art history, Chinese and Korean

The Beauty of Old Korean Paintings: A History and an Appreciation, by Lee Dongju 이동주 «李東洲» is an extraordinary gem of Korean art history, especially of painterly tradition in Korea and East Asia at large, writes Sajid Rizvi, commissioning editor of the volume and Editor of Saffron Books Korea Library Series.

The Beauty of Old Korean Paintings: A History and an Appreciation (translated by Robert Carrubba and Kim Kyongsook, ISBN 9781872843896, 2005; revised 2007) began as an illustrated lecture by Lee Dongju (1917-1997), the eminent author and art historian and Professor Emeritus at the Seoul National University. Although the book follows the format of a long slide lecture it has been thoroughly edited and adapted to make the texts and images accessible to an international audience. Initial editing by Robert Carruba and Kim Kyongsook was augmented with further editorial research and work, with addition of new elements, by Sajid Rizvi.

The Beauty of Old Korean Paintings originally was written in Korean under the subtitle A History and An Appreciation of Traditional Korean Paintings. As stated above the book began as an illustrated lecture by Lee Dongju 이동주 «李東洲», a self-trained art historian. The book evokes this passionate connoisseur’s acute, entertaining and at times uncomfortably frank observations on the subject of Korean art and artists.

The Beauty of Old Korean Paintings offers a wealth of information readily cross-referenced to Korean, Chinese and Japanese sources while preserving Professor Lee’s authentic voice and the value of his original work as an authoritative text on Korean painting. As the book is about to go out of print, with only a limited number of copies available, a new edition is being prepared by Sajid Rizvi, with further additions to the subject matter of the book.

True to Professor Lee’s intent, the book evokes interest in the whole gamut of Korean art as well as Korean artists, aesthetics and history.

About Lee Dongju
Lee Dongju 이동주 (李東洲), given name Lee Yonghui 이용희(李用熙˜), was born in Seoul, Korea, in 1917 and passed away in 1997. His father, Lee Gapseong, was one of thirty-three signatories to the declaration of independence issued during the March the 1st Movement of 1919.

Lee Yonghui attended Yonhi College, now Yonsei University, majoring in political science. Initially more famous as a scholar of international political science than an aesthete he held positions as Professor of Political Science at Seoul National University, President of Aju University, Reunification Minister, and First Secretary to the President. Although Lee Dongju never received an advanced degree in the subject, from his undergraduate days had a love for Korean art and naturally became immersed in its study.

For more than 60 years, he engaged himself in a comparative study of Korean, Chinese, and Japanese paintings while directly examining, researching, differentiating and systematising the specific character of traditional Korean works. Through his direct contact with these numerous paintings, Lee Dongju established his own aesthetic theory regarding Korean art, one that brought to light the error of narrow academic approaches and guided readers toward a more direct and proper appreciation. In this frame his aesthetic focused on appreciating individual paintings rather than judging works by the artist’s name or history. He asserted that a painting should be enjoyed for its intrinsic beauty.

Lee Dongju is among the very few scholars who are universally acknowledged to have an authoritative grasp of the history and tradition of Korean painting, having encountered and critiqued a vast number of works. Lee Dongju was prolific, authoring and editing numerous articles and a number of books on Korean Art, including, Old Korean Paintings, Korean Paintings in Japan, A Short History of Korean Painting, and Theory of the History of Korean Painting. Later in life, he found his greatest pleasures in paintings rather than politics.

Pyeongsaeng-do (平生圖), the Painting of a Person’s Life, is a series of paintings depicting the ideal life of a yangban aristocrat who enjoyed a successful career as a high official. The painting emerged in the second half of the 18th century when the expression of family awareness and ancestral worship was extraordinarily enhanced among the powerful bureaucratic clans in Hanyang. Most of the paintings are eight- or ten- panel folding screens, which depict rituals taking place throughout life such as the first birthday, marriage, and the 60th birthday, the 60th wedding anniversary as well as public life of a government official from starting for a new post to promoting to higher official positions. In addition daily life and custom of literati including studying at a village school, sitting in the civil service examination, enjoying leisurely life after retirement are often depicted. 
With the vivid illustration of the exemplary life of the upper class, various scenes delivering daily life, rituals, and festivities of yangban noblemen, Pyeongsaeng-do is considered commemorative and documentary painting as well as genre painting of scholars. The complicated nature of the painting and its socio-political significance has drawn great scholarly attention in its iconography, production, and its stylistic development. Despite its importance as the visual material to uncover the changes of the late Joseon society, little is known about the painting’s history, authorship, and iconographic origins. Previous scholarship suggests that the development of this genre was indebted to Kim Hongdo, the eminent court painter in the 18th century and Hong Isang and Hong Gyehui, the protagonists of the paintings, played a specific role in their production. But the questions remain; how the names of Hong Isang and Hong Gyehui were attached to the screens painted in the 19th century, how we can explain the discrepancies between the real life of the protagonists and the depicted scenes on the screen, what’s the role of Kim Hongdo’s style in the spread of this genre, how this genre was evolved in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and what these changes tell about the visual culture of the transitional period of Joseon dynasty.
To delve into the above questions I conduct iconographic research to identify the various scenes of surviving works and then provide an approximate date of the Painting of Modang Hong Isang’s Life through formal analysis. Painting of Modang Hong Isang’s Life is reminiscent of Kim Hongdo’s genre painting but the double outlines to applied clothes, shading to columns, roof tiles, and temporary tents reflect the style of the first half of the 19th century, By investigating the rise of powerful Pungsang Hong Family by the strong support of King Jeongjo(r. 1776-1800), I find that the reverence of Hong Isang, a legendary restorer of Hong Family, lead to commemorative projects including the compilation of chronological biography, anthology, and genealogical record, along with the commission of a painting of the person’s life, Pyeongsaeng-do. A close look at the socio-political geography in the late 18th century sheds light on the understanding of the nuanced relationship between the Painting of Modang Hong Isang’s Life and Hong Isang. The final chapter is dedicated to the last stage of Pyeongsaeng-do, which takes place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While paintings illustrating more personalized life were produced for military officials or gentry outside the capital, a lithograph version of the Pyeongsaeng-do was circulated as a commodity in the early 20th century. The style and iconography have been transmitted over the various media for ages but their functions, symbolic meanings, and patterns of consumption have been drastically changed.