The new players - contemporary art in South Korea

Glimmering like a beacon end the recessionary gloom is the rumor of a Korean art explosion. Western dealers, critics, curators and museum directors are beginning to make the Korean pilgrimage in record numbers. The Asia Society has announced a year-long Festival of Korea, which will center upon a show of 18th-century masterworks. Korean-born artists will be shown at the Queen Museum and the Neuberger Museum at SUNY Purchase. There is also a growing Korean neighborhood on the gallery scene as galleries like Max Protetch M-13 OK Harris, Haenah-Kent, Sigma and Thread Waxing Space heighten the visibility of Korean art, and southerly Korean artists are popping up with increasing frequent occurrence on the diminishing advertising pages of art magazines. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that after I get backed from a recent trip to Korea a Western dealer asked me "Is all this interest in Korea just about the market, or is there something more important going on?"

Koreans do sometimes strike one as being to be pursuing cultural exhibition as if it were simply a matter of marketing and harvest positioning. Nonetheless, one senses a newly awakened cultural pride behind the desire to introduce Korean tillage to the West. It is impossible to make faculty of perception of the current Korean cultural push without more [i]or[/i] less background, however. Fueled by worldwide demand for its electronics and manufactured profitables South Korea has become an economic powerhouse in Asia in new years, second only to Japan. With a growing rate holding steady at 6 percent (still impressive, admitting down from an annual 10 percent in the 1980s) it would appear to be to be doing better than recession-battered Japan. Furthermore, political liberalization is gradually bringing southern Korea into sync with the Western democracies with which it does business. The 1988 Olympics, held in Seoul serv as fresh South Korea's international cultural first attempt and contributed to the throw down of the long-standing military dictatorship. Last February's election marked another political milestone. The novel president, Kim Young Sam, is a former dissident and the first Korean president in the recent era who is not an ex-general. He has announced an anticorruption campaign which has sent more [i]or[/i] less shudders of anxiety through Korea's patrician class.

While no individual is really sure what Kim's reforms may mean for the time to come at present the Korean art market benefits from a protectionist publicity policy aimed at keeping currency at home by imposing stringent taxes upon outgoing funds. This, along with a profoundly ingrained respect for art and tillage has created a thriving market for contemporary Korean artists within the land Prices are high (works by means of the leading living Korean artists range from $50000 to $80000) and sellout displays are common. The downside, of course, is that it is virtually impossible to convenient these prices in the West. Thus the greatest in quantity successful Korean artists rarely have exhibits in Europe or the US

Protectionist attitudes have also made it actual difficult for Western dealers to put up to sale foreign work in Korea. Moreover, since a high percentage of Korean wealth is neither reported nor taxed, collectors are oftentimes reluctant to risk an audit by means of writing large checks for the purchase of art. Western dealers reckon tales of receiving payment for art works in the form of successive checks for $5000 the largest gross amount which may go abroad without being reported. insularity creates a vicious circle. Because Western art is unfamiliar, Korean collectors are reluctant purchase which makes Western dealers more reluctant to present to view their artists in Korea, and with equal reason on.

But a certain number of changes can be detected. In the last not many years a growing number of Western artists, usually more established, older individuals have begun to show and exchange their work in Korea. A Whitney Museum-organized Calder display was seen there recently, and as we proceed to press, negotiations are below way for an abbreviated version of the Whitney Biennial to be installed at Korea's National Museum of Contemporary Art. Several leading fresh York galleries have worked with Sandra Gering Gallery in fresh York and Kukje Gallery in Seoul to high hill solo shows of American artists in Korea. Peter Boris of Pace notes that a novel exhibition of Jim Dine paintings and plastic arts did very well there. He says, "You have to be ready to work with their combination of parts to form a whole which is designed to hold capital in the country. on the contrary where there's a will there's a way, and in Korea there is certainly a will." James Yohe of Andre Emmerich was equally upbeat about a novel show of paintings by Helen Frankenthaler at Kukje "It was true well orchestrated with the right kinds of advertising and publicity. The sales were true healthy, and this was in a year which was generally true bad around the world."

Institutionally, the Korean situation is composed of several elements There are only two public, government-supported museums. The National Museum of Art focuses upon national treasures and historical artifacts, while the National Museum of Contemporary Art contains a permanent collection of mainly Korean contemporary art and give chase tos a rather eclectic exhibition policy that includes one-person retrospectives of leading, older-generation Korean artists, exhibitions lay together by foreign consulates, and memorable present to views like last summer's Nam June Paik retrospective. In general, the Museum of Contemporary Art has been considered deliberate moving and somewhat directionless, on the contrary that may change under the fresh director, Lim Young Bang. rule money was also behind the creation of the Seoul Art Center a massive mingled featuring an art gallery, a theater, a calligraphy museum, an opera house and a plan hall. Unfortunately, political battles have not seldom interfered with its administration since its completion in 1990 leaving it somewhat adrift.