Dansaekhwa
[1] Nonetheless, their artistic practices are seen to share "a commitment to thinking more intensively about the constituent elements of mark, line, frame, surface and space around which they understood the medium of painting.
[3]: 11 Art historian Joan Kee has opted for the romanization "Tansaekhwa" instead because the McCune-Reischauer system is still in use for English-language databases, archives, and libraries when identifying Korean-language sources.
Joan Kee emphasizes the importance of understanding this context in relation to Dansaekhwa, arguing that the artists' emphasis on objecthood was informed by both a history of material dispossession during the Korean War and anxieties around further loss with the suspension of civil liberties in postwar Korea.
[8]: 34 Their material focus also reveals a keen awareness of the rapid industrialization and architectural transformation of the country, evident in, for example, Ha Chong Hyun's piercing of canvases with wire.
While the dominant art historical opinion has been that the Informel generation used Dansaekhwa in the 70s and 80s to regain their status, Yoon claims that their resistance to these groups signified a crisis for their own.
[12]: 41 Without, as Lee Ufan describes an "-ism," or movement, to guide it,[13]: 57 Dansaekhwa artists instead busied themselves with formal concerns that unsettled the boundaries between abstraction and figuration, painting and sculpture, tradition and modernity, and local and global.
[14]: 76–77 Some of the earliest Dansaekhwa artists began experimenting with a wide range of materials that rejected painterly traditions, but also emerged out of a lack of resources in postwar Korea and rising oil prices.
Curators and art historians often credit "Five Korean Artists, Five Kinds of White," a 1975 group show held at Tokyo Gallery organized by director Yamamoto Takashi with the support of Kim Mun-ho, the owner of Myeongdong Gallery, art critics Nakahara Yusuke and Lee Yil, and Lee Ufan, as the first major exhibition of works that were later identified as part of Dansaekhwa.
Yamamoto and Nakahara's impetus for the show was an interest in the artists' use of white,[17] and expansive understanding of color that is distinct from Euro-American modern art movements.
[18]: 237–239 Yisoon Kim on the other hand attributes the origins of Dansaekhwa to the solo shows of Park Seo-Bo, Kwon Young-woo, Yun Hyong-keun, and Ha Chong Hyun at Myeongdong Gallery from 1973 to 1974.
[4]: 76–78 Myeongdong Gallery became one of the main exhibitors of Dansaekhwa in large part due to Kim's willingness to allow young experimental artists to show in the space for free.
[20]: 38–39 Monroe believes Dansaekhwa can be considered an example of "alternative modernism" that drew from but cannot be reduced to contemporary art movements from abroad that Korean artists were exposed to.
[20]: 39 Yoon Jin Sup believes that the recent interest in Dansaekhwa in the global art world is partially due to its aesthetic qualities unique to South Korea, such as an attention to spirituality, materiality, and performativity.
Some have sought to draw new connections or find predecessors for Dansaekhwa, including Kim Whanki[25]: 247 and Quac Insik,[27]: 197–199 and identify the main actors in promoting the movement.
In 2013, the University of Minnesota Press published the first English-language academic book on Dansaekhwa: Contemporary Korean Art: Tansaekhwa and the Urgency of Method by Joan Kee.
Kee employs formalist readings of Dansaekhwa work to show how these artists were engaged with the outside world, challenging aesthetic parameters that were indelibly marked by the rapid social and political changes in Korea during the time:Tansaekhwa was not about the mastery of technique, the transmission of meaning, or even the manipulation of materials.
Potentially this opened up room for the reconstruction of a different narrative of painting, one less indebted to reified sets of distinctions founded on particular systems of order and belief repeated over a given period.
[3]: 11–12 Of particular note is co-editor Lee Phil's acknowledgement of their inability to find primary sources on women artists who were active during the period, and call for future scholars to search for this missing component.
[22]: 116 However, an excerpt of a journal article by Yun Nanjie offers a broad picture of the role of women in popularizing Dansaekhwa by organizing shows or working as art dealers.
The physicality of Dansaekhwa is evident in the artistic process, such as Park Seo-Bo's continuous and repetitive movements to create flowing lines, and remnants of Lee Ufan's gestures captured on canvas.
[31]: 88 Some like Kwon Young-woo and Park Seo-Bo have asserted the necessity of creating work without a predetermined technique or concept in mind, underlining the role of action and deemphasizing intention.
A few like Yun Hyong-keun worked with oil painting materials, but found alternative ways to wield them, such as placing the canvas on the ground, and restricting the color palette.
Many Dansaekhwa artists have reevaluated the relationship between figure and ground, emphasizing the role of the canvas as a part of the image in itself, resisting the use of sharp edges, and working both on and through surfaces.
[23]: 53 Some simplified and arguably essentialist readings of Dansaekhwa focused on the use of the color white, inviting comparisons to Korean ceramics,[38]: 162 and resonances with Zen Buddhism.
[39]: 51–52 Tokyo-based American art critic Joseph Love was unsure if the focus on process over outcome for avant-garde artists like Park Seo-Bo, Yun Hyong-keun, Kim Han, and Kim Whanki, several of whom became associated with Dansaekhwa and whose works were exhibited at the 1974 2nd Korean Indépendants Exhibition (National Museum of Contemporary Art, Gwacheon), might make it difficult for viewers to understand the value of these works.
