Lee Quede’s “Return to the Land” and Vernacular Modernism in Korea in the 1920s and 1930s

Abstract

Conference Presentation: March 15, 2019 / Banatao Institute in Sutardja Dai Hall, University of California, Berkeley Abstract; My essay examines the modern Korean painter Lee Quede within the colonial context of Korea from 1910 until 1945, when the country was subject to Japanese economic, political, and military power and the machinations of its Empire building. In my examination of Lee’s work and the social context in which they were created, this essays discusses the critical terms such as “return to the soil” or “return to the land.” The terms imply a sentimental but politicized use of the landscape in order to evoke the tranquility and traditional customs and scenery of the countryside in colonial Korea. The same spirit is found in the aesthetics of Yanagi Muneyoshi (1889-1961), who fetishized and exoticized the “Orientalism” in his theory known as Mingei. The essay will focus on interpreting a body of work produced by Lee in terms of “the return to the land” and will incorporate frequent comparisons with other works of art in Korea and Japan to elucidate a clearer and more distinct historical frame of reference. While looking at the formation and complicated development of nationalism in Japan and Korea in the beginning of the twentieth century, Chung wants to open a more fundamental question about how the Korean artist Lee and Japanese theorist Yanagi responded to the clash of indigenous traditionalism and Western modernity in the colonial context, and how each relied on the concept of the “return to the land” as a directive to either politicize (Lee) or depoliticize (Yanagi) the function of art. This conflicting situation will also address how vernacular modernity in the history of Modernism in Korea. Conference Info: Picturing Identities and Ideologies in Modern Korea: Transnational Perspectives for Visual Culture Hosting Institution: Center for Korean Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley Funding: Academy of Korean Studies Dates: March 14?15, 2019 Place: Banatao Institute in Sutardja Dai Hall, University of California, Berkeley Room 310 (main); Room 310 & 250 (breakout sessions)