• The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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• no.7
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• pp.125-163
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• 2009

The artworks of Socialist Realism of the former Soviet Union, with the beginning of the 21st century, are gaining a new attention from art collectors. One reason for this might consist in the fact that relevant art pieces exemplify the ways in which they visualize ideas on the basis of their high-profile art tradition and also in which they integrate their utopian ideals with mysticism. These aspects of the Soviet art goes far beyond the wide-spread assumption that their art, as a means of propaganda, principally represents a political allegiance to the system. With Stalin coming into power in the 1930s, the artistic trend of Socialist Realism obtained a nationwide sympathy and support from people, giving birth to a new art which essentially corresponded to the demands of the political power. An official art current of the USSR over the period from the 1930s to 1950s, Socialist Realism was in tandem with the Communist commitment to the party and popularity, symbolizing a loyalty to the cause. It was thus characterized by plainness and lucidity so that ordinary people could gain easy access to art. Its salient feature, over an entire range of art, was an optimistic pursuit of a utopian dream. Therefore, it tallied with the popular sentiment for a Communist paradise, giving form to their beliefs in human agency working at the materialist world and also to such abstract concepts as force, fitness, and beauty by adding even mythical ideals. Its main subject matter includes harvest feasts of collective farms, imaginary socialist cities, grand marches of heroic laborers and in this way it served as a propaganda for a sacred utopia of socialist totalitarianism. On the other end of the spectrum, however, rose the second camp of art, which put an emphasis on bona-fide artistic activities of plastic art and on an artist's personal expression and freedom, as opposed to the surface optimism of Socialist Realism. Central to the Russian Avant Garde art, which prized the above-mentioned values, were Malevich's Geometric Abstraction and A. Rodchenko's Constructivism. Furthermore, in the transitional era of the late 20th century and the 21st century it was recognized that film art or electronic media art, rather than traditional genre of paintings, would function as a more efficient way of propaganda. These new genres were made possible by ridiculing the stereotypes of the Russian lifestyle and also by ignoring ethical or professional dimensions of artworks. That is, they reinvented themselves into a sort of field art, seemingly degrading the quality of artworks and transforming them into artifacts or simulacres in the very sense of post-modernism. The advent of the new era brought about the formation and occupation of pop culture of the younger generations, calling into question the idea of art as the class-determined. It also increased the attention to field art, which extensively found way to modern art centers, galleries, and exhibition projects. It can be stated that this was a natural outcome of human nature.

• The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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• no.6
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• pp.27-50
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• 2008

This thesis examines contemporary Chinese painting after the Cultural Revolution(1966~76), focusing upon so-called "Chinese Pop art", which I termed as "Socialist Pop art". I considered the art of this period within the broader context of social changes especially after the Tienanmen incident of 1989. After the Cultural Revolution during which idolization of Chairman Mao was at its peak, one of the major changes in communist China was that an anti-Mao wave was generated in almost every social class. For example, novels that revealed the hardships during the Cultural Revolution were published. Posters that openly criticized the Maoism were also produced and displayed on the walls, and demand for democracy spurred widespread activist movements among young generations. These broad social changes were also reflected in art. A variety of art movements were introduced from the West to China, and after a period of experimentation with the new imported styles, artists began to apply the new artistic idiom to their works in order to visualize their own social and political realities they lived in. It was a shift from earlier Socialist Realism to a new expression either directly or indirectly, "Socialist Pop", an amalgam of Socialist Realism and Pop art tradition. After the 1989 crackdown of Tienanmen Square protest, when communist government quelled with brutal measures the students, workers, and ordinary people who rose for democracy, greater urge to protest the Deng Xiaoping regime emerged. This time coincided with the gradual emergence of art using Pop art vocabulary to satirize the social reality, the Socialist Pop art, along with many other art forms all with avant-garde spirit. One of the most frequent subjects of Chinese Pop art was visual images of Chairman Mao and his Cultural Revolution, and new China that was saturated with capitalism, which tainted the Chinese way of life with a Western way of consumerism and commercialism. The reason for the popularity of Mao's image was spurred by the "Mao Craze" in the early 1990's. People suddenly began to fall in a kind of nostalgia for the past, and once again, Mao Zedong was idolized as an entity who can heal the problems of modern China who had been marching towards their ultimate destination, the economic development. But this time Chairman Mao was no more an idol but just a popular, commercial product. He is no more an object of worship of almost religious nature but he has become an iconography symbolizing the complex nature of present Chinese society. During this process of depicting the social reality, Chinese artists are making the authority and sanctity of Maoism ineffective. Dealing with this new trend of contemporary Chinese art in view of "Socialist Pop art" two manners of re-creating Pop art can be illustrated: one that incorporates the propaganda posters of the Cultural Revolution; the other borrows from Chinese traditional popular imagery or mass media, such as photos taken during Mao era. What is worth mentioning is that these posters and photos of the Cultural Revolution can be identified as 'popular' media, as they were directed to educate the popular mass, thus combination of this ingenuous pop media with Western Pop art can be fully justified as a genre unique to China. Through this genre, we can discover a new chapter of the Chinese contemporary painting and its society, as their Pop art can be considered as self-portraits true to their present appearances.

• Journal of the Architectural Institute of Korea Planning & Design
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• v.34 no.10
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• pp.119-130
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• 2018

In the late 1950s, departing from their unquestioning following of Soviet architecture, North Koreans attempted to discover the specificities of traditional Korean architecture and apply them to their contemporary monuments. This paper examines the ways in which North Korean architects developed their unique version of Socialist realism in the making of Pyongyang Grand Theater. The traditional elements in harmony with North Korea's political ideology-an early form of Juche ideology-and modern building technologies were to be viewed as contemporary elements, and not as a simple revival of the past. This study applies Socialist realism's compositional principle "national in form and socialist in content" to Pyongyang Grand Theater and examines specifically what "socialist content" and "national form" were and how the two were combined in the construction of Pyongyang Grand Theater. By situating the building in the context of localization of Socialist realism which is universal art principle of the communist world, this study contributes to the deeper and wider understanding of North Korea's Modern Joseon Architecture.

• Journal of architectural history
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.7-20
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• 2023

This study aims to reveal the multilayered nature of the formal aspects of communal house architecture in North Korea. It is said that Kim Jong Il, who emerged as a successor after the mid-1970s, brought about a change in the architecture, leading the construction of a sculptural communal house on Gwangbok Street in 1989, and wrote The art of architecture (1992), which theorized architecture as an object of art. Therefore, it is widely perceived that the communal house was transformed from a simple form of living function to an artistic architecture with the rise of Kim Jong Il. This study, however, argues that this change was the result of an internal evolution in North Korean architecture, rather than a simple change in the position of an individual in power. It seeks to move away from the dichotomy that divides the communal house into two periods: the "KimIl-sung period," in which the communal house was laid out in a simple form to provide mass supply and a socialist lifestyle, and the "Kim Jong-il period," in which the communal house took on an artistic form, such as the Gwangbok Street communal house, in the early years of reconstruction. In the 1950s and 1960s, before KimJong-il's arrival, the communal house form was not simply a flat arrangement, but a three-dimensional and sculptural consideration of the effect on the cityscape.

• Journal of architectural history
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.47-58
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• 2022

The purpose of this research is to understand Ko Yu-seop's perception of 'contemporary emerging architecture' in the West by investigating into his two early 1930s' articles: 'On Emerging Arts, Particularly the Cutting-edge Architecture' (Jan. 1931) and 'Russian Architecture' (Dec. 1932). As a result of the investigation, it is argued that he attempted to systematically describe his contemporary architecture, fromthe concept of 'modern' to representative architectural theories, and his suggested reference list is considered meaningful since it illustrates one aspect of how modern architectural knowledge was transferred to Korea at that time. As his limitation, however, it should be pointed out that a significant part of his writing was a verbatim translation of the Japanese critic Takao Itagaki's New Art Acquisition (1930). Nevertheless, the two articles give us a valuable understanding related to his socialist tendency, his preferred commune-type city-cum-architecture that reflects the ideology, etc. Hereafter, this understanding needs to be further discussed in both study areas of art history and architectural history in Korea.

• 중국학논총
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• no.58
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• pp.91-119
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• 2018

As for the various pathological phenomena of the society which is getting worse without any improvement, the film paints the phenomenon nakedly with the cold and cynical gaze on the basis of realism. These attempts originated in the Chinese art world, and they cynically sketched a Chinese society that lost hope after 6·4. The cynicism of the art world contains meanings such as instruction, meanness, passion, indifference, and mockery. In particular, the distrust of the social system after 6·4 and the collapse of the Soviet and Eastern European socialist nations gave the Chinese people a skeptical view of socialism. This situation of the times has a cynical viewpoint to face as it is instead of prudent criticism. This cynical view was embraced by filmmakers who were not silent on The pathological phenomenon of society, and they were directed to films. is a film about the love, separation, suicide, frustration and reconciliation of youth in the era of identity confusion after 6·4. The characters in the film did not mention a single word about the state power that made them do it. based on the characteristics of women in northeast China and the murder that occurred around a woman with a beauty that was not like a laundry employee. Centered around the unresolved slice murder case, expressed human moral ambiguity that does not distinguish good fortune from human instinct for struggle for survival, and portrayed the scenery of a very cold northeast small city. But it does not show any criticism of the crime. Based on the true story of the 2000s, the portrays the uncomfortable aspects of China that established Chinese socialism. A film composed of four short episodes conveys the destiny set by God.

• Korean Institute of Interior Design Journal
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• v.15 no.5 s.58
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• pp.12-19
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• 2006

The artistic features of German Expressionism in the early twentieth century are often recognized for its abstract and emotional representation in art and architecture. Expressionism departed from the paintings, notably the works of Der Blaue Reiter and the Bruck, but the architectural works with curve and organic features were also taken as expressive. German architects Hans Scharoun (1893-1972) and Hugo Haring (1882-1958), in this regard, have long been regarded as Expressionist architects, but recent studies suggest that their architectural designs include a profound idea of modem functional building. Scharoun and Haring held a socialist utopian vision as other modernists have also had, but their inherent view upon modern architecture was function which was mistakenly viewed as Expressionism in earlier documents. This paper intends to exemplify how Expressionism is inappropriate to represent the expressive presentations of Scharoun and Haring. Despite the fact that their designs possess certain expressionist elements, their works can also be constructed as an advanced functionalism. Many young architects in Germany were not given chances to build due to economic hardship after the First World War, and they were naturally led to imagery sketch designs for future architecture. Abstract Idea was freely exposed in its preliminary visual form, and it is also uneasy to draw a borderline between expressive presentation and the Expressionism itself.

• The Journal of Korean Philosophical History
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• no.39
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• pp.221-235
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• 2013

Through the comparative analysisand inductive research on main creation styles of Chinese, American and Japanese animation films, a conclusion can be given out, which means that the animation film style of each country can hardly be formed without their own traditional painting art, aesthetics habits and ways of thinking. It is these characteristics that form their unique animation film style. America emphasizes realism art, development and utilization of new technology, Japan pays sepcial attention totraditional painting art and comic stories. In business aspect, they bring about different business models relying on the experience of satisfying the diverse needs of domestic and global entertainment markets. When it comes to the content field, they carry forward universal values and meet the individualistic heroismso that a variety of business animation films and art animation films find their ways into the global market and acquire great popularity among audiences from all over the world. Through the comparasion of American and Japanese animation films, a new view to analyze the animation films of China is created. Animation creation is largely based on the need of socialist ideology from 50s to 80s. Even though the purposes of animation film creations returned to satisfying the diverse requirements of commercial markets and audiences, the consequences, such as the break gap of creations and talents, the lack of diverse creative styles and commercial market operation mechanism, sitll affect China's animation films today. Japan found thier position from the American model and became successful. Nowadays, China need find our own creative style and position from American model and Japanese model. And the systematic reformings that are detailed in the government managements, industry standards, internationalized talents cultivation and accumulation are the essential point.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.181-195
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• 2009

Modern constitution obtains its justice by protecting the people's basic legal rights. The constitutional rights can be more than a defensive measure against government power by modern viewpoints. The government has to create an atmosphere which the rights are not violated. The Constitution provides that the government has to make efforts to prevent disaster and protect the people from danger in Clause 34, Art. 6. The government has an obligation to protect the people's basic legal rights of life, health and property from fire damages, and those rights are gathering strength under a socialist state principle as fundamental ideology of modern societies. The present fire inspection system gains a point constitutionally but it still needs to be certified as the most suitable system. This article examines the solution to operate fire inspection system efficiently, given the reality of present system operation. It is necessary to improve the system by integrating the present fire inspection with the self fire inspection. Government needs to re-modification the Fire inspections system for prevent and promote (resolve) the problem which government officer (ex fire fighter) can make a irregularities and corruption as do it oneself.

• The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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• no.4
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• pp.77-104
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• 2006

The propaganda paintings in oil colors or in forms of posters made from 1949 to 1966 have gone through some changes experiencing the influence of the Soviet Union Art and discussion of nationalization, while putting political messages of the time in the picture planes. The propaganda paintings which have been through this process became an effective means of encouraging the illiterate people in political ideologies, production, and learning. Alike other propaganda paintings in different mediums, the ones which were painted in oil colors and in the form of posters have been produced fundamentally based on Mao Zedong's intensification of the literary art on the talks on literature at Yenan. Yet, the oil paintings and posters were greatly influenced by the socialist realism and propaganda paintings of the Soviet Union, compared to other propaganda paintings in different mediums. Accordingly, they were preponderantly dealt in the discussions of nationalization of the late '50s. To devide in periods, the establishment of People's Republic of China in 1949 as a diverging point, the propaganda paintings made before and after 1949 have differences in subject matters and styles. In the former period, propaganda paintings focused on the political lines of the Communists and enlightenment of the people, but in the latter period, the period of Cultural Revolution, the most important theme was worshiping Mao Zedong. This was caused by reflection of the social atmosphere, and it is shown that the propaganda painters had reacted sensitively to the alteration of politics and the society. On the side of formalities, the oil paintings and posters made before the Cultural Revolution were under a state of unfolding several discussions including nationalization while accepting the Soviet Union styles and contents, and the paintings made afterwards show more of unique characteristics of China. In 1956, the discussion about nationalization which had effected the whole world of art, had strongly influenced the propaganda paintings in oil colors more than anything. There were two major changes in the process of making propaganda paintings in oil colors. One was to portray lives of the Chinese people truthfully, and the other was to absorb the Chinese traditional styles of expression. After this period, the oil painters usually kept these rules in creating their works, and as a result, the subject matters, characters, and backgrounds have been greatly Sinicized. For techniques came the flat colored surface of the new year prints and the traditional Chinese technique of outlining were used for expressing human figures. While the propaganda paintings in oil colors achieved high quality and depth, the posters had a very direct representation of subject matters and the techniques were unskilled compared to the oil paintings. However, after the establishment of People's Republic of China, the posters were used more than any other mediums for propagation of national policy and participation of the political movements, because it was highly effective in delivering the policies and political lines clearly to the Chinese people who were mostly illiterate. The poster painters borrowed techniques and styles from the Soviet Union through books and exhibitions on Soviet Union posters, and this relation of influences constantly appears in the posters made at the time. In this way, like the oil paintings, the posters which have been made with a direct influence of the Soviet Union had developed a new, sinicised process during the course of nationalization. The propaganda paintings in oil colors or in forms of posters, which had undergone the discussion of nationalization, had put roots deep down in the lives of the Chinese people, and this had become another foundation for the amplification of influences of political propaganda paintings in the following period of Cultural Revolution.