Supplementary information PAINTINGS & SCREENS OF THE JOSEON DYNASTY The Lee Ufan Collection in the Musée Guimet, Paris Art Gallery of New South Wales • 5 March – 8 June 2009 This exhibition presents decorative paintings class of patrons expanded to include minor civil of the latter part of Korea’s Joseon dynasty servants (jungin), merchants and landowners. (1392–1910) when Confucianism was the state The diverse backgrounds and education ideology, and Confucian-infused Ming China of the artists who catered to this growing (1368–1644) was the dream state. Indeed Joseon clientele, from Academy-trained court painters Korea saw itself as the true heir to the Ming to itinerant self-taught craftsmen, resulted in tradition, and sent annual envoys to the Chinese great stylistic diversity in decorative painting. imperial capital. The veneration afforded Popular subjects within this genre include Chinese culture is reflected in painting subjects, landscapes, paintings of books and scholars’ styles, and inscriptions that are in Chinese objects (chaekkori), paintings of Chinese characters rather than the native Korean script characters (munja-do), birds-and-flowers and of Hangeul. animal paintings. Apart from Confucianism, Chinese Daoism and Korean shamanism were sources of All paintings in the exhibition are part of the inspiration for artists, with the emphasis being Lee Ufan Collection in the Musée Guimet, Paris, on the auspicious and the edifying. Initially which has co-organised this exhibition with the the patrons for decorative paintings were the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. court and gentry (yangban), but with time the This information is supplementary to the exhibition catalogue available at the Gallery shop: www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/shop/browse © 2009 Art Gallery of New South Wales Photography by Thierry Ollivier © Musée Guimet/Thierry Ollivier 2 Mountains The Diamond Mountains (Geumgangsan) 1700s eight-panel folding screen Landscape painters of the Joseon period drew colour on paper; 65.5 x 37cm (each image) from a range of visual traditions, including those of the court literati, folk art, shamanism, The Diamond Mountains, located on the east coast Buddhism and Daoism. of present-day North Korea, have significance within Daoist, Buddhist and shamanic thought. A potent belief of shamanism, the native The mountains cover some 160 square kilometres religion of Korea, is that mountains, trees and comprise about 12,000 peaks. Famous peaks and rocks are imbued with their own spirits. and sites (such as Buddhist temples) associated with Mountains in particular were revered in shamanism, Daoism or Buddhism are often identified shamanism, as well as in other traditions. in paintings with ‘labels’ inscribed with their name in Chinese characters. Many powerful spirits were Daoism held that mountains were the domain considered to live in the Diamond Mountains, hence of immortals, the source of yang energy and Geumgangsan paintings played an important role at the various elixirs of eternal life. Confucius the time of Tan-O, the festival held on the fifth day invoked mountains in the Analects to illustrate of the fifth month every year to honour the spirits. his notion of happiness, and throughout For Daoists, the Diamond Mountains equated with Chinese history, emperors conducted state the land of the immortals where the sacred fungus of immortality grows. It was also believed that a single rituals at sacred mountain sites. The influence glimpse of the Diamond Mountains could save one of such belief infuses landscape painting, from falling into hell. Together, these ideas have insured with the revered Diamond Mountains being that, from early times, the mountains have been one significant to all traditions. of the most important pilgrimage sites in Korea. The mountains’ name is Buddhist in origin: Geumgang is the Korean pronunciation of the Chinese characters for the Sanskrit word vajra – the ‘diamond thunderbolt’ weapon held by many Buddhist deities, while the word san means ‘mountain’. Korean dreams: paintings & screens of the Joseon dynasty Supplementary information 7 Genre scenes (Pungsokhwa-do) 1700s-1800s eight-panel folding screen colour on paper; 63 x 27cm (each image) This screen is rich in content, with each of the eight panels (to be read from right to left) focusing on a classical Chinese scholar-poet or poem fundamental to a Confucian education. Each subject is identified by vertically written Chinese characters. The five willows in the upper right of panel (1) are the key to its subject: ‘Master Five Willows’ is a pen name for the famous Daoist poet Tao Qian (365–427) whose most famous work is a prose/ poem entitled Peach Blossom Spring. Panel (6) is a pictorial version of this famous subject, illustrating a poem written by the celebrated poet Wang Wei (699–761) in emulation of Tao Qian. Panel (2) focuses on the respected pastoral poet Meng Haoran (680-740). Meng, depicted riding his donkey across Ba bridge, was so admired by locals they built a pavilion in his honour in Lushan Mountain (pictured upper left). Panel (3) depicts a popular story emphasing the incorruptibility and virtue of scholar recluses. Xuyou was so respected for his knowledge and wisdom that an emissary was sent by the emperor to persuade him to become a bureaucrat at court. Yiyou not only refused, but was so offended at hearing the word ‘bureaucrat’ that he went to a nearby stream to clear his ears of the offensive word. Panel (4) depicts famous scenic spots around 4 Fragrant Mountain temple in Henan Province Carp against an imaginary landscape (illustrated at the top of the panel) which were 1600s–1700s immortalised in poems Tang dynasty poet Bai Juyi ink and colour on paper; 73.5 x 36cm wrote in retirement. Panel (5) illustrates a poem about Mt Wuyi in This work, which skillfully deploys a symbolic carp Fujian province by an historically important Confucian in a magical, dreamlike landscape, originally would scholar: Zhuxi (1130–1200), considered the most have formed part of a six-panel screen, together notable philosopher of the Song dynasty. It was Zhuxi with the tortoise painting next to it. In the Confucian who created the form of Neo-Confucianism adopted world, the carp is an emblem of perseverance by the Joseon rulers of Korea. because it swims upstream (that is, against the Panel (6) illustrates a version of the famous Tao current) to lay its eggs. Such perseverance equates Qian (panel 1) text Peach Blossom Spring by the great with that required to pass through the Confucian poet Wang Wei (699–761). The scene includes the exam system, so the carp is also a symbol of literary mandatory clues of a lone fisherman and blooming eminence. Chinese legend has it that carp of the peach blossoms. Yellow River that succeed in passing up the rapids Panel (7) illustrates the verse at the top which is are transformed into dragons. This painting has from the poem Song of the fisherman by Zhang Zhihe an inscription and is signed by Jichon (dates (742–782). The poem describes a fisherman enjoying unknown) indicating an artist perhaps associated the beauty of the white egrets flying before Mount with the court. Xisai and the plump perch swimming in the water. Panel (8) depicts the classical theme of ten views of the West Lake, using the verse of Zhangdai (1590–1680), a well-known writer and historian. The West Lake, near Hangzhou, has long been a site famous for its natural beauty and poetic and literary allusions. From the bottom up, the ten scenes, each captioned, include Watching fish in the flower pond; Orioles singing in the willow; Spring dawn on the Su causeway. Korean dreams: paintings & screens of the Joseon dynasty Supplementary information 4 3 2 1 8 7 6 5 7 Genre scenes (Pungsokhwa-do) 1700s-1800s Korean dreams: paintings & screens of the Joseon dynasty Supplementary information 8 Mountain god (Sansin) 1700s–1800s colour on silk; 100 x 78.5cm The banana leaf, symbolising self-education, of its many seeds, a symbol of posterity). The identifies this gentleman as Zhong Liquan, the head bottle-gourd suspended from a tree branch also of the eight immortals of the Daoist pantheon. denotes longevity, a message emphasised by the The immortals, thought to bring health, wealth scattered sprigs of the sacred fungus of immortality and many descendants, often appeared in the (pullocho). In the foreground the exposed seeds guise of mountain gods in Korean iconography. of a watermelon express a desire for prosperous The exaggerated foreshortening of the backdrop offspring, while the positioning of an eggplant, mountainscape conveys the otherworldly realm to thought to have feminine attributes, beside the which Zhong Liquan belongs. He is served by two melon expresses harmony between male and female. pages, one bearing a tray of peaches (symbols of longevity), the other pomegranates (because Korean dreams: paintings & screens of the Joseon dynasty Supplementary information 10 The ten symbols of longevity (Shipjangsaeng-do) 1800s six-panel folding screen colour on paper; 63.5 x 40cm The ten symbols of longevity, commonly used as Sometimes called ‘longevity paintings’, screens decorative motifs, were the sun, moon, clouds, of this type reflected the circulation and merging of rocks, water, cranes, tortoises, deer, pine trees and Daoist thought, ancient Korean myths, local forms the immortals’ fungus (pullocho). Deer, particularly of animism and mountain worship in Joseon society. spotted deer, and cranes are revered as companions Stylised landscape elements reflect indigenous of the Daoist Immortals who ride to and from the painting traditions, while the large scale and rich Islands of the Blessed in the Eastern Sea (where the mineral pigments recall the paradise imagery of sacred fungus grows) on the back of flying cranes. Daoist painting of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). The ten symbols are frequently joined by other Longevity paintings were commissioned from Court auspicious motifs, such as peaches (symbolising academy painters and presented by the king to his immortality), the five peaks (symbolising the subjects on New Years Day.