Two “Compulsory” Genres in a Unique Reality
To talk about “North Korean art” might appear to many as unbecoming, or even provocative. In fact, any cultural expression produced in either of the two Koreas can be linked to the precise ideological value on which it is based when it does not express explicitly the will of its patron. After all, many volumes have been written on the historicity of art in general. In the case in point, the art presented in this catalogue, being the expression of a country with a Socialist regime, can be naturally suspected, a priori, of having been created with an instrumental purpose, subservient to the propagandistic needs of the regime. In part this is certainly true. However, we cannot forget that we are talking about a country, Korea, which, being an integral part of the complex Far Eastern reality, has a rich tradition of many centuries in which the relationship between art and politics has often been deeply different from the European one and, in general, from that of the Western world. There are two fundamental traditions that can be distinguished in North Korean art. One is decidedly political, justifying completely its dependence on a precise ideological model; and the other traditional, essentially free of propagandistic references, dating back to when the country was united. In the latter tradition, before obeying to the reasons of State, art preferred to submit itself to conventions established in a very ancient epoch in China, which was enriched in Korea by very distinctive and peculiar elements. This simple division is an almost obvious reality in a country like North Korea which, imbued in its everyday life by an authentic political mysticism, can only accept the neutral diversity deriving from tradition. In fact, the recovery and the defence of tradition represent (and only to a naïve person this can seem a paradox) one of the main interests of national ideology. It is true that the “apolitical” tradition includes also Western painting techniques, but on the whole it is clear that the North Korean artist prefers to draw using (even if perhaps reassessing) well-established stylistic elements that have become part of the collective consciousness.
I will definitely not talk of “official art”: nothing is worse than applying our mental schemes to others’ realities. In classical Korea, art was always “official” because the institutional leadership did not undergo those changes that would have assured a reshuffle of the classes and, therefore, a change in the tastes of the art patrons. In fact there have been artists with a “popular” appeal, as early as the 18th century. Among these artists Kim Hongdo (1745-?) stands out, although in his case his precise intention was to manifest his personality through a very peculiar style which now makes him unmistakable. Nothing in common, in other words, with the formidable push exerted in the West by “popular” or “subordinate” art, with an improbable perspective and with pitilessly realistic traits (cf., 3rd century Roman portraiture) that little by little would have substituted the idealizing motifs of “official” art arriving to replace the principles of ancient and medieval iconography. In fact, in the East, to repeat ad infinitum, artistic or literary styles never caused uneasiness or criticism. On the contrary, it was always thought that the beauty of a subject, if adequately treated and guided by the talent of a strong personality, can be loved and appreciated by countless generations.
The common man could instead be surprised by how “ideological” art and the art which is heir of the purest tradition can sometimes have striking points in common. In that respect it is necessary to remember that the North Korean political system is more similar than one could expect to that of classical Korea. It matters little to define it “Socialist Confucianism” or “Confucian Socialism.” What is important to call to the attention of observers of the North Korean reality is that many of those aspects that the West finds perversely grotesque have existed from centuries, and not only in Korea, but in the whole Far East. Moreover, it is vital to recall that some solutions proposed by Confucianism—a lay ideology, for example—are well suited to be revisited in a socialist sensibility, inside an equally lay context. Thus, the so-called “personality cult” derives from the need of divinizing man in absence of a revealed god. In ancient times such honour appertained to the “Great Ancestors,” the founders of a new dynasty, a new moral and civil order.
The beginning of a new dynasty became a fundamental stage of the calendar, a reference point for the computation of time. It is exactly what happened in North Korea and nobody can doubt that the “Great Leader” Kim Ilsong (1912- 1994) made a radical political turn comparable to the foundation of a new course that apparently has assumed dynastic proportions, so far. At the same time, those who mock the legend that calls for the Great Leader to be taken by cranes after his death should know that it is not a North Korean invention: to ascend into heaven riding cranes is a topos of Eastern imagination reserved for prominent personalities and it has its roots in Taoist philosophy. This to say that Koreans (often without realizing it) draw from a well established cultural repertoire. Someone will object that we are in 2007: nothing could be more misleading. Korea is a country that for almost three centuries (from the beginning of the 17 th to the late 19th) was hermetically sealed, in which practically “nothing” happened of historical significance if compared to the tumultuous events during that same period in Western countries.
The opening of Korea by force soon led to an unimaginable time jump for which the country was not in the least prepared. A series of catastrophes followed, from the Japanese colonization to the division of the territory and finally to the terrible civil war. The ensuing struggles only exacerbated for those in the northern part of the peninsula the mistrust of foreigners, thereby encouraging northerners to defend their sense of national identity by forging a particular compromise between Socialism and traditional culture. North Korea, in practise, has an internal clock still out of phase with respect to the West. But, this is true also for South Korea, where the American political model, imposed from above, far from solving some contradictions, in some cases has made them worse. Something almost inevitable for a country which, as a whole, never knew democracy and a further defeat for those who think that Western models are always and in any case a panacea regardless of local situations.
So far we have spoken of “art” in general but for the purpose of this catalogue introduction, we will concentrate on graphic arts, and on painting in particular. To treat them exhaustively would require too much space for a catalogue, so I will try to describe this collection’s fundamental motifs, and the interplay between the political and traditional.
Painting within a State Art
The art of socialist derivation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea does not arise from nothing. When the nation was established (September 8, 1948), the Korean peninsula had undergone three years of controlled administration preceded by thirty-five very long years of Japanese domination, during which even the most basic rights of the Korean people had been violated. In spite of their oppressors’ taste being imposed upon them, Korean artists and men of letters imbued their work with signs of their hardships and the enslavement of their countrymen. In that way, Korean art came to have shades of meaning and double meanings, almost imperceptible details but clear to those who had the common deciphering code represented by the discomfort with foreign oppression. Western painting had established itself but, as in literature, it is impossible not to notice its tones of desperation as, for instance, in some works by Ko Huidong (1886-1965) and Kim Kwanho (1854-?). But the period between the two World Wars was also that of totalitarianism, in which art to the service of the regime was rigidly controlled and utilized grandiose shapes to better represent the dominant ideology. Nazism, Fascism and Stalinist Communism had their totems but a certain gigantism had already appeared in the 19th century on the two sides of Atlantic as a tribute to the political-economic successes of the nations facing it: from the New York’s Statue of Liberty (1888) to the Arc de Triomphe (1816-36) and Tour Eiffel (1884) in Paris. The world was enriched by monuments that certainly struck the imagination of the first Koreans who landed in the West. Certainly the gesture of the arm of Freedom stretched out to lighten the course of sailors and symbolically the way of all people is not an absolute first expression in Western iconography, however great is the debt towards that monument of the solemn gesture with which have been immortalized, both in painting as in sculpture, leaders of different countries, from Mao Zedong (1893-1976) to Kim Ilsong, up to Saddam Hussein (1937- 2006). And it was to the Paris arch, more than to the Titus or Constantine versions, that the architects of the Mansudae Art Studio drew their inspiration to build the P’yongyang Arch of Triumph(1982).
North Korean architecture and sculpture are, mainly, in the service of ideology; and yet even when such connections are conspicuous, just behind the thin Socialist façade, one can perceive more complex and articulate historical realities and cultural meanings. In fact the North Korean artistic “gigantism” (more precisely, the promotion of the Chuch’e— term that can be approximately translated as “autarchy”— eventually through the so called “personality cult”) established itself in the beginning of the 1970s, a crucial decade for the