The
Blossoming Scent of Ink: Song Young Bang features the five decades
of artistic endeavors of Song Youngbang(1936- ), also known by his pen name
Uhyeon. This exhibition is the second Korean traditional-style painting show of
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea’s special project, “Korean
Contemporary Artists Series”, whose objective is to lay the solid foundation
for the study of modern and contemporary Korean art.
Song is a Korean painter who
has successfully invented his own painting idiom, characterized by its
austerity and calm simplicity, while embracing diverse painting styles
including landscape, figure, flower-and-bird, animals, the Four-Gracious-Plants
paintings, and even abstract painting. His unrivalled plastic ability is
empowered by his keen faculty of observation and his use of the technique of
sketching from nature, and this ability of his has served as a cardinal
foundation of his achievement in the true “signified-oriented” landscape
painting in which the insights into the essential nature of the object beyond
its external image and the subjective elements of the artist’s inner mind are
superbly combined. Marked by their pristine simplicity and limpid and
transparent use of brush and ink, which are obtained on the basis of
traditional East Asian aesthetics, Song’s ink wash paintings reveal the true
quintessence of literati painting and the spirit of the literati.
This exhibition casts light
on the artistic life and convictions of Song Youngbang who has attempted to
make an earnest and in-depth investigation into what is genuinely “Korean” and
to grasp and reflect the conditions of his times while adhering to the idea of “creating
the new by reviewing the virtues of the old” by examining his works of manifold
subject matters and themes. It is strongly anticipated that Song’s decision to
take on what literati painting advocated and the unruffled placidity and
unobtrusiveness of his artistic oeuvre will re-enlighten minds of the
present-day society about the naturalistic aesthetic sense distinctive to Korea
and further present a promising vision of the Korean art scene's future.
1. Experimentation on
Abstraction in Ink Wash Painting
During the period from the
1960s to the 1970s Song devoted himself to the experimentation on abstract
techniques with the medium of ink wash. His works made during these years well
exemplify the experimental, abstract tendency prevalent in the field of
traditional-style Korean painting of the times. Song made his debut as an
artist by becoming a member of the Mookrim Group in the early 1960s, and later
he produced, as a member of the Korea’s Traditional-style Painting Group,
unprecedented works which were respectful of tradition and showed his apt
handling of brush and ink. The emphasis of his paintings of this period is
given more to the overall mixture of dots and lines throughout the entire
pictorial surfaces than to the figurative representation of concrete images. In
such works of his as Falling Rocks, Tianzhu Bone, and Hillstone the affective responses to the primeval forms and
phenomena of nature, which are internalized in stones and rocks, are clearly
detected. Considering Song’s liking of oddly shaped stones, this can be
plausibly interpreted as reflecting a sort of aesthetics whose focus is placed
on the attempt to delve into the profound law governing the harmony in nature
through the subject of stones. For Song whose creative undertakings explore the
boundary between figuration and abstraction, the medium of abstract painting is
no more than a means for the “signified-oriented” expressions intrinsic to
classical East Asian painting which underlines the spiritual qualities in a
painting rather than the depiction of the external form of the object.
2. The Upholding and
Transformation of Traditional Landscape Painting
The term “real-scenery
landscape painting” refers to the type of landscape painting whose emphasis is
laid on the realistic depiction of actual scenery, and it was a popular
painting style of the Joseon period. On the basis of the techniques of this
traditional landscape painting, Song has reinterpreted and given form to the
mountains and rivers of Korea by sketching from the natural sceneries of Korea
such as the Diamond Mountain, the Seorak Mountain, and the Bukhan Mountain
since the 1970s. In the production of his real-scenery landscapes Song placed
importance on the incorporation of his own inspirations from certain actual
views of nature rather than the realistic expression of them. In other words,
having been made on the basis of the idea of “imaginary, idealized landscape in
one’s mind”, his real-scenery landscapes substantiate his fruitful formation of
a simple and unadorned style of landscape painting accomplished by his use of
untainted, translucent palette of ink and concise brushwork. Song has also
created landscape paintings of another kind in which the detailed rendition of
nature is abandoned and instead the ideas inherent in nature are embodied. Among
these paintings that are differentiated from his real-scenery landscapes in
which the tradition of Korean landscape painting is maintained are included
series works entitled “Mountain, Water, and Cloud” and “Dancing Mountain and
River”. Song developed real-scenery landscape painting into his own style by
imbuing the endless panoramas of mountains and rivers with dynamic rhythms.
These idiosyncratic portrayals of mountains and waters bring to light Song’s
own idealized landscape painting manner through which he has delivered the
beauty of Korea’s nature in the modernized and symbolic ways.
3. In the Pursuit of the Spirit of Literati Painting
Song has produced paintings of diverse genres and
subjects including landscapes, human figures, flowers-and-birds, animals, and
the Four Gracious Plants, and such works of his manifest the innate spirit of
literati painting as well as his remarkable plastic ability. His Four Gracious
Plants paintings—among which are the plum blossom and the bamboo—and flowers-and-birds
are bathed in the subtle scent of ink and the ideals of the traditional
literati. Song’s figure paintings prove his acute penetration into the epitome
of the object and his masterful brushwork. Humor and affectionate sentiments
are embedded in his animal paintings which indicate his keen ability to discern
and capture the particular features of animals of various kinds. The peaceful
and humble disposition of the Korean people can be sensed in his human figures
and animals paintings.
The fundamental spirit of literati painting posits that
it lays more stress on the expression of the painter’s thoughts and impressions
of the object than the imitative representation of it. Song’s works of many
different subjects that employ modern formal elements while retaining such a
spirit are vividly reflective of the world of refined dignity for which traditional
literati painters aspired: the use of the minimal number of brushstrokes in
order to accentuate the core nature of the object; the dominant use of black
ink; the tactful utilization of empty space. His serene, yet inspirational artistic
endeavors, which are replete with poetic ambiences and vitality, attest to the
pure artistic attitude of Song Youngbang who has sought to emulate the
unaffectedness of nature by creating works that deal with a variety of objects
in nature.
* The Korean title of this exhibition “오채묵향(五彩墨香)” means five colors
of ink and its scent. In traditional East Asian painting “five colors of ink”
pertains to the lightness, darkness, dryness, wetness, and intensity of
blackness of ink. That is to say, it stands for a wide range of possible
variation in the use of ink.
