Abstract
Collision, Innovation and Interaction (Phaidon, 2020) and the exhibition catalog The Space Between: The Modern in Korean Art (2022). LACMA’s associate curator of Korean art, Virginia Moon, serves as the volume’s editor and pens three essays, including the introduction. Achieving a more equitable gender representation is another distinctive objective. Besides the prominent figure of Rha Hye-Seok (1896–1948), this exhibition presents six additional female artists. Among the art and artists featured are many “firsts” in Korea: the earliest extant oil painting, the first artist to study in Paris, the unprecedented representation of women as the sole subject, the unheard-of artist self-portrait, the trailblazing solo exhibition of artistic photography, the first woman to establish herself as a painter in oils, the first woman to exhibit in Europe, the pioneering movement to show nationalistic pride while employing imported Western mediums, the first art group that specialized in nihonga or Japanese-style modern paintings, the earliest cross-fertilization of painting and photography, and so forth.