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Showing posts from January 6, 2008

Art gallery and Auction

The tradition of Korean art gallery is very short and shallow, let alone auction. It is known that the beginning of gallery started from 1900 in Seoul. However, it is true the gallery under the modern meaning opened after 1960s in Korea. Even though the history is somewhat poor compared with western part, we can't ignore the right function of the gallery : the exhibition, the sale of art works, the support for artists, the education for viewers and the like. The association of galleries must have been proud of its dedication to Korean art market and art level. It have connected collectors to artists and tried to show the high standard to the public. Above all, it had no an enemy or a rival to compete with for a long time. At last it had a competitor : Art auction. Seoul auction appeared in 1998 and K-auction in 2005. Since then, galleries tended to lose its place as a main post of its field while auctions became healthy and obese. Instead, the auction started to encroach on the te

About Korean Art Auction

Now, we welcome the boom of Korean art market. Differently from the past, many people are concerned with buying art works or art itself. We attribute the skyrocketing of interest mainly to art auction. In spite of side effect of an excessive heat in the market, we can't deny people started to pay attention to art by virtue of the auction. Given that some think of art just as an object of investment or speculation, this overheated phenomenon of the market is interesting no longer. However, at the same time we can't not but accept its right function: The audience focus on art at any rate. We have never had the time before which art was considered as one of big issue in our society. Every day painters are introduced in newspapers and broadcasting news. Some of them are regarded as great stars and their works change new records in price. We just had only one-Seoul Auction- even before 2005 when K- Auction started its industry from. And this year we came to have more auctions such