A Study on Avant-Garde Fine Art during the period of Japanese Colonial Rule of Korea, centering on 'Munjang' (a literary magazine)

일제강점기 '전위미술론'의 전통관 연구 - '문장(文章)' 그룹을 중심으로

From the late 1920s to the 1930s, Korea's fine art community focused on traditional viewpoints as their main topic. The traditional viewpoints were discussed mainly by Korean students studying in Japan, especially oil painters. Such discussions on tradition can be divided into two separate halves, namely the pre- and post-Sino-Japanese War (1937) periods. Before the war, the modernists among Korea's fine art community tried to gain a fuller understanding of contemporary Western modern art, namely, expressionism, futurism, surrealism, and so forth, on the basis of Orientalism, and borrow from these schools' in order to create their own works. Furthermore, proponents of Joseon's avant-garde fine arts and artists of the pro-fine art school triggered debate on the traditional viewpoints. After the Sino-Japanese War, these artists continued to embrace Western modern art on the basis of Orientalism. However, since Western modern fine art was regressing into Oriental fine art during this period, Korean artists did not need to research Western modern fine art, but sought to study Joseon's classics and create Joseon's own avant- garde fine art in a movement led by the Munjang group. This research reviews the traditional view espoused by the Munjang group, which represented the avant-garde fine art movement of the post-war period. Advocating Joseon's own current of avant-garde fine art through the Munjang literary magazine, Gil Jin - seop, Kim Yong-jun and others accepted the Japanese fine art community's methodology for the restoration of classicism, but refused Orientalism as an ideology, and attempted to renew their perception of Joseon tradition. The advocation of the restoration of classicism by Gil Jin-seop and Kim Yong-jun appears to be similar to that of the Yasuda Yojuro-style restoration of classicism. However, Gil Jin-seop and Kim Yong-jun did not seek their sources of classicism from the Three-Kingdoms and Unified Silla periods, which Japan had promoted as a symbol of unity among the Joseon people; instead they sought classicism from the Joseon fine art which the Japanese had criticized as a hotbed of decadence. It was the Joseon period that the Munjang group chose as classicism when Japan was upholding Fascism as a contemporary extremism, and when Hangeul (Korean writing system) was banned from schools. The group highly evaluated literature written in the style of women, especially women's writings on the royal court, as represented by Hanjungnok (A Story of Sorrowful Days). In the area of fine art, the group renewed the evaluation of not only literary paintings, but also of the authentic landscape paintings refused by, and the values of the Chusa school criticized as decadent by, the colonial bureaucratic artists, there by making great progress in promoting the traditional viewpoint. Kim Yong-jun embraced a painting philosophy based on the painting techniques of Sasaeng (sketching), because he paid keen attention to the tradition of literary paintings, authentic landscape paintings and genre paintings. The literary painting theory of the 20th century, which was highly developed, could naturally shed both the colonial historical viewpoint which regarded Joseon fine art as heteronomical, and the traditional viewpoint which regarded Joseon fine art as decadent. As such, the Munjang group was able to embrace the Joseon period as the source of classicism amid the prevalent colonial historical viewpoint, presumably as it had accumulated first-hand experience in appreciating curios of paintings and calligraphic works, instead of taking a logical approach. Kim Yong-jun, in his fine art theory, defined artistic forms as the expression of mind, and noted that such an artistic mind could be attained by the appreciation of nature and life. This is because, for the Munjang group, the experience of appreciating nature and life begins with the appreciation of curios of paintings and calligraphic works. Furthermore, for the members of the Munjang group, who were purists who valued artistic style, the concept of individuality presumably was an engine that protected them from falling into the then totalitarian world view represented by the Nishita philosophy. Such a 20th century literary painting theory espoused by the Munjang group concurred with the contemporary traditional viewpoint spearheaded by Oh Se-chang in the 1910s. This theory had a great influence on South and North Korea's fine art theories and circles through the Fine Art College of Seoul National University and Pyongyang Fine Art School in the wake of Korea's liberation. In this sense, the significance of the theory should be re-evaluated.