SNU Museum of Art exhibition showcases 80 years of Dutch ‘Magical Realism’


Despite being named the nation’s favorite artist in recent surveys, few Koreans realize Vincent van Gogh was Dutch.

“Not many know about Dutch artists after van Gogh, either. Koreans tend to be interested only in artists from the U.S. or a few European countries like France or England. It is an unbalanced diet,” said Oh Jinyee, senior curator at Seoul National Museum’s Museum of Art.

To broaden the public’s perspective, MoA is currently holding an exhibition that sheds light on Dutch realism. It features 71 paintings and sculptures by representative artists from the Netherlands including Carol Willink, Wim Schuhmacher, Dick Ket and Philip Akkerman. 

Realism is a significant trend in Dutch art, explained Oh, who is the curator of the exhibition.

“While Dadaism and surrealism took up the mainstream in other European countries, Dutch artists stubbornly refused and continued on with their realism tradition, which started way back in the 17th century,” she said.

The exhibits trace 80 years of figurative art in the European country by showcasing artwork from as early as the 1920s up until the 2000s. The collection belongs to ING Bank, which jointly curated the exhibition with MoA. The Kingdom of the Netherlands supported the exhibition in celebration of 50 years of Korea-Netherlands diplomatic relations.

The title of the show, “Dutch Magic Realism: Past toward Contemporary,” at first seems cheesy. But the word “magic” makes sense after a tour of the show. The exhibits, which undoubtedly belong to realism stylistically, somehow appear unreal and even mystical.

Take “Ietje and Pisanello,” Koos van Keulen’s 2003 oil painting, for example.

There seems to be nothing extraordinary about it ― two women facing each other against a bluish background. Every detail is minutely described, as in any work of realism. Upon closer look, however, it is not difficult to see that the women are from totally different times and space.

The woman at left is dressed in a black sweater with her hair tied up in a messy bun. Not much different from girls we see every day; she is the Dutch artist’s daughter. The dress and hair of the woman at right, though, is reminiscent of ladies from the Italian Renaissance. Yes, the artist picked out her image from an old Italian painting.

“By placing a girl from the present and a girl from the past on the same canvas, the artist hoped to create an encounter of the present and the past. The blue background resembles the color of the air the artist felt while living and working in both the Netherlands and Firenze,” explained a docent.

A painting depicting the city of Delfshaven by Frans Stuurman seems like an illustration from a children’s book or part of an animation film, although one is told that the scenery exactly reflects that of the city.

A eerie sense of fiction is created by the lack of people in the work. Except for the piece of laundry hanging on the roof, there is not a single trace of a human being in the scene.

The extremely delicate details of the painting that seem to almost have been digitally created ― the artist is known to be able to paint only one or two paintings a year due to the amount of labor poured into each piece ― ironically adds implausibility to the piece as well. 

As one starts to wonder if such a genre could really be called “realism,” Carel Willink’s 1945 painting “Girl in a Renaissance Costume” answers that it could.

The actual brown dress the girl is wearing in the painting and the worn-out toy lamb she is clutching onto are exhibited beside the artwork.

“The girl in the painting is the seven-year-old Jacomine de Lange, daughter of well-known antiquarians. Willink painted the portrait for the girl’s parents’ wedding anniversary. The girl, who is an old lady now, is still alive,” said a docent.

The exhibition runs through April 12 at Seoul National University’s MoA in Sillim-dong, southern Seoul. Tickets range from 2,000 won to 3,000 won. For more information, call (02) 880-9504 or visit www.snumoa.org.

By Park Min-young  (claire@heraldcorp.com)