Customer Reviews

Korea As Viewed By 12 Creators

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I'll admit it, I came into this book with high expectations. The title alone sounded powerful and gave such great expectations, "Korea as viewed by 12 creators." I could only imagine what creativity would be found within these pages as artists sought to describe this somewhat hidden country via their art. The book's premise is that 12 different artists, a mix of French and Korean, created 12 different short works about Korea, which would showcase how different people viewed this land. But..it didn't really work well.

The biggest disappointment, and also the most telling, to me really was the way the French artists displayed the country. Most of them seemed to highlight their shopping experiences with only brief mention of the country around them. And while they displayed some of the interactions that they had with the people, they were so brief as to almost display a negative view of the people. For example, one artist depicted that the Koreans seemed to think that all white people were American. Only two artists from the French side seemed to show more of the country and the people and that was Vanyda and Herve Tanquerelle. Of the two Herve's is probably one of the more unique pieces in the book, being a completely wordless comic seemingly depicting an ancient legend. The Koren artists by and large focused more on the people of Korea and their treatments and customs. My favorite piece in the book Lee Doo-Ho with Solgeo's Tree. It's rendered lovingly in pen, ink, and brush and tells the story of an artist who paints an all to realistic tree. Even then though all of them worked in the same style and there was nothing different about how the work displayed.

Anther disappointment was that none of the artists teamed up to create a piece about their experiences, nor was it even obvious that any of the artists had ever met each other. It seemed to be more that they were recruited, asked to do a work, and that was it. Perhaps some of the stories would have been better served with a short introduction to tell us about the piece since the culture is so different than what most of the Western world is familiar with. Really what I had hoped for with this book was that the works would showcase more of Korea and its people and that just didn't happen for whatever reason.