All knowledge cards
Every card, grouped by city and kind.
Art movement 15
- Dansaekhwa 단색화Abstract painting that emerged in Korea from the 1970s, marked by a single tone and repeated making.
- Modern Korean Western-style Painting 한국 근대 서양화The oil painting and other Western painting that Korean painters learned, largely by way of Japan, from the early twentieth century, and the work they made in it; in Korea it is called seoyanghwa, Western painting.
- Conceptual Art 개념미술Art in which the idea itself is the most important part of the work, which took shape in the United States and Europe in the late 1960s.
- Korean experimental art 한국 실험미술A current of the late 1960s and 1970s in which young Korean artists left the canvas and worked with performance, installation, events, and film.
- Impressionism 인상파A painting movement that arose in France in the 1870s, marked by visible brushstrokes, open composition, and the depiction of changing light.
- Rococo 로코코A decorative style that arose in Paris in the 1730s and lasted into the 1780s, marked by flowing curves, asymmetry, and pastels with gilding.
- Minjung art 민중미술An art movement of 1980s South Korea in which progressive artists, alongside the democracy movement, depicted social reality in a figurative, narrative way.
- Abstract art 추상미술Art that builds a composition from shape, colour and line themselves, with a degree of independence from recognisable things in the world.
- Pop art 팝아트An art movement that brought imagery from popular and mass culture, such as advertising, comics, product packaging and celebrities, into painting, sculpture and printmaking.
- Neo-Expressionism 신표현주의A 1980s revival of painting in an expressionist manner, after minimalism and conceptual art.
- Avant-garde 아방가르드Art that breaks new ground by bringing in or trying out new forms or subjects. The word is French and originally meant the troops that march ahead of an army.
- Expressionism 표현주의Art in which the artist's own feeling counts for more than a true-to-life likeness, with colour and form pushed beyond natural appearance to carry it.
- Minimalism 미니멀리즘American art of the 1960s that reduces a work to plain geometric forms and points at nothing beyond the object itself.
- Contemporary art 동시대미술An everyday label for art being made now and in the years just before; exactly when “just before” starts, and where “modern art” ends, differ between museums and countries.
- Surrealism 초현실주의A twentieth-century movement in literature and art that starts from dreams and the unconscious and explores thought beyond reason.
Tradition 18
- True-view landscape 진경산수Landscape painting pioneered by the 18th-century Joseon painter Jeong Seon, depicting the real mountains before his eyes rather than an idealized nature.
- Ink painting 수묵Painting with only ink and water, rendering things through shades of ink and the movement of the brush.
- Korea Artist Prize 올해의 작가상A contemporary art prize run jointly by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, and the SBS Foundation since 2012, which each year selects four artists or teams and supports their new work and an exhibition.
- Still Life 정물화Painting of things that do not move, such as food, flowers, vessels, and books.
- Box inscriptions (sangseo) 상서Writing on the wooden box that holds a painting, calligraphy, or object, recording its title and maker, and often an appraisal and its history.
- Fashion photography 패션 사진Photographs made for fashion magazines and brands: pictures of clothes, and of the people who wear them and the mood around them.
- Korean colour painting 채색화The strand of Korean painting built on colour pigments, as against ink painting, which is built on ink.
- Hanbok 한복Korean traditional dress, made up of a jacket (jeogori), trousers (baji), a skirt (chima), and an overcoat (po).
- Geumbak (Gold-Leaf Stamping) 금박The Korean traditional craft of decorating hanbok and other fabrics with extremely thin gold leaf.
- Hanok 한옥The traditional Korean house: a timber frame, a roof of tiles or thatch, and ondol, floors heated by fire from below.
- Talchum (Mask Dance Drama) 탈춤Korean folk drama in which masked performers dance, sing, and speak.
- Roman copies of Greek sculpture 로마 시대의 그리스 조각 복제The Romans collected and copied masterpieces of Classical Greek sculpture on a large scale; many Greek originals are lost and are known today only through these copies.
- Jogakbo 조각보A Korean wrapping cloth pieced together from small scraps of fabric.
- Biennale 비엔날레A large international exhibition of contemporary art; the Italian word means "every two years".
- Byeongpung (folding screen) 병풍A room furnishing made of wooden-framed panels covered with painting, calligraphy or embroidery and joined so that they fold and unfold; also a format for painting.
- Daemok and somok (traditional Korean woodworking) 대목과 소목The two branches of traditional Korean woodworking: daemok, carpentry for buildings, and somok, joinery for furniture and household goods.
- Dongyanghwa (Eastern-style painting) 동양화In Korea, the name for painting made with traditional East Asian materials and techniques, coined in contrast to Western painting.
- Seohwa: calligraphy and painting 서화A Korean tradition that joins writing and painting as one art, tied to learning and self-cultivation.
Technique 21
- Media Art 미디어 아트Art made with electronic media such as video, screens, projection, and computing.
- Chiaroscuro 명암법Painting with strong contrasts of light and dark to model volume and create drama; the name joins the Italian for light (chiaro) and dark (scuro).
- Installation Art 설치 미술Not a single object on a wall or pedestal, but three-dimensional work that changes a whole space and that visitors move through.
- Modern Sculpture 현대 조각Sculpture's move from statues on pedestals commemorating people and events toward three-dimensional work concerned with material, weight, and the space around it.
- Photography 사진Recording an image by focusing light through a lens onto film or a sensor over a timed exposure.
- Printmaking 판화Art made by cutting, etching, or drawing an image on a plate or block, inking it, and pressing it onto paper; one plate can usually print many sheets.
- Illustration and Picture Books 일러스트레이션과 그림책Pictures made for printing and publishing, in books, magazines, products and more; a picture book is a book in which pictures and words tell the story together.
- Sound Art 사운드 아트Art that uses sound as its material, and often as its subject too.
- Contemporary Craft 현대 공예Objects and works that makers create by hand in materials such as clay, wood, metal, lacquer, and fiber, from everyday things to pieces close to sculpture.
- Artist's Books 아티스트 북Works of art that use the form of the book itself as their medium; some are printed in small or large editions, others made as one of a kind.
- Hangul Typography 한글 타이포그래피The craft and design of setting Hangul into pages for printing and reading, from hand-set metal type and phototypesetting to digital fonts.
- Performance Art 퍼포먼스 아트Work in which the artist is present and that happens over a stretch of time; it can be seen live or through documentation.
- Photorealism 극사실회화Painting in which the artist studies a photograph and reproduces the image as realistically as possible.
- Oil painting 유화A method of painting with colour made by mixing pigment into a drying oil, usually linseed, which hardens in the air into a tough film.
- Mural 벽화A painting made directly on a wall or ceiling, or made for a particular wall and fixed to it, so that it becomes part of the building.
- Colour 색채The way colour appears in a painting, shaped largely by the pigments the artist chose and by what the work is painted on.
- Linear perspective 원근법A way of drawing that creates the illusion of three-dimensional space on a flat surface, by making receding parallel lines appear to meet at a vanishing point.
- Collage and assemblage 콜라주와 아상블라주Collage sticks pieces of paper, photographs, fabric and the like onto a surface; assemblage combines unrelated, often everyday objects into one work.
- Experimental film 실험영화Films made outside the usual rules and forms of cinema, most often by individuals working apart from the film industry.
- Public art 공공미술Art in the public realm: works placed in parks and other places open to everyone, whether the site is public or private property and whether public or private money paid for it.
- Rubbing and frottage 탁본과 프로타주A method of laying paper over a surface with relief and rubbing ink or pencil over it, so the surface's pattern is transferred to the paper.
Material 4
- Hanji 한지Traditional Korean paper made from the inner bark of the paper mulberry; its long fibers make it soft yet strong.
- Lacquer 옻칠The sap of the lacquer tree, and the craft of applying it, layer by layer, to wood and other objects.
- Ceramics 도자Objects and works shaped from clay and fired in a kiln; by firing temperature and material they fall roughly into earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain.
- Pigments 안료The substance that gives a paint its colour; it does not dissolve in the liquid it is mixed with, but stays in it as fine solid particles.
Work 8
- Écriture 〈묘법〉Park Seo-bo's series from the late 1960s to his last years, built from repeated lines.
- Heaven and Earth 천지문The name the Dansaekhwa painter Yun Hyong-keun gave his own work: ultramarine for heaven, umber for earth.
- Clearing after Rain on Mount Inwang 〈인왕제색도〉Jeong Seon's 1751 painting of Mount Inwang as the sky clears after rain, the defining work of true-view landscape.
- All-over dot painting 전면점화The way of painting Kim Whanki developed in New York around 1970, filling the whole canvas with countless dots of color.
- Angbu Ilgu (Scaphe Sundial) 앙부일구A Joseon-era sundial shaped like an upturned cauldron, with a concave hemispherical face that shows both the hour and the seasonal division of the year.
- Sohn Kee-chung's Ancient Greek Bronze Helmet 손기정 기증 고대 그리스 청동 투구A Corinthian bronze helmet meant as the prize for the 1936 Berlin Olympic marathon, which reached the winner, Sohn Kee-chung, only fifty years later.
- Oegyujanggak Uigwe 외규장각 의궤Illustrated records of the Joseon royal court's state rites; the set once kept at the Outer Gyujanggak on Ganghwa Island was taken by French troops in 1866 and returned to Korea in 2011.
- Ahn Jung-geun's prison calligraphy (yumuk) 안중근 유묵Calligraphy written by Ahn Jung-geun (1879–1910) in Lüshun prison in February and March 1910, signed and stamped with his handprint.