Asia Times: Kitsch Jong-il: thoughts on art, diplomacy and progress


	December 15, 2001	atimes.com

The Koreas

PYONGYANG WATCH
Kitsch Jong-il: thoughts on art, diplomacy and progress
By Aidan Foster-Carter

I'm not sure that this column has ventured to tackle art before. But it makes a welcome change from war clouds, and our usual diet of politics and economics. For this aesthetic turn, thank the British Museum (BM) - which recently put on a North Korea Study Day, surely the first in this august institution's history. It was a great success. About 100 of us - more than I'd have dared hope - filled a lecture hall to hear eight talks, mostly illustrated, including two by senior cultural officials specially invited from Pyongyang.

As the museum's director explained, this arose from a visit to North Korea last March by a team from the BM and the British Library (BL). They came, they saw - and they bought, returning with a selection of Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) works of art currently on display in the BM's permanent Korea gallery. By chance, their visit coincided with one by diplomats preparing to open a British embassy in Pyongyang.

Her Britannic Majesty's first envoy to the DPRK, Dr James Hoare, himself a historian, kicked off the day with a lively account of his unusual posting, and the challenge of pursuing a more activist diplomacy than North Korea is used to.

Not being much of a diplomat myself, I was intrigued to see how delicate issues were handled. A case in point is North Korea's bizarre claim in 1993 to have found the tomb of Tangun, the mythical founder of the Korean race in 2333 BC. Having "found" it, they promptly rebuilt it as a massive monument with white marble and granite aplenty. Other more authentic royal tombs have had similar modern makeovers, bearing no obvious relation to how they really looked. North Koreans themselves call this "making the past serve the present" - the title the BL's Beth McKillop chose, tellingly, for her tactful talk on the topic.

By contrast, Kim Myong-chol of the DPRK's cultural preservation agency described it as an "honorable task to preserve and hand down this heritage in its original state". His topic was the jewel of that heritage: the glorious wall paintings from tombs of the Koguryo kingdom (277 BC-AD 668), which stretched from north Korea into what is now China. The colors are so fresh that one questioner implied they might have been touched up; but we were assured this was due to special minerals in the pigments.

The Koguryo artists painted mostly natural motifs, rich in symbolism: blue dragon, white tiger, red bird. But progress marches on. Today's North Korean artists have different priorities - as a slide show by the director of the DPRK's national gallery, Han Chang-gyu, amply illustrated. The first dozen pictures were all of - yup, you guessed. The Great Leader Is Always With Us; Torchlight in Pochonbo; On the Way to Counterattack; and so on. All showed Kim Il-sung in heroic poses - taller than anyone else, and more brightly lit - surrounded by adoring soldiers, peasants, men, women, children, cornfields. Corn indeed.

And then, of course, it was someone else's turn to have his dozen. The Dear Leader's preferred pose is on horseback, whether as a toddler on a white steed or as "General Kim Jong-il, brilliant commander of Mount Paekdu". All this bears about as much relation to reality as Tangun's tomb - except he does like horses, sort of. He once said: "English horses are no good: their ankles break when I ride them." (Wonder why.) For light relief, the projector kept jamming - perhaps choking on so much kitsch. To kill time, someone - okay, it was me - asked a question. Dr Han had stressed the "thorough maintenance of realism in painting methods". So what has the DPRK got against abstract art? "That style of painting is not loved by Korean people; they don't understand it." So much for the main global trend in 20th century art. I didn't pursue it further.

Once we got past the genuflections, some North Korean painting is actually quite nice. "Evening Glow on Kangson Steelworks" is a fine Turneresque sunset. There was a rare note of humor in "Who Is Taller": a picture of kids joshing, evocative of the witty 18th-century genre paintings of Kim Hong-do. And there was one absolute knockout, which the BM's Jane Portal wisely snapped up on her trip. "Building the Highway to Nampo", by Pak Kyong-hwi, is a riot of color and movement, vividly conveying all the razzmatazz of a huge construction project: the people, the banners, the bulldozers, the mess, the noise. It really grabs you.

But that's the exception. I went back for a second look at the DPRK exhibits a week later, and came away just as depressed. Where they use traditional genres, such as calligraphy and lacquerware, frankly they don't bear comparison with the subtle beauty of the real thing. Copying Koryo gray-green celadon vases is one thing - but decorating them with motifs of Pyongyang skyscrapers? As for such modern styles as poster art, which some in the BM profess to like, to me these militarist rants - "Let's Decisively Establish the Coal Industry, the Electric Power Supply, Rail Transportation, and the Minerals Industry!" - are just clones of models created under Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin. In this as in much else, North Korea is an epigone.

I'm all for diplomacy, cultural and otherwise. But with Hegel, I also believe in the standpoint of eternity. My bet is that a century from now, Koreans will look back in horror at how a brief but dire dynasty with derivative and vulgar tastes had the nerve to mess with Korea's historic past, cut the country off from the global mainstream, and squeeze the creative lifeblood out of Korean artists. All in the name of one Karl Marx, who for 30 years toiled just yards away in the BM reading room. He must be spinning in his grave.

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