960s, the socialist
realism of the 1950s. What was left was simply
realism. Under the banner of nationalism andlocalization, this form of realism was transformed into a style described as "red, bright,
and shiny, " all the better to serve the people.
In order to fulfill the requirements of politicalmovements, works in this style often focusedon figurative portraiture and historical subject
matter, expressing the revolutionary sentiment of the artist . In order to avoid criticism or
misinterpretation-deliberate
or otherwisein the course of political struggles, a generalprocedure was followed : "Among characters,righteous characters prevail; among righteous
characters, heroes prevail; amongst heroes,
major heroes prevail." After 1972 this collec tion of directives was codified in the form of
the high socialist style. Zhang Wei and theother painters of the No Name Group clearly
belonged to another category. Put simply, theyrejected without pause the style of socialist
realism . Their work contains neither dignified
figures nor stirring events; to the contrary, theirvast and silent landscapes pursue a sense ofvitality, of rich spiritual transformation amidst
a gray palette. In a highly militarized and politicized society, this speechless lyricism towards
nature implied courageous resistance to thevulgar politics of both artistic practice and public life. This, then, is the logical point of origin
for new art from China.
With the passing of Zhou Enlai in January
1976, spontaneous memorial events gradually evolved into protests and condemnationsof the Cultural Revolution . Although these
activities were quickly repressed and labeled"counter -revolutionary ,"the Cultural Revolution
finally came to an end with the death of Mao
Zedong some six months later. It took Deng
Xiaoping until the late 1970s to clean up thepolitical inheritance Mao left behind andtake the reins of power at the national level,
which was ultimately symbolized by his official overturning of the Cultural Revolution andhis retroactive recognition of the legality ofthe memorial activities of 1976. Commonlyreferred to as the "Beijing Spring," along thelines of the 1968 Prague Spring, the last threep,.

Art Studies_Ol

years of the 1970s saw the arrival of freedomof speech and association for the urban elite,
a consequence of this brief period of transition
amongst the leadership. Although the Cultural
Revolution had ended, radical youths in thecities continued to express their positions
through the anarchist "Big-character posters "posted on the street, drawing from a series ofconcerns marked by complaints of injustice,reflections on the Cultural Revolution, and considerations of totalitarianism . In order to applypressure to the political successors designatedby Mao and earn the support of public opinion
during the early phase of his leadership, Deng
Xiaoping tacitly consented to the persistenceof these forms of resistance; as soon as he had
consolidated power, however, he began tostifle commentary and protest.
Photojournalist Liu Heungshing, whocame to Beijing on behalf of Time magazine ,documented the cultural life of the street andthe changing lifestyles of this era, photographsof which were collected and published as
China after Mao in 1983 in the United States.
Focusing on everyday life and unintentional
moments , Liu's attention to detail asks thereader to consider the relationships between
ordinary behavior and social transformation .
For this reason, his style differs fundamentallyfrom the propaganda photography that tookhold in China under the influence of Henri
Cartier-Bresson's concept of the "decisive
moment." Liu's photographs clearly record
the bits and pieces that made up daily life
during that special historical time : the fading of
the figure of Mao from public spaces, theuniversity lecture hall as education resumed,
the Big-character posters on the street, thedemonstrations of artists. In particular, hefollowed and documented the Stars Groupexhibition in 1979, and his photographs of that
infamous event have become the classics of
20th century photography.

Th e Stars Group an d Revolutionary
Romantic ism
Although the artists of the No Nameand Stars Groups(££@~) were similar inage, the history of the Stars Group began at
a later date. Its original incarnation was actually very closely related to the underground
literature scene that had evolved out of theposting of Big-character posters : Huang Rui
was art editor of the publication Today, which
he founded with the poets Bei Dao and Mang
Ke. He was later joined at the journal by Ma
Desheng, whose early print works, influenced
by German Expressionism and Kathe Kollwitz
Presentation1

Chapter1

in particular, were largely intended as illustrations. German Expressionism was introduced
to China by Lu Xun in the 1930s, and was oneof the few modernist styles to be retained
after 1949 due to its associations with war andpoverty. It became influential for artists of theStars generation at least in part because theirparents were leftist, cultured youths before
1949, and later became cultural cadres in thegovernment of New China.'-" For families likethese, their lives would have been smooth,even privileged, until the Cultural Revolution .
In contrast to the long-term sensations of marginalization and inferiority experienced by theartists of the No Name Group, this meant thatthe fall from grace entailed by the treatmentof their families during the Cultural Revolution
would have seemed even more profound forthe artists of the Stars, a difference that is not
lost in the way their work reflects on (and, tosome degree yearns for) power. In his sculpture ,Wang Keping, for instance, works throughpower by means of symbolism, irony, anddestruction.
At the initiative of Huang Rui and Ma
Desheng, the Stars Group was founded
in 1979 with an understanding of art thatdiverged from that of the No Name Group,
concentrating instead on a strong notion ofpolitical and social intervention. Indeed, theyclearly insisted that participating artists"must be independent artists or professional
artists ideologically opposed to the system,"and that "the group will concentrate on questions of contemporary politics, culture, andart history." !.C'.
This also explains how the Stars
Group could lack a unifying style: their uniting
element was instead the decision to express
clear and topical political views, while their
methods tended towards the literary in an
amalgam of various romantic styles. This isevident in Huang Rui's oil painting: 5April
1976 documents the political protests heldin Tiananmen Square that year, but his moderemains that of revolutionary romanticism, astyle that appears again in Yuanmingyuan ...i;The title of this work refers to the Old Summer
Palace, the imperial park burned down in 1860
during the Second Opium War, which becamea gathering place for poets and artists during
the Beijing Spring. At the time, Today was
introducing Heinrich Boll's Triimmerliteratur or"rubble literature," and, for this generation ofartists, the Old Summer Palace came to symbolize both Chinese history and the personaltragedies of the Cultural Revolution . For Huang
Rui, these ruins appear as tree trunks struck bylightning or solitary wanderers imbued with asense of German romanticism. Artists of theDAY2 October1

023

Stars Group preferred symbolic material likethe Monument to the People's Heroes in
Tiananmen and the ruins of the Old Summer
Palace, two diverging subjects that seemed tostand, respectively, for the political future andthe cultural past .
As many open-minded officials resumed
their posts in 1977, cultural policy began toease. When the No Name Group took thelead in organizing an exhibition in 1979, theStars Group, too, requested equal treatment,
but , because of differences in scheduling, theartists of the latter group instead hung theirworks in the garden around the National Art
Gallery in Beijing. When the exhibition was
shut down, the artists took to the street andprotested in support of the freedom of artistic expression . Through the reporting of overseas media, the event came to be seen as asurge of democratic yearning. Despite the factthat the government was eventually willing tocompromise, the Stars exhibition was moved
to another public site. By 1980, however, Deng
Xiaoping had consolidated his grasp on powerand hoped to guide reform through authori tarian rule; no longer requiring the support ofpublic opinion, he began to tighten control
over freedom of expression . Big-character
posters were outlawed, Today and other underground publications were shuttered, and theexhibitions of the painting associations wereno longer granted official approval. Deng's
basic policy was the rapid restoration of thesocial order that had been disrupted by the
Cultural Revolution, and it was precisely the
resumption of social order that began to divide
art collectives like the Stars and the No NameGroup. As Zhang Wei began to study abstract
painting through exhibitions outside of China,some members persisted in socially marginal
positions while others entered the academy
for their studies. Many others, like Huang Rui,
moved abroad under politica l pressure.

From the Streets to th e Campus:
Th e 85 New Wave
Even as street culture and underground
activities were banned, the universities began
accepting students, internat ional exhibitions
began to be held in China, and a large number of philosophical and cultural texts weretranslated. As a result of these initiatives, thecultural core of the moment shifted from thestreet to the university campus. In the firsthalf of the 1980s, a large amount of Westernmaterial on modern and contemporary art
was introduced to China, and many professors
who had been banished from the academy
Jligh Lis \Vrong: Chine se Art before 1989

For instancP Wang Keping the son of
Wang Lin, and Ai We1we1,the son of At
Oing, were both leftist cultural figures
who spent time with the Communist
Party in Yan"an Similarly, Zhong
Acheng (Ah Cheng) is the son of thedrama theorist Zhong Dianfet who w"sbanished alongside Liu Xun, former
chairman of the BeiJing Artists
Association, during the Cultural
Revolution. This explains why Liu Xun
visited the Stars Group exhtbttion andopened the possibility of exhibiting in
Beihai Park.

Huang Rui and Ma Desheng,
A Constel!at,on of Stars, Huang Rw and
Ma Desheng: Art Editors, 7978-1983(Beijing Hadrien de Mont/errand Gallery,2013). p. 32

Huang Rut, 5 Apnl 1976, 1978, 0tl on
canvas, 120 x 89 cm,I,

Huang Rut, Yuanmingyuan 1979. oil oncanvas, 55x70cm

Cultur al Rebellion in \si a 196o- 198g

In that era, the National F,ne Arts
Exh1b1t1onwas the only ott,c,al exh1b1
tIon occurring periodically every few
years. After 1979, ,twas planned every
fifth year. Only through applying to thisexh1b1t1oncould artists achieve off1c1al
recognition After the Stars Group exh,
bition, many artists of the early 1980s
continued to harbor illusions about thenational exhib1t1on,and believed that
their avant-garde style would be
accepted for the 1984 IteratIon In theend, however. hardly any of them wer,
recogn,zed, spurring the foundation 0f
many artist groups and pa1ntIng organ,
Zo tIons. ,n addition to planting theseeds for the exhibition that would ate,
become 'Ch,nalAvant-Garde"
N

Wang Guangy,, Purg,ng Humanist
Enthusiasm," Jiangsu P1ctor,al lssu1 lC'1990). pp 17 18.
'I

A theory of the schema developed byGombnch ,n his l1ngu1st1~rnsearch was
brought 11110
the sphere of art r h,s publication Art and 1/lus,on. As he mentions,n h,s memoirs. when he was employed
for the surveillance of German radio
dunng World War II, hL discovered that
understanding a muddle phrase
required advanced famihanty with its
subJect matter. which lead to his C'lrclus,on that understanding often relieson accumulated knowledge Drawing
this argument 11110
visual perception
and art, he discovered the role of th~"schema" or mental set ,n artIstIc prac
tIces. As he writes ,nArtand 11/us,or>,'th~ schema Is not the product of aprocess of abstraction,' of a tendency
to 'simplify; 11represents the first
approximate, loose category which ,sgradually tightened to fit the forms 111s
to reproduce" Ernst Gombnch, Art and1/lus,on(New Jersey: Princeton University
Press,2000), pp. 73-74 Ong,nally deI1v
ered 1111956as the AW Mellon
Lectures ,n the Fine Arts at the Nat,cnRI
Gallery of Art. Washington, and subs
quently published by Princeton
University Press 1111956

The Pond Society Manifesto, as quoted,n Huang Zhuan, "An Ant,thes1s to •~eConceptual: On Zhang Pe,h,"Zhang Pe1/J
Certam Pleasures, Venus Lau and Robin
Peckham, eds. (Shanghai: Minsheng Art
Museum, 2011,
II

See for example.
Zhang Peih, Untitled !Glove;) 1988,
011on canvas, 100 x 134 cm,
Zhang Peili,X?Senes.· No.4, 1987,
011on canvas, 180 x 200 cm

Geng J1any1,The Second S,tuat,on, 1987
011on canvas, 170 x132cm each
(4 pieces)1,

Zhang Peil,. Brown Book No. 1. 1988,
11archival documents and one pair ofgloves, d1mens1onsvariable024

returned to take up their positions . With theacademy at its center, the art world brimmed
over with an atmosphere of self-confidence
and openness, and artists reiterated a century
of history-from Impressionism to Abstract
Expressionism-within the space of a few
years. Such experiments continued to be seen
as radical, and artists fancifully believed that
their experiments were of a piece with the economic reforms instituted by the government .
For the government, however, this culturalexperimentation was " spiritual pollution," andmany works in emerging styles were rejectedfrom the 1984 National Fine Arts Exhibition.
But, following Courbet's exclusion from theSalon of the 19th century, many artists werethen motivated to found their own artistic
groups and collectives, again organizing theirown exhibitions. These small art groups constituted a new scholarly community, form ing within civil society a system that could
contend with the official exhibition system .
Artists influenced by Western styles began torefer to "new wave art," which, in combination with that particular moment in time, cameto be known as the "85 New Wave." This wasa movement that would engulf Chinese art :artists believed their struggle was a continuation of the 1919 New Culture Movement, andthat their mission was to drive Chinese art intoa phase of "modernization. " Strictly speaking,the 85 New Wave was not a stylistic movement but rather marked a time of liberated
conceptual thinking, and for this reason its
styles and ideas appear diverse. Insofar as theartistic movements of the early 1980s generally
originated in suspicion towards the norms ofrealism, the New Wave could be seen as a con tinuation of the No Name and Stars Groups .
For many artists, the weapons of choice forresistance to realism included abstraction,
expressionism, and modes drawn from psychoanalysis and existentialism.
Following the uproar of the 85 New Wave ,however, some artists gradually came tobelieve that an artistic movement relying onliterary fervor would only be able to advance toa limited stage . By1987 many had turned
against its spiritual and romantic leanings,
maintaining that the notion of enlightenment
in the movement had become too strong andthat it had become too literary in structure,neglecting to consider the nature of art itself
and consequentially mythologizing art in an
overly romantic way . The artist Wang Guangyi
has called this form of enlightenment-esquemythology "humanist zeal." Modernist art
movements since the Stars Group had func tioned as a portion of a larger picture ofp

Art Studies_Ol

humanism, as opposed to considering art
through the spirit of a rational, disciplinary
lens. Wang, on the other hand, sought to strip
away the passions of humanism, moving awayfrom both classicism and modernism and in
the direction of contemporary art . Under the
influence of Ernst Gombrich 's concept of" schema and correct ion," he adapted a technique of flat painting to alter well-known
images in a supposedly systematic way, using
numbers , grids , and blocks to express a "rational" spirit of analysis and critique.

Beyond the 85 . ew \\' ave
Artists Zhang Peili and Geng Jianyi wereable to progress further on the level of criticalreflection . They rapidly rose to fame in the
85 New Wave for their existentialist painting ,but by that time they had already moved on
and were working with influences from Dada,
Duchamp, and " Poor Theater." Organizing thewell-known artist group Pond Society, they
began to reconsider and ultimately challenge
the narrative and spiritual qualities of art . For
this group , the core work of art was "to oblit erate the sacred in art," because "the sacredis something you cannot see"(Pond Society
Manifesto, 1985). Aside from the activities of
the Pond Society, Geng and Zhang also agreed
to create a series of works without individual ity in their personal practices ; Zhang adopted
medical latex gloves as his subject, hoping tocomplete (or perhaps"produce") 100 such flat,
monochrome paintings, identical in almost
every way . Geng Jianyi chose to paint a seriesof bald, laughing men; the paintings allow no
way to determine their identities or emotions ,but present only repetitive faces that become
as ossified as masks. By reducing the technical elements and compositional changes ofpainting to an absolute minimum, Zhang andGeng cast doubt upon modernist positions on
the spiritual nature of art and the sublime roleof self-expression . At this point their suspicions turned also to the spiritual and romantic
in the 85 New Wave. After completing somedozen glove paintings, Zhang PeiIi started
work on an instruction manual explaining how
to carry out the production of similar works
and began mailing fragments of latex gloves torandom people, further emphasizing the hidden violence enacted by forms of control like"standards" and "restrictions." Geng Jianyi,
too, began working with photocopied images
in his work. In their anti-visual perspective,
both artists work opened up an era of conceptual art beyond the image -centered realism ofChinese art.
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Meaningful shifts in concept and methodology occurred also in Xiamen, where Huang
Yong ping and other artists organized two
exhibitions under the mantle of Xia men Dada
in 1986 and 1987. After one exhibition theycollected all of the works in a square and set
fire to the pile; after receiving permission forthe other, they suddenly changed their proposal and brought all kinds of discarded materials from outside of the exhibition venue into thespace. Huang was attracted to the destructiveness and capacity for chaos offered by Dada:
his choice was for the temporary and provisional. He has consistently sought spontaneity
within his work, using the turntable or roulette
wheel as a tool to produce randomness bychoosing colors, sectors of the canvas, brushstrokes, and numbers of repetitions based on
the spinning of the wheel. '· In this process,spontaneity-rather than the dullness of concept-becomes the work, making the wheel"non-expressive" rather than "self-expressive."
Here the artist realizes his opposition to thesentimentalism, self-aggrandizement, andcomplacency of painting in the 1980s.

The 1989 "China /Avant-Garde" Exhib ition
Since Deng Xiaoping consolidated his
grasp on power in 1979, the government's
stance toward the cultural elite has vacillated:
they are necessary to the rallying cry of themarket economy, but they must not stray too
far. It is for this reason that slogans opposed
to bourgeois spiritual pollution continued toresurface: to warn artists when they went too
far. This elastic political reality, while it continued to incite some artists, allowed the artists
discussed above to rationally reflect on concepts of the production and creation of art .
When, in 1984, a large number of artists were
rejected from the National Fine Arts Exhibition,
they attempted to organize an exhibition in
Beijing that would accommodate all of theirpioneering experiments: the "Chinese Modern
Art Survey" exhibition, or "China/AvantGarde." Lacking both funding and venue,
the exhibition was continually postponed all
the way up to 1989, when it was realized at
the National Art Gallery. The development ofChinese art had been expeditious: in 15 years
it had progressed from an exhibition of landscape oils in an apartment to demonstrationsin the street, and from there to an exhibitionof "avant-garde" art in the institution thatwould later become the National Art Museumof China. Paradoxically, by the time this exhibition opened, advocating the legitimacyof New Wave art, the movement itself had
DAY2 October 1

already witnessed the pioneering suspicions
and critiques of artists like Wang Guangyi ,Zhang Peili, Geng Jianyi, and Huang Yongping.
Exigencies of the social realit ies of the moment
had positioned both the New Wave and those
who would bring it to an end in the same exhibition, after which point all of their differencesand distinctions would emerge.
At ten in the morning on February 5, 1989,
the exhibition "China/Avant-Garde" opened at
the National Art Gallery, including the work ofsome 100 artists and organized by a group ofart critics . None of the participants or organizers knew, however, that only an hour later TangSong and Xiao Lu would fire two shots froma handgun toward their own work. The exhibition was immediately closed and reopened
several days later. For many who had alreadycome to reconsider the New Wave, thismoment marked its conclusion. As critic Li
Xianting wrote on that very day:
"China/Avant-Garde" has lost the vigorof the 85 New Wave, but neither does itmake any claim to prediction for the future
based on the current development of modern art. The exhibition is, in fact, a conclusive retrospective, and this eagerness tolook back signifies a certain loss of vitality
in Chinese modern art. In addition, the factthat neither the organizers nor the participants hesitated to compromise in order
to meet the conditions of bringing theirwork into most hallowed halls of Chinese
art reflects a considerably traditional sensibility. One particularly important phenomenon around the exhibition is this : therecent work of many important figuresof the 85 New Wave shows signs of having exhausted their talent, and these two
gunshots served as the curtain call of the
movement . The two shots fired by TangSong and Xiao Lu brought on the "critical point" of the New Wave yet anothermoment earlier. This "critical point" marks
the outer limit of the new concepts andforms avant-garde artists seek to impose
upon society. This is, in itself, a spirit ofmodernity, as well as a unique phenomenon of Chinese modern art. 'Right is \Vrong: Chinese Art before 1989,:
See for example, Huang Yongp1ng,
Six Small Turntables, 1988,
mixed media, 50x40x 16cm

L1X1ant1ng, Two Gunshots: The Curtain
Call of New Wave Art," What Matters ,sNot Art (Nan1ing J1angsu Fine Arts
Publishing House, 2000), p. 254
00

Cuilural Hebelliou in \;,ia 1960 1989

026

Art Studies_Ol

BoundaryRidersof KoreanArt in 1960s- 1970s
ParkHyesung
Curator, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art , Korea

Introdu ction,,~...
Street demonstration of young artists, 1967

In December of 1967, a crowd of young
artists held a street demonstration in the
middle of Seoul picketed with signs that read,"National Art Exhibition Only with Images of
Seated Women;· "Art Works after Abstraction ;'"Artists in Action;· "Contemporary Arts Are
Intimate with the Public;"'National Development Starts from an Active Art Development
Policy," and "Korea without Contemporary Art
Museum" and so on. " ' They were arrested by
the police on the spot . These were the members of the Zero Group, the Origin Society, andthe New Exhibition Group who had opened"The Coalition Exhibition of Young Artists" on
the same day at the Central Public Information
Center. They defined their activities as arebellion against the systemized art world with
National Art Exhibition as a center of those days:
The established art world of Korea has
been stuck in the recession of lnformel.
We should carry out a new movement
without being left behind the times (contemporaneity) .. .. In contrast with lnformelthat was rather the product of personalemotions, our avant-garde art should
try to close distance with the public . In
areas where lnformel aims at anti-mechanism and humanism, the avant-garde art
acknowledges the machine (or civilization)in which it can find human beings.
From the seminar of the Coalition Exhibition ofYoung Artists held in May of 1968.

It was only after the early 2000 that theseshort-lived activities of the young artists were
given more focus and attention . Instead ofbeing interpreted merely as a bitter criticism
against established art, their activities havenow been relocated in the context of politics,
economy , and culture. Diverse practices ofeach artist have been introduced instead ofbeing generalized with the collective labels. 'The exhibitions and researches deconstructed
the macro-narrative of chronological development of lnformel from the mid -1950s to themid-1960s, along with Monochrome paintingsof the 1970s and Minjung art (political art for thegrass-roots) movement of the 1980s. However,
the activities of the young artists with wide
latitude of value and meaning were still left
with diverse layers of interpretation . It is necessary to examine their practices from the perspective of national category such as Korea,
Japan, the United States, and Europe, thereby
Park Hyesung

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Chapter1

reconstructing the original hybridity or polyphony of their practices from a view of "locality."
I am sure the international exhibition based on
this seminar will be a catalyst for this trial.
I will examine Korean arts in the 1960sand '70s to focus on some issues mentioned
from the announcement of this presentation.
"Contemporaneity" that the young artists
requested in the announcement is ambivalentbecause it doesn't only refer to a kind of obsession from non-Western countries' desire not tobe left behind the international art trends after
the enlightenment period of 19th century, but
it also addresses a critical attitude against theprevailing surveillance and violence in Koreansociety during that time. It is involved with thenext issues of the announcement; that is, thecommunication with the public and the relationship between civilization and human.
Anti-lnform el/ Post-Jnformel:
Activism of "Action"
It was the lnformel artists who had
appeared as "the first avant-garde of Korea"
10 years ago . These young artists who also
addressed themselves as "the avant-garde"
showed resistance. The young artists one generation prior had found the model of improved
culture in the Western avant-garde at a time
when Korean society started to accommodate the principles of democracy and capitalism after experiencing colonization (1910-45),
liberation (1945),war (1950-53)and national
division . They revolted against authorities andthe conservatism of the Korean National Art
Exhibition, which they regarded as a productof Japanese colonial system and enthusiastically embraced the internationally prevailing"hot abstraction" of lnformel style. Since the
Korean War, artists were exposed both directly
and indirectly to the American arts with thesupport of the United States and began tomodel their works after American Abstract
Expressionism while abandoning the academic style of realism and lyrical semi-abstraction influenced by Japan. But the French term
informel was selected to refer to this newstyle . lnformel showed the complex geopolitical conditions of Korean culture and offeredsome important frameworks for understanding a variety of experimental art practices of
the 1960s and '70s in Korea, for which I cannot
help but examine first.
Michel Tapie(1909-87)'s visit to Japan in1957 created a great sensation of lnformel inJapan and also waked the echoes in Korea
while abstract art had been developing asavant-garde. He extended the boundary ofDAY2 October 1

lnformel by including American artists as wellas European ones. He defined it as "Un art
autre (An Other Art)" that was against Cubismand geometrical abstraction and he praised
individualism, authenticity, aggression, violence, and violation based on the legacies ofNietzsche and Dadaism. It is well known that
his ideas were closer to that of Harold
Rosenberg (1906-78)who insisted on the integration of art and life through action on thearena of canvas and the negative spirit of Dada
than that of Clement Greenberg (1909-94)who
approached abstract art with the concept ofaesthetic autonomy. His ideas were acceptedby the members of the Gutai Art Association(1964-72)who had explored the body and action
with Yoshihara Jir6 (1905-72)as a leader. Theirconcern switched to the "materiality" on thecanvas from "action" that was extended out of
the canvas; this can be seen in the works of
Shi raga Kazuo (1924-2008)and Murakami
Sabur6 (1925-96). After their early "action" wasforgotten, they were criticized for having losttheir avant-garde spirit in confronting reality.
Some young artists that belonged to Neo Dada
Organizers and Hi Red Center in the 1960s
situated their anti-art against lnformel.
In Korea, lnformel appeared both as auniversal visual language that expresses theexistence and free will of the generation who
had gone through war and also as a manifestation of the spirit of resistance against theestablished system. The young artists in theirearly 30s labeled themselves as a combat unitof aesthetics by announcing the "anti-national
exhibition" during the late 1950s. This waswhen political and economic crisis was rampant in every corners of society . Even though
the issue of their originality was constantly
given doubt, their attitude was seen as a predicative of the 4.19 revolution (1960).· They
understood the canvas as an arena of action .
However, they focused too much on the spiritof the time, materiality from brushstrokes,
and textual expression rather than pioneering actions of early Gutai. In the early 1960s,
the lnformel style was accepted by traditional
painting groups as well as the national exhibition system, and became mainstream .
It was against the authorized lnformelthat the young artists of the late 1960s wereshowing resistance. They developed some
practices of post-flat surface or genre deconstruction in reaction to "a doctrinaire spirituality of matiere ." · They appeared in the art
world claiming a "return to reality" in a deadend of abstraction art, and paid attention to thepossibility of performance art such as eventsand happenings by chance from which they
Uoundal) Ridrrs of'h.ort':m \ rt in 1960~- 19/ 0s

The National Museum of Modern andContemporary Art, Korea (MMCA)
highlighted the conceptual arts, exper
imental arts, installation arts, and perfor
mance arts from the 1960s to '70s in the2001 exhib1t1on"Korean Contemporary
Art from the mid- 1960s to mid 1970s:
A Decade of Transition and Dynamics"
to shed light on the activities which had
not been paid proper anentIon in thehistory of Korean modern art. This exh1b1t1on focusing on small groups such
As the Coalition Exh1b1t1onof Young
Artists (1967), the Korean Avant-Garde
Assoc1at1on(AG 1969-75). the 4th Group
1 1970),and ST (Time& Space, 1971-81)
that were short-lived but clearly claimed
to advocate the avant-garde restored
lost works to their original sizes basedon thorough research, and introduced
hitherto unknown materials. It paved
the way for stressing the necessity tosituate such movements in their appro-

priate positions both in the genealogy
of art history and art criticism Six years
later. in 2007, the MMCA h1stoncallyexamined the performance arts in the"Performance Art of Korea 1967-2007"
exhib1t1on.In addition, the Art Center ofthe Korean Culture & Arts Foundation
held a series of solo exhib1t1onssuch as"Lee Seungtaek"(1997l. "Park Hyunki", 1998). "Lee Kunyong" (1999), and'Kim Kulim"I2000).

Michel Tap1e,"An Other Art. Art 1n
Theory 7900-1990· An Anthology of
Changmg Ideas, Charles Harrison andPaul Wood, eds. (New Jersey: W1leyBlackwell, 1993), pp.619-620

The 4.19 revolution Is a student revolt
against political corruption, whichremoved the dictator from power

Nakahara Yusuke requoted In Park
Sohyun, "Translocahty of Koreanlnformel." ReadmgofKorean
Contemporary Art, Yoon NanJi et al(Seoul Noonb1t.2013), pp.77-78

028

Cultura l l\ebcl lion in \sia 196o 1989

The Japanese art critic, M1yakawa
Atsush1, stated that the dialectics
between material and human action incontemporary paintings entailed a kindof conceptual shift of what constitutes"expression,"go1ng beyond its merely
formal dimension. The collapsing of theexpressive action onto expression itself,in Informal, meant a self-objectification of expression. He also stated thatlnformel was an anti-art because theprocess of expression was re-conceptu •alized as every-day obJects.
M1yakawa Atsushi, "Anforumeru ik6"
!After Informal], BiJutsu Tech6, No. 220(May, 1963)
In Korea, however, various anemptsof experimental art after lnformel havebeen read only as ant1-lnformel.

fiJ.,t.111

Lee Taehyun,Command 1, 1967,
gas mask, knapsack, 140 x 70 x 14 cm

li~. 1dKang KookJin, Chung Kan91a andChung Chanseung, Murder at a Side ofHan River, 1968

found a new art form. They were able toexpand their action into activism to criticize thesocial and political system together with theartistic system . But it seemed like they wereunable to fulfill this potential.
Young artists that belonged to small
groups such as the Origin Society(SeoSeungwon[1941- ]. ChoiMyungyoung[1941- ]. Lee
Seungjo[1941- 90) and HamSeob[1942- J), the ZeroGroup (ChoiBoonghyun[1941-), KimYoungja[1940-)
and Moon Bokcheol[1941- ) so on) and the New
Exhibition Group (ChungChanseung[1942- 94].
KangKookjin[1939- 92)andChungKangja[1942-) soon)made the artworks of Op art (geometricalabstraction), Pop art and Neo Dada. But they sparked
many events after the coalition exhibition.
What was produced in the late 1960s had avoice of criticizing the whole society after the
5.16 military coup (1960). They presented anumber of unstable social symptoms : harmful
consequences from abruptly developed economy , threatened democracy, and suppressed
personal freedom in the face of the conflict
between the South and North, and the repeti tion of demonstration and proclaiming ofmartial laws after the Korean-Japanese Treaty(1965)with ready-mades such as abandoned
waste, medical appliances for surgery, broken
containers, rubber gloves, skeleton masks, gasmasks and so on . During this time, Lee
Taehyun displayed a series of Order (1967)withgas masks and military backpacks i; ; Choi
Boonghyun produced Human being 3 (1965)
with black vinyl elements and mingled intravenous lines, and Human being 5 in which hewrapped a mannequin with linen clothes andropes. These works used metaphors to portray
not only the existential death of human beings

Park Hyesung

ArtStudies_01

but also depicted death-like life under the
military dictatorship. Such attempts , however,
could not last long due to the indifference of
the art world and the lack of understanding by
the public. Even the participants of Happening
with a Vinyl Umbrella and Candlelight (1967)
regarded these works as something new in
Korea, which art critics from the latter generation read as signifying elements for criticizing
civilization, denying the socio-political mean ing while only emphasizing its aesthetic
contingency .
Since then, they started to aggressively
announce the death of the established art
system and assumed activ ist aspects. Kang
Kookjin, Chung Kangja, and Chung Chanseungburied themselves in the earth under the Han
River's bridge. They crawled out by being
dashed with water to expose themselves tojournalists and the public . They put on clothes
made of vinyl written, " cultural crooks," " cultural blinds," "cultural dodgers," "cultural
illegalities," "cultural peddlers," "cultural acrobats" and so on, read them, then put them onfire before finally burying them . Murder at a
Side of Han River (October1968)i. was a protest against social contradiction and habitualroutines of the established art world. The 4thGroup that was formed in 1970 also performed
mime on street (July 1970)and Funeral for the
Established Culture and Art (August1970)in the
period of surveillance and punishment before
the October Revitalizing Reforms (1972).Kim
Kulim (1936- ), Chung Kangja, Son llkwang andKang Kookjin proclaimed liberation of Korean
culture at Sajik Park and celebrated the 25th
anniversary of independence from Japan andread aloud a declaration to call forth a funeralfor the established culture and art. They
departed from the park with a white flag, alongwith a coffin decorated with flowers and the
Korean flag, planning to cremate them at theriverside. But they were arrested in front of the
National Assembly building and got a sum mary conviction. Some artists were expected
to hold "The Incorporeal" exhibition to make
spectators tense by blowing an abrupt siren ina dark and dry -iced space. This was to accuse
the society as a source of confusion, but theshow was closed by the government on the
opening day. These happenings became rare
after the 4th Group was dismantled . It was
only after some years that another happeningof a funeral was carried out at a graduation
ceremony of Hongik University, Hong family inmourning (February1975).
These activities were similar to thoseof Japanese anti -art groups like Zero
Dimension that resulted in progressive political
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Chapter1

happenings such as funerals on the street
to criticize the Vietnam War. Nevertheless,although the activities of Japanese artists
were stopped by the police, they were finallyaccepted in the name of art at the crest of
economy and culture in Japan. In contrast to
Japan, experimental arts in Korea as a channel for opinion on artistic or social freedom
were prohibited because they posed threats tothe military government. The regime wanted
to maintain its power and forced the artists toturn from their direction of activism .

Fro m Activism to Conceptuali sm

A society which doesn't allow political
freedom doesn't allow personal freedom.
A society which doesn't accept the contents doesn't accept the forms .
Kim Sooyoung, Poem, Spit

Performance arts began in the late 1960s
and had developed until the early 1970s. But
the artists couldn't help realizing the powerlessness of their activism when their performances were prohibited and suppressed as
being labeled as a decadence or rebellion .
From the middle of the 1970s and onwards,
they started to focus only on the artistic concepts and logics, deconstruction of boundaryof arts, or the reason of the existence and wayof art.
The 4th Group was dissolved in less than
one year because of government suppression,
but artists from diverse areas such as fashion
design, film-making, music, literature, drama,
journalism, and religion, with Kim Kulim as
their leader, announced unification of politics,
economy, society, and culture into the level ofarts under the idea of "Incorporeal (1!UI)."""Kim
Kulim produced the first avant-garde film The
Meaningof1/24Second(July1969) r.,;..:before
organizing the 4th Group. Made of edited
black-and-white 16mm films, it consisted ofhundreds of meaningless and inconstant
1-second scenes and showed both boredom
and violence of daily life in the developing
country. He also ridiculed an old way of communication by mail in The Relics from MassMedia project (October 1969). Love Affair on a
Piano (September 1970), designed by Nam June
Paik (1932-2006), was a kind of total art which
united body and action, art and life, and timeand space dramatized potential desire underneath the modern civilization. They were notnew; similar works had been done by Fluxus or
Hi Red Center in the West and Japan, but they
were the first trial to overcome the boundariesof the established environment in Korea.
DAY2 October 1

The Korean Avant-Garde Association(AG) advocating a Korean way of avant-garde

approached artistic issues in a more conceptual fashion instead of simply criticizing absurdities of society. The associat ion had artist
members from various genres such as geometrical abstraction, installation, and happenings, which did not lead to a strong unity
within the group. They embraced the Western
trends of arts with agility while realizing thespecial condition of Korea of the time , andart critics Lee Yil (1932-97) and Oh Kwangsoo(1938-) provided them with a theoretical basis.
They published four magazines and held four
exhibitions (the 1st exhibition tit led "Mechanism of

These artists asserted that the theory of the "Incorporeal'" was borrowed
from the Taoist philosophy of ..leaving nature as 111s...and rejected theseparation of mind from materials.
Cho Su11n,"The Whole Story of the 4thGroup Challenge and Frustration ofHappenings, Magazme of Art History,
Vol40(2013).

Reduction and Expansion" in 1970, the 2nd "Reality
and Realization" in 1971, the 3rd "The World Free from
Conceptualism " in 1972, and the fi nal 4th in 1975).

They were disbanded when monochromatic
paintings turned the tide, but they provided a
missing link crossing the rupture of Informal,
Monochromatic paintings and Minjung art.
At the 1st AG exhibition , Kim Kulim presented From Phenomenon to Trace to deal withissues of time, place, and space together withpaintings by other artists reflecting the industrialized city. His works showed the change
from a solid matter (ice cube) to fluid and finallyto it evaporating in the flow of time . It was notbased on the premise of immediate experience, but exposed both the " phenomenon"
which demonstrated a single action and"trace," as a necessary result of the phenomenon with the time difference . Lee Kunyong(1942-) installed lumbers and dust (the Body
71-12) and Shim Moonsup (1942-) also presented pieces of trees in the gallery (Combination
oftheRelationship)at the 2nd show . .- At the sameshow, Seo Seungwon presented Simultaneitythat was made with white Korean traditional
paper instead of his usual geometrical abstraction paintings. This change can be regarded asa trial to find local characteristics from tradition
through universal language . It was in 1975 thatthe exhibition of "Five Korean Artists, Five
Kinds of White" was held in Tokyo Gallery.
Such trials can be found in the works of
Lee Seungtaek (1932-) who has produced
immaterial sculptures searching for the identity in traditional folk culture of Korea. Fromearly on in his artistic career, he tried to solve
the dilemma between Korea and the universe
through tradition. It was the act to "tie" or"knot" that he thought as one of Korean
unique experiences. "Tying"or"knotting" is avery familiar act with Korean bojagi (cloth-wrap per) culture, with which everything can bewrapped regardless of size and shape of thecontent. It is very flexible compared with usual
BoundaryRiders of KoreanArt in l960s- 19i0s

Kim Kuhm, Meanmg of 1124Second,

1969

It can be assumed that both Lee
Kunyong and Shim Moonsup werefamiliar with the works of Japaneseartist. Takamatsu Jiro, which were presented one year ago

030

C11ll11rall\ phplli on in \si a 196o 1g89

Yi-Fu Tuan, a humanistic geographer,differentiated "place" and "space." Theformer ,s specific, familiar, finite, andexperiential. while the latter ,s more
abstract, unfamiliar, infinite, and free.
He states, "place Is security, space ,sfreedom: we are attached to the one
and long for the other." Yi-Fu Tuan,Space and Place: The Perspective ofExperience (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.1977), p. 3
I~

I

Lee Kangso presented Untitled 75031 at
the 9th Paris Biennale in 1975. There, heconstructed a post in the middle of theexhibition space, laid chalk powder
around it, and attached to it a rooster by
its legs with a cord. As the rooster wandered in the frame of space created by
the artist, however limiting, it left
impressions of its movement on the
exhibition space floor. After the threeday event, Lee photographed the space
filled with the indexical imprint of therooster, and displayed them on thewalls of the space, alluding to the relationship between "reality"and "image"
Lee oftent,mlls made spectators participate in his works such as in the"Extinct,on"(also known as the "Tavern
Pro1ect")exhibition at the Gallery
Myungdong, Seoul, ,n 1973.

"Events" originated from the performance arts of Fluxus. John Cage
(1912-92) and his followers called theirevents "musical happenings" so as toseparate them from Allan Kaprow(1927-2006)'s happenings which are
known to be the first of ,ts kind. Art historian Kang Taehee guessed that theterm "event" came from Japan,
because Lee Kunyong conducted
events after he heard about theJapanese trends from Kim Kulim who
had studied by himself in Tokyo. The
events of Tokyo Fluxus were more sen
sat,onal and dramatic than those of
Fluxus. Kang Taehee,"Performance Art
in 1970s: on the Works of ST Members,"
Study of Contemporary M History, Vol
13 (2001). pp.8-10

li;.:.u.i
Lee Seungtaek, Boards Camed Away by
Flood with Being Caught on Fire, 1964
li;.:.uli

Lee Seungtaek, Wmd Action, 1971

packaging. Since the late 1950s, he has been
consistently giving shape to the concept of"tying" or "knotting" through works such as
History and Time (1958), Tied Stones (1958),
Installation with an Old Tree (1965) and Life andDeath (1968). After 1960, he started to search
the immateriality in Smoke(1960), Cremation(1964) and Boards Carried Away by Flood with
Being Caught on Fire (1964), r,. and finallyreached the whole series of Wind. "iIntroduced at the 2nd AG exhibition, theWind series was a shapeless sculpture which
criticized the art system and the art market
where the artworks were sold as a merecommodity . The motif was supplied from
Shamanism that was losing its ground in theindustrialized society, such as patches of cloth
fluttering in the wind in a shrine to the village
deity or a divinized old tree in a country, or in aritual for a big catch of fish . His works werecollections of visualization of the invisible,
meeting of matter and non-matter, and revelation of situation . His artworks were free, flexible
and anti-artificial. The concept of wind "as it is"
uncontrolled by human being shared the issuesof time, space, and place of contemporary arts .
His uniqueness was based on his view of
Taoism, East Asian traditional philosophy inwhich nature included human beings in a waythat was not objectified. Lee aspired for apostmodern space of nature or "a space that
expands endlessly." His intent was to convert
vague space into a more mediated place. "'At the 3rd AG exhibition, the numberof works exploring materiality, process, andconcept increased . Kim Kulim tied a lump of
mud with linen cloth and untied it in his From
Phenomenon to Trace; Lee Kunyong made astone tied to a pillar of the gallery faced withanother one laid on the floor in his Relation
Term; Lee Kangso (1943-) showed a stuffedwhite-painted rooster, its footsteps scatteredon the floor, and displayed nine dried fish tiedwith rope on a black coffin. J
At the last AG exhibition, during which

Park Hyesung

Art Studies_Ol

only four members joined, Lee Kunyong did
events like Logic of Place, Threading a Needle,
Hello, There and so on. The two former artists
dealt with the logical measuring of a place . The
latter and another event, "Eating Hardtack"presented in the same year, metaphoricallycriticized the sense of reality where the bodywas restricted by external conditions . Since
then, he named his works "event" or "logicalevent" in which he solved the relationshipbetween the world and an accident logically.
He differentiated them with impromptu andaccidental happenings and socio-criticalhappenings . In Logic of Place he revealed theconcept of place by drawing circles andshowed the placeness of Here and There. He
sought to achieve accidents and concrete
concepts by making the relationship between
the body of a subject who drew circles andplace. After playing Cutting and Connecting
Tapes (August 1975) he wrote an article to pointout that the conceptual art of the time wasconfined because artists opted out of direct
relationship with the world only dealing withinformation and knowledge, and he stated thatthose artists couldn't realize the world objectively because they focused only on the action
itself . He said that his events were logicalaccidents overcoming these shortcomings andthis is what Asians had desired .
Lee Kunyong had been realizing theseconcepts with the group of ST (Time & Space)from 1970. Except for Seang Neungkyung
who displayed newspapers by cutting out allsocio-critical articles and leaving out commercial advertisements and photos, all members, including critic Kim Bokyoung (1942-)
and Lee as leaders, studied the issues ofconcrete experiences and the place wheresuch experience was made. Lee introduced
Corporal Term " .:. at the 10th Korean Art
Society exhibition in 1970 and at the 8th Paris
Biennale three years later, where it wasappraised that it demanded to pay attention to
the underground life and the geographicalPresentation2