Academic literature on the topic 'Korean Ink painting'

The article is devoted to the hwajohwa artistic genre (bird-and-flower painting) of the early and middle Chosŏn periods (late 14th – late 17th centuries). The study identifies the historical and cultural context, the stylistic evolution of the bird-and-flower painting and the main terms for its designation. It presents individual artistic trends, examines the techniques used in Korean traditional painting. Moreover, the author outlines the leading artists who worked in this genre during the indicated period. In the early Chosŏn period (1392 – c. 1550), the hwajohwa genre gained particular relevance in traditional Korean painting, and a high artistic level was achieved in it. Vivid painting in the bird-and-flower genre, made in the academic style of court painting, became the most common and indicative of this historical period. In the process of the formation and strengthening of the positions of the new Yi dynasty, the ruling circles commissioned social paintings. Therefore, the works are characterised by an optimistic mood; the compositions are full of idyll and harmony with the world around them. Artist Yi Am, who laid the foundations for the development of the hwajohwa genre in Korea, was the most prominent representative of this movement. At the same time, scholar painters began to create small landscapes with birds, made only with water and ink. Confucian scholar Kim Jŏng is rightfully considered the founder of this scenic movement. The Middle Joseon period (c. 1550–1700) was characterised by the flourishing of the hwajohwa genre in the technique of monochrome ink painting. Many intellectual artists from the upper strata of Korean society emerged, for whom the bird-and-flower genre became a means of expressing deep personal relationships with nature and the world around them. Korea of the second half of the 16th–17th centuries suffered from numerous foreign invasions; thus, lonely and weary birds, sleeping or resting on the branches of trees, became the main and most popular motif in the hwajohwa genre. Such painting was a direct reflection of the feelings of the educated stratum of Korean society about the fate of their homeland. Paintings by scholar painter Cho Sok and court painter Yi Jin were the most popular works of the bird-and-flower genre of this period.

The purpose of this study is to examine the Buddhist and Taoist Icons, which repeatedly appears in ink paintings that Chang Ucchin(張旭鎭, 1917-1990), a representative artist of modern Korean art, began pro-ducing in the late 1970s. Chang Ucchin’s ink painting is not as well-known as the artist’s main works, oil painting, and although the number of works is small, the religious and Laozi·Zhuangzi’s taoist icons are well revealed. An icon is a person or image that appears in religious, mythological, or other works of art with a specific meaning. Therefore, the viewer can grasp the intrinsic and aesthetic meaning of the work through the iconography. Based on this understanding, it was possible to examine the Buddhist and Taoist iconog-raphy in Chang Ucchin's ink painting. Chang Ucchin’s ink painting is suitable for expressing abstract and restrained spirit with the unique expressive power of making brushes and ink. His work is a concise com-pression of the outside world and return it to essential elements. This study on Chang Ucchin’s ink painting is significant as an attempt to lay the groundwork for approaching and discussing the basis of Chang Ucchin’s formative language through ink from various perspectives based on Buddhist and taoist influences.

This article examines written records of the now-lost poem-painting scrolls created by Buddhist monks who were active in the late Goryeo and early Joseon (the fourteenth through fifteenth centuries) in order to reconstruct their artistic exercises and reassess their significance in the history of East Asian art. The literati painters of Yuan China reserved pictorial space in landscape painting for narrative or descriptive purposes. In contrast, the Buddhist monk-painters of the late Goryeo and early Joseon depicted natural features in their landscape paintings, accompanied by poems, as encrypted codes precisely corresponding to the characters of their studio names, or ho 號 (Ch. hao). Yuan’s Shiwu Qinggong 石屋淸珙 (1272~1352), who officially conferred the dharma to Goryeo’s Taego Bou 太古普愚 (1301~1382), proposed “a single thatched hut in the depth of the retreats,” or yi an shenyin 一菴深隱, as exemplary of Chan Buddhist paintings. The written records of the monks’ handscroll paintings suggest that the monks of the late Goryeo and early Joseon painted landscapes by combining the motifs of a thatched hut and of the depth of the retreat with depictions of natural features that signified their studio names. While the monk’s studio name was the central theme of the painting, each character of his name was also rendered pictorially. The records further testify that Goryeo monks played a critical role in introducing to Korea the styles of the Liu Daoquan 劉道權 and Li-Guo 李郭 schools, which gained tremendous traction in the early Joseon art scene, as the literati regarded highly of ink paintings by monks. It has been widely noted that early Joseon paintings contributed to the development of the paintings of a scholar’s studio in Muromachi Japan. The monks’ poempaintings themed on their studio names further attest to the significant impact that early Joseon paintings made over not just the style but also subjects, form, and content of Japanese paintings. Even if many works of premodern Korean painting are now lost, written records about them still survive. Close examinations of such textual sources can help illuminate the historical trajectory of Korean poem-painting scrolls in the context of East Asian art history.

This essay examines the Japanese reception of the Korean painter Yi Am 李巌(b. 1499), and by extension considers the relationship between ink painting technique and pictorial meaning. In particular, it examines how Yi Am’s unique approach to the painting of puppies with blended washes of ink opened up new interpretive possibilities among Japanese viewers. Although Yi Am’s puppy paintings appear to have been circulating in Japan as early as the seventeenth century, they were misattributed to Chinese painters such as Mao Yi, and Yi Am’s seal was mistaken as belonging to a Japanese monk-painter of the Muromachi period. The monochrome ink puppy paintings of the Kyoto artist Tawaraya Sōtatsu 俵屋宗達(ca. 1600-1640), however, depict the bodies of their canine protagonists with the same wash-based approach found in Yi Am’s works, and appear to have been catalyzed in some way by an encounter with the Korean artist’s paintings. In the case of Sōtatsu, this approach eventually came to be known as tarashikomi, a signature technique of the Rinpa School, and therefore it is no exaggeration to state that Yi Am’s works played a role in inspiring one of the most recognizable techniques of early modern Japanese painting. Although dog and puppy paintings are traditionally linked to auspicious meanings, Sōtatsu’s puppy paintings appear to have been associated within a Zen Buddhist themes, in particular the koan “A Dog Has No Buddha-Nature.” This Zen Buddhist framework of meaning can be gleaned from inscriptions on his paintings by Zen monks such as Isshi Bunshu 一絲文守(1608-1646) and Tangai Musen 丹崖無染(1693-1763). I would propose that the particular wash-based approach of Yi Am and Sōtatsu to this subject was particularly significant in generating this association. The eighteenth-century painter-poet Yosa Buson 与謝蕪村(1716-1784) also based his puppy paintings upon models derived from Yi Am. In the case of Buson, however, the cultural meaning of these works can be gleaned from his haikai poetry, in particular a poem accompanying a Maruyama Okyo 円山応挙(1733-1795) painting of a puppy that associates its inky body with the interiority of a poetic subject. The final case study examined in this essay is Itō Jakuchū 伊藤若冲(1716-1800). Jakuchū left a number of puppy paintings that embody Zen Buddhist themes in highly sophisticated ways. Because he was close to Tangai Musen, it is likely that he was aware of Sōtatsu’s puppy paintings, and indirectly familiar with those of Yi Am. Thus the case could be made that Yi Am’s wash-based technique opened up a new horizon of interpretive possibility among Japanese painters extending from Sōtatsu to Jakuchū.

“Grammar”(文法) is a technique for creating novels.The prefaces and postscripts (comments) of the novels of the Ming and Qing Dynasties in China have made a penetrating summary of the novel grammar, especially Jin Shengtan(金圣叹), Zhang Zhupo(张竹坡), Mao Zonggang(毛宗岗), Zhi yanzhai(脂砚斋) and many other critics, making the grammar theory occupy an important position in the whole novel theory. In the theory of novel grammar, a series of grammatical terms have been formed. The same point of the grammar theory of Korean and Chinese ancient novels is that both countries have introduced the terms of Theory of painting, and the novel critics of both countries have used Theory of painting and painting terms for reference. The influence of “painting theory”(画论) in the grammar of novels in both countries is mainly reflected in the vivid effect and ink skills. It is reasonable to introduce painting theory and painting terminology into the “grammar theory” in the preface and commentary of Korean Chinese novels.The application of Theory of painting to the field of Literary criticism has broken through the understanding level of Literary criticism.

The Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva Painting of Myeongbujeon Hall in Namwon Seonwonsa temple was painted in 1917 by seven monk painters including Geumeo Manchong, Sango and Haengeun. In the painting, Korean National Flag (Taegeukgi), a trace of anti-Japanese movement that had been hidden under suppression during the invaded by the Japanese period, was found on the surface of official wooden hat in Sixth King (Byeonseongdaewang). Elements of Pb, S and Si were commonly detected by the P-XRF of the painting pigments to be analyzed, which was estimated the characteristics of the Sinamchae made by mixing colored metal oxides and glass powder, and data were secured. As the optial microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and SEM-EDS analysis show that black is chinese ink and lampblack ink, white is lead hydroxide and chalk, gold is gold foil, yellow is iron oxide yellow, massicot and gamboge, red is cinnaba, iron hydroxide and minium, green is emerald green, blue is ultramarine, respectively. As the infrared photography, various coloring techniques and traces of several overlapping for completeness were found. A comprehensive considerations of these shows that various coloring techniques with back, bottom and middle colorations were used. The Taegeuk pattern is interpreted as making a circle shape with a minium and painting with emerald green over it.

В статье исследуются особенности корейской пейзажной живописи, развитие которой с начала XVIII века оказывается неразрывно связано со знаменитой горной цепью Корейского полуострова Кымгансан. Утвердившись как центральный образ в пейзажах «подлинного вида», горы Кымган со временем приобретают значение не только художественного феномена, но и знакового национального символа родной земли в корейском культурном сознании, оставаясь для художников воплощением естественных красот и сплетением разнообразной символики. Цель статьи — определить значимость образа гор Кымган в корейском изобразительном искусстве как выразителя национальной самобытности искусства Кореи и хранителя художественно-ценностных традиций. В статье изложен анализ произведений корейских художников с XVIII столетия и до наших дней. Исследуются произведения ряда современных северокорейских и южнокорейских художников, чьи работы, разные по стилю и технике исполнения, объединяет единство мировосприятия гор Кымган как духовного источника, репрезентируя стремление к этнической аутентичности, возрождение традиций и выражение патриотизма в современном искусстве Республики Корея и КНДР. Предлагается обзор тенденций в корейском изобразительном искусстве, где в данном образе проявился национальный подход, натурное видение природы родной страны и творческое переосмысление открытий великих корейских пейзажистов в контексте адаптации новых художественно-выразительных особенностей в рамках традиционной системы дальневосточной живописи тушью и творческих экспериментов с разнообразными техниками. В заключение делается вывод о важности художественного образа гор Кымган, который, утвердившись в корейском пейзаже в XVIII веке, стал прочной основой для развития корейской живописи современного периода, демонстрируя не только приверженность традициям, но и способность к новациям как в приобретении новых символических оттенков в его прочтении, так и в расширении творческих поисков для выражения его эстетического идеала в картине мира современности. The article examines the features of Korean landscape painting, the development of which since the beginning of the 18th century is inextricably linked with the famous mountain range of the Korean Peninsula Kumgangsan (Diamond Mountains). Having established itself as the central image in landscapes of “true appearance”, the Kumgang Mountains over time acquire the significance of not only an artistic phenomenon, but also an iconic national symbol of the native land in the Korean cultural consciousness, remaining for artists the embodiment of natural beauties and the interweaving of various symbols. The purpose of the article is to determine the significance of the image of the Kumgang Mountains in Korean fine art of past and present eras, as an exponent of the national identity of Korean art and a keeper of artistic value traditions. The main objective of the article is to study the image of the Kumgang Mountains based on the analysis of the works of Korean artists from the 18th century to the present day, with the definition of its role and place in the contemporary fine arts of Korea. The article analyzes the works of a number of modern North Korean and South Korean artists, different in style and technique of execution, but similar in perception of the Kumgang mountains as a spiritual source, representing the desire for ethnic authenticity, the revival of traditions and the expression of patriotism in contemporary art of the Republic of Korea and the DPRK. The article provides an overview of trends in Korean painting, where this image manifests a national approach, a natural vision of the native country and a creative rethinking of the discoveries of the great Korean landscape painters in the context of adapting new artistic and expressive features within the traditional system of Far Eastern ink painting and creative experiments with various techniques. It is concluded that the artistic image of the Kumgang mountains is important as it has established itself in the Korean landscape in the 18th century, and become a solid foundation for the development of Korean painting in the modern period, demonstrating not only adherence to traditions, but also the ability to innovate, both in acquiring new symbolic shades, and expanding artistic and expressive means to display its aesthetic ideal in the picture of the world of our time.