Most people find it difficult to appreciate art. Going to a museum is not a normal going out. Seeing paintings and talking about your own feeling seems to be a hard work. Think about the situation when you go to museum and someone comes to you and asks your own feeling of the art. What can you say about it? What would you feel when you were asked? It would be a real burden!
Then what about cartoons? A cartoon is a kind of art, but people don’t think of it as difficult to understand. Even more, they enjoy cartoons. Some people say reading cartoons are their favorite hobby. Cartoons are friendlier than any other kinds of art. It is an art, but can be from everyday life. Also, cartoons can come easy to all generations regardless of age or sex. I myself like cartoons, too. After I changed my mobile phone to a smart phone, I enjoy reading cartoons on a website. When I heard the exhibition’s name the Cartoon World, I was really interested about what they will display.
Myeongrang Manhwa
When I took the first step to the exhibition, old memories crowded in upon me. The term of ‘myeongrang’ represented humorous daily episodes or some kinds of funny genre which has ridiculous characters. It is a comic offering laughter through everyday stories of cheerful characters. Yoon Seungun was famous for his comic book series, Manggonge seodang. I read that comic book series when I was in elementary school. It was a funny story of Chosun’s school seodang’s episodes. It also had information of history, so I could study history with humorous episodes, too.
Character
In the next exhibit hall, I saw a picture of Mari Kim and I could recognize that it was similar with an album picture of famous k-pop group 2NE1, and I was right. She was the artist who drew the group’s album image. Her character’s name is Eyedoll so she thought it would be fun when Eyedoll was in the album of an idol group.
Webtoon
Webtoons are a kind of variation of a cartoon. Nowadays most people use smartphones and it changes our daily life. Webtoons are an Internet service that shows cartoons on the Internet. I enjoy this service on Internet, too. I could see my favorite webtoon artist Kim Heemin and Jung Pillwon. Their pieces were their webtoon characters’ portraits. It was an unusualexperience that saw cartoon characters’ portraits, not those of real people.
Fun and Ash
There were big objects that contained the artist’s imaginations of dreams and fantasy. I was shocked when I saw Lee Esther’s big mobile. First I thought it was just a big sculpture, but I could see they were hung on the ceiling. They were also colored in vivid orange, yellow, and red. What was her thought when she made this? She said the reason she made it was just that she loves mobiles. How simple! When I went to the museum and listened to the long story of why he made this or long background of the pieces, it made me bored, but this exhibition was totally different. Artist didn’t say many things. Thinking about pieces is up to us.
This is the reason of the exhibition of cartoons is held. The aim of ‘The Cartoon World’ is art’s approach to the public. Cartoon is the fastest and most direct means of communication with the public. Cartoons contain daily life and communicate with public where diverse social phenomena are represented or criticized. Cartoons are superb showing our reality with a twist as a humorous story. They also change their form from past to today for getting close to the public. They are still transforming and the world seems similar to cartoons more and more. See the cartoon, and you can see the world through them.
