Trendy London welcomes North Korean
art By Michael Rank
LONDON - Above the chic shops and arcades
of London's Pall Mall, the flag of the Democratic
People's Republic of Korea wafts incongruously in
the wind. Look inside, and portraits of the Great
Leader and the Dear Leader stare out at you.
No, the North Korean army hasn't marched
across the River Thames, but Pyongyang has
established a small cultural enclave in London's
West End in the form of the first major exhibition of
North
Korean art in the Western world.
Curator
David Heather says he first got the idea after
meeting a North Korean painter at an art
exhibition in Zimbabwe in 2001. "I got chatting
with Mr Pak and he invited me to Pyongyang," said
Heather, making it all sound surprisingly
straightforward. But the 45-year-old financier
admits that mounting the exhibition was "quite a
challenge ... very time-consuming" and also admits
that he has no great knowledge of art or the
international art market.
He describes the
surprisingly extensive exhibition of about 70
artworks as "an opportunity for people to see art
from what is a secretive and protective society at
first hand".
The show ranges from
apolitical landscapes and ceramics to a vast,
blatantly propagandistic battle scene celebrating
the routing of the US Army in the Korean War, as
well as hand-painted posters on such unexpectedly
diverse themes as "international hero" Che Guevara
and "say no to sexual slavery in the 21st
century". This is a clear reference to Korean and
Chinese "comfort women" who were forced into
prostitution to serve Japanese soldiers during
World War II.
Heather brought over three
of the artists to London for the opening of the
exhibition, including Pak Hyo-song, whom he had
met in Zimbabwe and who has two dramatic - if
highly un-North Korean - wildlife paintings of
zebras and lions on show.
Pak spent five
years in Zimbabwe as representative of the
Mansudae Art Studio, North Korea's leading group
of official artists, whose activities include
designing monuments and propaganda posters on
behalf of foreign, mainly African, governments.
Pak's dramatic if not entirely lifelike
oil paintings seem to have been influenced by the
well-known British African wildlife artist David
Shepherd, and sure enough, the 47-year-old
"Merited Artist" told Asia Times Online at the
opening party that he was a great fan of Shepherd.
He is undoubtedly the only North Korean
artist to have had a one-man show in Europe, after
Heather mounted an exhibition of 15 of his
paintings in Wiesbaden, Germany, in 2005.
The London opening featured a remarkable
mix of people. It was was a rare chance for the
three North Korean artists and normally elusive
members of the North Korean Embassy in London to
mix socially with South Korean diplomats, art
collectors and business people as well as with
British Foreign Office officials, members of
Britain's tiny pro-Pyongyang New Communist Party,
and at least one aging Moonie.
Heather
said he had hopes of bringing the show to Paris,
Berlin and even New York, and that only a few days
after the opening he had already sold 50 posters
at 250-300 pounds sterling (US$500-600) each, as
well as two large paintings priced at several
thousand pounds.
The sum of 300 pounds may
sound like a lot for a none too subtle North
Korean poster by an anonymous artist, but
propaganda art is highly fashionable nowadays,
with Chinese posters from the 1960s and 1970s
fetching hundreds of dollars in London and New
York. Given that the North Korean posters are
hand-painted while the Chinese pictures are
mass-produced prints that originally cost a few
cents, the North Korean versions may turn out to
be rather smart investments.
Heather said
he had "no idea" how much he had invested in the
exhibition, including renting a gallery on one of
London's most expensive streets for six weeks. "I
don't do it to make or lose money," he said, but
he clearly takes pride in being "a good
negotiator".
He said the North Koreans are
"very direct and straightforward" and that "they
are very open to ideas". He has visited Pyongyang
just once, in 2004, and conducted most of his
negotiations in Beijing. Heather said he had
bought 150 artworks, which he would show in
rotation. Pricing the pictures was difficult, as
this was the first time North Korean works of art
were being sold in the capitalist West, he noted.
"It opens up a new market which wasn't there
before."
The biggest and most expensive
picture in the exhibition is called Army Song
of Victory and is priced at 28,000 pounds. A
collective work by seven artists, it shows a
Korean People's Army brass band celebrating as US
troops flee in the Battle of Rakdong River in
1950. A spokeswoman said the gallery was
considering an offer of 21,000 pounds on the
opening night.
Heather said he had
received "a lot of help" from the North Korean
Embassy and the British Foreign Office, and quiet
encouragement also from the South Korean Embassy,
which was anxious to see what North Korean art was
all about. He has taken the North Korean artists
to the Houses of Parliament, the British Museum
and the historic city of Bath - despite the floods
covering much of western England - and invited
them to his home for a traditional British dinner
of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.
Heather has clearly formed an excellent
rapport with the North Korean Embassy, and has
even played golf with one of its diplomats on a
course near London. "He's sort of average like me.
He has played on the Pyongyang golf course; it's
mainly for the elite," Heather explained.
But holding an art exhibition is just the
beginning, and Heather is now hoping to bring a
150-member North Korean orchestra over to London
next year. "I'm hoping they will play in the Royal
Albert Hall or Royal Festival Hall," he said,
referring to London's two biggest concert halls.
This may not be quite as far-fetched as it
sounds. Heather is working on the orchestra
project with British soprano Suzannah Clarke, who
has given several concerts in Pyongyang and is one
of North Korea's few foreign celebrities. Her
rendition of "Danny Boy" is said to be especially
popular with North Korean audiences. Given her
fame and his business prowess, it's an unlikely
plan that just could come off.
Artists,
Arts and Culture of North Korea runs at La
Galleria, 5b Pall Mall, London SW1Y 4UY, until
September 2.
Michael Rank,
graduate in Chinese studies from Cambridge
University (1972), was a Beijing correspondent for
Reuters from 1980-84; he is a freelance writer in
London.
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