The Economist Korea | Tomboys in Hanbok Step Into Contemporary Art
Art critic Sun Seung-hye (Chief Curator, Seoul Museum of Art), writing in her Economist Korea column "Reading Emotional Codes Through Art," introduces Kim Hyun Jung and Heukyoseok, two contemporary Korean artists popular for their hanbok-clad characters. She argues these artists' bright, spirited "21st-century beauty paintings" have found their audience through social media rather than through gallery exhibitions. She singles out Kim Hyun Jung for reinterpreting traditional ink-and-wash figure painting through a pop-art sensibility in her "Naesoong" series, noting that her exhibitions sell out again and again and that she enjoys idol-star-level popularity.
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Art Sun Seung-hye's Emotional Codes Read Through Art
Tomboys in Hanbok Step Into Contemporary Art
The latest update to the Korean "beauty painting," reflecting the character generation — its artists enjoy idol-star-level popularity
Korea's beauty paintings have changed. Reflecting the tastes of the character generation, cute girls now wear hanbok in paintings as if doing cosplay. Like manga and anime heroines, they are lively rather than demure. The beauties of Joseon-era painter Shin Yun-bok have time-traveled into 21st-century girls, and turned cheerful in the process. Hanbok-clad girls first won mass popularity for their spirited image thanks to the 2006 MBC drama "Goong," a fusion historical drama based on a comic, in which actress Yoon Eun-hye alternated between a school uniform and a modernized hanbok. It showed that a girl in hanbok could be every bit as cute as any other.
Now, the hanbok-clad girls of comics have stepped into contemporary art. These cute hanbok-wearing girls broke the binary fashion code that cast hanbok as old-fashioned and Western dress as modern. They have also delightfully shaken off the not-entirely-pleasant modern association, however tacit, between a woman in hanbok and a gisaeng. Artists working with hanbok-clad women as their subject are appearing one after another in Korean contemporary art.
Breaking the bias that "hanbok is old, Western clothes are new"
The representative artists popular in Korean contemporary art for their hanbok-clad girl characters are Kim Hyun Jung and Heukyoseok. Both are young female artists. They are free of the psychological weight carried by Korea's 386 generation in contemporary art, and they have a certain boldness — asserting their own path even against social authority. The heroines in their paintings have even built fandoms as game characters. They enjoy mass popularity more through social media than through conventional gallery exhibitions.
Heukyoseok is a game illustrator well known through her blog. Contrary to the assumption that "Heukyoseok" (an artist name) might belong to a man, she is a graduate of Ewha Womans University's Department of Oriental Painting and works as an illustrator. Her Hanbok series reimagines European fairy tales with protagonists dressed in hanbok, and she holds the copyright to the work, pursuing various commercial applications such as jigsaw puzzles.
Among her Hanbok series, "Alice in Wonderland" (2011) has won particular popular affection. The premise is that Alice appears in the Joseon era. Wearing a sky-blue hanbok skirt and white jeogori, Alice falls into Wonderland together with a rabbit — an irresistibly adorable scene. The rabbit wears a red magoja jacket and a gat (traditional hat), nonchalantly puffing on a long pipe. On the wall of the room through which they travel through time and space hangs "Buiseonrando (Orchid of Non-Duality)" by the late-Joseon painter Kim Jeong-hui, and a blue-and-white porcelain jar holding a plum branch sits atop a traditional bandaji chest.
Heukyoseok does not restrict the sharing of her hanbok illustrations online, so they are endlessly shared and loved among netizens. Instead, she retains copyright over the original illustrations and sells various derivative products such as puzzles. Last year, she crowdfunded a solo exhibition titled "Alice Wears Hanbok — Heukyoseok" and donated the proceeds to the House of Sharing, a shelter for survivors of Japan's wartime sexual slavery.
Heukyoseok also worked as an illustrator on the online fantasy card game "Million Arthur." The game's characters are girls with youthful faces and voluptuous bodies. Because they are drawn somewhat provocatively, this aspect has drawn the ire of some feminists. Still, there is no doubt she is an artist with a fantasy-inflected talent — or magic — for maximizing a girl's beauty.
Kim Hyun Jung, who paints ink-wash figure paintings with witty, spirited pop-art flair, is already a star. Her works, executed in traditional Korean painting technique, project herself onto a hanbok-clad girl, and have won such broad popular affection that they invite envy. A talented graduate of Seoul National University's Department of Oriental Painting, she skillfully applies the technique of Goryeo Buddhist painting — painting the bare skin first and layering translucent clothing over it — drawing on solid technical command of Korean painting. In particular, her Naesoong series has won hearts through its cheerful portrayal of pretty women who act demure yet ultimately reveal their inner tomboy — a charming form of "naesoong." Women here are no longer either passive, virtuous ladies or fighters standing against men; what stands out is their cheerfulness and boldness. Because Kim Hyun Jung is, in real life, as pretty as the heroine in her paintings, she even hints at the potential for a comprehensive idol-level star in the art world, much like idols in pop music.
Cheerfulness and boldness stand out
Kim Hyun Jung's "Feign: Xenitis" (2013) is worth remembering. The heroine holds a smartphone in one hand, listens to music through Dr. Dre Beats headphones, and races along in hanbok and rubber shoes. The bicycle wheels, rendered in blue, catch the eye with a lively coloring not traditionally used in ink-wash figure painting. The red rubber shoes, resembling high heels, stir an odd protective instinct — will this tomboyish girl trip and fall? A girl racing along in hanbok, heedless of those around her, is lovable from every angle.
Kim Hyun Jung also made headlines last year as a "sold-out artist" whose works, large and small, sold out completely across her exhibitions. News of her sold-out shows even made it into the news. She demonstrates a new strategy for an era in which art, too, requires marketing and promotion. The sight of young collectors who bought her paintings taking commemorative photos and posting them on social media looked much like the excitement of meeting an idol star.
The cheerful tomboy characters in hanbok appearing in Korean contemporary art carry a charm distinctly their own, alongside the recent hit Walt Disney animation "Frozen" and its own brand of appeal.
Sun Seung-hye is Chief Curator at the Seoul Museum of Art. She researches and practices the art and theory of Korea and East Asia by connecting it with the field, having previously served as assistant professor at Sungkyunkwan University's Academy of East Asian Studies, curator of Korean and Japanese art at the Cleveland Museum of Art in the United States, and curator at the National Museum of Korea.
[Photo captions] Heukyoseok, "Alice in Wonderland," illustration, 2011. / Kim Hyun Jung, "Feign: Xenitis," ink and light color with collage on hanji, 2013.