Keeper Guide -
Rha Hye Seok
Documentary
Edited by Youvin Choi
1’5”
Adobe Premiere
2022
I’ve made an Art History Club called “Keeper Guide” and produced a documentary video introducing a Korean feminist painter, Rha Hye Seok.
The contents were composed of themes penetrating life and a collection of research.
This documentary focuses on a female artist who first dealt with Western art.
Known as Rha Hye Seok's Self-Portrait, the painting is a portrait of a woman full of screens. The dark background, clothes, and black hair create a dark and heavy atmosphere as a whole. Only the face, neck, and hands are emphasized in bright colors, in contrast to the dark background, and the gloomy and lonely expression adds to the overall subdued atmosphere. Her large eyes and high nose depict charismatic, exaggerated Western physical features. Due to this Western feminine mask, there is a controversy in academia over whether it is a self-portrait of Rha Hye Seok. However, it can be interpreted as a portrait that reveals the painter's psychological state regardless of whether it is she or not. The resigned expression and firm gaze express her psychological and emotional states along with the contrast of the light and dark on the screen.
The year of production is unknown, but it seems to reflect the influence of the new art trend centered in Paris, France, as she traveled around the world in the late 1920s and toured various countries for about a year and eight months. During her stay in Paris, Rha Hye Seok sympathized with the Beast Wave style of intense brushwork and free color, which is well-illustrated in this work, characterized by simplifying, flattening, and active brushwork, away from the reproducible human portrayal. Rha Hye Seok was the first female Western artist in Korea to study at an all-girls art school in Tokyo in 1913 and graduated in 1918. Unlike the first generation of Western painters such as Ko Hui-dong, Kim Kwan-ho, and Kim Chan-young, who quit painting shortly after returning home or turned to oriental painting, she continued to work passionately upon her return.
It is a portrait in which the pioneering self-consciousness of Korean first female Western artist is well revealed along with expressive painting style and has a notable historical meaning and art historical value.