The unexpected delicacy of North Korean art

WHEN South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, visited North Korea last month, he was given a tour of the Mansudae Art Studio, an enormous complex in Pyongyang where most North Korean art is produced. At what is one of the largest art factories in the world, around 1,000 artists and 3,000 assistants churn out ornaments for Kim Jong Un’s regime. Mr Moon’s eye was drawn to a series of paintings of Pungsan hunting dogs; afterwards Mr Kim sent his counterpart a pair of the animals as a gift. In a guest book, Mr Moon wrote: “I wish that art would become a bridge connecting South and North Korea as one.”

That mission has already begun, albeit in fraught circumstances. At the Gwangju Biennale, a few hours south of Seoul, 22 paintings produced at Mansudae are on display in a groundbreaking exhibition. It consists entirely of Chosonhwa, the traditional North Korean technique of ink-wash painting. Other forms of art, such as oil-painting and printmaking, are common in North Korea, but Chosonhwa has long been the country’s most revered form. The works include portraits, industrial scenes and landscapes that evoke classical Chinese ink-painting.

This kind of figurative work is a far cry from Dansaekhwa, the South Korean minimalist movement that has achieved widespread appeal. In the North, by contrast, there is no avant-garde or abstract tradition. Still, in some ways the show confounds presumptions about socialist realism, a genre to which some of the paintings loosely belong.

The heroic studies are intimate as well as dramatic. The artists reputedly immerse themselves in the activity they aim to capture—building a dam, for example—before painting it. The result is an unexpected emphasis on detail, a daintiness that is also inherent in the medium. Painted on hanji, a traditional paper made from mulberry bark, Chosonhwa works are delicate, a quality that offsets the ruggedness of the subjects. As with Chinese calligraphy or ink-wash landscapes, the paper is too thin to absorb more than a single brush-stroke.

The confidence and virtuosity required mean that—to a surprising extent for a production line in a totalitarian state—individual artists are able, even encouraged, to develop personal styles. Their “aesthetic priorities” are distinctive, says B.G. Muhn of Georgetown University, curator of the Gwangju show.

Take the landscapes of Jong Yong Man (pictured), one of the most famous painters in a country where the best-known are household names. His depiction of Mount Kumgang, with its striking use of negative space and accomplished evocation of cloud and mist, contrasts starkly with Choe Chang Ho’s more literal rendering of the same peaks. True, much North Korean art glorifies Mr Kim’s regime, but not all is simplistic propaganda. The artists, Mr Muhn says, cling to “human dignity”.

This mix of skill and kitsch has won admirers overseas. Exhibitions have been staged in London, Vienna and Assen in the Netherlands. An art-tourism industry has sprung up along the Chinese border, in cities such as Dandong, where visitors have sampled North Korean food, watched folk dancers and bought relatively inexpensive North Korean paintings. A Mansudae-themed gallery operates in Beijing’s hip 798 Art Zone.

But this nascent cultural exchange has hit a formidable obstacle, linked to another North Korean specialism—monumental sculpture. Nurtured on an insatiable domestic appetite for gigantic bronzes, Mansudae’s sculptors have created statues across Asia and Africa. They include the giant African Renaissance Monument in Senegal and the Heroes’ Acre war memorial in Namibia. Recently, however, these activities have come under scrutiny by the UN, suspected of being a front for sanctions-busting—resulting in the UN Security Council blacklisting Mansudae.

Mr Muhn could put on the show in Gwangju only because the paintings came from collectors, not directly from the factory (the sanctions apply only to current sales). Likewise the gallery in Beijing says it is independently owned and sells work from a private collection. Art can be a tool of diplomacy, but it can be a victim, too.