A leading artist of the Korean ink painting tradition, Chang Woosung depicted a new kind of realism in his figure paintings. Chang’s work Atelier (1943) depicts the artist himself in his studio with a female model. He portrays himself as a modern man wearing Western-style clothing, casually smoking a pipe, and using the ladder as a seat. The presence of the female model evidenced the growing popularity of depicting women in art, a drastic change from tradition. She is dressed in a white Korean traditional dress (hanbok), perusing a magazine. The work represents modernised urban life. While under colonial rule, the country was challenged culturally by being forced to adopt Japanese names and ban all Korean speech and publications. While there are varied interpretations, the white hanbok alludes to the ubiquitousness of white clothing worn during precolonial times, and the empty background distinguishes Korean coloured-ink works from Japanese ones, in which the background was often completed with patterns.
This is the first time the work of Chang Woosung is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Virginia Moon
