An artist, Oh Yun(1946~86)’s theory of people’s art during his final period issummed up in his essay ‘Expansion of Artistic Imagination and World’(1985).Emphasizingthe mystic and traditional characteristics of Oh Yun’s artistic oeuvre during his final period,some critics focus on Oh Yun’s experience of medical treatment and shamanistic custom atJin Do island, and his belief in Jeung San Do, the dao of Jeung-san, the Ruler of theUniverse. However, they forget the practical intention and implication of his theory of artduring his final period, which aimed to overcome the contradiction of revelation itself. Oh Yun’s essay criticized the loss of artistic imagination and the ignorance oftraditional culture that resulted from the elevation of science to a religion, and insisted thatthe stereotyped idealism, scientism and elitism in art should be overcome in order torecover the full reality in realism and to continue traditional cultures. The essay iscomprised of 18 paragraphs. Oh Yun criticized monochromatic art, conceptual art, hyper-realistic art, objet d’art,and neo-dadaist art, saying that they were simply mechanical forms of modern art derivedfrom scientism and a fetishistic lens culture. In addition, he criticized naturalism in art,which had continued as a tendency in the development of western art, for the samereason. He pointed out that even the world of realism had been diminished by elitestereotypes and diagrams. He declared the need to overcome the imitation of shells orstereotyped propaganda, and recover full realism, which seems to have started with areflective examination of current problems in ‘Reality and Utterance’, in which heparticipated. Especially, he thought that universality and the extension of full realism could be achieved by building on the views of traditional cultures, which is meaningful. This logic issame as the theory of epic theatre that Bertolt Brecht(1898~1956)has developed under theancient Greek masque and Pieter Bruegel the Elder(1525~69)’s story-like picture style. Theuniversality of realism and the extension of acquisition to include incantation art,rather thanmove toward incantation art, is what Oh Yun intended to propose in ‘Artistic Imagination’.This attitude is same as Bertolt Brecht’s aesthetic viewpoint in the 1930s. But regrettably,Oh Yun’s style wording, which seems covert and far-sighted, is often misunderstood as‘mysticism’. In the flow of people’s art in the 1980s, Oh Yun was a traditionalist in a narrowsense, and an realist in a broad sense. However, his critical mind, which comprehendstradition and reality, was attempting to expand universality and extend full realism, and thisattempt found many sympathizers and had an influence on the next generation of people’sartists, such as 「Levee」which is field-centered, to which we should pay attention. Thismeans that while their works thought about ‘tradition’, we should be careful not to connectthem with‘aesthetic conservatism’or ‘classical art’. This is the why the meaning of Oh Yun’stheory of art during his final period should be closely examined again.

From the late 1920s to the 1930s, Korea’s fine art community focused on traditionalviewpoints as their main topic. The traditional viewpoints were discussed mainly byKorean students studying in Japan, especially oil painters. Such discussions on tradition canbe divided into two separate halves, namely the pre- and post-Sino-Japanese War (1937)periods. Before the war, the modernists among Korea’s fine art community tried to gain afuller understanding of contemporary Western modern art, namely, expressionism,futurism, surrealism, and so forth, on the basis of Orientalism, and borrow from theseschools’in order to create their own works. Furthermore, proponents of Joseon’s avant-garde fine arts and artists of the pro-fine art school triggered debate on the traditionalviewpoints. After the Sino-Japanese War, these artists continued to embrace Westernmodern art on the basis of Orientalism. However, since Western modern fine art wasregressing into Oriental fine art during this period, Korean artists did not need to researchWestern modern fine art, but sought to study Joseon’s classics and create Joseon’s ownavant-garde fine art in a movement led by the Munjang group. This research reviews thetraditional view espoused by the Munjang group, which represented the avant-garde fineart movement of the post-war period. Advocating Joseon’s own current of avant-garde fine art through the Munjang literarymagazine, Gil Jin-seop, Kim Yong-jun and others accepted the Japanese fine artcommunity’s methodology for the restoration of classicism, but refused Orientalism as anideology, and attempted to renew their perception of Joseon tradition. The advocation ofthe restoration of classicism by Gil Jin-seop and Kim Yong-jun appears to be similar to thatof the Yasuda Yojuro-style restoration of classicism. However, Gil Jin-seop and Kim Yong-jun did not seek their sources of classicism from the Three-Kingdoms and Unified Sillaperiods, which Japan had promoted as a symbol of unity among the Joseon people;instead they sought classicism from the Joseon fine art which the Japanese had criticized asa hotbed of decadence. It was the Joseon period that the Munjang group chose as classicism when Japanwas upholding Fascism as a contemporary extremism, and when Hangeul (Korean writing system) was banned from schools. The group highly evaluated literature written in the styleof women, especially women’s writings on the royal court, as represented by Hanjungnok(A Story of Sorrowful Days). In the area of fine art, the group renewed the evaluation of notonly literary paintings, but also of the authentic landscape paintings refused by, and thevalues of the Chusa school criticized as decadent by, the colonial bureaucratic artists,thereby making great progress in promoting the traditional viewpoint. Kim Yong-junembraced a painting philosophy based on the painting techniques of Sasaeng (sketching),because he paid keen attention to the tradition of literary paintings, authentic landscapepaintings and genre paintings. The literary painting theory of the 20th century, which washighly developed, could naturally shed both the colonial historical viewpoint whichregarded Joseon fine art as heteronomical, and the traditional viewpoint which regardedJoseon fine art as decadent. As such, the Munjang group was able to embrace the Joseon period as the source ofclassicism amid the prevalent colonial historical viewpoint, presumably as it hadaccumulated first-hand experience in appreciating curios of paintings and calligraphicworks, instead of taking a logical approach. Kim Yong-jun, in his fine art theory, definedartistic forms as the expression of mind, and noted that such an artistic mind could beattained by the appreciation of nature and life. This is because, for the Munjang group, theexperience of appreciating nature and life begins with the appreciation of curios ofpaintings and calligraphic works. Furthermore, for the members of the Munjang group, who were purists who valuedartistic style, the concept of individuality presumably was an engine that protected themfrom falling into the then totalitarian world view represented by the Nishita philosophy. Such a 20th century literary painting theory espoused by the Munjang groupconcurred with the contemporary traditional viewpoint spearheaded by Oh Se-chang in the1910s. This theory had a great influence on South and North Korea’s fine art theories andcircles through the Fine Art College of Seoul National University and Pyongyang Fine ArtSchool in the wake of Korea’s liberation. In this sense, the significance of the theoryshould be re-evaluated.