Description

In 1972, South Korean president Park Chung-hee declared martial law with the introduction of the Yushin, or “Revitalization” Constitution. In the following years thereafter, state surveillance intensified in a way that bestowed new urgency upon enterprises whose impact was primarily visual. Visual works commissioned or completed at the behest of the Yushin state distinctly turned on the notion of reciprocal scrutiny: these works were concurrently surrogate “eyes” of the state and objects subject to public inspection. The importance of looking and being looked at was especially well delineated in painting, a medium that gained renewed momentum in seventies Korea through both the expansion of the state-sponsored national documentary paintings project and the consolidation of a Korean artistic avant-garde. The wages of looking was perhaps best demonstrated by the Ecriture series of Park Seobo. Heralded as an exemplar of Korean avant-garde art almost upon the moment of its first unveiling in 1973, the Ecriture series consists of paintings whose size and appearance compelled looking of such closeness so as to open up new possibilities for audiences otherwise accustomed to visual modes seemingly intent on attaining closure.

Joan Kee is Assistant Professor in the History of Art department at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. A specialist in modern and contemporary art with particular interests in East and Southeast Asia, her publications include articles for the Oxford Art Journal, Positions: East Asia Cultures Critiques, Third Text, and Art Journal as well as catalogue essays for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Korean Pavilion for the 2003 Venice Biennale.