Make Gray City Be Bright
상태바
Make Gray City Be Bright
  • Lee Kim Sooyeon
  • 승인 2013.03.09 13:47
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There are some special things which make us stop when we are nonchalantly walking on a street in a city.  Flowers beautifully blooming and street musicians’ performances can catch our eyes.  However, wall paintings are a new distraction in the city.  Wall paintings are really colorful, so they can make people who are living in a gray city brightly smile when they see it.  Then, how and why did wall paintings get their start?


It Never Disappears


Now wall paintings appear anywhere, such as on the surface wall of buildings, walls beside streets and walls in cafes.  As we know, today’s wall paintings are for design.  However, the original purpose of making wall painting was different.  At the time of the Old Stone Age, the wall painting was used for shamanic purposes.  Our ancestors wanted to get confidence in hunting by drawing animals which they would hunt.  Buddhist wall paintings were drawn for religious purposes.  Monks give religious messages to mankind by drawing wall paintings.  Egypt wall paintings were for recording events.  When there was an important event, they drew it on the wall.  Thus, in the past the purpose of wall painting was shamanic and religious, and for recording.  However, the time when the purpose of wall painting become similar to its present meaning was from the City Wall Painting Movement of Spain and America.  To express social consciousness and resistance to society, particular artists appeared.  In Korea, wall painting started to get attraction from the 1980s, when the city development, the Asian Games, and the Olympics were held in Korea.  From then, Korean artists started to draw wall paint for better visual environmental reform of the city.  As we can see in history, the purpose of drawing wall paintings changed a lot, and now the purpose is the visually aesthetic decoration of the city.

 

Everybody is Artist


As wall painting popularized, people who paint the wall paintings changed.  In the past, Korean wall painting was for visual environmental reform, so government supported a lot and it was painted only by professional artists.  Nowadays, however, normal citizen amateur artists have started to draw wall paintings.  It means anybody who wants can draw them.  With this trend, today many university students participate in wall painting talent donation voluntary service in groups.  Yoon Euijin, Department of Business Administration of Gachon University ’12 said, “I’m joining in a wall painting club.  As wall painting has popularized, many painting clubs have appeared.  It is new that unprofessional people also can draw it.  I’m glad to donate my drawing talent.” At the same time, in contrast, wall painting became more professionalized so that it achieved recognition as one of the art genres.  It means wall painting has moved beyond graffiti now.  It is drawn deliberately as art.  Now there are many professional wall painting artists who are major in wall painting.  As you know, the famous Korean wall painter Lazy Pink Whale, also known as Cyin Juuk, often exhibits his wall paintings on Hongik University Street.


Why Hot?


How come wall painting does not disappear?  And how has its popularization and recognition as art occurred at the same time? It is because wall painting has something special.  Wall painting gives a strong impression.  Also, its colorful paints are more intense because they are spread onto somber gray walls.  Another reason is because wall painting is the easiest and cheapest way of changing the image of a place or village.  By drawing wall paintings, dark streets can be brighter and poor hillside villages can be activated.  Wall painting’s strong impression and power of changing image is now magnified as a good method of making the gray city be bright.  A Mayor of Changwon city, Park Wansu, said, “Before we draw wall painting on the concrete wall, it looked really cold.  However, now after we colored it, our city found its light.”


It Catches Our Eyes & It Touches Our Minds


Wall painting not only changes city’s image but also touches our mentality.  Places which give us negative images like the police station, the poor hillside village, and underpasses have started to be changed with wall paintings.  By painting their walls, negative images disappeared so that those places became more approachable.  Actually, Ewha village was a really gloomy place, but after a wall painting was drawn there, it became a famous tourist attraction.  Also, wall painting has the power to change individual attitudes.  Nowadays, Seoul City is trying to constrict criminal psychology for lessening the crime rate by using wall painting.  That wall painting gives us is not only enjoyment.  It also changes our minds and attitudes.  The city where we are living is too fast and too gray.  Inside there, composure and change which a small wall painting gives us is not that small.  That small wall painting is maybe the big hurricane of a butterfly’s small flapping.


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