Discourses on Southern and Northern Schools and the Dichotomy of Ink and Color in Post-liberation Korean Painting

This study examines the evolution of discourse on ‘Southern and Northern schools’ within the Korean painting community from 1945 to the 1960s, focusing on how this dualistic framework became intertwined with debates over stylistic preferences between ink and color painting, ultimately reshaping the structural configuration of the Korean art scene.First, the research examines how post-liberation studies of Chosŏn painting history were constructed around the dichotomy of the Southern and Northern schools, emphasizing the elevation of ink-based Southern-style painting as the bedrock of nationalist art in efforts to purge the influence of Japanese colonialism.It then traces how the mid-1950s dispute surrounding the National Art Exhibition brought previously latent factional divisions within the painting community to the surface. Throughout this dispute, ink and color painting emerged as not only separate but mutually exclusive practices, reinforcing a dichotomous opposition between ‘Southern–ink’ and ‘Northern–color.’ This polarized paradigm quickly became a normative framework regulating both artistic practice and critical discourse.The study also sheds light on how, during the 1950s and 1960s—amid simultaneous demands for modernity and national identity—the aesthetics and philosophies of Southern school painting acquired renewed significance in a modern context, with conservative and eclectic reinterpretations coexisting until the late 1960s, when a reevaluation of the concept of Northern school painting gathered momentum.By analyzing how the concepts of Southern and Northern schools were reinterpreted and reassessed across historical, critical, and practical dimensions in the post-liberation period, this study seeks to illuminate the dialectical relationship between ink and color painting—one of the most consequential issues in modern Korean art discourse.