Organizer: Junghee Lee, Portland State University
Chair: Donald F. McCallum, University of California, Los Angeles
Discussant: Youngsook Pak, University of London
The panel presents three papers which focus on the unique nature of Buddhist motifs and icons in the art history of Korea. The importance of Korea in international Buddhism is only just now being realized. No longer can Korea be regarded as merely a bridge between Chinese and Japanese Buddhism. The panel hopes to show, using detailed examples dating from the Three Kingdoms period (53 B.C. - A.D. 668) up until the present, that the Buddhist art of Korea contributed fundamentally to the nature of Buddhism in Asia.
In the first paper, Jonathan Best proposes a new interpretation of the tomb as incorporating a Buddhist significance. He reexamines, using literary sources and archaeology, the lotus motif on bricks decorating the walls of the royal tomb of King Muryong (dated 526) of the Paekche Kingdom in its context as a Buddhist artistic symbol. Best shows that the use of the Buddhist lotus had a basically political motivation.
In the second paper, I will discuss the state of research on the Vairocana Buddha image of the Unified Silla period (A.D. 668-935). The earliest extant images of the Vairocana Buddha with the wisdom-fist mudra appear in the mid-eighth century in Korea, earlier than the images in the Tantric mandala of the Shingon sect in Japan or the Vairocana images in Chinese temples. The images present quite exciting problems to Korean art historians and Buddhologists. The Vairocana Buddha images with the wisdom-fist mudra were very popular in Korea during the Unified Silla and Koryo periods, without developing into the fully Esoteric Buddhist context. It seems to be a unique type of image developed in Korea in which the tenets of the three important sects (the Avatamsaka, Tantric, Son [meditation] sect) intermingled. I will offer the possible source of this image as South India via the sea route, and suggest a new interpretation of the significance of this type of image in a religious context.
In the third paper, Frank Hoffmann discusses the use of art for propagandistic purposes by the Minjung [political activist, or underground] movement in Korea during the 1980s and early l990s. He deals with traditional Buddhist iconography of the messianic cult of Maitreya used for political ideology by contemporary intellectuals to promote political freedom under oppressive military regimes. It is well-known that the Korean student and Minjung movements have been a great inspiration to the Chinese student movement. While Chinese students used the Western iconography of the Statue of Liberty in Tiananmen Square, Korean political activists aimed for a national audience by using the Maitreya image which has had a messianic context throughout the history of Korea since the Three Kingdoms period. Mr. Hoffmann also deals with the issue of the reincarnation, in folk belief, of historical figures, such as the leader of a peasant rebellion as Maitreya, one of recurring importance in Korean art and culture, and thus helps to understand the use of traditional icons in a modern context.
Thus, each paper demonstrates the original way in which Korea dealt with Buddhist influences, the Korean artists, monks, and elite using Buddhist art to express their own religious and political outlook. Korean Buddhist art reveals a unique creativity that has long been overlooked.
Jonathan W. Best, Wesleyan University
Fifteen years ago at the 1980 annual meeting of the AAS, I presented a paper entitled "The Life, the Times and the Tomb of King Muryong of Paekche." After having drawn attention in my presentation to the close similarity between the lotus design on the bricks used to construct the early sixth-century tomb and those found on bricks from contemporary southern Chinese graves, a person in the audience asked if the extensive utilization of the lotus motif in the Paekche royal tomb indicated that it was a Buddhist burial. My response at the time was that such a conclusion was not necessarily warranted both in view of the contents of the tomb and since the use of the motif could have been as well motivated by the desire to be au courant with China as by the intention to make a strong religious statement. My subsequent research concerning the political and cultural history of Paekche, however, has caused me to revise somewhat my earlier assessment of the Buddhist significance of this important monument-wholly Buddhist it is surely not, but it is more significantly Buddhist than I originally understood.
Accordingly, in this paper I will introduce both the written evidence derived from early Korean, Chinese and Japanese sources and the material evidence contributed by archaeology that have prompted my reconsideration of this issue. My aim will be to present the evidence in such a way as to establish a cultural and historical contextualization of the tomb's Buddhist decorative elements so that a more appropriate reading of their original significance emerges. It is my understanding that following a succession of serious threats to the kingdom's survival in the last quarter of the fifth century, Paekche's early sixth-century monarchs consciously sought to restructure their government more fully on the Chinese model so as more firmly to centralize power in the throne. As an element in this transformation, the connections between Buddhism and governance-again based on the contemporary Chinese model-were greatly enhanced. The prominence of Buddhist decorative elements in Muryong's tomb reflects, in part, this important shift in the political role of Buddhism in early sixth-century Paekche.
Junghee Lee, Portland State University
In this paper, I propose to examine the identity and origin of the Korean Vairocana Buddha image in the wisdom-fist mudra. Two of the world's earliest extant images with the wisdom-fist mudra dating from the second half of the eighth century were found in the Silla kingdom in Korea. According to the inscription dated to 766, the seated Buddha of Sognam-sa represents the Vairocana Buddha. In the wisdom-fist mudra the upright index finger of the left hand is enclosed in the fist of the right hand. This mudra symbolizes the union or harmony of two elements, phenomena and principles, in Tantric Buddhist iconography. The main thesis of this paper is that the Buddha form of the Vairocana Buddha with the wisdom-fist mudra is the cosmic Buddha of the Avatamsaka sect, not Mahavairocana of Tantric Buddhism.
An even earlier Korean image with the wisdom-fist mudra may be found in the figure painted on the Avatamsaka Sutra, dating from 754. The figure, wearing jewels and scarf, may represent Mahavairocana Buddha in the wisdom-fist mudra. The bodhisattva form of Mahavairocana Buddha is very rare in Korea, but Buddha images in monks' robes were very popular in Korea during the Unified Silla period.
The origin of this Buddha image in Buddha form is obscure. This could have come about due to the influence of Buddhism in the southern route, from south India via Indonesia to China, Korea and Japan, partly documented by Vajrabodhi's trip to India from China in A.D. 716.
The appearance of the Vairocana Buddha in the wisdom-fist mudra was due to the popularity of the Avatamsaka sect and the Son sect in Korea. In Korea, the deity Vairocana was not transformed into the esoteric deity, Mahavairocana, in all likelihood because the esoteric teaching of the Mahavairocana Buddha never developed a strong enough following.
Frank Hoffman, Harvard University
The South Korean art scene of the 1980s was marked by the emergence of the Minjung Cultural Movement, a politically motivated movement that, during its most vibrant period, centered on democratization, social justice and national reunification, both reinterpreting Korean tradition and, at the same time, inventing new traditions. Besides condemning Americanization and social disparities through depictions of scenes from the daily life of Korean peasants and workers in an industrializing society, Minjung art also used traditional patterns of peasant culture (e.g., the mask dance), alluded to peasant resistance (e.g., the Tonghak Peasants Uprising) and made use of religious icons such as the Maitreya-since the sixth-century the most popular Buddhist icon on the Korean peninsula.
We have seen the images of Minjung art as cover illustrations on books and magazines, as pictorial banners at university buildings or during labor strikes, and in the television news. Given the crude, flashy and direct styles of the Minjung Art, we might not anticipate a need for much familiarity with Buddhist iconography to decipher these pictures. However, as I will demonstrate through several examples of paintings and prints by Kim Pong-jun (b. 1954), Hong Song-min (b. 1960), Pak Kwang-su (b. 1960) and others, Minjung artists made ingenious use of traditional Buddhist iconography, occasionally allowing readings at various levels of sophistication, more often assuming a rather thorough knowledge of Buddhist iconography. In contrast to woodcuts by Kathe Kollwitz (1867-1945) and Taeko Tomiyama (b. 1921) or paintings by David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974)-some of the artists whose works inspired Minjung art-many of the Korean works are therefore not fully accessible to the majority of the Korean lower classes, the minjung, but must be understood to a great extent as art by students for students, works by intellectuals for intellectuals.
In this paper, I will examine the use of the Maitreya image as an icon in Minjung painting and prints, to demonstrate how Korean traditional icons were used in the 1980s protest-art movement, how their iconographical meaning changed, and how new pictorial traditions were invented. In the broader context, this will serve as the basis for a discussion of the use of tradition in modern Korean art.
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