Korean Crafts Reveal ‘Innate Sensitivity’

The Korean contemporary crafts show “Land of the Morning Calm” plays tricks on its curators from Seoul and Washington, D.C.

The exhibition’s metal and fiber works appear different, depending on which side of the Pacific Ocean they’re viewed from.

From his Western vantage, the Smithsonian Institution’s Michael Monroe claims the works display a “new vision” that goes “beyond the familiar and the proven.” Monroe, the exhibit’s guest curator and juror, culled the pieces for “Morning Calm,” which is on display through March 12 at the San Diego State University Art Museum.

However, Monroe’s overseas counterpart, Kyung Sung Lee, sees the exhibit’s 65 works--ranging from jewelry, holloware, metal sculpture, tapestries and cloth figures--as the modern offspring of traditional Korean design. Lee is the director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul.

In the exhibition catalogue’s introduction, Lee refers to an “innate sensitivity,” which--having been shaped and tempered by the art and culture of three historical kingdoms beginning in the 5th Century--is still the grounding for today’s Korean art and design.

“From the gold crown of the Silla Era, the elegant jewelry and metal of the Paekche Era and the the colorful costumes of royalty and the clothing of common people during the Yi Dynasty . . . an innate Korean sensitivity is reflected in centuries of culture and artistic expression,” Lee wrote.

The show offers visitors a rare view of Asian applied design, which has led to discussion of just what constitutes the Korean aesthetic, said Joel S. Eide, director of the Northern Arizona University Art Gallery in Flagstaff, where “Morning Calm” first showed in the United States.

“Most of the Korean artists in the exhibit expressed a closeness to nature,” Eide said. “Many of the motifs hinge on natural forms--delicate grass etchings, figures that represent trees, the sun, the moon. The emphasis on nature also comes out in write-ups by the artists and in the works’ titles: ‘Fire of Autumn,’ ‘Wind,’ ‘Mountain Spirit.’ The connection to nature in the works is almost mystical.

“The American artist will not do that. They may derive the same shapes, but I don’t think they feel the same kind of affinity.”

Another difference, Eide claims, is that the Korean artists included in the show tend to have stronger grounding in design theory than some Western craftsmen. Long recognized as a fine art form in Korea, metal and fiber crafts have been given proportionately more attention in university art departments there than in the United States, and almost all of the works here are by artists associated with Korean universities, Eide said.

In the United States, the average college curriculum places more emphasis on practical application, Eide said. By comparison, U.S. students of metal and textile design take fewer theoretical courses and spend more time in the studio, he said.

The San Diego presentation comes at the tail end of a two-year North American tour, Eide said. It has also been seen at the University of Oregon in Eugene; the Alberta Crafts Council gallery in Edmonton, Canada; Indiana University at Bloomington; the Korean Cultural Service in Los Angeles, and seven other locations.