Korean Art History Reading - Book Report/Review Example

Korean Art History Reading Response Essay Kee argues that among the modern art blind spots, there is few apparent contemporary ink painting. Despite the fact that it makes a considerable amount of art making in Asia (particularly Southeast and East Asia) as duly displayed by the huge and enthusiastic collector base, it (ink painting) seldom features in the records or history of contemporary art. Critics view it as medium’s state of rebirth or crisis while the historians view it as a medium’s role to standard modernist movements like abstract expressionism.

A number of initiatives have attempted to address the visible invisibility state. In the past decade, various initiatives have attempted to frame ink painting in the forms of display linked with contemporary art, and they include contemporary art museum and the international biennial (2007 Chengdu Biennial and the die 1998 Shanghai Biennale) (Kee 1). The following evidences support the argument made by Kee. “Not all ink paintings are as visibly invisible as the medium is generally” (Kee 1).

For instance, Zao Wou-ki’s works are documented as examples of modern art and they have been recognized as ink paintings. This form of selective recognition displays contemporary or modern ink painting as a theme described by the endorsement of distinctions. Standing assists in the illustration of die correlation between contemporary art and contemporary ink painting as a practice through which the differences are made through proximity apprehensions. Ink paintings usually accomplish standing through proxy.

They are viewed as contemporary based on their possible associations with questions, conditions, and subjects previously reified as important to contemporary art or as contemporary (Kee 1). For instance, Zao’s background is a good example in this regard. Zao was a Beijing native and in the 1930s, he joined Hangzhou National College of Art, which was entirely preoccupied with artists’ fluency in media linked with the West and the East, that is, media such as oil and ink. After the Second World War, he went to Paris where he was affiliated with the France art world.

In France, he was able to encounter ink painting afresh in the absence of the ideological relationships forced on the medium during the 1950s. The sophistication of Zao’s negotiations, “however, were commonly resolved through a modernist view of abstraction, whose terms were codified by the discussion of specific bodies of euro-American painting, in Abstract Expressionism” (Kee 1). Particular ideas of performativity, gesture, and image have been mentioned as evidence of modernity works like the recent Zao’s paintings.

During the mid-1980s, a student from the Hangzhou National College of Art gained significant attention in China (this was because of his ink paintings series that featured Chinese script faux). Gu Wenda works got standing based on its ability to display the main trait of contemporary art as suggested by numerous commentators. Yun-Fei Ji works are also fundamental in this regard and they indicate the effect of a range of social hegemony such as Chinese Communism and British imperialism. The works of Ji such as the die 2002 Whitney Biennial have been featured in major contemporary art shows and in many contemporary art publications.

They have been included because of their themes, for instance, the subjects are in line with the present social issues. In the Whitney Biennial, for example, Ji’s paintings are described as metaphors describing the imperialism destructive legacy. However, “despite the specificity of his approach and despite his own stated interest in the history of ink painting as social commentary. Ji’s choice of medium is almost exclusively discussed as a sign of tradition” (Kee 1). The materials and the techniques of ink painting are mentioned as evidence of his capability to link the past and the present.

Thus, a demonstration of how contemporary art can be now understood as temporal and spatially fragmented condition (Kee 1). Lee So-Jung’s ink painting works are also recognized as examples of contemporary art. Lee has had extensive training in the traditional ink painting and she has taken part in group shows associated with contemporary art. The most remarkable thing in her work is the repertoire of marks. Lines of various thicknesses, blots of all sizes, and varying levels of bleeding overrun the pictorial space.

All her works have been inspired by the personal urge to analyze the claims made about the ink painting medium. This is based on the old proverb that states that out of the ink emerge a thousand colors. Lee asserts that her mark-making display her desire to question the ink’s privileged state in the ink painting medium (Lee 1). Works Cited “The Curious Case of Contemporary Ink Painting.” faqs.org. Kee, Joan, 1 Oct. 2010. Web. 15 Dec. 2011.