An expressive mode of abstraction was formed when Korean artists endeavord to modernize Korean art after the Independence and the Korean War. Emulating the newly emerging style of Art Informel and Abstract Expressionism after WWII, the new abstraction in Korea was called Informel. With little reflection on the viability of the term Informel to characterize Korean artists, the discourse on Korean abstraction has been established pertaining mainly to Art Informel, advocated by French critic Michel Tapie. Informel has been assessed as a success, which enabled Korean art to be shown at international venues. While taking a revisit to critics’ writings in the 1950s, however, this paper calls into questions the lack of critical interests in American art criticism among Korean art critics. This paper looks into the way in which Korean art critics and artists understood the style of postwar abstraction, and received criticism on the new abstraction. It also examines the way in which they responded to the introduction of American art in Korea, and poses a question on possible impacts of American art criticism on the development of postwar Korean abstraction.
Korean art critics of the 1950s asserted that postwar abstraction was the modern styles to emulate. Yet, they also stressed the importance of maintaining Korean identity while adopting advanced wester art. Whereas reviews from the early 1950s paid attention to broader issues, which included western modern art history, the relation between art and society, and the avant-grade’s resistance against tradtiona, later reviews tended to focus on the Informel style. Against the backdrop of art critics’ partial interest in Art Informel, several exhibitions of American art were held in Korea with the support of USIS. Reviews on those exhibitions reveal the critics’ interests in American art, particularly in its freedom in creation. There was even a call for more knowledge about American modern art to accelerate the modernization of Korean art. Despite the positive responses to the exhibitions of American modern art, there was little indication that Korean artists and critics had sought further information on American art and criticism. This paper calls into question this discrepancy between the formal interest in artistic style and the critical interest in theories. As anticipated by the hasty adoption of the term Informel, Informel as art movement dissipated fast, thereby failing to continue its experiments for further development. This paper contends that the formation of Korean Informel should be reassessed by investigating the lack of critical interests in the cultural and philosophical sources of western postwar abstraction. Thus, Korean Informeal still demands further historical and critical investigations to disclose the unexplored course of its formation.