Three Art Fairs; One City

Three major art fairs are converging on Seoul this week and each has its own K-Pop idol to represent it. First, you have KIAF Seoul, the Korean International Art Fair, which is founded by the Galleries Association of Korea in 2002 and which claims to be the first international art fair in Korea. Then there’s StArt Art Fair founded in 2014 by David and Serenella Ciclitira who are long time enthusiasts and supporters of Korean art. And finally Seoul will see its very first Frieze Art Fair, the latest in the Frieze Art Fair franchise, which is apparently being held in partnership with the Galleries Association of Korea. 

We’ll get to the idols in a minute.

For the uninitiated, these types of Art Fairs (Art Basel is another famous one) are not really fairs or even very expensive exhibitions for public viewing despite what the name might imply. Art fairs are trade shows for the art world. It’s a chance for professional buyers to see what the professional dealers are selling. Art fairs are not curated exhibitions of art intended for some kind of platonic ideal of “art appreciation”; an art fair is a marketplace for buying and selling art. And the real art market has price tags that are much, much higher than the $50 watercolor you may have bought on Etsy. Work by serious, established artists starts at about $10,000 and can go into the millions--or even hundreds of millions--on the secondary auction market.

Monetarily, art is worth what people are willing to pay for it and this value can change based on a number of factors, such as scarcity. Much has already been written about the inflated prices of works by “brand name” artists (Hirst, Koons, KAWS), as well as the increasing use of fine art as a place for wealthy people to park their money. (Consider some segments of the bloated market in fine art a type of tulipmania for the modern age.) And of course this doesn’t mean that every person involved in buying and selling art is some kind of cynical monster but it does mean that when discussing art, that there’s more to it than just the intrinsic beauty or decorative value.

So, for example, paintings by a dead artist are worth more money because there can never be any more of them. Another factor is an artist’s renown. A well-received exhibit at one of the prestigious museums can boost an artist’s work into the next tier of prices. The Freakonomics podcast talked about how this happened with the American portrait artist Alice Neel as an example. As she became more appreciated and better known, her work became worth more money. And then there’s simply the tulipmania part of the market where rich people pay a lot of money for works to keep the value of their other works high because they see art as nothing more or less than a tangible asset.

And what we’ve seen over the last 15 years or so is that the exclusive, high end (“blue chip”) art dealers who specialize in these very valuble art assets have joined the marquee European luxury brands like Louis Vuitton and Cartier in putting down roots where the money is: China, specifically in Hong Kong. The top art dealers in the world, Gagosian and Zwirner, have Hong Kong branches. Art Basel began hosting Art Basel Hong Kong in 2013. Planning for the mega-art-museum intended to compete with the Tate and MOMA, M+-- which opened in 2021 in West Kowloon-- began over a decade ago. The top auction houses have Hong Kong branches. 

The market in Asia for art is booming. 

So as Korea boosted its profile in other global arts fields such as film, it’s not surprising that they’d also want to get in where the real money and prestige is: fine art. This hasn’t been without problems. A boom in museum building has led to a shortage of both museum customers and works to stock them with. And then there’s the disruption of the existing domestic Korean art market by the influx of money from both the global outsiders but also from new Korean investors. The FT just published an excellent look at the booming art business in Korea, which touches on this second point but as the great T.O.P. explained in his ArtNet interview last year:

“It has to do with economics. People with wealth are trying to invest their money. Real estate is an option, but that market has changed. There’s been a lot of fluctuation with other markets. So younger people have been focusing on art.”

Apparently, this now even includes platforms to invest in shares of an artwork, to include a platform run by one of the top two local auction houses: K Auction, which--just to further complicate matters--is run by the son of Park Myung Ja, who founded Gallery Hyundai (not associated with Hyundai Motors), which is one of the top two premiere galleries in Seoul and which has been participating in these big global art fairs for a few decades, helping boost artists like Do Ho Suh and Lee Ufan into the global marketplace. Art and specifically art auctions are becoming big business in Seoul, with art functioning as something of a tangible NFT in lieu of real estate investment--although some are just flat out moving into NFTs.

So, where do the idols come into this carnival of capitalism?

Each of the three art fairs is using a different idol (or idols) as a way to grab some media attention and what’s fascinating is which one each has chosen and what it says about the intended audience. 

KIAF Seoul partnered with fashion magazine Marie Claire, who are putting out a special KIAF edition featuring BigBang’s Tayang. To me this signals that KIAF is looking to attract a young, upwardly mobile, fashion-forward, and very trendy domestic Korean audience. Taeyang is an aspirational celebrity. Not only is he very rich with a gorgeous wife and brand new baby, but he’s an accomplished musician with a string of mega hit songs and runs in Korean celebrity circles with people like the fashion photographer Mok Jungwook, who has shown work at KIAF associated galleries. And, oh yes, he’s also well known to be a collector of fine art. It’s the #goals choice if you’re picking K-Pop idols.

StArt Art Fair is actually exhibiting work by two idols--Winner’s Mino and Yoon (going by different stage names for their art works, Ohnim and Yooyeon, respectively). Winner is a popular group domestically in Korea (they just put on a very successful surprise guerilla concert) and Mino and Yoon are both well known individually as solo artists, TV personalities, and actors. They had both been scouted by StArt founders David and Serenella Ciclitira for the “Korean Eye 2020” exhibition and seemingly had a good enough response to also be featured in the art fair itself.

StArt seems to be trying to separate itself from competition KIAF/Frieze by really focusing on emerging artists rather than established “blue chip” artists. Being talented artists as well as recognizable names, Mino and Yoon confer authenticity along with their celebrity sparkle and help the event pop in a crowded domestic media marketplace. 

Now, who did Frieze, the international behemoth landing in Seoul for the first time, choose to use to get media attention? That would be BTS’s Rap Monster aka RM. And over the last three years or so there’s been a fascinating narrative of RM being rebranded from hip hop wunderkint to fine art connoisseur and art influencer. 

This RM rebranding subplot appears to have begun during the 2018 Love Yourself world tour, almost certainly to provide fodder for the voluminous “behind-the-scenes” #content that was being filmed (to include a feature film, television documentary series, footage for extras on the concert DVD, and footage for the annual “Memories” collections, etc.) and, at first, it appeared to be a perfectly normal idol repackaging. 

Thanks in large part to BigBang’s T.O.P., who set the mold, it’s become something of a trope to be a K-Pop idol with fine art as your “thing.” Idols like the ones I mentioned above along with guys like Seventeen’s The8, NCT’s Ten, and T.O.P.’s band-mate G-Dragon, often share the paintings and drawings they’ve created on social media or post images of works in galleries or museums. So, it wasn’t initially too much of a stretch to see RM rebranding in this mold, doing things like posting pictures of himself visiting the workshop of Japanese-American artist George Nakashima. It’s nothing we hadn’t been seeing for years on G-Dragon’s instagram. And this is not a bad persona for an idol to adopt. It can be a great gateway into fine art for curious K-Pop fans.

But then the narrative begins to change focus from RM as a typical “art idol” to RM as a majorly influential “art influencer” and collector and this is what really caught my attention because it happens concurrently with a major push to drive traffic into Korea’s art museums as well as a push to establish Seoul as a new art market hub in Asia. And this is important because art is not just for viewing; as I said at the top, art is also an investment. 

Let’s rewind just a little bit. Maybe about 15 years.

When I was looking up background information on fine art from Korea, quite a few articles said that the recent interest in Korea from the global art market came from the popularizing of Dansaekhwa, a minimalist Korean painting style, via the the rising profile of Lee Ufan, a respected artist now in his 80s, who finally had his first solo exhibition in America in 2008. 

It is a wonderful style of painting but did it really spark a global boom in Korean art?

I think there’s probably some truth there but it’s not the whole story. 

If you follow the news coverage, what seems to have happened is that after it became clear that art auctions in Hong Kong were big business, trend hunters began pushing forward looking for the next “undiscovered” Asian hot spot in order to get in on the ground floor. And Korea, with its rich history of both creating and collecting art, was ready.

And one of the first things to pop up was in 2009 when collector David Ciclitira (remember him?), in partnership with British bank Standard Chartered which just so happened to be the largest foreign investor in Korean financial services at the time, began an annual series called “Korean Eye” at the Saatchi Gallery in London. The first series was curated by a young hot shot named Lee Daehyung who we will definitely be seeing later.

You then start to see the entry of official government groups such as the Korean Craft and Design Foundation pushing into the international arena. They put on a well received show in Milan and then again at the Saatchi Gallery in 2013 boosting the work of artists like Chung Hae-Cho, whose pieces were then bought by the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum. And then had another hit with the  “Korea Now” exhibition in Paris in 2015.

About the same time, one of the massive chaebol companies (Korean family-owned conglomerates), Hyundai Motors, struck a deal with the Tate Modern in London to sponsor a series of exhibitions--the Hyundai Commision, curated by a young hot shot named, yes, Lee Daehyung--in addition to purchasing nine works from Korean artist Nam June Paik for the Tate’s collection. 

I want to be clear that there’s nothing necessarily evil or nefarious about this. Nam June Paik is a respected artist and Chung Hae-Cho is an accomplished craftsman making incredible art but as I said above, one of the best ways to boost the monetary value of an artist’s work is to get a piece placed into the collection of one of the big tastemaker museums. And, well, if this also happens to help increase the value of the art held by the types of people who have family-owned conglomerates, then that’s just icing on the cake!

In 2015, we see K-Pop really enter the arena when mega popular idol G-Dragon launches his PeaceMinusOne exhibition in order to bridge contemporary art and pop culture and in 2016  T.O.P. curates a very well received auction at Soetheby’s Hong Kong.

By about 2017, some “blue chip” western galleries began to open branches in Seoul and in 2019 Gallery Hyundai opens an American branch. 

And then we get to the ill-fated 2020 Connect BTS project. Guess who approached BTS about doing something with the art world? Former Hyundai Commission curator Lee Daehyung! So, BTS, who just so happened to be Hyundai brand ambassadors at the time, were somehow talked into funding 22 non-Korean artists (to include such people as Antony Gormley) to put on public art events in five cities worldwide… because art. 

When this project was first presented to the public in January 2020 through an extremely painful public relations tour in which BTS themselves said almost nothing and showed very little interest, I couldn’t quite figure out what the point was. Was this meant to establish BTS as “art loving K-Pop idols” in the manner of T.O.P. and his 2016 curated Soetheby’s auction? Because that was a lot of effort when some museum selfies would have done enough. Was it supposed to prove BTS were serious artists and thus should be exempt from mandatory military service? Was it supposed to catapult them into the upper echelons of the art world for… some reason? Was it art washing from BTS’s parent company Hybe née BigHit Entertainment in advance of the planned IPO launch? Was it simply a favor to Hyundai? An attempt to prove BTS’s power by introducing the large BTS fanbase to already established artists like Antony Gormley?

In retrospect January 2020 was not an ideal time to be launching a public art event but even without the global emergency Connect BTS made very little impact. The project felt empty, offered nothing new, had no passion behind it and even less momentum. And I’m still not sure what the purpose was. Why on Earth did a Korean pop group need to fund Antony Gormley?

Going back to our repackaging subplot. After a full year of posting staged museum photos in 2019 (with lists of museums visiting being conveniently assembled for the media) followed by the aborted Connect BTS project launched in early 2020, there’s a prominent and widely promoted donation made by RM to the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul in September 2020 and the subsequent recognition of RM as an official “patron of the arts” by the Arts Council of Korea. Moving into 2021 you begin to see RM’s name being used in articles like this in-house Hybe publication looking at Korean art “through RM’s eyes” and being used as an example of “young Koreans investing in art instead of luxury goods”.

BTS are then appointed Special Presidential Envoys for Future Generations and Culture by former President Moon Jae-In and brought with him to the United Nations in New York City in September 2021 to perform their song “Permisison to Dance” (written by Ed Sheeran,  Johnny McDaid, Steve Mac and Jenna Andrews) and on that trip they accompanied Korean Culture Minister Hwang Hee and the first lady to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to donate a work by our old friend, contemporary lacquer artist Chung Hae-cho! This was allegedly the first of many such appearances in support of Korean culture although it currently appears to be the only activity they’ve undertaken as Special Envoys (possibly related to the pushback around their receiving and then attempting to display diplomatic passports.)

It’s unclear what BTS brought to this donation celebration, which was intended as a push to expand the presence of Korean art at the museum which had been (as a Korea Herald article noted) “relatively smaller than the exhibition halls for China and Japan.” Chung Hae-cho already had works placed in exclusive museums like the Victoria & Albert. Did the Met really need the approval and celebrity of the K-Pop group to accept it?

During this time there was also the inclusion of K-Pop stars as artists in the, yes, Korean Eye series as well as the StArt Art Fair. Winner’s Mino and Yoon both had work featured as did Super Junior-M’s Henry Lau. Mino’s “Laugh” was even chosen as one of the signature images used to promote the StArt Art Fair in 2021 and 2022. 

Meanwhile we continue to see lists of “RM’s favorite artists” as chosen by journalists and the idol making promotional appearances at museums.

It’s not until the end of June 2022, after the controversial “hiatus” announcement that we begin to see the narrative take hold that RM is important to the art world because he’s driving fans to museums. This seems to stem from an initial post from an English language Korean news site in April 2022 which reported what “insiders” had been telling them: “However, the reason why RM is considered to have a wider impact within the art world is because he has a stronger image as a museum-goer rather than a collector. This has ultimately helped art become more mainstream by attracting more people to art museums, insiders have collectively told the Korea JoongAng Daily.” [Emphasis added.]

June 28, 2022, from BTS fan Delia Harrington: “BTS’s RM Has Sent K-Pop Fans Flooding to Art Museums”

June 30, 2022, The Washingtonian: “BTS Fans are Recreating RM’s Instagram Posts” (“The National Gallery of Art says it can’t directly attribute an increase in visitation, or a shift in visitor demographics, to RM’s posts, but the museum did see a big spike in social media engagement.”)

This was set up as an explicit contrast to the established K-Pop idol collectors such as BigBang’s T.O.P. (who had a lengthy and substantive interview in the ArtNet Intelligence Report in 2021) as well as idols who have actually created art (again, Winner’s Mino and Yoon among others).

This burst of media attention overlaps with his appearance  on the “Art Basel” podcast in a conversation that does not really talk much about “art”..

BTS fan Delia Harrington then does an “email interview” with RM posted July 26, 2022: “BTS’s RM Talks about His Growing Influence and Appreciation of Art”

All of this culminates in a New York Times profile by Andrew Russeth, who struggles to write something substantive about the allegedly art loving idol. RM is not a top collector. His collection is nowhere near the most prestigious or even most expensive among idols. BigBang’s T.O.P. has an entire warehouse dedicated to his collection. In comparison, RM and his prized KAWS seem less than noteworthy. Not to mention that KAWS is very popular with young male celebrities in Korea. He’s not a creator like Winner’s Mino and Yoon. And he’s not at the center of trends like BigBang’s G-Dragon.

Russeth does manage to find a dealer, who coincidentally happens to be BTS fan, to vouch for his credentials as a burgeoning art expert but there honestly doesn’t seem to be much “there” there. 

LiveArt’s social media person nailed the reason for RM’s selection by Frize on Twitter in a since deleted tweet: “Russeth could not have picked a better topic to preview next week’s Frieze Seoul debut. Sure, the BTS fanbase isn’t likely to suddenly start buying art. But Seoul is a hotbed for Contemporary art and has been for many years, though it is not well known among the general public.” 

To put it bluntly: RM is good for mainstream English language media engagement.

The art experts won’t read this profile but for the average person skimming the New York Times, they’ll see “Korea” and “Frieze” and hopefully remember the connection the next time they walk past Gallery Hyundai in the South Village. 

And that is good for the people looking to grow the monetary value of Korean artwork.

I’ll leave this post with a link to a May 2022 opinion piece from Park Yuna titled, “Double-edged sword: celebrities’ influence on Korean art scene”. Celebrities may drive up prices but who actually profits in the end?