Jungsil Jenny Lee

10.18399/acta.2021.24.2.006

Park Soo Keun modern Korean art local color Sin Saimdang motherhood

Park Soo Keun (朴壽根 Pak Sugŭn, 1914–1965) was a modern artist active in Korea from the later Japanese colonial period of the early 1930s to the mid- 1960s. Despite the poverty and adversity it caused him, Park persisted in producing paintings of ordinary people, including the poor, that he observed in his everyday life. His use of local color and the distinctive textures of his multilayered oil pigments led to his posthumous recognition by Korean critics and American art collectors as one of the most “Korean” artists. Park’s paintings often present women as the main subjects. His interest in the rediscovery and restoration of Sin Saimdang 申師任堂(1504–1551), who emerged in the 1960s as a significant female icon with the traits of a wise mother, talented artist, and learned noblewoman, is epitomized in his visual depiction of female figures. Park’s silent, serious representations of Korean mothers, symbolizing suffering and self-sacrifice for the sake of the country’s next generation, evoke nationalistic sentiments, admiration, memories, and nostalgia. Through investigating the construction and representation of such a Korean female identity in the social and cultural context of Park’s time, this study elucidates the current enthusiastic reception of Park’s paintings in Korea and the growing international recognition of a distinctive Korean style in studies of modern Korean art.