Picasso, Zao Wou-ki, and Whanki Kim in Paris:
The “Other” at Home
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM
Korean Cultural Service, 460 Park Avenue (57th Street), 6th Floor
Free admission; refreshments provided
Throughout the history of art, the complex insider/outsider experience of expatriates — those who leave their native countries for new lives abroad — has been explored by artists from around the world. Especially since the middle of the 20th century, many Asian artists have ventured far beyond their Eastern homes, re-situating themselves in various centers of the Western art world, from New York and Paris to Berlin and London. Sometimes these moves have been strategic: how better to find an outlet and a receptive audience for one’s own modern art than by moving to a hub of the avant-garde art-making world? At other times, the transition into becoming an expatriate artist has been more fortuitous: a family moves, and the child simply grows up inevitably to become an artist disconnected culturally and geographically from his or her ancestral land.
Paris, in particular, has long been the go-to destination for expat artists, and in this lecture we will examine how Whanki Kim (Korean-born, 1913-1974) and Zao Wou-ki (Chinese-born, 1920-2013), among other Asian artists, have followed the examples set by Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, and Amedeo Modigliani before them, as foreigners adopting a new country like France as their homes away from home. Alongside Kim and Wou-ki, we will also look at artists like Do-ho Suh (New York, London), Michael Joo (New York), Byron Kim (California), Y. David Chung (Germany, Michigan), Yoo Hye-sook (Paris), and Seo Soo-Kyoung (Berlin) as additional artists from across the Korean and Asian diasporas who join a long tradition of 20th century expatriate artists. These artists of Asian heritage have used their art to explore the liminal zone between feeling at home and feeling apart from home. Especially important to such artists’ production has been the troubling question of identity, as often the answer is complicated, mutable, and, as a result, delivered in both deceptively simple and highly conceptual ways.
Dr. H. Alexander Rich
Dr. H. Alexander Rich, Assistant Professor, Department of Art and Art History, Florida Southern College
Dr. Rich is the director of Florida Southern College’s art history program and director of the college’s Melvin and Burks Art Galleries. He is a specialist in Modern and Contemporary art history, with a particular focus on European and American art of the 19th and 20th centuries. He has previously taught in the History of Art Department at the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York and in the City University of New York system. He has also worked in both curatorial and education capacities at museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Hood Museum of Art in Hanover, NH.
Education: AB, Dartmouth College, PhD, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
