K-pop master takes inspiration from Korean monochrome painting master

Arts & Design

Published: 26 Jan. 2023, 18:56 Updated: 26 Jan. 2023, 19:00

K-pop master takes inspiration from Korean monochrome painting master

Album art for RM's first solo album, ″Indigo″ (2022) [BIGHIT MUSIC]

RM, the leader of boy band BTS, starts the first track of his first solo album “Indigo” with the line: “He always said, be a human being foremost/play, feel it/experience the joy, anger, sorrow and pleasure/instead of trying to do art.”

Who is this “he” that RM is referring to in the lyrics?

The name of this track is “Yun,” and anyone who is well aware of RM’s love for art would know that he is referring to Korea’s dansaekhwa, or Korean monochrome painting, master Yun Hyong-keun (1928-2007). The album cover also shows RM sitting underneath one of Yun’s paintings, "Blue" (1972).

“If you look at the album cover, you will see my jeans on a stool and artist Yun’s painting on the wall,” RM said in a video he posted on the band’s YouTube.

The song even starts and finishes with Yun’s voice, which RM inserted to honor the late artist.

RM’s affection for Yun and his works — the singer has visited nearly all the artist's exhibits both home and abroad — has helped even the laymen of the art world learn about the dansaekhwa master.

JTBC’s hit drama “Reborn Rich,” even references the genre and Yun in one of its episodes. Many people commented online after watching the episode that they were able to understand what the actors in the scene were talking about “thanks to RM, who constantly revealed his affection through gallery visits and of course, his latest song “Yun.”

Dansaekhwa is a type of abstract painting that first appeared in the Korean art scene in the 1970s. It refers to paintings that emphasize spirituality, by restricting the number of colors used, leaving traces of repetitive actions on the canvas, or drawing calligraphy strokes.

These paintings are often considered “difficult” with less sensual pleasure or fun — perhaps something far from what would interest a K-pop star in his 20s.

One of Yun’s representative works “Umber-Blue,” however, is said to be an easier work for people to relate to compared to his other dansaekhwa. That simplicity has been brought into RM’s solo album.

“If you listen carefully to the lyrics, you can see some levels of sadness and solitude, even for cheerful songs, which I think is very humane,” said Tablo, leader of hip-hop trio Epik High, who collaborated with RM on “Indigo.”

Such sensibility may exist in RM’s album as it is his “last archive of his 20s.”

″Umber-blue″ (1976-67) by Yun Hyong-keun (1928-1903) [NATIONAL MUSEUM OF MODERN ARTS]

RM created the album while facing unprecedented difficulties in the entertainment industry due to the pandemic, and at a turning point for the band, when it was announced that the members would be enlisting to serve their mandatory military service.

In “Yun,” RM sings, “You are nothing without the team. It’s a highway, but you are trying to use a narrow path.”

In “Wild Flower,” he sings, “When all the glories turn into yokes, do please take my greed [...] From a living flame to a wildflower, from a boy to eternity, I shall stay in this bleak field.”

RM expresses his conflicting identities in these lyrics — as the leader of a super band who enjoys incredible fame, but also as an artist who wishes to devote himself to creation in order to make music that transcends the flow of time, and as a human being living his ordinary life.

RM seems to have found consolation for these feelings of agony and anxiety from Yun’s works. Yun’s series of paintings, “Umber-Blue” are reminiscent of a combination of calligraphy and ink landscape paintings of the East and the abstract paintings of the West. A thin light is represented by the color of raw hemp cloth and black refers to the color of charcoal, which is a mixture of umber and Blue paints, as shown in the title of the painting “Umber-Blue.”

From his mid-40s, Yun exclusively used these colors in his paintings. Yun said in multiple interviews with the media that his “style of painting changed since 1973. The anger I had when I got released from Seodaemun Prison triggered me to change my style. I used colors prior to that, but I changed to disliking colors and extravagant styles, which made my paintings look darker. I was cursing and gushing out anger through art.”

Yun Hyong-keun at his atelier after his teacher Kim Whan-ki passed away in 1974. The painting on the left is Yun's ″Umber-blue″ (1976-67) [NATIONAL MUSEUM OF MODERN ARTS]

In 1950, Yun was almost sentenced to death after being accused of being a follower of a communist ideology during the Bodo League massacre, a war crime that saw tens-of-thousands of civilians who were alleged to be communist sympathizers killed during the Korean War.

Yun was arrested four times for political reasons, and the last arrest was the catalyst that changed Yun’s oeuvre. Yun was arrested under the Anticommunist law in 1973 after criticizing one of his students for being unfairly admitted to Sookmyung Girl’s High School.

Yun was freed after signing a letter of resignation about a month after getting arrested.

These events inspired RM to sing “Heart burnt dark, I write a poem over those ashes, a life that went through life-or-death crises, what you left to our land” in his song “Yun.”

Yun wrote in 1977 that his “Umber-blue” series bear a lot but keep silent, or “shriek without nagging.”

The use of black in Yun’s paintings doesn’t just represent spite and anger. He explained in a diary entry written on Sept. 19, 1986 that “trees endure the fearful wind, rain, frost and snow of cold winter to maintain their lives, adhere to their locations in silence, and finally go back to the earth when their time is up.”

In a memo written in 1977, Yun wrote, “The color of the soil is the color of nature that is rotten then cleansed” and that it is the color of “beauty that has eternity.” Referring to his “Umber-Blue” series, Yun said that umber, which is the color of the earth, and blue, which is the color of the sky, combine to form the universe.

Therefore, the color black for Yun, connotes agony, resistance, as well as the endurance of remaining silent.

“Sorrow leads to truth and truth leads to beauty,” wrote Yun on Aug. 17, 1988.

“Cunning people tend to move past that. You’d have to detour as much as possible to really see and to feel, and to build up the experiences. That’s what makes art so difficult. Detours can be nasty and come with hardships [...] For those who can’t experience that pathetic life would never realize the true beauty of this world nor really know what beauty really is.”

″Blue″ (1972) by Yun Hyung-keun (1928-1903) [YUN HYUNG-KEUN ESTATE PKM GALLERY]

RM took inspiration from Yun’s philosophy, which regards even the pains in our lives as a detour to finding true art. In the first song of the album dedicated to Yun, RM sings in English, “I wanna be a human, 'Fore I do some art, it's a cruel world/But there's gon' be my part/'Cause true beauty is a true sadness/Now you could feel my madness.”

In the lead single “Wild Flower,” he sings about being a wildflower that roots itself in the soil, quietly blooming and falling, forever covering the earth, instead of being a gorgeously flaming fire that soon extinguishes.

Why did RM choose to have “Blue” (1972) on the album cover rather than the “Umber-Blue” series which was so critical to the album?

“'Blue’ is a painting that came right before his signature painting ‘Umber-Blue,’ explained RM in the YouTube video. “It’s like his last artwork before finding his signature style. I think I still haven’t found my true signature style and that’s why I used that painting.”

RM’s ambition as an artist and his deep understanding of Yun’s work is felt through his explanation. RM’s works challenge us to think about what our signature of life is at this time of the new year.

BY MOON SO-YOUNG [moon.soyoung@joongang.co.kr]