The Declaration of Blankism
by Cho, Sang-Hyun
The Declaration of Blankism was initiated by publishing a book and by displaying around 30 works of o,
Sang-Hyun based upon the spirit of Blankism at Dansung Gallery located in Insa-dong, Seoul, Korea from January
15th to January 18th, 1998.
Blankism is a coinage created by adding Ism to Blank. I have not yet found the proper interpretation of the
coinage into Korean. It can be said to be YEARBACKISM.
Blankism originated from the courage which I became assured from the invention of metallic print letters,
Hangul(the first Korean language-invented by the Sejong the Great), and the Turtle Boat(an ironclad battle ship
shaped like a turtle), which are the specific historical events created by our ancestors. The lessons which I learned
from these historical events are that novelty was gradually developed from past tradition and event rather than
produced all of a sudden.
As a result, Blankism tries to pinpoint and polish the prerequisites from the historical, cultural, social, spiritual,
artistic traditions of the past. It is quoted to guide the solution to problems in our present status of Arts field.
Blankism sprang from the local mind to get a better grasp of the world-wide reality in the realm of Arts. The
current situation of the world village being Westernized→ Internationalized→ Globalized, the loss of self-identity
such as anti-localism, and anti-uniqueness emerges. Unless we can find self-identity living in the
post-industrialized society, it implies losing everything. Finding an identity of arts is revitalizing our body. In an
attempt to revitalize our body and soul, I met Blankism.
Blankism is related to the responsibility of the Arts to serve the contemporaries who live in the post-modern
society. That is to say, Arts should provide comfort and coziness to people who live in complex times. In other
words, the purpose of Blankism is to instil fresh winds into tired body and soul of industrial society by using simple
and succinct spirit and pattern of form and selecting realistic topic.
The spirit of form intended by Blankism is to wipe out the dirty world of Westernized Arts by introducing the
philosophy of the Golden Mean, Cleanness, Pragmatism which our ancestors have already developed in Korean
and Oriental tradition.
The form pattern of Blankism is to create tranquillity and space leisurely from such modeling concepts as
[abbreviation and exaggeration],[divine view and positivism], [stillness among movement] inherent in Korean and
Oriental traditional arts.
Since Blankism is composed of 3 easily understandable patterns of space such as [ empty space - mid
space - expressed space], it is said that anybody can appreciate it with ease and comfort. The thesis, theme and
topic in Blankism is closely connected to Reality. I attempt to convey soft, flexible and sightful messages to
appreciators by showing naturalistic things rather than artificial and hypothetical.
Blankism is a world of arts which can be easily accessed and understood by everyone. Furthermore, the idea of
Blankism is to provide vitality and rigour to the life of contemporary people who live in agony and boredom.
I hope that Blankism deep rooted in Korean and Oriental tradition would be a new world of arts suitable to
contemporary sense of feeling and beauty, and it would be an issue in world-wide arts.
●Tranlated by Choi Chang-Hyeon (Professor at Kwandong University, Ph.D in Public Administration)
