Her Private Life is a South Korean drama against the backdrop of the artistic life. Sung Duk-Mi is a curator at the Cheom Museum of art by day, and a fan of kpop idol Cha Si-An by night. She also runs a fan website called The Road to Si-An. But being a fangirl is a big secret. If her identity as The Road to Si-An were known, Duk-Mi would lose her job.
Si-An, Duk-Mi’s idol, is himself a fan of Lee Sol, a reclusive artist known to have produced only nine paitings before retiring. Duk-Mi tries to purchase a painting by Lee Sol for Si-An at an art auction, but she is outbid by Ryan Gold, a famous artist who lost his ability to paint when he first beheld a painting by Lee Sol.
Ryan Gold is a Korean adopted by Americans as a child. He returns to Korea and assumes the directorship of the museum where Duk-Mi works. Through a series of comical events Ryan Gold and Duk-Mi embark on a relationsip. The story of the relationship is the typical romatic comedy that Korean drama leads us to expect. To me, the art of Lee Sol was far more interesting. Each of the nine paintings offers a clue to Ryan Gold’s real identity and his relationship with the artist Lee Sol. They are intelocking puzzle pieces.
When Ryan Gold eventually begins painting again, after a tearful reunion with his mother, I realized I never really believed in him as a painter. Whereas Lee Sol’s paintings told a story, Ryan Gold’s painting is just added splotches of paint to a portrait that was traced from a shadow of Duk-Mi.
I enjoyed watching this series because of the way it addressed the question of art and of fandom. The love story, the childhood abandonment trope and the fact that everyone in the story seems to have met before when they were children are not what impressed me. But the story of Lee Sol and her art was intriguing.
Some things considered art just do not appeal to me. In the art world, you have to believe in this farce, which I just cannot tolerate. How is tracing a shadow art? Actually, there is talk about how some major artists use projectors and trace photographs, and how many are not honest about this.
Yes, I agree with you. One of the minor characters on the show was an female artist who used to date Ryan Gold. He said he respected her as an artist. But when someone suggested to her that she could open an art academy in Korea, she admitted that she could not actually draw.