- Title
- Summer Trees
- Date Made
- circa 1950
- Medium
- Ink on Rice Paper
- Dimensions
- 64 1/2 × 44 × 1 1/8 in. (163.83 × 111.76 × 2.86 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2022.77.1
- Collecting Area
- Chinese and Korean Art
- Curatorial Notes
Song Soo-Nam was a leading proponent of ink wash painting and a founding member of the Sumukhwa (Oriental Ink Movement) of the 1980s based in Seoul. Here, with a few broad, vertical strokes, he suggests a deep woodland in a monochromatic palette ranging from satiny black to bright grays suffused with light. Song’s landscapes, including Summer Trees, constitute a radical interpretation of abstraction in ink that he and other Korean artists launched in the postwar period to revitalize a traditional medium while maintaining the integrity of historical idioms. The introduction of oils and acrylics from Japan in the early twentieth century fueled a deep soul-searching among Korean artists concerned with how to move ink painting forward while contemplating whether it could even survive in the modern world. Absent a clear answer, these topics continued to be debated among artists such Song and Suh Se-Ok (M.2020.13.2, .3, and .4), who spearheaded the influential Mungnimhoe (Ink Forest Society) in the early 1960s. While a definitive answer may never be forthcoming, the work of Song Soo-Nam and his contemporaries exemplify the myriad ways artists have adapted ink to modern forms of expression.
Virginia Moon
2024
