Tuesday, September 26, 2006

More Zombie Art News from North Korea

"Railway liner" - Sin Pong Nam

A bit late, but well worth the retelling:

Pyongyang, July 26 (KCNA) -- A national exhibition of art works was held at the Pyongyang International Cultural Centre. On display there were more than 300 art pieces such as Korean paintings, oil paintings, graphic paintings and calligraphies done by creators and teachers of the Mansudae Art Studio, the Central Art Studio and Pyongyang University of Fine Arts and others in the capital city and provincial capitals.
They contributed to the exhibition those pieces drawn at factories, on farms and in scenic and other places.
Korean paintings "Another Charge", "On the Field" and "At the Site of Rice Transplantation", graphic painting "At the Construction Site of the Samsu Power Station" and other works drew particular attention of visitors as they truthfully represented the ideological and moral traits of Party members and other working people and their heroic labor drive.
On display there were also art works depicting the beautiful landscape of the country including Korean painting "Sangwon Temple in Valley", oil painting "Landscape of Moran Hill" and woodcut "Lake in the Evening."
Kang Nung Su, minister of Culture, officials concerned and artists in the city looked round the exhibition on July 25.

As with Chinese painters of Mao etc., there is only one possible response for the occidental artworld to make, that is to prepare to grab these works as soon as North Korea is liberated from the choking grip of etc., etc.
The particular, peculiar, attitude we have to such artworks once exhibited in the hallowed halls of the Centre Pompidou, the Martin Gropius Bau, American Museums and so on, is a clear reproduction of what we bring to the whole country, the people, culture and so on. Patronising appropriation. Bizarrely, you can tell a lot about the whole range of our attitudes to the countries and peoples of states actually or potentially able to be "liberated" such as Iraq, Iran, and so on and on, by the way we treat them artistically, culturally.

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