This North Korean Art Is More Than

Propaganda
Socialist Realism isn’t just pictures of happy workers and brave soldiers.

BY GABE BULLARD

P U B L I S H E D J U LY 2 0 , • 4 MIN
2016 READ

It’s a little unexpected to find yourself staring at a work of North Korean propaganda
in Washington, D.C. It’s even more unexpected to find the artistry of the work
completely transfixing.

A new show of North Korean Socialist Realism paintings at American

University rewards long, close looks. Approaching the work, there’s the initial feeling
of being overwhelmed by the size—many are more than 10 feet wide. Then there’s the
puzzlement that comes from seeing scenes that, to anyone outside of North Korea,
seem either overly melodramatic or entirely implausible—workers smiling as they tap
water from a dam, a soldier on horseback leaping over a burning railroad bridge, a
man holding onto a boat ready to fire his pistol at an enemy. This, from a country the
United Nations has said practices “systematic, widespread, and gross human rights
violations.”

But then there’s the wonder, and the feeling of unease as you realize these paintings
are more than just propaganda.

“I was fascinated by the art,” says artist and curator BG Muhn. “I thought, wow, this
is something I never knew about.”

Muhn spent five years putting together the display, gathering works from North
Korean museums and private collectors outside of the country. His goal was to show
the craft behind the politics.

“It’s beyond our imagination,” Muhn says. “[North Koreans] not only produce
nuclear weapons … they admire art.”

Through its art studios, North Korea produces works both for other countries and for
its own citizens in public displays and museums. The works in the display in
Washington (and in the above gallery) were painted between the late 1960s and the
present day, many by multiple artists, and many are replicas, painstakingly recreated
brushstroke by brushstroke.

All of them are examples of a technique called Chosonhwa, which uses ink and rice
paper instead of oil paints and canvas. This limits how much layering artists can do,
and leads to innovative techniques—for instance, a painting of a tiger includes several
blank spaces to depict white snow. It also gives the paintings a sense of delicacy when
viewed up close, which is surprising, given the strength of the political messages
many of them send.

Going through the works, there’s a clear evolution over the decades. Newer paintings
show modern brush techniques and more abstract representations of subjects. But
even in the older paintings, there’s evidence of both Western influences and
advanced techniques. One work depicts a rescue at sea, and the scene’s composition
is surprisingly dense, as the line of an arm throwing a rope contrasts with the curve
of a wave.

Despite their intricacy, many of the paintings are still, obviously, propaganda—that
theme doesn’t change. The pieces in the gallery may not be over-the-top war posters
that show things like a fist crushing an American warplane, but the pictures celebrate
bravery, daring, and abundance, the latter of which is perhaps lacking in a nation
that has frequent bouts of famine.
American University Art Museum director Jack Rasmussen doesn’t think that means
they can’t also be looked at as art.

“Most of the history of Western art was propaganda for the church,” he says, also
noting how similar these works are to American paintings in the 1940s (think Rosie
the Riveter). “This succeeds at every level art should succeed at.”

This is a familiar point. The author Upton Sinclair argued in 1925 that “all art is
propaganda.” Sinclair’s socialist critique argues that essentially there’s little
difference, since art is the representation of reality through an artist’s personality,
made “for the purpose of modifying other personalities, inciting them to changes in
feeling, belief and action.”

Maybe not all art is political propaganda like this, and maybe more art flourishes in
less stifling societies, but Sinclair’s thesis remains a fairly popular saying (it was later
used as the title of a George Orwell collection).

Out of their context, these paintings don’t so much make the viewer set aside North
Korea’s prison camps and potential nuclear threat, but they complicate what can
sometimes be a one-dimensional view of the country. When asked if showing these
works in the U.S. might soften feelings for the country, Rasmussen smiled.

“I don’t think many people will want to move to North Korea after seeing this,” he
says.