Picture of Park Geun-hye giving birth

In November 1980, an art group called “Reality and Comment” held its commencement exhibition in Seoul’s traditional arts neighborhood of Insa-dong. Young painters showcased their works under the slogan “Art that communicates with society.” This marked the beginning of the public art scene, which was mainstream Korean art in the decade. Public artists stressed the social participation of art and tried hard to find genres appealing to the public, such as hanging pictures.

Hong Seong-dam, 57, a public engraving artist, supervised cultural propaganda of civilian troops in the pro-democracy movement in Gwangju in May 1980. “We had few visual media that helped the movement to be known to the outside, so I started printing work,” he said, adding, “I considered it a movement tool instead of art.” Hanging pictures, which were often used in the movement, were mostly the collective work of many artists. Hong was imprisoned for sending the image of a hanging picture titled “The History of the People’s Liberation Movement” to the World Festival of Youth and Students. He served three years in prison after the Supreme Court found him guilty of creating a piece abetting the enemy. He made the picture with some 70 other artists.

The National Museum of Modern Art held an exhibit on 15 years of public art in February 1994, when interest in public art had faded. The event featured a collection of all public art pieces. Yim Yeong-bhang, then curator of the museum, said, “We tried to exclude works with a strong taste of communism or pieces that weren`t so artistic.” In the exhibition, however, many paintings were coarse and had little artistic value. The cultural community said the event effectively ended the era of public art, calling it the “funeral of public art.”

In 1999, Hong shed his rough image of the past and showed artistically mature pieces in his personal exhibition. He seemed to break with art being used as a tool of a movement. He caused yet another controversy, however, after he unveiled a picture in which Park Geun-hye, the presidential candidate of the ruling Saenuri Party, gives birth to a child who looks like Park Chung-hee, her late father and former president. Hong did not hide his political intention, saying, “The picture is derived from the rumor that Park gave birth to a child.” This is disgusting and hardly artistic, but more like propaganda since the rumor was unconfirmed. Those who support Hong cry freedom of expression but given his past and the history of public art, he could be said to have ruined his artistic soul in the run-up to the Dec. 19 presidential election.

Editorial Writer Hong Chan-sik (chansik@donga.com)