Art

Lee Yil and the AG Group of the 1970s

비평가 이일과 1970년대 AG 그룹

Lee Yil (Author)

Chung Yeon-shim Lee Yu-jin (Editors)

2024. 1. 31. 246 pages 225×300 mm Softcover 9791168230491 KRW 35,000

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50 Years of Experimentation, Avant-Garde and the ‘AG’ Group

“Under the premise of a strong consciousness of avant-garde art, we seek and create a new sculptural order on the Korean canvas of visionary poverty and contribute to the development of Korean art culture.” (‘AG’ Declaration, 1969)

Art critic Lee Yil and the AG Group in the 1970s, a companion volume to the exhibition of the same name held in May 2023, revisits the activities of the Association for the Korean Avant-Garde (AG), founded in 1969, and the art critic Lee Yil (1932-1997), who served as its theoretical centerpiece. The Association of the Korean Avant-Garde (AG), an acronym for ‘Avant-Garde’, was formed in the late 1960s by a group of avant-garde Korean artists and critics, including the critic Lee Il, and held three major exhibitions from its founding in 1969 until its official dissolution in 1975, and organized the Seoul Biennale in 1974. It also published its own journal, where ‘critics and artists’ discussed the experimental nature of Korean contemporary art and sought ‘international synchronicity’ with art from abroad.

In a short span of five to six years, the AG Group held three major exhibitions, demonstrating its experimentalism by responding to changing materials from traditional to urbanized and industrialized. These exhibitions also have important curatorial value in terms of the exhibition history of Korean contemporary art. AG’s activities through exhibitions and publications demonstrate the collaborative relationship between artists and critics in understanding each other’s work, and provide clues to the source of the experimental spirit that runs through the era.

Chung Yeon-shim’s article, “Experimental Art Exhibitions of the AG Group,” summarizes the AG Group’s activities in various fields, including exhibition, publishing, curation, and criticism, and points out their art historical significance. It includes photographs of a 2023 exhibition of works by nine AG Group artists (Kim Gu-rim, Park Seok-won, Seo Seung-Won, Shim Mun-seob, Lee Kang-so, Lee Seung-jio, Lee Seung-taek, and Choi Myung-young), as well as archival materials such as AG publications and books from the 1970s, exhibition posters, and photographs of the artists’ own exhibitions.

In addition, it includes articles and handwritten manuscripts published by critic Lee Yil in AG journals and various media, Lee’s photographic records, and interviews with AG artists who vividly testified to the meaning of the group’s activities and the times in which they lived. Through this, the exhibition provides a three-dimensional look at the ways in which Korean artists sought an avant-garde identity in Korean contemporary art and attempted to understand and study overseas art (conceptual art, land art, process art, contemporary architecture, etc.). The exhibition also explores the point of harmony between past and present by including AG’s works from the 1970s and their recent works.

Lee Yil

Lee-Yil is an art critic who made a significant contribution to recognizing and establishing the concept of art criticism and review in the Korean art world from the 1960s to the 1990s. Born in 1932 in Gangseo, South Pyongan Province, Lee was a student at Seoul National University, where he was active as a literary youth, organizing the ‘Literature and Literature Society’ and appearing as a poet. After dropping out of college, he studied abroad in France in 1956, where he completed his studies in the history of French literature and art at the Sorbonne University and worked as a Paris correspondent for the Chosun Ilbo. In 1966, he returned to Korea and was appointed as a professor at Hongik University, and in 1968, he was appointed as a dedicated art writer for the Dong-A Ilbo. In 1969, he founded AG as a founding member of the Korean Avant-garde Association, and in 1970, in the preface to the exhibition AG Exhibition he gave a lucid interpretation of Korean contemporary art by proposing the theme of expansion and reduction which was later changed to reduction and diffusion and became a conceptual term representative of Lee-Yil’s art criticism.
He served as an international jury member of the International Printmaking Biennale in Tokyo (1972), Korean commissioner of the Paris Biennale (1975), international jury member of the Cagnes International Painting Festival in France (1977), Korean commissioner of the Venice Biennale (1995), steering committee member and jury member of the Seoul International Printmaking Biennale, Taipei International Printmaking Biennale, and Seoul International Art Festival, and president of the Korean Art Critics Association (1986-1992). He is the author of Trajectory of Contemporary Art (Donghwa Publishing Corporation, 1974), Genealogy of Western Art (API, 1992), Korean Art, Its Present Face (Spatial History, 1982), Perspectives on Contemporary Art (Mijin Book Company, 1985), Return and Diffusion in Contemporary Art (YeolhwaDang, 1991), The Adventure of Abstract Art (by Michel Lagong, Culture and Education Publishing House, 1965), The Birth of New Art (by Michel Lagong, Jeongneumsa, 1974), History of World Painting (by Louis Urtig, Joongang Ilbo Publishing House, 1974), History of Western Art (by H. W. Janson, Mijinsha, 1985). In 1986, he participated in the founding of the magazine Art Criticism (published by the Korean Art Critics Association), and in 1990, he was awarded the Order of Culture by the French Ministry of Culture. He passed away in January 1997, and was honored with the Order of the Archival Culture in 1999 and the Special Achievement Award of the International Art Critics Association (AICA) in 2014.

Chung Yeon-shim

Chung Yeon-shim is professor of Art History and Theory (예술학과) at Hongik University in Seoul, South Korea. She received her Ph.D. in art history at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Dr Chung’s research interests encompass both modern and contemporary Western and East Asian art. Before teaching at Hongik, Dr Chung was an assistant professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City and a researcher for the exhibition The World of Nam June Paik at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 1999. She also curated several landmark exhibitions in New York and in Seoul since 2000 as an independent curator; she worked as one of the curators for the 2018 Gwangju Biennale. Chung was a Fulbright fellow and visiting research professor at IFA/NYU from Sept. 2018 to Aug. 2019.

Lee Yu-jin

Lee Yu-jin graduated from Ewha Womans University with a B.A. in Sociology and received her M.A. in Art History from Hongik University. She has been engaged in art education for the general public, exhibition planning, and publishing activities at museums. She is the author of Critic Lee Il and the AG Group in the 1970s, Critic Lee Il Anthology and The Birth of a Hero among other books.

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