Art Prof. David Pagel quoted in The Nation on the renewed popularity of South Korean abstract art
Globalization has been the talk of the art world for years now, but the international perspective is of a shallow sort—a smorgasbord of names shorn of any sense of culture or history. Ask someone to name a Korean artist, for instance, and the answer will likely be Nam June Paik, who was born in Seoul in 1932. But after his university years in Tokyo, Paik lived in West Germany and then the United States from 1956 until his death in 2006. Someone else might mention Lee Ufan, an artist of Paik’s generation who likewise went to Japan to study and now divides his time between there and Paris. And there’s Do-ho Suh, a prominent midcareer installation artist whose work has appeared in many biennials as well as one-person shows across the United States and Europe. But the list might stop there.