The thesis covers Korean avant-garde art history and the dilemma that faced Korean artists at the end of the Japanese Colonial Period (1910-1945). Current literature adequately details avant-garde as progressive fine arts; however, there is limited literature on Korean art in this period. This thesis suggests the term avant-garde dilemma to indicate Korean artists‘ difficulty in style selection to follow a traditional aesthetical trend or progressive socio-political attitude for the foundation of Korean post-modernism. A salient démarche is found when Korean political avant-garde artists meet this dilemma in the midst of the Korean Demonstration Era (1976-1989) that initiates the decline of aesthetical activism and Demonstrative Art. Several styles of avant-garde dilemma after the Korea War are critiqued in the avant-garde evolution; subsequently, there arise hybrid styles between socio-political avant-garde and aesthetical avant-garde styles in Contemporary Korean Art. The examples included are Nam-Jun Baik‘s Video Art (a combination of art and technology), Do-Ho Suh‘s combination of meticulous sculpture with installation to satire Korean neo-capitalist society, Doo-Shik Lee‘s combination of oriental color with western gesture, and Suk-Chang Hong‘s free calligraphy to combine still-life, landscape, calligraphy, and scribbling.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations