How do we embark on a history of art from the assumption of a global majority, outside of essenti... more How do we embark on a history of art from the assumption of a global majority, outside of essentializing categories like race or hollow proclamations of solidarity? How do we imagine the rich and surprisingly understudied relationships between Black and Asian artists and the worlds they initiate through their work?
The Geometries of Afro Asia breaks down this relationship and chronology into points, angles, and trajectories. Spanning North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, the book considers the relationships that formed between Black and Asian artists at critical historical junctures—from civil rights struggles in the United States and the development of South Korea amid US military occupation in the 1960s and 1970s to debates over multiculturalism and critiques of globalization in the 1990s and 2010s.
A history of one kind of capitalism through the lens of art and law
UC Press 30% discount code:... more A history of one kind of capitalism through the lens of art and law
The first in-depth examination in English of twentieth-century Korea’s most important artistic mo... more The first in-depth examination in English of twentieth-century Korea’s most important artistic movement
Starting in the mid-1960s, a group of Korean artists began to push paint, soak canvas, drag pencils, rip paper, and otherwise manipulate the materials of painting in ways that prompted critics to describe their actions as “methods” rather than artworks. A crucial artistic movement of twentieth-century Korea, Tansaekhwa—monochromatic painting—also became one of its most famous and successful. Promoted in Seoul, Tokyo, and Paris, Tansaekhwa grew to be the international face of contemporary Korean art and a cornerstone of contemporary Asian art.
In this full-color, richly illustrated account—the first of its kind in English—Joan Kee provides a fresh interpretation of the movement’s emergence and meaning that sheds new light on the history of abstraction, twentieth-century Asian art, and contemporary art in general. Combining close readings, archival research, and interviews with leading Tansaekhwa artists, Kee focuses on a crucial but often overlooked dimension of the movement: how artists made a case for abstraction as a way viewers might productively engage with the world and its systems. As Kee shows, artists such as Lee Ufan, Park Seobo, Kwon Young-woo, Yun Hyongkeun, and Ha Chonghyun urgently stressed certain fundamentals, recognizing that overwhelming forces such as decolonization, authoritarianism, and the rise of a new postwar internationalism could be approached through highly individual viewing experiences that asked viewers to consider how they understood their world rather than why.
Against the backdrop of the Cold War, decolonization, and the declaration of martial law in South Korea, these artists asked questions that continue to resonate today: In what ways can art matter to the world at large? How does art exert agency when its viewers ive in times of explicit or implicit duress?
Labour and Privilege | Future Commons New Writings on Contemporary Art Practices, 2024
Let me propose two claims. The first is that 1968 marked a distinctly prewar, rather than postwar... more Let me propose two claims. The first is that 1968 marked a distinctly prewar, rather than postwar, era. The second is that artworks made in North and South Korea support this claim especially well. 1968 is shorthand for the welter of crises happening on an international scale during the sixties and shortly thereafter. Its magnitude is such that histories of modern and contemporary art revolve around its aftereffects. Only 1945 carries more weight as a centre of discursive gravity. In the two Koreas technically still at war, 1968 was when tensions between and within both North and South Korea threatened to bring the world closer to total destruction than it had since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yet, both the governments of North and South Korea seemed unified in their attempts to will an artificial peace into existence. As if to mask the sheer terror of total destruction that loomed larger than ever, artists in both Koreas diligently churned out pastoralised views of industrial facilities, slice-of-life portraits, and genre paintings.
Alien Encounters: Popular Culture in Asian America, 2007
Notes on Asian American art and pop culture
“Visual Reconnaissance.” In Nguyen, Thuy Linh Tu, and... more Notes on Asian American art and pop culture “Visual Reconnaissance.” In Nguyen, Thuy Linh Tu, and Mimi Nguyen, eds. Alien Encounters: Popular Culture in Asian America. Durham: Duke University Press
Catalogue essay for the first self-identified Asian American art show in Shanghai; closed due to ... more Catalogue essay for the first self-identified Asian American art show in Shanghai; closed due to SARS.
<Tradeshow: New Currents in Recent Asian American Art>, (Shanghai: Pottery Workshop C2 Gallery), 2003
On Afro Asian intersections in sixties Los Angeles. To be expanded in my upcoming book, "The Geom... more On Afro Asian intersections in sixties Los Angeles. To be expanded in my upcoming book, "The Geometries of Afro Asia" (University of California Press)
How do we embark on a history of art from the assumption of a global majority, outside of essenti... more How do we embark on a history of art from the assumption of a global majority, outside of essentializing categories like race or hollow proclamations of solidarity? How do we imagine the rich and surprisingly understudied relationships between Black and Asian artists and the worlds they initiate through their work?
The Geometries of Afro Asia breaks down this relationship and chronology into points, angles, and trajectories. Spanning North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, the book considers the relationships that formed between Black and Asian artists at critical historical junctures—from civil rights struggles in the United States and the development of South Korea amid US military occupation in the 1960s and 1970s to debates over multiculturalism and critiques of globalization in the 1990s and 2010s.
A history of one kind of capitalism through the lens of art and law
UC Press 30% discount code:... more A history of one kind of capitalism through the lens of art and law
The first in-depth examination in English of twentieth-century Korea’s most important artistic mo... more The first in-depth examination in English of twentieth-century Korea’s most important artistic movement
Starting in the mid-1960s, a group of Korean artists began to push paint, soak canvas, drag pencils, rip paper, and otherwise manipulate the materials of painting in ways that prompted critics to describe their actions as “methods” rather than artworks. A crucial artistic movement of twentieth-century Korea, Tansaekhwa—monochromatic painting—also became one of its most famous and successful. Promoted in Seoul, Tokyo, and Paris, Tansaekhwa grew to be the international face of contemporary Korean art and a cornerstone of contemporary Asian art.
In this full-color, richly illustrated account—the first of its kind in English—Joan Kee provides a fresh interpretation of the movement’s emergence and meaning that sheds new light on the history of abstraction, twentieth-century Asian art, and contemporary art in general. Combining close readings, archival research, and interviews with leading Tansaekhwa artists, Kee focuses on a crucial but often overlooked dimension of the movement: how artists made a case for abstraction as a way viewers might productively engage with the world and its systems. As Kee shows, artists such as Lee Ufan, Park Seobo, Kwon Young-woo, Yun Hyongkeun, and Ha Chonghyun urgently stressed certain fundamentals, recognizing that overwhelming forces such as decolonization, authoritarianism, and the rise of a new postwar internationalism could be approached through highly individual viewing experiences that asked viewers to consider how they understood their world rather than why.
Against the backdrop of the Cold War, decolonization, and the declaration of martial law in South Korea, these artists asked questions that continue to resonate today: In what ways can art matter to the world at large? How does art exert agency when its viewers ive in times of explicit or implicit duress?
Labour and Privilege | Future Commons New Writings on Contemporary Art Practices, 2024
Let me propose two claims. The first is that 1968 marked a distinctly prewar, rather than postwar... more Let me propose two claims. The first is that 1968 marked a distinctly prewar, rather than postwar, era. The second is that artworks made in North and South Korea support this claim especially well. 1968 is shorthand for the welter of crises happening on an international scale during the sixties and shortly thereafter. Its magnitude is such that histories of modern and contemporary art revolve around its aftereffects. Only 1945 carries more weight as a centre of discursive gravity. In the two Koreas technically still at war, 1968 was when tensions between and within both North and South Korea threatened to bring the world closer to total destruction than it had since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yet, both the governments of North and South Korea seemed unified in their attempts to will an artificial peace into existence. As if to mask the sheer terror of total destruction that loomed larger than ever, artists in both Koreas diligently churned out pastoralised views of industrial facilities, slice-of-life portraits, and genre paintings.
Alien Encounters: Popular Culture in Asian America, 2007
Notes on Asian American art and pop culture
“Visual Reconnaissance.” In Nguyen, Thuy Linh Tu, and... more Notes on Asian American art and pop culture “Visual Reconnaissance.” In Nguyen, Thuy Linh Tu, and Mimi Nguyen, eds. Alien Encounters: Popular Culture in Asian America. Durham: Duke University Press
Catalogue essay for the first self-identified Asian American art show in Shanghai; closed due to ... more Catalogue essay for the first self-identified Asian American art show in Shanghai; closed due to SARS.
<Tradeshow: New Currents in Recent Asian American Art>, (Shanghai: Pottery Workshop C2 Gallery), 2003
On Afro Asian intersections in sixties Los Angeles. To be expanded in my upcoming book, "The Geom... more On Afro Asian intersections in sixties Los Angeles. To be expanded in my upcoming book, "The Geometries of Afro Asia" (University of California Press)
How the globalization of art is fundamentally a story of moving through different legal jurisd... more How the globalization of art is fundamentally a story of moving through different legal jurisdictions
A two-day workshop on modern Korean art intended to expand the constituent audience for this exci... more A two-day workshop on modern Korean art intended to expand the constituent audience for this exciting field beyond specialists in Korea. The social, historical and political situation of Korea makes Korean art a particularly rich node through which to consider the relationship between visual experience and modernity. Featuring scholars from various backgrounds discussing articles-in-progress, this workshop explores a range of artworks produced by Korean artists from the mid-18th century to the present.
Conceptions of medium have long shaped the presumptive fields of modern and contemporary art, but... more Conceptions of medium have long shaped the presumptive fields of modern and contemporary art, but particularly with regard to modern and contemporary art in East Asia. In many respects, the very history of this field might be configured the lines drawn between oil from ink, figuration and abstraction, and "fine" art from craft. Many of these divisions enacted as a means to work through evolving definitions of culture, nationality, ethnicity, and race throughout the 19th and 20th centuries; illustrations in point include the rise of nihonga in Meiji Japan or the use of woodblock prints in Republican China. In many instances, particular media were celebrated on the basis of their supposed capacity to authentically, or "purely" embody the sensibilities of a particular nation, culture, or race. This was in direct odds with the artworks themselves, all of which were the result of sustained negotiations with diverse, and frequently, divergent, ways of thinking about form. Operative in these works is a palpable indeterminacy and in-betweenness that fatally undermines the notion of a "pure" medium. Contrary to certain Anglo-American discourses of modernity which privilege the issue of medium specificity, the core questions of modern art in East Asia turn on the implications of medium as a fundamentally compromised notion. In recent decades, the question of medium has been further complicated by presumed divisions between materials, that is, between artists working with materials associated with modern and contemporary art as defined by consensus opinion rooted in artistic circles based in Europe and the U.S. versus those who work with materials designated as “indigenous” or “traditional.” This workshop aims to open up discussion regarding the position and impact of medium in modern and contemporary art in East Asia.
Japan, and the engagement with materiality by ink painters working in postwar Korea.
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Books by Joan Kee
The Geometries of Afro Asia breaks down this relationship and chronology into points, angles, and trajectories. Spanning North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, the book considers the relationships that formed between Black and Asian artists at critical historical junctures—from civil rights struggles in the United States and the development of South Korea amid US military occupation in the 1960s and 1970s to debates over multiculturalism and critiques of globalization in the 1990s and 2010s.
https://www.amazon.com/Geometries-Afro-Asia-beyond-Solidarity/dp/0520392450
UC Press 30% discount code: 17M6662
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520299382/models-of-integrity
Starting in the mid-1960s, a group of Korean artists began to push paint, soak canvas, drag pencils, rip paper, and otherwise manipulate the materials of painting in ways that prompted critics to describe their actions as “methods” rather than artworks. A crucial artistic movement of twentieth-century Korea, Tansaekhwa—monochromatic painting—also became one of its most famous and successful. Promoted in Seoul, Tokyo, and Paris, Tansaekhwa grew to be the international face of contemporary Korean art and a cornerstone of contemporary Asian art.
In this full-color, richly illustrated account—the first of its kind in English—Joan Kee provides a fresh interpretation of the movement’s emergence and meaning that sheds new light on the history of abstraction, twentieth-century Asian art, and contemporary art in general. Combining close readings, archival research, and interviews with leading Tansaekhwa artists, Kee focuses on a crucial but often overlooked dimension of the
movement: how artists made a case for abstraction as a way viewers might productively engage with the world and its systems. As Kee shows, artists such as Lee Ufan, Park Seobo, Kwon Young-woo, Yun Hyongkeun, and Ha Chonghyun urgently stressed certain fundamentals, recognizing that overwhelming forces such as decolonization, authoritarianism, and the rise of a new postwar internationalism could be approached through highly individual viewing experiences that asked viewers to consider how they
understood their world rather than why.
Against the backdrop of the Cold War, decolonization, and the declaration of martial law in South Korea, these artists asked questions that continue to resonate today: In what ways can art matter to the world at large? How does art exert agency when its viewers ive in times of explicit or implicit duress?
Papers by Joan Kee
“Visual Reconnaissance.” In Nguyen, Thuy Linh Tu, and Mimi Nguyen, eds. Alien Encounters: Popular Culture in Asian America. Durham: Duke University Press
<Tradeshow: New Currents in Recent Asian American Art>, (Shanghai: Pottery Workshop C2 Gallery), 2003
The Geometries of Afro Asia breaks down this relationship and chronology into points, angles, and trajectories. Spanning North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, the book considers the relationships that formed between Black and Asian artists at critical historical junctures—from civil rights struggles in the United States and the development of South Korea amid US military occupation in the 1960s and 1970s to debates over multiculturalism and critiques of globalization in the 1990s and 2010s.
https://www.amazon.com/Geometries-Afro-Asia-beyond-Solidarity/dp/0520392450
UC Press 30% discount code: 17M6662
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520299382/models-of-integrity
Starting in the mid-1960s, a group of Korean artists began to push paint, soak canvas, drag pencils, rip paper, and otherwise manipulate the materials of painting in ways that prompted critics to describe their actions as “methods” rather than artworks. A crucial artistic movement of twentieth-century Korea, Tansaekhwa—monochromatic painting—also became one of its most famous and successful. Promoted in Seoul, Tokyo, and Paris, Tansaekhwa grew to be the international face of contemporary Korean art and a cornerstone of contemporary Asian art.
In this full-color, richly illustrated account—the first of its kind in English—Joan Kee provides a fresh interpretation of the movement’s emergence and meaning that sheds new light on the history of abstraction, twentieth-century Asian art, and contemporary art in general. Combining close readings, archival research, and interviews with leading Tansaekhwa artists, Kee focuses on a crucial but often overlooked dimension of the
movement: how artists made a case for abstraction as a way viewers might productively engage with the world and its systems. As Kee shows, artists such as Lee Ufan, Park Seobo, Kwon Young-woo, Yun Hyongkeun, and Ha Chonghyun urgently stressed certain fundamentals, recognizing that overwhelming forces such as decolonization, authoritarianism, and the rise of a new postwar internationalism could be approached through highly individual viewing experiences that asked viewers to consider how they
understood their world rather than why.
Against the backdrop of the Cold War, decolonization, and the declaration of martial law in South Korea, these artists asked questions that continue to resonate today: In what ways can art matter to the world at large? How does art exert agency when its viewers ive in times of explicit or implicit duress?
“Visual Reconnaissance.” In Nguyen, Thuy Linh Tu, and Mimi Nguyen, eds. Alien Encounters: Popular Culture in Asian America. Durham: Duke University Press
<Tradeshow: New Currents in Recent Asian American Art>, (Shanghai: Pottery Workshop C2 Gallery), 2003
a means to work through evolving definitions of culture, nationality, ethnicity, and race throughout the 19th and 20th centuries; illustrations in point include the rise of nihonga in Meiji Japan or the use of woodblock prints in Republican China. In many instances, particular media were celebrated on the basis of their supposed capacity to authentically, or
"purely" embody the sensibilities of a particular nation,
culture, or race. This was in direct odds with the artworks themselves, all of which were the result of sustained negotiations with diverse, and frequently, divergent, ways of thinking about form. Operative in these works is a palpable indeterminacy and in-betweenness that fatally undermines the notion of a "pure" medium. Contrary to certain
Anglo-American discourses of modernity which privilege the issue of medium specificity, the core questions of modern art in East Asia turn on the implications of medium as a fundamentally compromised notion. In recent decades, the question of medium has been further complicated by presumed
divisions between materials, that is, between artists working with
materials associated with modern and contemporary art as defined by consensus opinion rooted in artistic circles based in Europe and the U.S. versus those who work with materials designated as “indigenous” or “traditional.” This workshop aims to open up discussion regarding the position and impact of medium in modern and contemporary art in East Asia.
Japan, and the engagement with materiality by ink painters working in
postwar Korea.