The translucence of the transhistorical: the case of Korean Dansaekhwa. Issue 1 (2nd January 2018) - Morley, Simon
Abstract : Dansaekhwa, which means 'one-colour painting' in Korean, is a stylistic term now employed as a way of drawing attention to a tendency in Korean art that came to the fore in the 1970s. While Dansaekhwa artists adopted procedures and underlying assumptions from the modern Western tradition, they also sought to cleave to what they understood to be key characteristics of a traditional Korean culture that was fast disappearing. I discuss Walter Benjamin concept of the 'dialectical image, ' and through drawing on Jörn Rüsen's work on historical consciousness and the 'Tao' of history, and the writings of the Korean artist, Lee Ufan, I make an argument for Dansaekhwa as the transhistorical re-visioning of temporality in terms not of the historical categories 'past' and 'present' but rather as a more subjectivized 'then' and 'now' grounded in somatic experience.