李仁星の郷土色―民族主義と植民主義―

Lee In-sung is considered the most successful artist of the Colonial Period (1910-1945), having won several prizes at the Joseon Art Exhibition in Korea, and the Teiten or Shin-Bunten in Japan. Artistic assessment of his work, however, mixes praise and criticism. On the one hand, he is viewed as someone who helped to define Korean identity and aesthetics. On the other hand, he is regarded as an artist who, swayed by the political current of his time, lacked historic awareness. Especially, the critical debates focus on whether his use of so-called local colors' in the 1930s, a switch from his urban themes of the 1920s, was an expression of nationalistic sentiment or an effort to win approval from Japanese juries, who were known to favor exotic portrayals of Korea. Yet the debate has usually assumed the form of short essays by art critics based on their impression of his works. This paper, then, is an art historical attempt to investigate and critically assess the images in the works of Lee Insung, which are ambiguously interwoven with both nationalism and colonialism. Marginalization of Lee's works conforms to Korean images created by Japanese artists who lived in or traveled to Korea and who portrayed Korean women in exotic style, far removed from modernization, politics, and social realities of the time. This was also representative of the cultural imperialism of Japan that orientalized Asian countries as backward, and advocated itself as spokesperson for “modern” civilization.