“Where have you been hiding?”
Fine Art Hallyu from an Economics Perspective
Moonyoung Kim
Reporter, Maeil Broadcasting Network
The other day, I heard Lee Kun-Yong, the 81-year-old Korean pioneer of experimental art, speak about his recent performance at a gallery in the United States where he had visited as an invited guest. Following his performance of Snail’s Gallop [at Pace Gallery], a group of teary-eyed New Yorkers asked him where he had been hiding all this time. Lee said he just laughed but felt a little embarrassed, as he had been performing the piece since 1979. Despite being a widely acclaimed artist who has shown his works and performances at major international exhibitions in Paris, São Paulo, and other cities, his name still seemed unfamiliar to many art lovers in New York. Lee also shared that more than 10 of the staff members at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum confessed that they viewed his performance for the first time at Pace Gallery—a mere few weeks before their museum hosted him. Currently, the Guggenheim is highlighting some of the most significant Korean avant-garde art from the 1960s and ’70s, in an exhibition that pays special attention to Lee, Kim Kulim, and Sung Neung Kyung.
This trio is not the only example of belated yet sudden global recognition. Korean art, once treated as something peripheral, has now become the subject of special exhibitions at major museums across the globe. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met), one of the most renowned museums in the world, is currently introducing historic and contemporary Korean artworks in its Lineages: Korean Art at the Met exhibition. Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Museum of Art is presenting The Shape of Time: Korean Art after 1989, the largest-ever exploration of Korean aestheticism held in North America.
Such trends may be surprising to some artists, but this “fine art hallyu” (Korean Wave) seems to be driven by the growing influence of the Korean community; Hui Kyung An currently works as a curator for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Hyunsoo Woo as Pappas-Sarbanes Deputy Director for Collections at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Samsung and other Korean companies have also sponsored major international galleries and museums, which in turn familiarized them with Korean art. In short, following Korea’s rapid economic growth, powerful Korean voices on the global stage.
From a deeper perspective, there is the economic logic of weighing marketability, that is, seeing Korean art as marketable. Now that the status of Korean culture has changed, art fairs in Korea and exhibitions focused on Korean art are expected to attract more collectors and visitors than in the past. Having held the Frieze Seoul art fair for two consecutive years, Director Patrick Lee suggested that Seoul had become a sort of bridgehead into the Asian market due to its well-structured “cultural city” image, cemented by excellent infrastructure, K-pop, and Korean movies by such directors as Bong Joon-ho and Park Chan-wook. Visitors to Frieze Seoul 2023, unlike the previous year, even travelled outside of Seoul to visit galleries and museums in provincial cities. Given the mounting interest in Korean art, it is only natural that international art institutions are interested in tracking its history from the works of dansaekhwa (monochrome painting) artists such as Park Seo-bo and Ha Chong-hyun, to the avant-garde artists of later generations.
Additionally, the Korean art market’s ability to overcome challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic drew the attention of international galleries seeking promising markets. Amid a rising tendency of viewing artworks as s for investment, the domestic art market emerged in the global spotlight following explosive expansion, with substantial amounts of money streaming into auctions and real estate interiors. As Hong Kong, the previous Asian hub of fine art, began to lose its luster due to political instability, Korea shined by registering the world’s seventh largest market sales as of 2022, although its volume of trade was smaller than that of China. Other factors encouraging renowned international galleries to advance into the Korean market or expand existing operations included the absence of value added tax in Korean art trade and a local transportation cost lower than that of Japan.
It is not desirable that the value of art works is swayed by cultural trends or economic power, but it is the reality. However, the silver lining to this trend is the highlighting of previously underrepresented Korean avant-garde art and ink-wash paintings. It is also worth noting that the current Korean art hallyu has been sweeping the world without the help of any significant policy drive; this suggests that increased growth is possible no matter how poor other conditions may be thanks to a strong foundation of circular connection that exists within the realm of arts.
Please note: This article has been authored by an expert outside the Korea Foundation. The views expressed here may not reflect the KF’s official position.
KOREA FOUNDATION
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