Park Website positioning-Bo was a towering determine in Korean up to date artwork, each as an artist and an educator. Identified abroad because the “Father of Korean Up to date Artwork”, he lived to see the Dansaekhwa (monochrome) motion, and his position in it, obtain worldwide recognition up to now decade. After revealing his lung most cancers prognosis in February, on the age of 91, he wrote, “I’ve lived sufficient, however there are nonetheless issues I need to paint.”
Born Park Jaehong in 1931 in Yecheon, southern Korea, he later moved along with his household to Gyeonggi Province, the place his father labored as a judicial scrivener. Towards his father’s needs that he ought to examine regulation, Park enrolled at Hongik College, Seoul, in 1950, to review Japanese portray. Nonetheless, with the outbreak of the Korean Battle in June of that 12 months, he was drafted to serve within the army, the place his duties included map-making. On returning to academia in 1952, he needed to switch to Western portray due to an absence of academics in his authentic division. In 1954, throughout his remaining 12 months, Park made his creative debut on the third Nationwide Artwork Exhibition with two figurative work, Nude (A) and Sunflower.
On the eve of commencement, he fled and took on the identify “Website positioning-Bo” to keep away from detection
Park volunteered for officer coaching in 1954, trusting the federal government’s promise of draft exemption for individuals who accomplished the course, until struggle resumed. Nonetheless, the federal government broke its promise and arrested college students throughout their commencement ceremony. On the eve of his commencement from Hongik College, Park fled and took on the identify “Website positioning-Bo” to keep away from detection. He grew a beard and wore a fedora to seem older, till he was a part of a collective lawsuit in 1961 towards the army authorities which enabled him to surrender his disguise.
After finishing his research, Park joined Seoul’s Lee Bongsang Portray Institute in 1957 and have become a member of the Anguk college, which superior Korean summary artwork by way of embracing an improvisatory Artwork Informel strategy. Park started to discover daring, self-destructive strategies. Someday in 1958, he was engaged on a figurative portray of the Buddha’s face for the third Up to date Exhibition in Seoul. Rising disillusioned with the method, he defaced the art work utilizing a whetstone, threw paint and kicked the canvas earlier than leaving the studio. On his return, he discovered that the altered canvas revealed the creative course he had been searching for.
On the institute, Park met Yoon Myung-Sook, a scholar from Hongik College. Yoon later mirrored on their engagement: “On a drizzling day, we visited a quaint whisky bar in Jongno. It was my first whisky expertise, and I acquired a bit of tipsy. Out of the blue, he proposed, and I accepted.” However the couple’s beginnings had been something however romantic. They wed in 1958, and through their honeymoon had been joined by a police officer and artist good friend, Kim Tschang-Yeul, who acted as a physiqueguard for Park, then nonetheless in hiding, because the younger artist couple spent the subsequent few years transferring from place to position.
Paris sojourn
In 1961, Park travelled to Paris to attend the Unesco exhibition Jeunes Peintres du Monde, and spent practically 10 months within the metropolis. Whereas aiding the artist Lee Ungno, Park procured leftover wooden and cloth scraps, pieced them collectively and painted the composite work black, naming it Péché Originel No. 8. This new strategy paved the best way for the sequence Primordialis, the place Park integrated strategies similar to creating soot with ignited cotton, texturising the canvas with a wire brush and attaching threads. After his Paris sojourn, Park placed on a solo exhibition, Primordialis, on the Nationwide Central Library Gallery, Seoul, in October 1962, and was instructed that his work resembled a war-scarred determine. Although the artist supposed to depict “a kind earlier than the appearance of some residing substance”, he concurred that the ultimate imagery certainly mirrored the scars of struggle.
Impressed by watching his youthful son practise Hangul, the official Korean script, tearing and scribbling on pages as he made errors, Park adopted a novel approach. Realising that “striving to fill the void signifies intent whereas yielding captures the great thing about resignation”, Park mirrored his son’s strategy. He methodically utilized white paint on a canvas with a ruler, drew a line with a pencil, and, earlier than it set, hid it with paint, then added one other line. At a colleague’s suggestion, this sequence was later named Écriture, French for “writing”.
Worldwide collections
Park launched the Écriture sequence at a 1973 solo exhibition at Muramatsu Gallery, Tokyo, following the recommendation of a good friend, Lee Ufan, who stated, “In case you are recognised in Japan first, you’ll be recognised in Korea.” The monochrome Écriture sequence with pencil, which Park labored on intensively till 1986, was later collected by New York’s Museum of Fashionable Artwork and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Park repeatedly diverse the Écriture sequence, pasting moist Korean paper on canvas within the Nineteen Eighties, specializing in straight strains as an alternative of zigzags within the Nineties, and including the colors of nature to the canvas after being captivated by the autumn foliage of Tokyo, the place he held a solo exhibition in 2000.
Past his work as an artist, Park profoundly influenced Korean up to date artwork by way of his roles as an educator and administrator. Beginning in 1962, he taught within the portray division at his alma mater, Hongik College. For greater than three a long time, till 1997, he was a cornerstone of Korean artwork schooling. As dean of the college’s School of High-quality Arts, he modernised departments to fulfill up to date wants. After being elected vice-chairman of the Korean High-quality Arts Affiliation in 1970, he organised the Indépendant exhibition, to pick artists for worldwide showcases. This initiative gave rising artists similar to Lee Kun-Yong and Shim Moon-Seup a novel alternative to current their experimental items on the eighth Paris Biennale in 1973.
Whereas Park’s efforts to enliven the Korean artwork scene typically confronted criticism, his lasting influence on Korean up to date artwork is plain. Ha Indoo, a good friend who had a fancy relationship with Park, seen the Nineteen Eighties as a interval when, as he instructed Artwork in Tradition journal, “up to date artwork turned extra homogenised, and collective thought gravitated in the direction of factionalism”, difficult Park’s affect and opposing his re-election as president of the Korean High-quality Arts Affiliation. Nonetheless, Park’s influence on the native artwork neighborhood has solely grown. In 2019 a retrospective that includes 160 of his works was held throughout two galleries on the Nationwide Museum of Fashionable and Up to date Artwork in Seoul.
Advertising and marketing clout
Regardless of Park’s prominence, the market solely just lately acknowledged the Dansaekhwa motion and Park’s position in it. In 2012, the Nationwide Museum of Fashionable and Up to date Artwork formally launched Korean monochrome portray with the exhibition Dansaekhwa: Korean Monochrome Portray. Galleries similar to Perrotin and Kukje subsequently showcased Dansaekhwa artists, and the 2015 exhibition Dansaekhwa at Palazzo Contarini Polignac through the Venice Biennale amplified international curiosity. A major milestone was Park’s 2016 exhibition at London’s White Dice. “The work began promoting after the White Dice,” Park noticed, and in his 80s he discovered his artwork was in excessive demand. This 12 months his 1975 piece Écriture No. 37-75-76 fetched a document $2.6m at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong.
Lately, Park established the Park Website positioning-Bo Basis (previously Gizi Basis), inaugurated a museum devoted to his works on Jeju Island, South Korea, and funded scholarships at Hongik College. But, his endeavours spotlight the inescapable political nuances of Korean society. In 2022, he pledged $1m to the Gwangju Biennale, launching the Park Website positioning-Bo Artwork Prize for rising artists. The inaugural winner, the Korean artist Oum Jeongsoon, expressed gratitude for the popularity. However only a month after the award ceremony, the prize was abolished due to controversies surrounding Park’s involvement with pro-government artwork organisations through the Gwangju Rebellion in 1980. Relating to these disputes, Park commented: “With out backlash, there’s no progress. However we have to have up to date arguments for 2023. The zeitgeist is alive and modifications quickly.”
In late August, Park’s remaining exhibition was held at Johyun Gallery in Busan, South Korea, with Park and his grandson current. A solo exhibition at New York’s White Dice is deliberate for November 2024. Lee Yoojin, director of the Park Website positioning-Bo Basis, elaborated to The Artwork Newspaper on Park’s newest Écriture, which will probably be proven at White Dice: “Begun in 2022, this technique entails pencil drawing over paint on outdated newspapers, eliminating textual content and pictures that depicted a world evolving right into a psychiatric ward. Whereas the repetitive drawing echoes the previous Écriture’s philosophy of clearing one’s thoughts and coronary heart, the intentional act of erasing for purification introduces a novel strategy.” Piles of outdated newspapers and canvases stacked within the studio stand as a silent tribute to Park, who, till his final moments, ceaselessly honed his craft.
• Park Jaehong (Park Website positioning-Bo), born Yecheon County, Korea 15 November 1931; married 1958 Yoon Myeong-Sook (two sons, one daughter); died Seoul 14 October 2023
