• Korean Association of Arts Management
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• no.50
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• pp.177-212
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• 2019

In an effort to understand the global standing of artists from Japan, China, and Korea, this article presents an analytic study of data from auctions, notable international contemporary art galleries, notable international art museums, contemporary art biennials, and the Venice Biennales' award. We also look at select art exhibitions as they have been covered by international art magazines to analyze the geography of international contemporary art. Our analysis of international art magazines shows that the global position of the three Asian countries we consider is low in comparison with select Western countries. Auction data, on the other hand, reveals that Chinese and Japanese artists are highly regarded in economic terms, while the visibility of Japanese artists is emphasized in the data we consider from art biennials. In the permanent exhibitions and contemporary art biennales we look at, we note that the visibility of Chinese artists is much higher than that of Japanese and Korean artists, who also demonstrate remarkable visibility. We find that Korean artists represent an important presence in our analysis of the Venice Biennale awards, with Japanese and Chinese artists holding noteworthy positions. Through these myriad criteria, we develop a clear idea of the nature of the global position of artists from Japan, China, and Korea. The Asian art world can profit from these findings by considering them when developing strategies for managing the growth of its artists on the international contemporary art scene.

• The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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• no.14
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• pp.187-215
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• 2012

In recent studies of art historical methodology, such as Critical Terms for Art History and The Art of Art History, subjectivity, identity, abjection, and other terms have been placed safely in the genealogy of contemporary art history. This paper questions the contemporaneity in the story of contemporary art in our time in relation to two other critical terms that have been regularly cited by contemporary critics, not only in Euro-American fields but also in Korea. The terms are postmedium and postproduction, respectively, as used by Rosalind Krauss and Nicolas Bourriaud. This paper stems from the critical condition in which art criticism and theory have their power in the rise of neo-liberalism. But this paper does not deal with the contemporary as a chronological term for art history but rather examines the three critical terms-contemporaneity, post-medium, and postproduction-that have garnered scholarly attention. I would like to put aside postmodernism for the moment; I don't disregard the postmodern condition although the death of postmodern critical terms has resulted in the loss of its polemical power in art worlds such as in exhibitions, etc. To look at "the postproduction in the age of post-medium age after postmodernism," I first explore Krauss's notion of post-medium because, unlike media artists like Lev Manovich and Peter Weibel, Krauss's post-medium condition is different and insists on medium specificity. In this sense, Krauss has turned out to be another Greenberg in disguise. For her, photography and video are expanded mediums after Greenberg, because Krauss has spent her life explicating those mediums. Under the Cup, her recent publication, came out in 2011, and discusses her desire to defend medium-specificity against the intermedia of installation art found ubiquitously in international exhibitions and biennales. Her usage of post-medium has been taken up by Weibel as postmedia in a broader sense. But whether the post-medium condition or the postmedia age, we nonetheless enter the new age of the contemporary. Consequently, this paper questions what constitutes contemporaneity in our times. It is said that there is nothing new on earth, yet I find original artistic strategies among the younger generation in the postmedia age. The contemporary justifies its place in art fields and criticism by keeping its distance from postmodernism although we still find the remnants of postmodern artistic practices and theoretical foundations. By looking at materials written by Terry Smith, I would like to examine contemporaneity as a rhetoric where artists, critics, and curators endeavor to set up a new spirit of criticism, distant from the past of modernism and postmodernism. In discussions, modernism and postmodernism act as catalysts interacting with each other while justifying their own place. In conclusion, my paper reaches to delineate where the contemporary finds its place among artists' responses and working methods. It explores the postproduction of the Internet and the World Wide Web generations, where images become data rather than representation (of modernism) and appropriation (of postmodernism). This paper analyzes Bourriaud's text, as well as relevant artists like Pierre Huyghe, Liam Gillick, and others. By examining the aforementioned critical terms, I would like to reconsider our own contemporary art in Korea, especially among young artists influenced by digital media and the World Wide Web in the 1990s.

• Journal of Korean Society of Archives and Records Management
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.231-256
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• 2024

The study aims to investigate the production and management of contemporary Korean artists' personal records and propose support measures necessary for documenting their work activities, such as educational programs. First, through a literature review, the importance of documenting contemporary artists' work activities and the support program documentation are analyzed. Second, through interviews with six contemporary artists using various formats and media, records production by artistic process and management by documentation type are investigated. Third, based on the investigation analysis, the cooperation and support plan to be cooperated by art museums, archivists, and other record professionals for the artwork documentation is recommended. Areas of support are divided into educational program provision, museum artistic activity documentation, and documentation tools development and support.

• Journal of Conservation Science
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.37-46
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• 2020

It is difficult to predict the kinds of damage to contemporary art because of the diversity of materials and experimental techniques used. This makes it hard to conserve. Furthermore, the artist's intention in contemporary art is emerging as one of the important issues to be handled in conservation treatment. Thus, collaboration with various stakeholders such as the artists themselves, bereaved family members, and foundations have become more important than ever from the viewpoint of planning conservation treatment. The trustworthiness of conservation treatment would be significantly enhanced if conservation treatment reflected the understanding and respect of not only the appearance of the work, but also the social/cultural context inherent in the work. This should be done, in particular, through collaboration with the artists. In this study, various case studies at home and abroad were analyzed as to explore collaboration methods with various stakeholders for objective and trustworthy conservation treatment. Along the way, the study raised the need to establish new conservation ethics for contemporary art. It is expected that the outcomes of the study could be used as basic material to preserve the originality of contemporary artwork and to set the direction for conservation practice.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.13-22
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• 2023

Recently, global luxury fashion brands such as Gucci, Saint Laurent, and Louis Vuitton have been showing special interest in Korean contemporary artists and actively collaborating with them. This can be said to be a new change that is distinguished from previous collaborations of fashion brands. Therefore, this study investigated the cases of collaboration between global luxury fashion brands and Korean contemporary artists, and analyzed the types and characteristics to examine the trends and characteristics and draw meaning. As a result, fashion brands combine the characteristics of Korean art works of various genres with the brand concept and pursued values to create new sensibility and high value-added products. It can be seen that the intention was to prepare a place to draw out. In addition, it was found that collaboration was also utilized in terms of marketing so that domestic customers could visit the brand store with a sense of familiarity by utilizing Korea's artistic and cultural sentiments. Based on the results of this study, we intend to provide basic data for the development of creative contents for various collaborations between fashion and art that can help develop the modern fashion industry.

• The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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• no.3
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• pp.9-34
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• 2005

Contemporary Korean art in the 1960s and the 1970s reflects the social and political contexts in Korea from the 5 16 revolution through the Yoo Shin period. This paper investigates whether art has been free from power or not. It examines the power embedded in contemporary Korean art in the 1960s and the 1970s. This paper examines the historical moments of the Korean Art Exhibition, focusing on the complications between the abstract and figurative artworks of the 1960s. One of the significant art exhibitions since the 8 15 liberation of Korea, the Korean Art Exhibition witnessed conflict among Korean artists who wanted to have power in the art world of Korea. Institutional contradiction based on factionalism and conservatism prevailed in the Korean Art Exhibition was attacked by the avant-garde young artists in the 1960s. With the contact of Abstract Expressionism, young artists' generation participated in the The Wall Exhibition. This exhibition challenged and established moral principles and visualized individual expression and creation similar to the Informal movement in the West. In the world of the traditional painting of Korea, the Mook Lim Exhibition of 1960, organized by young artists of traditional painting, advocated the modernization of Soo Mook paintings. Additionally, abstract sculptures in metal engraving were the new trends in the Korean Art Exhibition. In the 1970s, the economic development and establishment of a dictatorial government made the society stiffen. Abstract expression died out and monochrome painting was the most influential in the 1970s. After the exhibition of Five Korean Artists, Five White Colors in the Tokyo Central Art Museum in 1976, monochrome paintings were formally discussed in Korea. 'Flatness' 'physicality of material' 'action' 'post-image' 'post-subjectivity' and 'oriental spirituality' were the critical terms in mentioning the monochrome paintings of the 1970s. 'Korean beauty' was discussed, focusing on the beauty of white which was addressed by not only Yanagi Muneyoshi but also the policy of national rehabilitation under the Yoo Shin government. At this time, the monochrome paintings of the 1970s in Korea, addressing art for art's sake, cutting of communication with the masses, and elitism, came to be authorized.

• The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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• no.14
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• pp.125-158
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• 2012

After liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945, there was the three-year period of United States Army Military Government in Korea. In 1948, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and Republic of Korea were established in the north and south of the Korean Peninsula. The Republic of Korea is now a modern state set in the southern part of the Korean. We usually refer to Koreans as people who belong to the Republic of Korea. Can we say that is true exactly? Why make of this an obsolete question? The period from 1945 when Korea was emancipated from Japanese colonial rule to 1948 when the Republic of Korea was established has not been a focus of modern Korean history. This three years remains empty in Korean history and makes the concept of 'Korean' we usually consider ambiguous, and prompts careful attention to the silence of 'some Koreans' forced to live against their will in the blurred boundaries between nation and people. This dissertation regards 'Koreans' who came to live in the border of nations, especially 'Korean-Japanese third generation women artists'who are marginalized both Japan and Korea. It questions the category of 'Korean women's art' that has so far been considered, based on the concept of territory, and presents a new perspective for viewing 'Korean women's art'. Almost no study on Korean-Japanese women's art has been conducted, based on research on Korean diaspora, and no systematic historical records exist. Even data-collection is limited due to the political situation of South and North in confrontation. Representation of the Mother Country on the Artworks by First and Second-Generation Korean-Japanese(Zainich) Women Artists after Liberation since 1945 was published in 2011 is the only dissertation in which Korean-Japanese women artists, and early artistic activities. That research is based on press releases and interviews obtained through Japan. This thesis concentrates on the world of Korean-Japanese third generation women artists such as Kim Jung-sook, Kim Ae-soon, and Han Sung-nam, permanent residents in Japan who still have Korean nationality. The three Korean-Japanese third generation women artists whose art world is reviewed in this thesis would like to reveal their voices as minorities in Japan and Korea, resisting power and the universal concepts of nation, people and identity. Questioning the general notions of 'Korean women' and 'Korean women's art'considered within the Korean Peninsula, they explore their identity as Korean women outside the Korean territory from a post-territorial perspective and have a new understanding of the minority's diversity and difference through their eyes as marginal women living outside the mainstream of Korean and Japanese society. This is associated with recent post-colonial critical viewpoints reconsidering myths of universalism and transcendental aesthetic measures. In the 1980s and 1990s art museums and galleries in New York tried a critical shift in aesthetic discourse on contemporary art history, analyzed how power relationships among such elements as gender, sexuality, race, nationalism. Ghost of Ethnicity: Rethinking Art Discourses of the 1940s and 1980s by Lisa Bloom is an obvious presentation about the post-colonial discourse. Lisa Bloom rethinks the diversity of race, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender each artist and critic has, she began a new discussion on artists who were anti-establishment artists alienated by mainstream society. As migration rapidly increased through globalism lead by the United States the aspects of diaspora experience emerges as critical issues in interpreting contemporary culture. As a new concept of art with hybrid cultural backgrounds exists, each artist's cultural identity and specificity should be viewed and interpreted in a sociopolitical context. A criticism started considering the distinct characteristics of each individual's historical experience and cultural identity, and paying attention to experience of the third world artist, especially women artists, confronting the power of modernist discourses from a perspective of the white male subject. Considering recent international contemporary art, the Korean-Japanese third generation women artists who clarify their cultural identity as minority living in the border between Korea and Japan may present a new direction for contemporary Korean art. Their art world derives from their diaspora experience on colonial trauma historically. Their works made us to see that it is also associated with postcolonial critical perspective in the recent contemporary art stream. And it reminds us of rethinking the diversity of the minority living outside mainstream society. Thus, this should be considered as one of the features in the context of Korean women's art.

• Korean Institute of Interior Design Journal
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• no.10
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• pp.50-57
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• 1997

This study is concentrated on the specified relationship between the contemporary art and the interior design by investigation their situational connections through the expresison of their works. Each fields of modern art makes expressive situation more complicated and transforms its unintelligible and expressive outputs variously. The expression is the basis of the incompatibility of the modern art which features the ambivalence of the various tendency and the characteristics of the artists works as well as the disappearance of the typical genre of the art. The new expression such as the spatial recognition of the paintings and the participatio of the real, expreimental examples of the modern art enlarges its realm. The field interior design which has the close relationship with the fine arts need to make a new discussion or a theory among the progressive expression and the various tendencies of the art. Through this research, by reviewing the intermixed and expressed features of the artists works and designers projects which went far beyond the concepts and genre, the interrelationship between expression tendency of the contemporary art and the interior design has been specified.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.70-80
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to compare and analyze the identities and roles so that they can grasp their social roles and directions. Artists show a change in identity from the deification of modern artists with freedom and genius to artists who challenge the cognitive aspect of art and redefine the scope and concept of artists by expanding their social role. Artists dreaming of an ideal art utopia, in which art, society, politics, and daily life are coordinated, are constantly presenting the social role and direction of art through the combination and challenge of new ways of art and craft, beauty and function, creative imagination, and public service. Fashion designers act as contemporary genius artists, creators who express the appearance of the times, practitioners who advocate social values and changes, members of business in the fashion system, celebrities who are spotlighted by the public at the center of the fashion industry, or fashion influencers. Thus, fashion designers are complex or selective in their role depending on the fashion philosophy of individual designers or location given within the fashion system. They are becoming the subject of creating the culture of the times by expressing social ideology or playing a role in practicing art in life that leads social culture so as to raise the value of fashion in their development and satisfy cultural enjoyment of fashion consumers who consume art in everyday life.

• The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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• no.4
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• pp.7-32
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• 2006

This study is about the cultural policy related to fine art under the U. S. Military Government in Korea(USAMGIK), from September 8, 1945, to August 15, 1948. Drawing on the previous studies of Korean art history in the 'Liberation Period', this study especially concentrates on intention, attitude and activities of the USAMGIK. Particularly the historical documents, stored at the National Archives at the College Park, Maryland, U.S.A., were valuable to do research on the cultural policy of USAMGIK. The cultural policy was subordinated to the political objectives of occupation that can be summarized to building a stronghold of anti-communism in South Korea. Under the U.S. Military government control, cultural matters were assigned to the Cultural Section, the Bureau of Education, which later turns into the Bureau of Culture, the Department of Education. The Bureau of Culture dealt with matters of the ancient Korean art treasures and of the Korean contemporary art. USAMGIK reopened the Korean National Museum which had been closed by the Japanese since the World War II period. After that, U.S. Department of State sent arts & monuments specialists to South Korea for investigating ancient Korean art and culture. Although some of the destructed art treasures were restored during the occupation, th ere were many negative cases including intentional destruction of historic sites or loot of art treasures by U.S. army. In contrast to their interest in the Korean antiquities, USAMGIK payed little attention to promoting the Korean contemporary artists and their arts. USAMGIK distrusted and suppressed the artists of leftism, while they kept good relations with the pro-American artists and the right-wing artists. In conclusion, the visual-cultural policy of USAMGK was mainly planned and carried out in order to preserve the national interest of the United States. This period produced long-term effects on the fine art and visual culture of South Korea, in terms of institution, policy, and reorganization of art community based on anti-cummunism.