Translatability and 20th century Korean art (1930s to 1990s)

Abstract

This PhD thesis is a critical inquiry into the (un) translatability of the 'difference' of an art produced in a non-'Western' context. My inquiries into the translatability of cultural differences do not deal with 'the incommensurability' of these differences, but explore the possibilities of their significant translations. This has been carried out in terms of case studies of four major Korean artists, their representative works, and the artistic developments of the 1930s-1990s in Korea. The artists in order are OH Chi Ho, PARK Seo Bo, SUH Se Ok and Kim Sooja. Each of Chapters 3 to 6 focuses on one of these artists whose work represents the most significant developments of colonial and 'postcolonial' Korean art, in reference to my theoretical arguments grounded in Chapters I and 2: the ideological and political discourses of cultural identity of a colonial and postcolonial nation's art; a marginalized nation's discourse of 'double translation' in cross-cultural transactions; and the postmodern and postcolonial concept of a 'peripheral' nation's hybridity. The term 'translation' in this thesis covers all kinds of translation: from translating the figurative to the literal, translating between different cultures and translating the past into the present. I will also use the term 'translate' as a metaphor for certain kinds of transference and dependence-linking it to Hegel's philosophy of self-consciousness and aspects of Lacan's psychoanalytic theory in order to illuminate and analyze problems involved in theorizing cultural identity and cross cultural transactions within the context of the current globalization in which geographical, economical, cultural and conceptual spaces are becoming increasingly hybrid. Throughout the thesis, Iuse the case studies of particular Korean artists as the basis of a critique of the nationalist Korean analysis of colonial and postcolonial Korean art, a postcolonial theory-inspired notion of the hybridity of an assumed peripheral culture/country (for example Korea), totalizing generalizations of 'Asianness' or 'Koreanness' of contemporary Korean art, and the Euro-centric concepts of 'cross­ cultural influence'. These studies focus on how certain Korean appropriations of 'otherness' of the 'exotic Western' imports within specific historical contexts have played an integral role in the ongoing process of conceptualizing and formulating forms of national and cultural identity.