Art Under Control in North Korea.

ART UNDER CONTROL IN NORTH KOREA

BY JANE PORTAL

LONDON: REAKTION BOOKS. 224 PAGES, $35.

Now that old-school totalitarian North Korea has entered contemporary cultural discourse--not only has the country been recognized as an integral member of the "Axis of Evil," but its dictator, Kim Jong Il, has been lampooned on Saturday Night Live--an examination of its art suddenly seems timely. Jane Portal, a curator in the Oriental Antiquities Department at London's British Museum, has seized the moment with Art Under Control in North Korea, a curious hybrid of international-affairs primer and illustrated art-historical study. As the former, the volume succeeds; as the latter, it is slightly lacking, despite its intriguing albeit obvious thesis: State-sponsored North Korean art borrows heavily from both Soviet and Chinese traditions of propagandistic socialist realism.

Indeed, Portal's early chapters offer a concise summary of international Communist art and its didactic intent, and thanks to her generous sampling of dramatic graphic posters portraying square-jawed workers in dynamic poses, this basic function of North Korean art is roundly established. While one wonders why she doesn't juxtapose them with examples from the former Soviet Union and China to enforce her assertion, Portal makes other, often surprising connections between Communist (and fascist) art and art intended to convey the ideals of democracy and freedom. For example, she argues that many large-scale, heroic statues of Kim Il Sung (Kim Jong Il's father and the first official leader of North Korea's Communist regime) are similar to dramatic monuments in democratic countries, including the United States, for example Mount Rushmore and the Statue of Liberty. Portal's point--ostensibly simplistic but possibly subversive, given her choice of comparisons--seems to be that art is a powerful political tool, whether commissioned in a dictatorship or in a democracy.

Given Portal's background as an art historian, it's surprising that five chapters out of six are devoted to an overview of North Korea's history and politics, with art as illustration rather than focus. Throughout the book, she presents a time line for Kim Il Sung's rise and his promotion of juche, or "self-reliance," a concept cribbed directly from both Soviet and Chinese Communist dogma, and constructs a portrait of Kim Jong Il as an insecure man (his "predilection for platform heels," notes Portal, "is thought to be a result of his feeling of inferiority at being shorter than his father") who even went so far as to kidnap a filmmaker whose movies he admires. Within a topical chronology of the country's art, Portal scatters a spectrum of images, ranging from a Mao-like portrait of Kim Il Sung (complete with slicked-back hair and shirt stiflingly buttoned up to his neck) to rarely seen original forms of North Korean art, such as unusually colorful figurative ink paintings on paper (a mix of Asian and Western aesthetics unique to the region). If only all political histories were accompanied by such engaging visual material. One hopes, however, that future studies of North Korean art will engage more directly with images and objects--although one can imagine the bureaucratic challenges of gaining access to material and sources. In the meantime, Portal's offering serves as an accessible introduction.