People and art in the graduate oriental painting section

two of Dong im's works


these two sketches are b Ho min (my N.Korean buddy - his work is really traditional because, well, Pyongyang doesn't exactly have a flourishing contemporary art scene). click on the pictures to see the finer details.



One of the dozens of works in Jung sue's space




So, if you are like me, you are looking at these and trying to find a way into the art. That has been a big problem for me here - a lot of our ideas of what makes art "contemporary" (or appealing, or good, or whatever)is absent from these works. Concept, for example: hardly any "concept" is present.
Even though i feel that this type of work can hardly be considered contemporary, I have seen magazines of huge exhibitions of Contemporary oriental painting. North East Asian countries seem to share a strong interest in oriental painting that manages to remain relatively free from the impact of the art movements around it. What I can make of oriental painting is that it is the personal style and technical know-how that puts one artist or artwork above another. Age too: the Confucius doctrine of respect for elders and teachers leads to the mature, long-practicing artists monopolizing the awards tables - it's like figure skating in that respect. The whole practice of this form of art is self-contained and continues no matter what happens in other art forms extraneous to it - follows its own rules, has its own influences, is shown in specific galleries. That being said, oriental painting cannot avoid influencing artists more in step with global perceptions of art. That appropriation leads to art that we can look at and evaluate using the appreciation system we have developed over our scholastic lifetimes. Much of this art (art that is "oriental painting"-ish, though is not really oriental painting) would never make its way into these contemporary oriental painting exhibits, because they do not fit the evaluation system.

confused? me too, and I have to have a work ready two weeks from now for an upcoming exhibit in June. Back to work.