Organizer and Chair: Junghee Lee, Portland State University
Discussants: Susan Bush, Harvard University; Chin-sung Chang, Yale University
This panel presents three case studies of how foreign influences affected Korean art in both ancient and modern times. It shows how the influences were used and changed in their absorption by indigenous developments. These studies help to outline how Korean art created its distinct identity.
The first paper evaluates the sources of foreign influences upon the Buddhist temple of Sokkuram, suggesting that a major source was the Korean monk Hyech’o who made a pilgrimage to India from China via Southeast Asia and also Central Asia in the eighth century. Sokkuram recreated different influences into a unique Korean monument, that of a womb mandala with an indigenous iconography and style.
The second paper, by Professor Hyung-min Chung, will focus on the ink paintings of the period 1863–1910. She discusses the impact of Chinese institutional reform on Korean art production and argues that despite both Chinese and Western influences, there was continuing internal development leading to a unique Korean modern art. Finally the last paper, by Professor Yongna Kim, examines the oil paintings of Yi In-song during the Japanese occupation period and explores how colonialism and nationalism influenced his art and how he is affected by foreign influences, producing personal crisis and conflict that produced a dichotomy in his work.
The overriding conclusion of these three papers is the ability of Korean culture and art to absorb and transform foreign influences, producing the nature of Korean art.
Sokkuram and Hyech’o’s Trip to India
Junghee Lee, Portland State University
Sokkuram is one of the most important and enigmatic monuments—not only in Korean art but in Asian art as a whole—and it is testimony to the sophisticated knowledge of Buddhist philosophy and iconography held by Korean monks of the mid-eighth century. Its structure is unique in East Asia, with a circular inner chamber and square passageway and rectangular ante-room. This structure does not appear in cave temples in China or wooden buildings in Japan. The foreign influences upon its creation probably came from Central Asian and Indian architecture which had been viewed by Korean monks who travelled to India via Central Asia. Most eminent of these pilgrim monks was Hyech’o, who went from China to India by sea and returned via the Silk Road around 720, and thereafter spread the teachings of Tantric Buddhism. The idea of its beehive dome had been introduced to Central Asia from Greece. Sokkuram’s two octagonal columns and the original Chaitya window also allude to the Chaitya Hall in India.
Its circular room with the hemispherical dome creates a Korean-style architectural mandala of the womb chamber, garbha-griha, with the Buddha at its center. It shows deities with Mahayana and Tantric Buddhist elements. It also uses indigenous techniques, such as a method of building stone chambers without mortar, employed in the tombs of Koguryo, and the Korean iconometry used in the stone pagodas of Silla.
Modern Institutional Change and Its Impact on Art Production During the Reigns of King Kojong and King Sunjong (1864–1910)
Hyung-min Chung, Seoul National University
The reigns of King Kojong (1864–1906) and King Sunjong (1907–1910) were periods of tremendous socio-political-cultural upheaval due to the influx of Western civilization on the one hand and internal development towards modernism on the other. Much research work has been done in the area of social science, but little on the art history of the period.
This paper will investigate the dawn of the modern period as reflected in artistic activity of the time, focusing on the institutional establishment newly adopted as part of the enlightenment policy. Among the various venues through which the new model and concepts were introduced, the Ch’ing court is assumed to have played a significant role, and in-depth research into the modern Chinese institutional establishment related to art production will provide a clear picture of the late Choson development in this area.
This presentation hopes to answer the following questions: What was the impact of the socio-political enlightenment policy on art production and on the role and status of artists, and how did the concept of art change during the last decades of the Choson dynasty? What were the characteristic features of the paintings of the period in terms of style, theme, and expression?
This paper will also define the meaning of "modern" in Korean painting and assess this so-called "period of enlightenment" in the history of Korean art.
Yi In-song’s "Local Colors": Promotion of Nationalism or Colonialism?
Yongna Kim, Seoul National University
Yi In-song is considered the most successful artist of the colonial period (1910–1945), having won several prizes at Sonjon in Korea, and Teiten or Shin-bunten in Japan. Artistic assessment of his work, however, mixes praise and criticism. On the one hand, he is viewed as someone who helped to define Korean identity and aesthetics. On the other hand, he is regarded as an artist who, swayed by the political current of his time, lacked historic awareness. Especially, the critical debate focuses on whether his use of so-called ‘local colors’ in the 1930s, a switch from his urban themes of the 1920s, was an expression of nationalistic sentiment or an effort to win approval from Japanese juries, who were known to favor exotic portrayals of Korea. Yet the debate has usually assumed the form of short essays by art critics based on their impression of his works.
This paper, then, is an art historical attempt to investigate and critically assess the images in the works of Yi In-song, which are ambiguously interwoven with both nationalism and colonialism. Marginalization of Yi’s works conforms to Korean images created by Japanese artists who lived in or traveled to Korea and who portrayed Korean women in exotic style, far removed from modernization, politics, and social realities of the time. This was also representative of the cultural imperialism of Japan that orientalized Asian countries as backward and advocated itself as spokesperson for "modern" civilization.