Rha Hyeseok, who was our country’s first woman oil painter, gave an exhibition of her pictures for the first time in Seoul, and worked diligently on the stage of the Joseon Art Exhibition. During the period when some senior painters such as Go Heedong and Kim Kwanho left the circle of painters in the Western style, Rha Hyeseok did not lose self-awareness as a pioneer, and left numerous statements related to art in parallel with critical works.
Starting from the publishing of “Paintings and Joseon Women” in Dong-A Ilbo in February 1921, she left a distinct mark on early modern art criticism, in 1924 writing “The sundry Observations of Gyeongseong: I Have a Look One Year after Seeing the Joseon Art Exhibition,” which is the first review of an exhibition written by a critic using her real name and, in 1933, “The Impression of the Joseon Art Exhibition” serially, which is the first criticism that comprehensively criticized the Joseon Art Exhibition. Besides art criticism, she wrote articles with enlightened characteristics that provided the concept and idea of art to the public, or published essays giving personal insight into what she had experienced and felt in the creative process. Moreover, she wrote in detail about the art world and art trends she experienced in the West in her travels, and recounted her travels around the world and how that became a turning point in her life.
By today’s standards, the art criticism Rha Hyeseok wrote can be evaluated as only opinions that describe her impressive and subjective views, rather than objective observations based on academic basics such as aesthetics, science of the arts, and art history. She also confessed her limitations as a critic, describing herself as an outsider. However, there is no denying her achievements, in that she concretely pointed out the strengths and weaknesses of painters’ works, provided formative logic for the public, and edified the creation of art by voicing criticism about the mechanism of the contemporary art world, and connected art and the public in the early period of the field of art criticism.
Her form of criticism, which combined creation and theory, shows a meaning that maintains literary calligraphic painters’ tradition with an embrace of poetry, calligraphy, and painting, and the aspect of an elite artist that directly defends her creative activities. That is why we must pay attention to Rha Hyeseok, who lived her life full of twists and turns, left not a few art reviews, and contributed to the realization of a new painting sprit during a transitional period.