Youn Myeung-ro: 50 years of life in art

Perched high on a hill in Pyeongchang-dong, Seoul, artist Youn Myeung-ro’s atelier overlooks the two greatest mountains in Seoul. Having the rocky Bukhan Mountain as a backdrop, Youn’s 35-year-old house has a breathtaking view of Inwang Mountain in the front.

The artist may not need to look too far to find motifs for his paintings as he can see clearly the seasonal changes of nature and find its wonders inside of his house. A 200-year-old pine tree sits in the center of his home, built in a quadrangle-shape to protect the tree.

The 77-year-old artist paints in the basement where natural sunlight comes from the roof window and the sights of beautiful sky and mountains are available anytime.

“Sometimes I stay up all night figuring out how I am going to start painting here,” said Youn at his atelier. 

Youn debuted in the Korean art scene in 1959, winning the top prize of the National Art Exhibition that year. He established a unique style of painting, which left impressive footprints in the development of abstract art in Asia, according to the director of the National Art Museum of China Fan Dian.

His 54 years of artistic development can now be seen at his retrospective at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, a survey of Youn’s artistic development in the Informel abstract art from the 1960s until now.

“I painted abstract paintings when none of us in Korea had ever heard of Informel art. It was more of an abstract expressionism back then. But then later my paintings during the period matched the characteristics of Informel art,” said Youn. 

Looking back at his artistic career spanning more than half a century, Youn said he felt emotional when the retrospective exhibition opened on March 26.

“I think I always did my best in art and in life,” he said.

Unlike the typical retrospectives featuring as many of the artists’ works as possible, journals and photos, Youn wanted his exhibition to be like “watching a movie.”

“I asked the museum to hang my paintings sparsely. And of course, no photos or newspaper article scraps. I wanted to show people the natural flow of my works,” said Youn.

The exhibition follows the changes in his artistic practice in terms of composition, media and expressions, categorized by decade.

Youn found his unique expressive methods in the Crack series of the 1970s, which featured accidental cracking as a result of the paint and chemical pigments that caused cracks on the surface of canvas in the process of drying.

In the Ollegit series from the 1980s, he tried to show how traditional aesthetics and contemporary expression can merge. In the 1990s, Youn sought to capture the energy of nature onto large canvas in the Anonymous Land series, using his body as a tool. In 2000s, he started the Homage to Gyeomjae series, inspired by the Joseon painter Gyeomjae, who set the uniquely Korean style of landscape painting amid the prevalent Chinese influence on art.

In 2010, Youn held a solo exhibition at the National Art Museum of China where he showed 39 pieces of artwork created during the last 10 years.

“I received a good response from viewers. They said my paintings have subtle allure, between Oriental paintings and the Western paintings,” he said.

The director of the National Art Museum of China Fan Dian praised his works saying Youn’s artworks provide answers to questions that Chinese and Korean artists face today.

“Both of our nations’ artists deal with a set of circumstances engendered by collisions in the age of multiculturalism, a result of globalizing trends, which has made the internal artistic dialogue between our two nations even more indispensable. How we seek support from within our own artistic traditions in the East, how we respond to the challenges posed by Western art, and how we rejuvenate our traditions using a language with ‘universal significance’ are all important issues Chinese and Korean artists alike must face. Youn Myeung-ro has given credible thought to precisely this issue,” wrote the director in the book published for the 2010 China exhibition.

Youn, who said he has always explored new methods so as to not bore his viewers, said his new goal was to paint something that can touch people’s soul.

“There are many fun artworks nowadays, but I don’t see works that touch people’s soul. I think that could be my last assignment,” he said.

By Lee Woo-young (wylee@herladcorp.com)