Artists Under The Japanese Invasion and Occupation Period
Korean artists from the middle 1880s til 1945, when Korea was freed by the allies after the unconditional surrender of Japan, had a very difficult time.
From the 1880s onward, the Japanese invaders of Korea attempted both to obliterate and eliminate Korean art itself through looting and destruction of Korean artistic works, and continued as they closed Korean schools of art, torched Korean paintings of Korean subjects, and forced those few artists left to paint Japanese subjects in Japanese styles and so seed Japanese art as the art of the Koreas forever. Japan held an exhibition of the Korea art and produced many Koreans young artists such as Park Su-geun.
To this date there has not been a retrospective show of the hidden art under Japanese occupation, or a discussion of the conflicts between those who were forced into compromise under Japanese artistic demands. It is an issue of great sensitivity, with artists who studied and worked in Japan and painted in the Japanese style forced into self-defense and justification of compromise without other alternatives.
Bridging the late Joseon dynasty and the Japanese occupation period were noteworthy artists such as:
- Chi Un-Yeong (1853–1936)
and others.
Read more about this topic: Korean Painting
Famous quotes containing the words artists, japanese, invasion, occupation and/or period:
“Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.”
—Lionel Trilling (1905–1975)
“I will be all things to you. Father, mother, husband, counselor, Japanese bartender.”
—Mae West, U.S. screenwriter, W.C. Fields, and Edward Cline. Cuthbert Twillie (W.C. Fields)
“Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of “Emergency”. It was a tactic of Lenin, Hitler and Mussolini.... The invasion of New Deal Collectivism was introduced by this same Trojan horse.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)
“For myself I found that the occupation of a day-laborer was the most independent of any, especially as it required only thirty or forty days in a year to support one. The laborer’s day ends with the going down of the sun, and he is then free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit, independent of his labor; but his employer, who speculates from month to month, has no respite from one end of the year to the other.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Remember how often you have postponed minding your interest, and let slip those opportunities the gods have given you. It is now high time to consider what sort of world you are part of, and from what kind of governor of it you are descended; that you have a set period assigned you to act in, and unless you improve it to brighten and compose your thoughts, it will quickly run off with you, and be lost beyond recovery.”
—Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121–180)