The 20th Century, The Evolution Of Korean Painting

The biggest issue facing traditional Korean painting in the 20th century was how to respond to painting styles from outside and modernize traditional painting. This paper posits that modern Korean painting in the 20th century shows the following characteristics:firstly, in the 20th century, the field of traditional Korean painting changed quickly, and the painting style changed greatly, becoming totally different from a long history of traditional form. Secondly, one of the main reasons of the changes in the painting style was the influence of external environment. To take an example of a political bearing, Japanese painting had a deep influence on Korean painting because Korea had been ruled by Japan in the first half of the 20th century; abstract painting of the Euro-US painting style also had a far-reaching influence on Korean painting for military affairs, US politics, and the Korean war in the second half of the century. Thirdly, it was hard to discern a necessary relationship or logic among the changes of painting style, unlike the developmental history of European fine art in the 20th century, which was changing step by step with rich and revolutionary color.Ink abstract painting was an outstanding painting style during the modernization of Korean painting and has been popular in the field of Korean painting for a long period since the 1960s. The common grounds of modern Korean painters are as follows:firstly, many people drew from traditional literati painting and modern-style painting at the same time, which had a great influence on their experimental abstract painting style; secondly, during process of experimental abstract painting. There was no adequate logical relationship between traditional literati painting and modern-style painting because people at that time were unfamiliar with Western abstract theory and its logical system was always mixed with theory of literati painting. Thirdly, imitation factors, especially Japanese media, had great influence on the painting style. Fourthly, picture form rarely had an attitude of cold scientific research toward composition, on the contrary, it paid more attention to expression of emotion, which is related to XieYi, of literati painting.In the 1950s and 1960s, Korean abstract painting was affected by the Japanese magazine "Art Notes". Although many Korean ink painters do not accept this point of view, this paper shows and analyzes several cases which were influenced by the magazine.There were many conflicts in the modernized experiments of traditional painting methods, as undertaken by some modern Korean painters and criticized by the people coming, but we can say they expanded a space of change and a development of modern Korean painting, as well as laying a foundation for feasibility of traditional media and drawing attention to the probability of traditional painting spirit.