◎ Volume 5

Rebinding five volumes of 『Hwacheopgihaeng』
Preface to the North African Travelogue

Chapter 1 Algeria
Into White Africa
The Gate of the World, Airport Story
Hotel Saphir, a traveler's monastery
Ecstasy, Two Women in the Mauritanian Royal Tombs
People lived there, in the marketplace of Buishmael.
Words carried by the wind, from Tipasa
Camus's Rain by the Sea
Boy crying in a Kasbah alley
Albert Camus: Following the Map of Hallucination
Meditation, the Black Jesus of that neighborhood
A tribute to an Islamic miniature painter

Chapter 2 Egypt
Night flight to Cairo
Love of the Nile
From Cairo to Giza: A Journey with Two Women
From Luxor to Abu Simbel
The Art of Death

Chapter 3 Tunisia
Love in the Sandstorm, Sahara and [The English Patient]
Sahara inside me
[Star Wars] and the cave hotel Sidi Dris
Suss's Gallery, that 143.5-centimeter relationship
Kairouan, the holy land of water
El Jem at sunset, the Colosseum of Africa
The backbone of history, Carthage's Byrsa Hill
Light of Time, Bardo Museum
In search of the 'Samcheong' neighborhood in Sidi Bou Said
Art Cafe Denat

Chapter 4 Morocco
Night flight to Casablanca
As Time Goes By, Casablanca Once Again
Tomb of the Great Crier
The sound of drums in Jemaa el-Fnaa Square
Majorelle and Laurent never sleep, in the Majorelle Gardens
The hourglass of Fez, the labyrinthine souks of the Medina
From mosques to tanneries
Peace, peace.
Blue gates inside the Udaya Citadel

Travelogue 5 - Brilliant Starlight Pouring Over the North African Desert

A masterpiece of artistic travel prose, beautifully blending the flavors of the humanities and the arts.
A complete revision of 『Hwacheopgihaeng』 and a new work after 6 years!

A travelogue of 'Art' that fully unleashes the artist's 'color instinct'!

The enchanting landscapes of the land where the flower of 'art' blooms and grows
A pen as a mast, a brush as a pole
Bring it up with words and pictures.

The 『Hwacheopgihaeng』 series, a masterpiece of artistic travel essays beautifully woven with the warp and weft of humanistic spirit and artistic soul, has consistently received love and enthusiastic support from readers since the first volume was published in 1999.
In order to present a very special chronology of Kim Byung-jong's artistic travels like a painting by synthesizing the series, the previously published "Art Travelogue" volume 3, "Kim Byung-jong's Monoletter," and "Kim Byung-jong's Latin Art Travelogue" were categorized by region and theme, completely revised, and compiled into 4 volumes. In addition, a new book in North Africa, "Art Travelogue 5: Brilliant Starlight Pouring Over the North African Desert," was included, and a new 5-volume edition was published by Munhakdongne.
We wanted to present the essence of a high-quality art travelogue that encompasses the unique combination of text and pictures that only artist Kim Byung-jong can show, and the era, region, and culture and art. In particular, this new North Africa edition contains artist Kim Byung-jong's delicate thoughts on the unique colors and artistry of Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco, which have never been properly introduced in Korea, and serves as an excellent guide to the culture and art of North Africa.

North Africa, a land where the dazzling colors of nature coexist with poverty and sorrow.
Artist Kim Byeong-jong, who used to pack his bags and set out on a journey as freely as the wind, uncaught by a net, whenever his battery ran out, decided to travel to North Africa one summer day when he “felt like life was like a blanched plant.”
The reason he chose North Africa as his travel destination was because he believed that the region was a place where one unique culture met another, creating a unique color.
It was precisely this third realm that caught his attention.
This North African travelogue includes Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt, which I visited previously, among the Maghreb, a region in northwestern Africa that means the west where the sun sets.
Artist Kim Byeong-jong, who couldn't sleep during his literary youth, embracing Albert Camus's words, was a painter and lonely individual who suffered from the ecstatic colors of a foreign land. He looked at North Africa and depicted it as a land of art overflowing with humanity and vitality.

When the scenery is dazzling, the brush becomes dazzling too.
When the scenery is enchanting, the brush becomes enchanted as well.
As was the case when I was touring the Caribbean coast, many of the landscapes I encountered this time particularly stimulated my 'color instinct'.
Sidi-Bou-Said, which European painters most wanted to capture on canvas, the Sahara night with its pouring stars, the Roman ruins of El Jem revealing their beauty in the magnificent sunset, the white mosques, the Majorelle Gardens with their intoxicating aura of primary-colored trees and flowers, and above all, the lonely and alluring, deeply shadowed gazes of foreign women revealed under their hijabs… … Now the trip is over.
But those enchanting scenes still remain as afterimages, constantly appearing before my eyes.
_In the text (page 8)

Albert Camus, Saint-Exupéry, Jacques Majorel… …
A land where the souls of countless artists are buried
Artists born in North Africa, or who gathered in North Africa like a lonely planet, left their mark everywhere.
Artist Kim Byeong-jong, who was an 'Albert Camus kid' and spent his chaotic youth immersed in art and literature, stands in North Africa with the energy of a fisherman pulling up a net full of fluttering fish.
Camus's slums in Algiers where he was born and raised, 'Tifassa' which he painted like watercolors, the Sahara that Saint-Exupéry would have seen from his flight, the 'Café Denat' in Tunisia which was the beloved home of numerous artists including André Gide, Maupassant, and Paul Klee, and the 'Majorelle Garden' in Morocco created by the painter Jacques Majorelle and inherited by Yves Saint-Laurent, are written and depicted with excitement as if quenching a long-standing thirst.
North Africa, where the scent of art permeates every corner, is also famous as a filming location.
Representative examples include the Sahara Desert, the setting for [The English Patient] and [Star Wars], Casablanca in Morocco, which became famous through [Casablanca], and the amphitheater in El Jem, Tunisia, which served as the motif for [Gladiator].
In addition, it presents an in-depth artistic journey by weaving together the artists and works that emerge from each place you visit with the local scenery.


A small castle at the end of an alley of white houses.
Contemporary artists gathered like lonely planets in this old house.
What brought them to this white house at the end of a street in Sidi Bou Said, a city on the outskirts of Tunis, in far-off North Africa?
Was it because of the loneliness that was darker than the color of the sea?
Or maybe it was because of the African coffee, which was dark and deep like poison.
Or maybe it was just to sit by the window and look out at the endless jade-colored sea.
Or maybe they just wanted to break away from their group and be alone.

_From the text (page 237)

A curious mixture of races and cultures, North African art exudes a unique charm.
Behind the history of North Africa, which has been ruled by various dynasties and empires, including Phoenicia, Rome, the Ottoman Turks, Spain, and France, for thousands of years, lies a third artistic uniqueness born from the encounter with these disparate cultures.
Artist Kim Byeong-jong, who had been feeling averse to the massive collections and copycat interpretations of European art museums, was captivated by the Bardo Museum in Tunisia.
The simple display style and the refreshing introduction, “This is a house that holds light,” create a comfortable atmosphere, and the world’s largest Roman mosaic, completed with their own unique technique, is as delicate as a painter’s brushstrokes.
Islamic architecture is also an essential part of North African art. Artist Kim Byung-jong, while looking around Morocco's historic mosques and residential areas of the common people, expressed his own opinion that in Islamic architecture, where symbolic representations are extremely rare, it is none other than the 'door' that symbolizes Islam.

I told Professor Lee that the symbol of Islam is the temple architecture itself, and especially the door.
Professor Lee smiled and said it was the first time he had heard of this.
From what I've seen, aren't the old city, the Medina, and the new city also divided by a gate like a mosque? In the case of Fez, the moment you pass through one of the Medina gates, it's so different that you feel like you've gone back a thousand years.
The moment you pass through the gates of Udaya Fortress, isn't a completely different world unfolding before you?
In short, he said that the door is not just a simple door, but that the moment one passes through it, the 'secular' and the 'sacred' are divided, this world and the next, sin and sanctification are divided, and above all, the door is the door that divides the moment and eternity, so he believes that the door is the ultimate symbol of Islam, and that he obtained this not from scripture but from walking on his own feet.
_From the text (page 311)

People who are not rich but peaceful and clear
The dazzling colors of nature that erase the shadows of poverty
In the eyes of artist Kim Byeong-jong, North Africa is a melting pot of all colors.
The author vividly describes the olives in a variety of colors, the leather dyeing factories with pools of color, the red bougainvillea covering the white walls, the jade-colored sea that can only be called "Tunisian blue," and the multi-colored sunsets of the Sahara, as if he were painting a picture.
Meanwhile, to truly understand the country, I recommend heading to the traditional markets where you can see how people live, rather than to stuffed museums.
Among them, the labyrinthine market in Fez, Morocco, was built in the 14th century and is known as the world's largest and most complex market, with a whopping 9,000 alleys.
But inside the market, it is extremely peaceful.
An old donkey busily carries its load with the merchant, and no one calls out to come into its shop.
The people of this area, including the market merchants, all thought of themselves as descendants of God and quietly carried out their assigned tasks.
Although not abundant, the efforts to maintain peace and the dazzling scenery that unfolds behind it make material abundance seem shameful and insignificant.

The sights and lively conversations of this historic alley market were instructive.
It was more vibrant than what you'd find in a few of Europe's tacky museums.
This is why it is not easy to experience a country's culture so raw.
So I would like to recommend it.
If you want to know about Islam, or any culture, for that matter, go to a traditional market rather than a stuffed museum.
The best of these is this labyrinthine market in Fez.
Take a leisurely stroll through the souk's hourglass market, where time is sold rather than goods.
The more lost a person is in life, the more he or she will have to find his or her way back out of the maze.
_From the text (page 303)

The clear call to adhan resonates from the mosque and winds through the village alleys, the intense rays of sunlight bouncing off the brown desert and the jade sea intertwined, and people smiling peacefully within it… If you travel to the land of North Africa, where ecstatic joy and piercing sorrow coexist, you will come to realize that the joys and sorrows of everyday life, no, the very act of being alive, is a splendid miracle.