Title of art	John Ford Point/John Ford Point			Sector	Korean painting (한국화)
Art specifications	31.5?41cm			Material technique	Color on paper
Collection year	1998			Production year	1987
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. In the 1980s, Chun sought out the worlds of literature and film. 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. Chun’s quest for internationally renowned literary masters’ footsteps resulted in her visual and written works, wherein her passion and affection for culture and the arts can be found. Chun's endless pursuit of the primal nature of mankind combined with her deep appreciation for the art and culture of European and American civilizations have led to detailed and realistic styles that also present certain changes in composition and colors, thereby capturing a world of dreams, love, and fantasy on the canvas. (1987) depicts Monument Valley. Chun traveled to the American Southwest with her youngest son in 1987. Monument Valley was named after its monument-like geographic features comprised of buttes, rocky bodies of elevation formed from eroded mesas. The location in Chun’s work was named John Ford’s Point after the westerns film director who often featured panoramic scenes of the Monument Valley since Stagecoach (1939). Chun substituted the rusty brown of the vast land under the scorching sun with red, green, and purple to unfetter the feeling of desolation. The dog and yellow flowers instill the scenery with a sense of resilience otherwise absent from the vertically eroded rocky cliffs. Chun detailed the Mitten Butte in the center by overlaying similar colors to simulate the grains of the weathered monolith. Although the painting appears simplified, the overlaying of colors provides depth. Chun’s rendition of the endless stretches of the orange wilderness varies in color as the eyes trace across the canvas. The arid, desolate scenery is transformed in Chun’s painting through her unique coloration aesthetics to capture the mystery and fantasy of Mother Nature.
Address	61, Deoksugung-gil, Jung-gu, Seoul			Source	Seoul Metropolitan Government