De-Modernization and the Search in the Transition Period

Abstract In this article, the author first provides a chronology of Korean modern art, in which the modernization of every sector of Korean society is intricately entangled with struggles in regards to Westernization and the anxieties of colonialism. As a result, he points out that the ‘Korean’ aesthetics of Dansaekhwa were discursively constructed by Japanese scholars from the colonial era. Instead of readily utilizing the term ‘postmodernism’ in articulating the younger artists’ rebellion against Dansaekhwa, therefore, the author uses ‘anti-modernism (ban-modeon)’ and ‘de-modern (tal-modeon)’ as the prevailing attitude of the 1980’s art of Minjung misul and of the new figurative paintings.