ABOVE: detail from a hand-painted North Korean propaganda poster, for sale through the Pyongyang Art Studio in Beijing. Flag reads “socialism our way.”

Just a small post today: The New York Times is a bit late to the party on this story about the Pyongyang Art Studio, a Beijing gallery that deals exclusively in posters, canvases, and ceramics from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). The supersecretive closed communist country puts most of its artists to work on large-scale propaganda posters and murals, painted in the creepy Technicolor pop of the style known as socialist realism. Given N. Korea’s nazione-non-grata status on the world stage, this art was until recently not well-known outside its borders. Then some middle-aged British dude named Nicholas Bonner just swaggers in, cuts a deal with Pyongyang, and sets up an officially-sanctioned DPRK gallery in Beijing to sell North Korean art. According to the gallery’s website, it was written up by Newsweek and the International Herald Tribune way last winter. Why the Times didn’t get to it before now, especially given that they they own the IHT, is a mystery. But as everyone knows, until the Times has covered it, it ain’t been covered, friend.

The art is of mixed quality, but many of the pieces are quite affordable. You too can reduce an entire desperate nation to an ironic dining-room decor statement starting from just US$200.

LINK: The New York Times > A Gallery Peers Into the Closed World of North Korean Art
LINK: Pyongyang Art Studio