It is evident that special interest in, what is called, the Min-Hwa (folk painting) in the field of the formative arts has been greatly increasing lately. This is very fortunate for our country, because this tendency to studying what is really Korean ...
It is evident that special interest in, what is called, the Min-Hwa (folk painting) in the field of the formative arts has been greatly increasing lately. This is very fortunate for our country, because this tendency to studying what is really Korean contributes to the establishment of our national identity and the development of traditional culture.
The Korean emotion, the feeling of the common people in daily life, and the aesthetic consciousness are expressed realistically on the Korean Min-Hwa. So it is desirable that more diversified and deeper research in the Min-Hwa should be made and tried hereafter, because it includes the life of the common people.
The word Min-Hwa is a coined word by a Japanese, Yanaki Muneyoshi. He regarded Min-Hwa as industrial arts for the practical use by the common people. He did not form a logical system until he came in contact with the Chosun Min-Hwa. His definition of the word, Min-Hwa, was paintings born from the common people, drawn for the common people, consumed by the common people.
Korean Min-Hwa has been recognized in its value and given much attention to as a unique painting since Yanaki Muneyoshi.
In the middle of the 1960's, there was great enthusiasm in the Korean Min-Hwa collection, but in the 1970's the interests in Min-Hwa spread so rapidly that many people began to study it and attempted scholarly approach to it. And many specialists of art did nation - wide research and wrote papers on the Min-Hwa. Some peculiarities of Min-Hwa are as follows. First, one can find out a certain color or line that a modern man needs. Second, Min-Hwa is a painting drawn as one wishes, and a painting of one's own thought. Third, the feeling of the common people expressed on Min-Hwa accords with the consciousness of the modern man who has democratic social consciousness. Anyway the conception of Min-Hwa seems to give us a kind of peculiar Korean wit and composure that are really Korean.
Lately the revised new curriculum lays emphasis on discovering our own traditional culture in school education, particularly in art education. But in the art textbook, Min-Hwa or the related materials are very few, and it holds a very slight position compare with increasing interest in Korean paintings.
To improve the education of Min-Hwa in a secondary school, the following plans are recommended. First, one should establish a concrete guiding principle of Min-Hwa in the current textbook, and its position as the subject of national culture should be occupied firmly. Second, one should collect and arrange more extensive works of Min-Hwa, and classify them systematically, and put them to practical use as guiding materials for learning in school.
Third, one should separate the field of Min-Hwa from that of Korean painting, and prepare and spread the basic teaching plan of it. Fourth, one should insert much more related materials of it in the textbook, and make art teachers get more interested in it and make them teach the students earnestly.
Min-Hwa is a life art on which the philosophy and the feeling of our existence was expressed concretely. We can say that Min-Hwa is our national heritage into which life and death, love and hate, joy and sorrow of the Korean masses have sublimed through the ages. It is the real life of the common people, To take care of and develop this precious national heritage, our constant effort and research should be made. And by learning Min-Hwa through the curriculum of the secondary school, our students should be taught what is really Korean and what was the real life of the Korean people.
This will be one of the most important teaching methods about Korean inheritance.