ABSTRACT
The seminal work of Ernest Gellner on nationalism has allowed us to examine how nations come to invent their own notions of nationhood for political legitimacyand, in the process invent identifiable characteristics with a messianic desire for self-determination and territorial rootedness. The Oriental body is portrayed through Western conventions of exoticism, eliding Western body types to be replaced by Korean ethnic attributes and vernacular details. Along with Lee Quede, hyangtosaek became an artistic practice by creating vernacular modernism in the influx of colonialism. Although Korea was liberated from Japan, hyangtosaek remained the dominant visual language, as is apparent in Group of People III painted around 1948. In the interaction between colonizer and colonized, Lee Quede’s works and Yanagi’s minye theory were produced within the rhetoric of hyangtosaek and the folk art movement as significant parts of the search for national and cultural identity, both in Korea and in Japan.
