Resilience in Repetition – Overcoming Historical Trauma Through the Repetition of Painted Motives (in Francis Bacon and Kim Tschang-yeul’s Works)

Conference: The Kyoto Conference on Arts, Media & Culture (KAMC2021)
Title: Resilience in Repetition – Overcoming Historical Trauma Through the Repetition of Painted Motives (in Francis Bacon and Kim Tschang-yeul’s Works)
Stream: Arts Practices
Presentation Type: Live-Stream Presentation
Authors:
Simon Kim, Korea University, South Korea

Abstract:

At the first glance, nothing seems to link British painter Francis Bacon (1909-1992) and Korean artist Kim Tschang-Yeul (1929-2021). And yet both in the biography and in the works of these two masters, we can find common features that point to the act of creating through the repetition of the same motives in order to overcome or to recover from the traumas of World War II for Bacon and the Korean War for Kim. Be it the recurring motive of the waterdrop in Kim Tschang-Yeul’s series (titled ‘Recurrence’) or the distorted and screaming packs of flesh of Bacon’s paintings, the two painters use the repetition as a way to cleanse their mind from the horror of reality, giving to the practice of painting itself a character of personal necessity that foregoes the meaning let for the viewers to seize.
This presentation aims at showing how two ensembles of work so different originate from the same existential and resilient necessity, but also how they root themselves in the cultural (pictorial and literary) traditions of the past to reconnect with a world that made sense, a world from before the war.

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