The Last Mask

Finished the last painting in the Modern Mask Series: Cheabol Son last night. I still need to sign and date the painting, but that will have to wait until some pigments dry.

The six mask paintings are based on Korean Mask Dance a significant cultural art form for  more than a thousand years that flourished in the Li Dynasty. In a nutshell, the Mask Dance was a means by which the underprivileged could vent against the higher born, including the monarchy itself.

I thought it would be interesting to use the Mask Dance (탈춤) as a vehicle for paintings of how a modern mask might look in conjunction with a contemporary story. The plot of the story, written by Seon Doh Kim,  deals largely with desire and the price of self-doubt with a representative Chaebol Family replacing the role of "higher borns."  To the right, the mask paintings in their order of completion, the plot of the dance.

Hannam Mask Dance (한남탈춤)

Young Salary Man and the Bride From the North are engaged. Young Salary Man is admitted to a Chaebol company after a fierce competition, where he meets his childhood friend, Chaebol Son. (They met at an international school before Young Salary Man's family business went bankrupt.) Young Salary Man is a newbie while Chaebol Son is already a department head (as he is the son of the Chaebol Chairman).

While Young Salary Man and Chaebol Son rekindle their friendship to some extent, Young Salary Man finds it difficult not to feel small around Cha
ebol Son. One day, Young Salary Man takes his wife-to-be to a company dinner where he introduces her to Chaebol Son.

Chaebol Son is struck by her “smashingness” and secretly starts to woo her behind his friend's back. He is confident she would have him as he had never failed with women before, what with his background and his charm. While the Bride is flattered, of course, she discourages him of his pursuit. However, when Young Salary Man finds out what had been going on, he finds himself in a fit of jealousy and a sense of inferiority. He starts to become suspicious of his lover, obsessing about her whereabouts.

Young Salary Man is continuously under stress at work, as he works alongside Chaebol Son, who keeps making snide remarks about his relationship with the Bride. The Bride feels Young Salary Man's distrust too, and the distance he is placing between them.

Meanwhile, it comes to the Chairman's attention that his son (Chaebol Son) is infatuated with a common woman with no significant background. As the Chairman sees the infatuation grow, he calls his son to his office to talk him out of it and eventually threatens to cut him off, as he had done with his daughter*, if he does not stop with this madness. The Chairman sends his people to the Bride as well, as he has done many times before with other women in Chaebol Son's life, to offer her money in exchange of his son's freedom. Appalled, the Bride rejects the money and makes it clear she has no intention of getting involved with Chaebol Son.

She rushes home to her dad, the Urban Old Man, to share her distress. Urban Old Man, who lost his job during the Asian financial crisis of 1997, is a wise man with an incisive perception of how the world is run. Seeing the mess her daughter has landed herself in, he goes to see Young Salary Man. Young Salary Man is desperately unhappy, convinced the Bride has betrayed him, and nothing Urban Old Man says convinces him otherwise. Urban Old Man looks through him, sees Young Salary Man's inferior complex eating at him and leaves him in his despair, knowing that the Bride deserves far better.

* The Chairman's daughter fell in love with an ordinary man, invoking the wrath of her father. He threatened her lover with everything he had, and when that did not work, cut his daughter off. She, who had never been a woman of strong character, was in a miserable state until she hung herself the night before the wedding.

 (The boldface is where Death makes his/her appearance.)

I am currently compiling the 2014 Catalogue of paintings which will include Hannam Mask Dance (한남탈춤)
in higher resolution in addition to closeups of the paintings.