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Japan Specialist Seminars

Specialist Seminars

Korean art student in Japan before liberation's Details
Theme Korean art student in Japan before liberation
Presenter Kim, Ji-young (Tokyo University of the Arts, Arts Department Ph.D.)
Time November 24th, 2020 (Tue) 12:30 ~ 14:00
Venue Zoom Webinar
No. 245
Discussion
Koreans and Japanese art students are very important in the history of Korean art in that they imported the concept of modern art. More than 500 Korean art students in Japan from 1900 to 1945 for about half a century, including non-institutional students who received private studies. Nearly half of these international students are Western painting majors who are learning Japanese-style Western painting in Japan, followed by textile art (embroidery art). In particular, unlike other schools where Western painting is the absolute majority, girls' art school has a large number of embroidery art, which is due to gender differences.
Female international students during the colonial period, including art, had the conditions of a rich economic base and a family environment that recognized the necessity of women's education, but their motivation and purpose were severely limited. The most important factors in the major decision were the social perception that women should choose a study that is helpful to women, the permission of their families, and the purpose of becoming a professional woman after studying abroad. Therefore, obtaining a graduation certificate or a teacher's certificate is the main purpose of studying abroad, and there were few cases where embroidery art itself was regarded as an academic subject or an academic deepening activity. This is the difference between a male art student who aims to become an artist through the income of newspapers.
This gender difference causes a big difference in activities after returning to Korea, because embroidery art was not recognized as a single art in Western paintings and male-centered paintings, but was treated as amateur art. This shows the gender hierarchy in art that created the concept of an artist to refer to men who produce persimmon products that are distinct from women who make home-made handicrafts.
In addition, there is a hierarchy in the study abroad area. In the art study abroad world mostly centered in Tokyo, a small number of international students from Osaka Art School showed several distinctive features. First of all, unlike Tokyo, which gathered from all over the Joseon Dynasty, there were many from Gyeongnam and Jeju, and that from the beginning, people from poor immigrants went on to study, not for the purpose of studying abroad. Even after liberation, these Osaka art school graduates did not advance to the central art gallery and stayed mainly in the Gyeongnam or Jeju art zones, seeking the nostalgic identity of local art.
Another special case is Hideo Manabe, who was a surrealist painter who rejected his identity as a Korean or Japanese Korean and wanted to remain Japanese. As such, modern Korean art studies have a multiplicity of intertwined gender, genre, and regional hierarchies, and since various identities are derived from the differences in study environment and experiences, it is of great significance to illuminate the whole picture.

Question-and-answer: First, when asked whether art international students had similar motivation to study in comparison with the Koreans who entered Imperial University and advanced as bureaucrats, the presenter similarly cooperated with Japanese colonial students who went to government art schools to institutionalization after liberation Although it had an influence, it was evaluated that the private academy graduates who paradoxically rejected it, especially artists like Lee Jung-seop, remained in the history of Korean art. Additional inquiries about Hideo Manabe, who rejected the identity of Koreans or Koreans in Japan and reclusive as Japanese, led to questions and concerns about how to re-establish the identity of a diaspora artist.
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