Title of art	브로드웨이 나홀로/Alone in Broadway			Sector	Korean painting (한국화)
Art specifications	32?41cm			Material technique	Color on paper
Collection year	1998			Production year	1997
Gallery	Seoul Museum of Art			Artist	Chun Kyung-ja
Description of art	Chun Kyung-ja established a unique style of the traditional chaesaekhwa [oriental color painting]. While chaesaekhwa comprises the majority of her best-known paintings, Chun also created many travel paintings, ink and color wash paintings, illustrations, and drawings. Chun embarked on a series of trips overseas for about 30 years since 1969. Chun’s travel paintings are her unique genre of works based on the artist’s sketches capturing the moments and experiences she witnessed during her trips. Chun's travels abroad in the 1980s took her to the sites of literature, film, and performing arts. Chun grew up hearing the pansori performers sing in town squares and admiring the traveling circus troupes. Chun had fostered an appreciation for literature and film since her student days, and over the years, film, theater, pop music, and dance became more than just a hobby for the artist; they had become the sources of her artistic inspiration, the means for consoling her lonesome life, and materials for her work. As such, images from literature and film served as significant materials for Chun’s paintings and writings, and became components of her memory and experiences. As Chun visited destinations that served as the backdrop of works of literature and black-and-white films, she tried to capture the raw essence of those sites in her work. The artist’s endless pursuit of the primal nature of mankind in her travels combined with her deep appreciation for the art and culture of European and American civilizations have led to detailed and realistic styles serving as historical documentation while also presenting certain changes in composition and colors that capture a world of dreams, love, and fantasy on the canvas. (1997) depicts the billboards of Broadway, New York. Girls dressed in colorful costumes and performing acrobatics looked so dazzling and entrancing to Chun that she wanted to be a circus girl herself. Although Chun visited the circus only three times, the circus girl took rook in Chun’s mind as a form of spiritual nostalgia. She was so absorbed in performing arts that she would refer to the ‘lunacy and acquired energy’ of the performers to express the process of her work. Wherever in the world she travelled, Chun would enjoy visiting performances and making sketches. Chun was particularly invested in America’s performing arts, which is often largely represented by Broadway. The flamboyant billboards advertising the musicals and theatrical productions adorn the streets of Broadway and into Times Square. In the center screen can be seen the billboard for Les Miserables along with those for Grease, Cats, and Phantom of the Opera. The Coca Cola ad visible through the musical billboards ostensibly represents the popular and consumer culture of America along with the “USA” inscription in the lower right corner. Chun depicted each billboard realistically yet in her own painterly style to elucidate the nature of American performing arts.
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