Organizer: Junghee Lee, Portland State University
Chair and Discussant: Kumja Paik Kim, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco
This panel will present new interpretations of Chinese and Korean figurative art, with emphasis on figures with distinctive gazes. In the first paper, Jan Stuart will examine the significance of the direct forward gaze and strict frontality in Ming and Qing Confucian ancestor portraits. Her paper demonstrates that stylistic changes in portraiture in Ming and Qing portraits reveal nuanced levels of meanings.
In the second paper, Junghee Lee will explore the transcendental gaze and naturalism in the Korean statue of the Portrait of the Monk Huirang from the Koryo period. She will trace its stylistic sources to Chinese works of the Song and Liao Dynasties, and deal with the important issues of dating, religious context, and the influence on Japanese portraiture.
The third paper by Hongnam Kim will focus on the self-portrait of the Korean scholar-painter Yun Tu-so in a socio-political context and explore the significance of the intensely direct, penetrating gaze. Kim will attribute the development of the self-portrait to the rise of individualism and the proliferation of private academies which fostered it.
In the last paper, Saehyang P. Chung will examine highly unorthodox figures with suggestive, romantic gazes in the genre paintings of the Choson-dynasty court painter Sin Yun-bok. She will trace the sources of some of Sin’s figures to Chinese Christian engravings and demonstrate how the artist transformed them to portray glimpses from the amorous lives of the Korean gentry.
Facing Forward: Nuanced Meanings in Frontal Poses in Chinese Portraiture
Jan Stuart, Freer/Sackler Gallery
This paper explores the meaning of frontal poses in Chinese portraiture, with special reference to "ancestor portraits." The importance of frontality in portraying images of deities is a possible source for the frontal posture that became standard in the Confucian-inspired ancestor portraits that were popularly used as foci in family ceremonies to venerate the forebears in Ming and Qing China. The forward gaze of the "ancestors" may have been inspired by the religious authority associated with frontal images of gods. In addition, a desire to "map" faces in correspondence with theories of physiognomy was another factor that encouraged strict frontality for depicting the face. The forward-facing pose seems to draw upon a tradition of charts that illustrate faces with distinctive physical features and correlate those features with personality traits.
The paper also examines the possibility that the initial introduction of strict frontality into Ming portraiture drew on the association of that pose with depictions of the emperor. Gradually the pose was adopted for ancestor portraits depicting any member of the social elite. By Qing times the pose was de regueur in ancestor portraits created at all levels of society. During the Qing, another permutation occurred when rigid frontality was gradually accepted as a normative pose for casual, life portraits. Careful study of the evolution of the frontal pose and close observation of exactly when and how it appears reveals nuanced levels of meanings in the portraits created.
The Distinctive Features of the Monk Huirang’s Sacred Statue and Their Relationship to Chinese and Japanese Portrait Sculptures
Junghee Lee, Portland State University
The sacred images of Korean monks have been housed and venerated as integral parts of Korean Buddhist monasteries since the Koryo (916–1392) Dynasty. However, very little is known about the Korean monk portraits of this period. One of the most important of these is "The Portrait of the Monk Huirang (889–956)" in Haein monastery. Made of wood and coated with lacquered fabric, this statue displays many distinctive features. In this paper, I will investigate its transcendental gaze, Chinese sources, the problems of style and dating, and the religious context, as well as its influence on Japanese portrait sculptures.
According to tradition, this sculpture is a self-portrait and a true image of Huirang. It portrays the monk as an emaciated, meditating figure, seated in the cross-legged position, attired in a brightly colored robe. Interestingly, this work shows a gentle smile and warm, open forward gaze, which is very unusual for a meditating monk’s portrait. Although its naturalism reflects the influence of Chinese sculptures from the Song (960–1279) and Liao (907–1125) periods, this statue is much more individualized than the Chinese works. For instance, Huirang’s thin chest, with a rectangular hole, enhances the monk’s austere appearance, as does the calm spiritual expression, which indicates Ch’an Buddhist practices carried out by the Hwaom sect monk. These stylistic features are highly significant, as they probably exerted influence on Japanese portrait sculptures of the Kamakura period.
Authenticity and Realism in Yun Tu-so’s Self-Portrait
Hongnam Kim, Ewha Women’s University
The self-portrait of the Korean scholar-painter Yun Tu-so (1668–1715), with its highly expressive realism, is unquestionably a masterpiece of Asian portraiture. The painter concentrated on his face while nearly omitting the rest of the figure. His direct gaze is so penetrating and intense that, transfixed by the gaze at first, the viewer soon has to make a choice whether to avoid the gaze or stare back. With such remarkable expressiveness, Yun Tu-so’s painting stands out among all the contemporary portraits.
Yet in spite of its importance, very little is known about this self-portrait. Unlike Chinese examples, this work is highly individualistic, and appears at first glance to deviate from the ritualistic tradition of Confucian portraiture. Such artistic innovations cannot be explained alone within the ideology of the "Practical-Learning School" or "direct Western influence."
This paper will explore some significant factors that influenced Yun Tu-so’s painting, notably, changes in Confucianism and the self-image of true Confucian scholars in eighteenth-century Korea. In particular, Yun’s conscious choice of an eremitic life-style and scholarships will be examined, along with his preoccupation concerning the question of human nature—an issue central to Neo-Confucian philosophy. Furthermore, Yun’s portrait will be viewed within the cultural milieu of private academies of the time and the context of traditional painting techniques. Examinations of social, cultural, and artistic circumstances of the time reveals a complex set of factors that contributed to Yun’s highly creative self-portrait.
Sin Yunbok’s Amorous Figures and Their Possible Relationship to Seventeenth-Century Chinese Christian Engravings
Saehyang P. Chung, Pohang University of Science and Technology
This paper explores possible artistic sources for a number of highly unorthodox figures in genre paintings of the late Choson Dynasty (1392–1910) court artist Sin Yun-bok (born ca. 1758).
Whether embracing outright, or pinpointing the object of their affection with a subtly amorous gaze, Sin Yun-bok’s lovers are undoubtedly some of the most unconventional and enigmatic images in traditional Korean painting. Due to the lack of comparable motifs in the native pictorial tradition, important art-historical questions concerning their artistic antecedents have not been addressed in recent scholarship. Although the depiction of amorous themes apparently led to the artist’s expulsion from the Court Painting Bureau, it has never been made clear how Sin Yun-bok came to adapt such a daring type of subject matter.
This paper examines several unusual pictorial elements found in Sin Yun-bok’s paintings, most notably in works portraying the amorous activities of gentlemen from the upper class and their high-class courtesan companions. The origins of the artist’s unorthodox images are then traced to figural representations in seventeenth-century Chinese Christian engravings, which are known to have been in the collection of the Choson court during Sin Yun-bok’s lifetime. Careful study of the poses and gazes of Sin Yun-bok’s figures reveals the likelihood that the artist made use of the newly imported pictorial materials to enrich his intimate scenes of male-female relationships in the changing contemporary life of Choson society’s more privileged sector.