Studio Ghibli & Mucha at Seoul Arts Center

As a kid, I was fortunate to live in a city with impressive art museums, theater, and ballet. Coming to Korea, I remember hoping I would be able to continue to see great art exhibits and ballet performances. Luckily, living near Seoul has kept these diversions available to me, which has been, for lack of more descriptive word, awesome. A few weekends ago, some friends and I decided to head to Seoul Arts Center to check out two art exhibits currently on display: Studio Ghibli and Alphonse Mucha.


Both of these exhibits boasted impressive artwork, and being a fan of Studio Ghibli's films as well as being borderline obsessed with Mucha's Art Nouveau lithographs, I'd been deadset on seeing these exhibits for months. With the end of September rapidly approaching and my weekends filling up, catching these exhibits before they ended on the 22nd was a priority. 



First, we wandered over to the Studio Ghibli exhibit. It's common for big exhibits like this to only let in a certain number of people at a time. So, after being handed our tickets, we were also given numbers. When we got to the entrance of the exhibit, we saw that we were about 200 back in line, but that they were letting people in 50 at a time. Luckily, we only had to wait about 30 minutes before being let inside. While we waited, we wandered around Seoul Arts Center, eating some crepes and sausages and enjoying the people watching. 


The exhibit itself was massive -- illustrated layout after layout showing scenes from every Studio Ghibli production imaginable. In total, there were nearly 1,300 selections from the animation layouts of their films. Another bonus: this is the first time these pieces had been exhibited outside of Japan. 



The skill and detail in the sketches was really remarkable. All so carefully laid out and planned, with amazing coloring and shading. It was really neat to see how Ghibli's richly colorful films started. Some of the layouts were even drawn by Ghibli's famous founders: Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata. I've found that as wonderful as these exhibits are, the masses of people are actually maddening. For me, museums are a quiet, zen experience. So anytime I'm in a museum that's packed full, I find myself getting frustrated. In Korea, it seems everyone is content to form a line and slowly trudge their way through the entire exhibit... Let me emphasize the slowly part. Towards the end of the exhibit, I found myself picking up the pace significantly. Adding to the slow pace of the crowd was the fact that this exhibit simply had too much packed in. Normally, this isn't a bad thing, obviously, but the slow pace of the crowd's circulation through the galleries made me feel like trying to see every piece was actually impossible. 


I found the final room to be especially cool. Its originally empty walls had been plastered with round, white stickers, all of which had been drawn on by fans. Little versions of the famous Ghibli characters completely covered the walls and it was a lot of fun to walk around and just look at what people have drawn. I even added my own. 



Upon exiting the Ghibli exhibit, I booked it to the other side of the Hangaram Museum of Art so I could make it to the Alphonse Mucha exhibit before it closed at 8pm. 



The Mucha exhibit, while much smaller, felt like it deserved much more than the hour that I had left. Upon entering the exhibit, I noticed a completely different mood. Gone was the frenzied pace of the huge crowd in the Ghibli exhibit... Instead, Mucha's exhibit felt peaceful, which is exactly what I like when I'm looking at art I've admired for years. The nearly empty gallery rooms left my friend and I to stroll through at our leisure -- a huge difference from the masses in the Ghibli exhibit.


The exhibit featured some of his most famous lithographs as well as some sketches, oil paintings, and photographs. In all, the show had around 200 pieces, highlighting six different periods in his career. His works were displayed in beautifully ornate frames that complemented their Art Nouveau style. While walking through, I was talking about a mile a minute to the friend that was with me, just gushing about his art and the various things I loved in each piece. 

Seeing Mucha's work in person was awe-inspiring for me -- the colors and precision in his portraits as well as the wonderfully romantic style from the Art Nouveau movement in Belle Epoque Paris... It just wows me. The exhibit showcased the progression of his career and style really well, making it my favorite of the two. 

Seoul Arts Center, by the way, is really amazing. This was the second time I'd been -- the first being last Christmas when my boyfriend and I went to see Korea National Ballet's "The Nutcracker," which was just beautiful and wonderful. A big jazz festival was going on when we were there to see these exhibits, and it seems like they have events and exhibits there pretty regularly. I seem to constantly forget that Seoul Arts Center even exists, and this trip served as a serious reminder.