ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Nangnang Parlour as a cultural text to consider how the imagination and experience of being “modern” flourished among Korean artists and writers of the 1930s. With its strong emphasis on academic art, however, the Joseon Art Exhibition was too conservative to show modernist works. The interior was furnished with rattan chairs and tables, which at the time were a seemingly requisite element of Seoul coffeehouses, including the “Sunroom” in Chosen Hotel. In the late nineteenth century, prestigious hotels in Europe and America installed atriums filled with tropical plants, which came to be known as “palm courts.” Japanese cafes and coffeehouses followed suit by decorating their interior spaces with tropical plants. Coffeehouses such as Nangnang Parlour emerged as important exhibition venues. Future researchers could fruitfully explore the complex relationship between Korean modernist art and coffeehouses as spaces inscribed with traces of colonial modernity.
