No Name Group and Dansaekhwa Compared — Past and Present of Two Coeval Anti-Authoritarian Art Movements | #Art & Design History
Asian art has long been a blind spot in a western dominated perception of art history. Bringing discussions of this part of history to the table is important as it will change an orientalism-centered narrative, and build a historical view to see the culture and history of the world as a whole. As an Asian who practiced art and design for more than five years, I feel obligated to share what I have studied, read, and written, so that these artists, creations, and movements can be known and understood by more people.
Intro & Historical Background
No Name Group and Dansaekhwa are two anti-authoritarian art movements that separately took place in China and Korea in the 1960s and 1970s with distinct characteristics, developments, and trajectories. Dansaekhwa is widely known and considered as the representation of “Koreaness”, while No Name Group gradually dissolved with few artists creating art in their original style. However, the common ground of aesthetic purity is shared by these two art movements despite all the differences in trajectory and all the debates put on them. To understand this difference and similarity, it is necessary to review their historical background, the methodology, and ideology of their works and their current status of development.
After World War II, many of the countries in Asia were in the process of restoring order in their economy and politics. China and Korea were such examples. Two decades after that, the authoritarianism arose in the regime of both China and Korea, in which the art movements of No Name Group and Dansaekhwa were born.
After the Korean War and the division of the peninsula, Dansaekhwa, also known as the Monochrome Movement, emerged in South Korea under the authoritarian pressure of Park Chung- hee’s exploitative policy for economic prosperity. Under this circumstance, authoritarian rule limited the content of art creation to political propaganda. To not trigger the alarm of authority, instead of making art with a rebellious spirit or sarcastic content, they embraced the influence of minimalism and abstraction from the US and Europe with the attempt to connect themselves with Asian value and nature.
Almost the same period, from the 1960s to the late 1970s, China experienced the Cultural Revolution when western, capital-related and traditional activities, cultures and thoughts were aimed to be purged from the nation. People’s work, food and even living space were distributed and managed by the government in the name of serving the country. In this case, propaganda art became the authority. In this chaos spawned the No Name Group whose name was given at the later period of its existence. Artists from the group sought their social and political escape from socialist society, therefore, they stealthily traveled to the suburban area and depicted landscapes.
The Emergence of the Movements
Their different approaches to anti-authoritarian art were not accidental. The personal background of the artists and the references they took from domestic and western art cast a crucial influence on their distinct methodology and ideology.
For Dansaekhwa artists, abstraction was construed as a portal to engage with modernism and modern art in overseas trends and context, and which they needed to practice more to keep pace with their overseas counterparts. South Korea was reconstructed based on the infrastructure left by Japan’s colonization (1910–1945) after the Korean War (1950–1953) ended. This lingering aftermath can also be seen in their art education system where ink painting and oil painting were strictly separated and associated with “Oriental painting” and “Western painting”, one representing tradition and another representing modernism. To distinguishing Korean art and ink painting from Japanese- influenced art, artist group like Mungnimhoe (Ink Forest Group) took abstraction as a tool to innovate Korean ink painting.
Take the leading artist of the group, Suh Se-Ok (b.1929)’s work (fig.1) as an example, although abstraction was used in the composition, ink is still the leading element. However, Dansaekhwa artists not only embraced abstraction as a style but also as a tool to discuss materiality, medium, and viewership. Take the ink painter Kwon Young-woo (1926–2013) as an example, he explored a way to be separated from the pervasive interpretation of abstraction. He made use of the different characters within those media and began to cut, prick and encase objects with Korean paper in the mid-1960s, which enabled him to overstep the boundary between using traditional materials orientally and using western means of expression, and present the materiality within those media towards his audience. (fig.2)
Unlike those Dansaekhwa artists who still had a chance to expose themselves into western modern art examples and studied in art school despite the rigidity of the system, artists from No Name Group were all self-taught artists, had never got any academic training because art schools refused to admit students with a family background associated with rightism, capitalism and western influences, which at that time were considered “bad”. With all the books related to western thoughts confiscated and the repellence on western culture, they barely had access to any western art references, let alone the current prevalent art trend at that time.
For the older generations of the group, a reflection on Russian realism can be seen in Yuyuantan, Summer (fig.3) painted by the eldest group member Zhao Wenliang (b. 1937), and in Yuyuantan (fig.4) painted by Yang Yushu (b. 1944). Their way of antagonizing Socialist Realism in those propaganda arts shares a common stem with Russian Realism in the late nineteenth century. In their paintings, the composition of using distantly extended water and landscape as the ruling element of the painting along with the thick brush trace created by the oil paint indicates that they might had borrowed the idea from Isaac Ilyich Levitan (1860–1900)’s works such as Evening on the Volga (fig.5). Still, the influence of their own culture is prominent. The style of the dry brush strokes alludes to flying white technique that was adopted by traditional Chinese ink paintings. Despite the homogeneity of painting plein air landscape, the interest of the old and young members is implied to be different through their works.
The young generation in the group, such as Li Shan (b.1957) and Wei Hai (1952–2010) was sometimes referencing Matisse and Van Gogh in terms of the style and motif. In Wei Hai’s Shade of Willow Trees at Diao YuTai (fig.6), the willow leaves were deliberately painted with off and on brush strokes. Few blue strokes were randomly added in between those green leaves to form a complete impression of the landscape blocked by the willow. This use of brush strokes can also be found in post-impressionism paintings such as Wheatfield with Crows by Van Gogh (fig.7).
The Development and Debate in their Later Period
Understanding the formation of the methodology and ideology of both Dansaekhwa and the No Name Group, it is easier to comprehend their distinct trajectories and current status of development.
Having exhibited in New York, Venice, and Paris over the last five years, Dansaekhwa received fervent attention over the world. Especially the two exhibitions held in the US in 2014, “Overcoming the Modern, Dansaekhwa: The Korean Monochrome Movement” and “From All Sides: Tansaekhwa and Abstraction”, even received the comment which regarded Dansaekhwa as a representation of “Koreaness”. The first exhibition of Dansaekhwa “Five Korean Artists, Five Kinds of White” was held in Japan in 1975. (fig.8) It was the first time a group of Korean contemporary artists with a solid unified theme held an exhibition abroad. It was at that time when whiteness was construed as an aesthetic innovation with a national identity.
This association between Dansaekhwa and “Koreaness” leads to a critical debate. Korean critic Lee Yil argued that the idea of whiteness exists in Korean culture long since and demonstrated with evidence such as Choson white ceramics (fig.9) in his essay. However, examples such as the prominently use of white in clothing during the preindustrial period, cited in his 1975 essay, was originally assumed by the western journalists who visited Korea early before. Therefore, it is criticized that some examples in his essay came from a very western and foreign perspective which may not be representing the actual identity of Koreans.
Without arousing much attention throughout the world and gaining an eminent position in art history like Dansaekhwa, the No Name Group dissolved gradually after their only two exhibitions were held in China immediately following the opening up of China. Although their friendships are deep and irreplaceable, the difference in pursuit led to an irrecoverable division. The old generation tried to achieve a combination of traditional literati ideals and modern views, while the young generation explored more possibilities and sought an avant-garde approach to create art. Today, Zhao WenLiang and Yang Yushu continue to paint with their literati ideals and No Name style, sought to distance themselves from the art academic system and market. And for the young generation who considered themselves as Chinese avant-garde were frustrated by the western standard of avant-garde art. Some of them stopped their career as an artist, while others, like Ma Kelu and Zhang Wei, keep pursuing their art career abroad.
Though having distinct trajectories in development and all sorts of debates, the aesthetic purity, a significant common point, cannot be ignored in both Dansaekhwa and the No Name Group.
Yusuke Nakahara, a Japanese art critic addressed another perspective towards the whiteness in Dansaekhwa. The whiteness works as a dissolution between amorphousness, abstract form, and representation that does not have to represent national identity. Aesthetic purity is presented through the visual experience.
Take Lee DongYoub’s “Situation” series as an example, a cup is depicted in Situation A (fig.10), the audience may interpret this as an empty cup or a cup of translucent matter. Later, he created Situation B (fig.11), in which his audience may see a block of ice melting because of the gradient color applied to that substance. Also, the icelike substance is placed at the bottom of the cup, therefore the audience knows the cup from Situation A is likely to be empty. With his Situation C, a painting with the same cup in Situation A whose outline is slightly fainter, the audience can easily imagine a cup of water melted from the previous ice block from Situation B. In this case, whether those unclosed lines and delicate paints are indicating cup, ice block or water does not really matter. Representation is not what Lee DongYoub was focusing on but the relationship between the form and the visual experience is.
This aesthetic purity can also be found in the No Name Group not only in visual experience but also in their motif. Take one of Li Shan’s paintings, Remains of Snow (fig.12), as an example, set against a large proportion of rosy clouds, the diminutive dark green bench is rather catchy. The use of red was not political. Without red, the rest of the colors will be less vivid. The balance between color and proportion is natural and fluent enough to let the audience believe that was what Li Shan saw in the Beijing suburb. Her mood and the social environment was less important when she was painting. The only thing she cared about was how to present the view she saw and how to form a good composition. This use of colors can also be seen in her other works (fig.13) (fig.14).
Conclusion
Authoritarianism once found its chance to take place during the restoration of orders from the western colonialism aftermath. Under this circumstance, many regions from Asia attempted to get rid of the autocracy and keep pace with the western modernization trend. Some of them, such as Dansaekhwa and the No Name Group, tried to fight their way out through art. Their art may be started by taking western references. However, through their comprehension of the local environment and their own culture, they established their distinct approach to art that is way beyond imitation. No matter how much or how little attention they received, they were both significant in art history. They were seeking and recording the last surviving beauty during a dark period in history and they successfully turned that beauty into their own innovation. No matter their rise and fall in the past and future, no matter what debates were and will be put on them, the aesthetic purity will long last through their amazing artworks.
Bibliography
- Chu, Denise. “Li Shan: The Nameless Painter.” Art and AsiaPacific, no. 96 (2015): 110–21.
- Gao MingLv. The No Name: A History of a Self-exiled Avant-garde. ed1. Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2006.
- Joan Kee. Contemporary Korean Art: Tansaekhwa and the Urgency of Method. 2013.
- Juliane Noth. “Landscapes of Exclusion. The No Name Group and the Multiple Modernities in Chinese Art around 1979.” In Negotiating Difference. Chinese Contemporary Art in the Global Context, edited by Birgit Hopfener, Franziska Koch, Jeong-hee Lee-Kalisch and Juliane Noth, 49–62. VDG, 2012
- Liles, Robert. “Beyond White.” Art and AsiaPacific, no. 89 (2014): 76–83,11.
- SooJin Lee. Review of Contemporary Korean Art: Tansaekhwa and the Urgency of Method, by Joan Kee. Third Text, 2017. http://www.thirdtext.org/joan-kee-korean-art
