This essay is an attempt to present the potential of oral history in academic writing for the study of Korea"s modern and contemporary art history by reconstituting and analyzing, as well as by interpreting through historical connections, oral exchanges with Woonsan Cho Phyunghwi(1932- ) on the subject of ‘Transformation and Modernization of Paintings and Calligraphic Works in the 20th Century Korea’ at the Arts Council Korea in 2008.
Cho Phyunghwi produced abstract works amidst the heat of l"Art Informel during the 1960"s after winning an award at the National Exhibition with Sitting Woman when he was an undergraduate, in 1958. However, he switched over to traditional ink and water landscape paintings in the mid-1970"s and has from the 1980"s to present day, for over 30 years, been painting scenes and thus focusing on reinventing ink and water landscape paintings through a contemporary language. This process of change in Cho Phyunghwi"s work, in a sense, shares the same pulse with developments in the world of artists to the extent that it can be said to be a compressed version of Korea"s artists circle. However, in his oral statements, the man"s past experiences are reignited in the present and turn up freshly historicized. Cho Phyunghwi becomes greatly excited when speaking of episodes related to the National Exhibit and repeats or dwells on the same episode, indicating how much the National Exhibit means to him. However, plainly surfacing in his oral statements were the psychological conflict and remorse the artist felt as he forfeited entry into the National Exhibit after failing to gain special selection even though the artist"s own academic advisor was a panel member on the National Exhibit"s jury.
Regarding the abstract works he made in the heat of l"Art Informel, the fever of which had for an instant swept through the art scene, Cho did not invest those works with significant meaning, saying that they were merely "works done to follow a trend." The reason for his recollection as such can be attributed to his pride for having worked for over 30 years as an ink and water landscape painter, as well as his desire to be remembered as a landscape painter. Cho Phyunghwi began implementing various sculptural experimentations he had grasped through his abstract works of the 1960"s into ink and water landscape paintings from the mid-1970"s onward. These were apparent in two kinds of leanings: the method of completely filling the surface, so that no sense of space could be felt, with a closeup of a part of nature as when one works in abstraction, and the way of viewing the entirety of a mountain from a high point and capturing the vigor of the mountain and the atmosphere of the clouds onto a large screen. The grand compositions in which the force of structure and vigor can be felt through dark ink and carefree brush strokes are hallmarks of Cho Phyunghwi"s creative world. As he continued to speak about his ink and oil landscape paintings, Cho Phyunghwi shifted from an earlier position and slowly began to mention that his ink and water landscape paintings, too are endued with his experience with abstract art.
Meanwhile, upon inspection regarding the fact that Cho Phyunghwi was the student of Chongcheon Lee Sangbom, who was his teacher at Hongik University, and Unbo Kim Kichang, various changes in emotion and the situations in the artist circles, which would have been hard to find in written records, appeared during dictation. Up to this day, that Cho Phyunghwi was a student of Chongcheon and Unbo"s, once entered in, has been continuously replayed in the writings of critics and gained significant meaning in evaluating Cho Phyunghwi. However, unlike what literary records indicate, it could be noticed during three separate dictations that this teacher-student relationship changes in complex and subtle ways depending on the changes within the circle of artists. Examples such as this convinced me that oral histories can have highly useful applications in researching teacher-student relationships and, furthermore, theories on artists.