일제강점기 서양화 거래에 관한 고찰

Abstract

This study examines the art market of Western paintings in Korea during the first half of the 20th century. It analyzes the starting point of Western paintings that became available after the opening of the ports have been traded, price fluctuations compared to Eastern paintings, and the factors that led to the trading. This paper considers that Western paintings began to be actively traded in the 1920s and compares the list of sales price of the works in Chosun Arts Exhibition in 1922 with the suggested price lists for the works in the exhibitions in 1930 and 1941. Research materials that I discovered such as The 9th Chosun Arts Exhibition Works List in 1930 and The 20th Exhibition Works List in 1941 were actively utilized. Despite the fact that the sales prices and suggested prices are different, under the circumstance of the shortage of information it is inevitable to outline the market of Western paintings at the time this way. According to the analysis, the price of Western paintings in the 1930s was 15 times higher than that of 1922, and it went up by 33% in 1941 compared to that in 1930. As a result, the price of Western paintings rose sharply in the 1920s, rising to a level similar to that of Eastern paintings after the 1930s. The genre of Western paintings preferred by the collectors also gradually became diversified from landscape to portrait and still life. The collectors of Western paintings in the beginning were mainly Japanese people with high-income like bureaucrats and professionals migrated from Japan, but gradually Korean people began to collect. Japanese collectors at first mainly purchased Japanese paintings but steadily began to also buy Korean paintings. With several overlapping factors, by 1941 Korean artists who painted in Western style were able to offer higher prices than Japanese painters. This study shows that structural factors related to supply and demand, such as ▲increase in the number of Korean painters who produced Western style paintings, ▲proliferation of demand for Western paintings, and ▲emergence of well-known galleries, have influenced this phenomenon of the trading of Western paintings.