가이드

Research Guide for the Kim Jungheun Collection

이전 페이지로 가기 다음 페이지로 가기

Research Guide for the Kim Jungheun Collection

Author |&nbsp;Sohl Lee (Associate Professor of Art History, Stony Brook University)With contribution for research |&nbsp;Minjung Lee (MA in Art History, Ewha Womans University)Publication date |&nbsp;2025.10.31&nbsp;1. Preliminary Information&nbsp;Kim Jungheun (b. 1946-)—painter, art activist, art educator, and arts administrator—has persistently raised questions about art, society, and the history of the Korean Peninsula since the 1980s. He was born in Pyongyang in 1946, fled to Busan during the Korean War, and later spent his childhood in Seoul. He earned his BFA in painting from the College of Fine Arts at Seoul National University in 1972 and completed his MFA there in 1977. In his group and solo exhibitions during the 1970s, he pursued semi-abstract painting experiments. From 1980 onward, he produced works referred to as “critical realism,” or “new figurative painting,” incorporating images and materials from mass media such as magazine advertisements and newspapers. His main themes include peasants, the&nbsp;minjung&nbsp;(the people), land, history, and the division of the Korean Peninsula. From the 1980s to the 2010s, spanning about 30 years, he served as a professor in the Department of Art Education at Kongju National University. He is widely recognized as a prominent figure in&nbsp;minjung&nbsp;art (people’s art), having played a key role in founding the artist collective&nbsp;Reality and Utterance&nbsp;(est. 1979) and the national organization Korean People’s Artists Association (est. 1985), both of which led the development of&nbsp;Minjung&nbsp;art during the 1980s. In the early 1980s, he developed the concept of the “Massive Picture” into a public art project and continued his painting practice through 2019.&nbsp;Kim Jungheun, By Chance, By Necessity: 40 Years with Minjung Art, 2021This is a memoir reflecting on the author’s 40-year journey as a Minjung (people’s) artist, beginning with his early years as a “liberation baby”—born shortly after Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945. The book is divided into two parts: Part 1 covers the author’s autobiographical life story, while Part 2 explores his artistic philosophy through his contributions to&nbsp;The Hankyoreh&nbsp;newspaper. It serves as a valuable resource for understanding Kim Jungheun’s life, the history of Minjung art in which he participated, and the values he upheld as an artist.&nbsp;Kim Jungheun, “Art and Ownership: A Proposal for ‘Massive Art’,” in&nbsp;Reality and Utterance: Toward a New Art of the 1980s, 1985This essay presents the author’s thoughts on the ownership and consumption of art. Kim critiques the commodification of art and the institutional systems that perpetuate it, advocating instead for what he calls “massive picture”—art that enables genuine communication between the artist and the audience. By “massive picture,” he refers to “art that can be shared”: “art that tells stories of real, lived experiences; stories freed from ownership relations that make communal living possible; stories in which people become the agents of their own lives, liberated from division and oppression.” Kim not only proposes “massive art” as a form of artistic practice but also emphasizes the need for art education as a means of addressing fundamental issues. Written around the time of the formation of the Korean People’s Artists Association, this text offers insight into Kim’s evolving view of art in relation to reality—expanding from art creation to socially engaged artistic practice.&nbsp;Kim Jungheun, “Environmental Communication,” in&nbsp;Pictures and Words: Collected Writings for the ’82 Exhibition of Shape of Happiness, 1982This essay positions “art in the frame” and “art on the street” as opposing concepts, assigning murals the roles of popularity, anonymity, the social significance of the contextual site, and communication as the transmission of messages. It primarily references postwar Anglo-American murals and the early 20th-century Mexican mural movement. Citing Arnold Hauser (1892–1978), who described art as “a different form of society with life as a common denominator,” Kim identifies the urban environment as “the totality of our lives.” As a consistent reader of the literary quarterly&nbsp;Creation and Criticism(창작과 비평), Kim was an early reader of Hauser’s&nbsp;Art and Society. In this writing, Kim’s critique of art supremacism culminates in a celebration of large-scale popular art, including monumental murals.&nbsp;Monthly Art August 1989 Issue, “Contemporary Artist Study: Kim Jungheun”This special feature on Kim Jungheun appeared in the August 1989 issue of Monthly Art (Wolgan misul). It proposes examining the artist’s work as an exemplar of “critical peasant painting,” introducing key pieces focused on rural life and farmers, such as Farmer&nbsp;(1980) and Mr. Kim Who Guards the Village (1988). The issue includes an interview with a prominent minjung art critic You Hong-june (b. 1949-) and a critical essay by art critic Shim Kwang-hyun (b. 1956-). Shim’s essay, “A Painting That Pierces the Spirit of the People,” discusses the meaning of popularity and the resulting thematic concerns pursued by Kim and other&nbsp;Reality and Utterance&nbsp;artists, as well as how Kim’s engagement with social reality deepened after the formation of&nbsp;Korean People’s Artists Association, particularly through his development of the concept of the “massive picture.” In the same issue, Kim was also featured as one of 14 contemporary Korean artists who adopted&nbsp;Folk Painting-inspired motifs, alongside a special feature on the&nbsp;spirit and everyday ethos of minjung and ordinary people found in traditional Korean folk painting.&nbsp;National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Korea,&nbsp;15 Years of Minjung Art: 1980–1994, Exhibition Catalogue, 1994This exhibition was the first retrospective of the Minjung Art movement and the first Minjung Art exhibition organized by a state-run public art museum in South Korea. At the time, Kim Jungheun served as chair of the organizing committee. In addition to highlighting his artistic practice within the broader Minjung Art movement, the catalogue also sheds light on his practical engagement in the arts as an arts administrator.&nbsp;Kim Jungheun, Shin Chung-hoon, “Kim Jungheun: Seeing the World Through Art,” in&nbsp;Minjung Art, Listens to History 1, 2017This book was planned in 2015 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the founding of Korean People’s Artists Association, and it compiles interviews conducted by eight critics with eight veteran artists who participated directly or indirectly in the Minjung Art movement. In the dialogue included in the book between Kim Jungheun and art historian Shin Chung-hoon (b. 1975-), Kim offers an autobiographical reflection on his life. He recounts his artistic journey beginning with the&nbsp;Weed&nbsp;series from the 1970s, created out of his interest in marginalized subjects, followed by his works during the&nbsp;Reality and Utterance&nbsp;period centered on urban life and industrialization, and how these interests eventually expanded into the theme of farmers and peasants.&nbsp;Gyeonggi Larchiveum, “Kim Jungheun: On So-Called Weeds,” 2022This is the exhibition leaflet for&nbsp;Kim Jungheun: On So-Called Weeds, an archive exhibition held at Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Larchiveum exhibition in Ansan. Unlike previous studies, which primarily introduced Kim as a participant in 1980s Minjung Art collectives and group exhibitions, this show focused exclusively on his early works from the 1970s. Art historian Sohl Lee’s essay, “On So-Called Weeds: Polysemic Experiments with Tradition Before the Era of the Massive Picture,” analyzes the semi-abstract paintings in which Kim explored various interests and themes that shaped his early artistic vision. His engagement with life, art, and literature can be traced back to the 1970s. This is echoed in the attitude revealed in Kim’s 2020 op-ed in&nbsp;The Hankyoreh, also included in the leaflet, titled “On the ‘Miscellaneousness’ of Art,” in which he describes his own paintings as&nbsp;japda&nbsp;(雜多), or “miscellaneous.”&nbsp;Yoon Nan-Ji, “Minjung Art as a Hybrid Space,”&nbsp;Journal of Contemporary Art History&nbsp;22, 2007This article approaches Minjung art as a form of visual culture shaped by its contemporary era and society, focusing particularly on reality within the core founding group&nbsp;Reality and Utterance. The author draws on Homi Bhabha’s (b. 1949– ) concept of the “third space” to analyze the hybridity of Korean society as reflected in Minjung art during the politically, economically, socially, and culturally turbulent 1980s. Within this framework, Kim Jungheun’s&nbsp;Ode to Seoul&nbsp;(1981) and&nbsp;A Life of Plenty: Lucky Monolium&nbsp;(1981) are interpreted as indicators of the spatiotemporal plasticity of urban life at the time, marked by the coexistence of heterogeneous and conflicting elements amid rapid industrialization.&nbsp;Shin Chung-hoon, “Ambivalence in Reality and Utterance’s Relationship to Industrial Society, Mass Culture, and the City,”&nbsp;The Journal of Art Theory &amp; Practice&nbsp;16, 2013This study builds on the perspective of viewing Minjung art as a form of contemporary visual culture and examines the ambivalent attitudes of&nbsp;Reality and Utterance&nbsp;during its formative years in the late 1970s and early 1980s, in relation to the introduction of Frankfurt School’s mass culture theory in Korea. At a time when rapid industrialization spurred theoretical inquiry into mass culture, the group’s critics, including Choi Min (1944–2018) and Sung Wan-kyung (1944–2022), paid close attention to the power of mass culture to blur the boundaries between high and low culture. The author argues that in its early phase Kim Jungheun also embodied this ambivalence toward mass culture; the key example is Kim’s 1981 work&nbsp;A Life of Plenty: Lucky Monolium, which appropriates advertising imagery. The study highlights how early Minjung artists within&nbsp;Reality and Utterance&nbsp;critically engaged with mass media and popular imagery.&nbsp;Oh Song Hee, “The Image of the National Division in Korea in the Minjung Art of the 1980s: Focused on the Appropriation of Photographic Images,” The Korean Society of Art History 54, 2020This study examines how the technique of appropriating photographic image used in the works of Minjung artists during the 1980s is closely tied not only to formal concerns but also to thematic content—specifically Korea’s division system, a central subject of Minjung art. Kim Jungheun’s&nbsp;Pink Stimulates Appetite&nbsp;(1984), exhibited in the&nbsp;5th Reality and Utterance Members’ Exhibition: June 25&nbsp;(1984), directly appropriates a photograph from the Yalta Conference. His later work,&nbsp;April 19 and May 16 – The Gunpoint of Dictatorship and Unification&nbsp;(1990), presented at the&nbsp;5th Unification Exhibition&nbsp;organized by&nbsp;Korean People’s Artists Association, combines photographic images with&nbsp;geolgae geurim&nbsp;(hanging pictures) to visualize national division. These works reflect the evolution of Kim Jungheun’s artistic practice, particularly his experimentation with photographic images and&nbsp;the site-contingent art emerging from protests and rallies at a time such activist art was gaining political and artistic traction.&nbsp;2. Background Information&nbsp;Semi-Abstract Painting:&nbsp;Weed seriesWhile receiving an abstract-oriented education at an art college in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Kim Jungheun developed a socially critical attitude through reading&nbsp;Creation and Criticism, a literary and cultural criticism monthly first published in 1966. His loose participation in artist collectives during the 1970s and his 1977 solo exhibition at Gyeonji Gallery, which reflected his interest in motifs such as&nbsp;Weed,&nbsp;Baekje dynasty-period terracotta bricks, and&nbsp;Folk Painting developed into semi-abstract paintings in which each motif, expressed through a variable abstract language of white and pale tones, acquired meaning according to its position and context. The artist conceptualized&nbsp;weed&nbsp;as a theory of minor art—art produced on the margins, outside the mainstream. The theme of&nbsp;hillside shanty towns, which appears in his works from the 1980s and 1990s, also first emerged during this semi-abstract period. A large number of sketchbooks and notebooks preserved in the art archive attest to the artist’s intense early-stage reflections and working process.&nbsp;Reality and Utterance and the Minjung Art MovementKim Jungheun was a founding member of the artist collective&nbsp;Reality and Utterance, established in the winter of 1979. He participated in numerous thematic exhibitions held by the group, including&nbsp;The 1st Reality and Utterance Members’ Exhibition&nbsp;(1980),&nbsp;The 2nd Reality and Utterance Members’ Exhibition: City and Vision&nbsp;(1981),&nbsp;The 3rd Reality and Utterance Members’ Exhibition: Images of Happiness&nbsp;(1982), and&nbsp;The 5th Reality and Utterance Members’ Exhibition: 6.25&nbsp;(1984). Unlike his Weed series of the 1970s, the submitted works were characterized by bright, vibrant primary colors and newly introduced depictions of farmers and families, often incorporating magazine advertisements and product logos as background. Kim affixed actual magazine pages to the canvas, directly appropriated advertising slogans as titles, and created&nbsp;esquisses—preparatory sketches—drawn over magazine and newspaper pages as part of his painterly compositional process. These methods align with the early theoretical direction of Reality and Utterance, particularly with ideas proposed by its key theorists Choi Min and Sung Wan-kyung concerning the visualization of the relationship between art and industrial society. As an active participant in the Minjung art movement, Kim continued his practice with a strong emphasis on social engagement and communication with the public through art. Notably, he devised a unique pictorial approach in which multiple visual planes—at least two—are layered within a single canvas, allowing diverse viewpoints and perspectives to coexist simultaneously within the work. As a result, various representational modes coexist within a single work in Kim Jungheun’s work. After joining the faculty at Kongju Teachers’ College (now Kongju National University), Kim collaborated with his students to complete his first public art project,&nbsp;Dream and Prayer&nbsp;(1985), painted on the exterior wall of the Gongju Prison.&nbsp;Painting Expanded Through an Inquiry into Land and SoilAs the Minjung art movement entered its later phase, Kim Jungheun came to occupy a central position in both the historicization of Minjung art and the globalization of Korean art in the 1990s. As a founding member of the Korean People’s Artists Association, he participated in the planning of 15 Years of Korean Minjoong Arts: 1980–1994, held at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in 1994, serving as chair of the organizing committee. The following year, he received a Special Award at the 1st Gwangju Art Biennale (1995). While continuing to employ a pictorial methodology based on overlapping visual planes, Kim produced works between approximately 1987 and 1995 that centered on ochre-colored land and soil as primary backgrounds and motifs. The figure of the farmer also continued to appear throughout this period. Kim briefly explored installation art, producing a public sculpture at Cheonho Station in 1994 and exhibiting an installation at the Gwangju Art Biennale in 1995. He subsequently returned to painting and, from 1995 into the 2000s, carried out experiments with media, arranging multiple canvases horizontally or vertically to construct a painterly surface.&nbsp;Arts Administration as an Expansion of the Art MovementBeginning in the late 1980s, Kim Jungheun expanded the scope of his artistic practice into the realm of cultural activism by serving as the representative of the Korean People’s Artists Association from 1989 to 1990 and later as co-chair of the National Korean People’s Artists Association in 1998. He organized and participated in a wide range of exhibitions, projects, and initiatives, thereby broadening the framework of artistic engagement into a broader cultural movement. Kim’s involvement in arts administration and operations began in earnest with&nbsp;JAALA: The Third World and Us&nbsp;(Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, 1986), the first international exchange exhibition organized by Korean People’s Artists Association, where he was responsible for communication and the transport of artworks. Especially after the 2000s, Kim held numerous major positions in art administration, including Executive Director of the Citizens’ Coalition for Cultural Reform (1999–2003), Commissioner of the Cultural Heritage Administration (2005–2007), Member of the South Korean Commission for UNESCO (2005–2007), Chairperson of the Arts Council Korea (2007–2010), Director of the Art and Village Network (2009–2012), Chairperson of the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture (2012–2015), and Chairperson of the April 16 Foundation (2019–2021).&nbsp;3. Related Keywords&nbsp;Minjung Art, Massive Picture, Public Art, Weed, Minor Art, Peasant Painting, Folk Painting, Popular Culture, Industrial Society, Visual Culture, Reality and Utterance, Korean People’s Artists Association, Art Administration, Realism, Critical Realism, Creation and Criticism, Choi Min, Sung Wan-kyung, Oh Yoon, You Hong-june, Gwangju Art Biennale, Art and Village Network, JAALA, Art Education

다음게시물: 김정헌 컬렉션 연구조사 가이드

목록으로

소장자료

상세검색

탐구와 참여

연구

활동

미술아카이브

나의 페이지

Research Guide for the Kim Jungheun Collection

Research Guide for the Kim Jungheun Collection