A Companion to Korean Art

J. P. Park, Juhyung Rhi, Burglind Jungmann, Dana Arnold

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781118927007
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: History of Art

The only college-level publication on Korean art history written in English

Korean pop culture has become an international phenomenon in the past few years. The popularity of the nation's exports—movies, K-pop, fashion, television shows, lifestyle and cosmetics products, to name a few—has never been greater in Western society. Despite this heightened interest in contemporary Korean culture, scholarly Western publications on Korean visual arts are scarce and often outdated. A Companion to Korean Art is the first academically-researched anthology on the history of Korean art written in English. This unique anthology brings together essays by renowned scholars from Korea, the US, and Europe, presenting expert insights and exploring the most recent research in the field.

Insightful chapters discuss Korean art and visual culture from early historical periods to the present. Subjects include the early paintings of Korea, Buddhist architecture, visual art of the late Chos?n period, postwar Korean Art, South Korean cinema, and more. Several chapters explore the cultural exchange between the Korean peninsula, the Chinese mainland, and the Japanese archipelago, offering new perspectives on Chinese and Japanese art. The most comprehensive survey of the history of Korean art available, this book:

• Offers a comprehensive account of Korean visual culture through history, including contemporary developments and trends
• Presents two dozen articles and numerous high quality illustrations
• Discusses visual and material artifacts of Korean art kept in various archives and collections worldwide
• Provides theoretical and interpretive balance on the subject of Korean art
• Helps instructors and scholars of Asian art history incorporate Korean visual arts in their research and teaching

The definitive and authoritative reference on the subject, A Companion to Korean Art is indispensable for scholars and academics working in areas of Asian visual arts, university students in Asian and Korean art courses, and general readers interested in the art, culture, and history of Korea.

Part I
Ancient to Medieval Cultures on the Korean Peninsula

1
Early Paintings of Korea: Murals and Craft Decorations

Minku Kim

Introduction

As a brush‐based practice, painting in early Korea was essentially the result of interaction with China. Extant works display conspicuous connections to Chinese culture in terms of techniques, iconography, and style. But also notable are local characteristics, some of which were shared widely across Eurasia. Among an array of painted media, funerary murals have survived in the greatest number, and early ones have been found in the deltas of the Taedong and Chaeryŏng rivers. Koguryŏ, originally centered in the mid‐Yalu basin, adopted murals for their stone‐chamber tombs as well, and their repercussions are also clear and persistent in Paekche and the watershed of Naktong. Additionally, craftworks, especially lacquerwares, constitute another major archeological assemblage to accompany early paintings. Rare examples of painting on harnesses have been excavated from burials in Silla. Also noteworthy are the mural fragments discovered from the ruins of above‐ground buildings, presumably once part of Buddhist establishments.

Emergence of Painting on the Korean Peninsula

This chapter investigates the evidence of the earliest known major painting projects on the Korean peninsula and in the adjacent regions of continental northeast Asia, generally known as Manchuria. The period under consideration ranges roughly from around the beginning of the Common Era to the seventh century, corresponding in large measure to the so‐called Three Kingdoms Period (trad. 57 BCE–668 CE), a name deriving from historical sources of the much later Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392) and referring to the kingdoms of Koguryŏ (trad. 37 BCE–668 CE), Paekche (trad. 18 BCE–660 CE), and Silla (trad. 57 BCE–935 CE). Throughout this period the first complex societies emerged in the given region, which grew into multiple substantial state‐level polities, including these foremost three. Presumably, given the complexity and quality of those early surviving projects, paintings were already being produced during the preceding era, but archeologists have yet to uncover physical evidence of such antecedents.

In paving our way to the main matter, we nonetheless need to come to grips with two admittedly familiar yet slippery critical concepts: “Korea” and “painting.” What does this chapter mean by Korea? Setting aside the issue of English etymology, “Korea” is largely an arbitrary modern construct. In fact, its historiographical validity is questionable, if not entirely counterfactual, with regards to this period. There is no indisputable proof that an equivalent notion or otherwise was shared in the region throughout this period. Instead, the given historical experience, albeit in retrospect, can be at best understood as a process, whereby any attribute that is to be later labeled as Korean was eventually formulated. In the following I use the term for lack of a better alternative and for practical reasons of taxonomy (just as we do with “China” and “Japan”). Therefore, “Korea” will serve as an expedient geographic marker, even if its boundaries remain ambiguous and in constant flux. In addition, the region that will be investigated now hosts several modern nation states, including two Koreas and parts of China and Russia; here, the allusion to a certain, historical “pan‐Korean region” is only invoked theoretically, free from today’s nationalist or even territorial repercussions. Moreover, the term “Korea” fails effectively to indicate a specific people (or rather peoples). It is philology that would ever help us in pigeonholing them as some ethno‐linguistic category at least, but the study of proto‐Korean languages is exceedingly difficult (Lee and Ramsey 2011: 1–76). Scarce data suggest, elusively, a tantalizing variety of languages, many of which have gone extinct with or without apparent successors (Vovin 2010). In any case, these imagined masses of individuals may not constitute a homogenous monolith of cultural, social, or political identities—or, more specifically, a mono‐ethnicity, the dogmatic truism that has long been perpetrated, whether consciously or unconsciously, by a trend in modern scholarship that has been shaped by a presentist awareness of Korea (Pai 2000; Xu 2016). Admittedly, any trans‐nationalist approach might simply look like an implausible, sterile neutrality. Nevertheless, this approach of exploration outside of the prevailing mold of ethnocentric narratives should equip us with insight on the period that we will investigate.

The word “painting” creates another set of difficulties―the burden of categorization among an analogous array of cultural undertakings. Following the custom of the field, the author defines painting as the purposeful execution of pictorial motifs by use of paint on a surface. Such a classification nonetheless has its limitations, curtailing line drawings or engravings.

This inadequacy is only exacerbated by the fact that, seemingly during this period, the practice of painting, especially as the art form that we know from later periods, was not genuinely in place or was only being formed. More importantly, our understanding of such painting is tied intimately to the happenchance of archeology, which might distort our evidence while creating a false impression of coherence. We need to acknowledge the possibility that many works of painting on such soft surface as textiles or paper and on buildings have simply not survived. It is no accident that the painted materials examined below are largely such less perishable craftwork items as lacquer vessels and harnesses, and tomb murals.

Alternatively, we might add a range of materials, such as petroglyphs and painted pottery, to the category of painting. Such materials are, despite our difficulties in dating, indigenous to prehistoric cultures that flourished earlier and are particularly important for their rich and manifold connections to various ecological and anthropological circumstances within the wider Eurasian context. Moreover, we can identify the persistence of some tradition in the succeeding period, and these materials were, to some extent, reused in later times. Take, for instance, most dramatically, the cliff‐face of Ch’ŏnjŏlli in Ulju (Ulsan), which possesses a large petroglyphic tableau (9.5 meters wide) of animals, figures, and geometric designs that runs parallel in the lower register to a number of lengthy inscriptions (as many as 800 total characters) carved in Idu (Chinese characters reproducing indigenous language) with a long date span ranging from 514 to 838.

In addition, incised decorations occur on bone, pottery, and bronze artifacts, some of which are clearly pictorial and reminiscent of the themes and styles of petroglyphs, suggesting the endurance of certain artistic habits across different media. Most noteworthy among these is the palm‐sized, ring‐knobbed, bronze plaque (13.5 centimeters wide), acquired reputedly from Taejŏn by the National Museum of Korea in 1969 (Figure 1.1). This plaque has been dated to the third century BCE, based ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• About the Editors
• Notes on Contributors
• Editor’s Preface
• Series Editor’s Preface
• Introduction: The Contours of Korea’s Cultural History
• Part I: Ancient to Medieval Cultures on the Korean Peninsula
• Part II: The Koryŏ Dynasty
• Part III: The Chosŏn Dynasty
• Part IV: Modern & Contemporary Developments
• Index
• End User License Agreement