Gwaneum rests his foot on an ornate lotus, a popular
votive an image or object
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Buddhism to provide a system of beliefs aimed at estab-
Buddhist symbol for purity. The bodhisattva’s gaze, his
right arm, and the crystal prayer beads dangling from his
hand direct attention to the pilgrim Sudhana, the small
figure kneeling in the lower-left corner.
When juxtaposed with earlier Avalokiteshvara icons
from areas of present-day China (see Figs. 31.15 and
31.16), Seo’s painting testifies to the dissemination and
transformation of images of this revered bodhisattva. The
iconographic marker of the crown set with Amitabha
Buddha is consistent across all representations. Other
features are new, such as the diaphanous quality of, and
embroidery on, Gwaneum’s white veil, which may allude
to the net of light with which the suffering of sentient
beings is removed. In terms of the artistic medium,
Goryeo Buddhist icons are also distinguished by the use
of gold ink, notably as visual accents on rocks.
A gold-ink inscription along the painting’s lower left
records the artist’s name, Seo Gu-bang, and a date equiv-
alent to 1323. The inscription, which includes a reference
to Seo’s position as a court artist, also attests to imperial
sponsorship. Water-Moon Gwaneum Bosal and paintings
of other Buddhist icons demonstrated religious devotion
among Goryeo aristocracy and would probably have been
displayed in votive chapels, whether in private temples
or homes. However, the painting’s current location is
in Japan. Centuries ago, Goryeo Buddhist icons were
transferred by pilgrims, pirates, or as plunder from war
to collectors and temples in the Japanese archipelago.
Their origins forgotten, such paintings were subsequently
misidentified as the work of anonymous Chinese artists
of the Song or Yuan dynasties. Over the course of the
twentieth century, however, Goryeo artists, such as Seo
Gu-bang, and Goryeo Buddhist paintings—of which only
about 140 are known to have survived—have become
properly recognized.
As a result of the many military conflicts on the
Korean peninsula, much Korean art has been destroyed.
However, despite so few Goryeo Buddhist paintings still
being in existence, many more celadons, for both ritual
and secular use, remain. These vessels demonstrate the
exceedingly high standards of the Goryeo dynasty and
the extraordinary range of transformations achieved in
art during the period.
Confucianism and Art of Early Joseon
Korea, 1392–1592
Although Buddhism permeated Goryeo society, the
state also established a Confucian system of scholar-
officials such as that created in Song dynasty China.
Having studied Confucian texts and passed government-
sponsored examinations, scholars could qualify for
appointments to official positions in civil adminis-
tration. As a social force, scholar-officials exerted less
influence during Goryeo, but they gained more power in
the subsequent Joseon dynasty (1392–1910) when the gov-
ernment replaced Buddhism with a new state ideology,
Neo-Confucianism. This philosophy, which originated
in Song dynasty China, and endures in areas of East and
Southeast Asia, draws on Confucianism, Daoism, and
lishing harmony in state and society. A flourishing Joseon created as a devotional offering
culture oriented to the taste and values of scholar-officials to a deity.
is particularly evident in two paintings—a portrait and a
physiognomy the shape,
landscape—from the mid-fifteenth century. proportion, and composition
of facial features.
portrait of sin suk-ju By definition, portraits repre-
sent their subjects. But how closely do representations
correspond to true physical appearance? The rep-
resentations of powerful individuals vary according to
portrait conventions and cultural standards relating to
physiognomy. Rather than being straightforward records
of physical appearance, portraits of important individ-
uals are designed to convey certain ideas to the viewer.
Portraits of powerful people often use visual strategies
to assert authority and legitimacy.
This painting of the scholar-official Sin Suk-ju (1417–
1475) combines generic conventions of formal portraiture
with an individualized face (Fig. 32.3). Seated with feet
resting on an ornately carved footstool, Sin wears a black
hat with starched wings and a green robe, which features
a gold-embroidered badge, including a pair of peacocks,
to indicate his official rank in the bureaucratic hierarchy.
(Each rank was assigned a different motif.) The costume,
furnishings, unpainted background, and posture are
formulaic, but Sin’s face is particularized. His straight eye-
brows, steady gaze, rounded jaw, mustache, and whiskers
are probably the work of a portrait specialist.
Produced at court, which was at the capital Hanseong
(present-day Seoul), formal portraits of officials such as Sin
32.3 Unknown artist, Portrait
1'
of Sin Suk-ju, Joseon dynasty,
second half of fifteenth century.
Hanging scroll: ink and colors
on silk, 5 ft. 5¾ in. × 43 in.
(167 × 109.2 cm). Goryeong Sin
Family Collection, Cheongwon,
South Korea.
Chapter 32 | Transformative Eras and Art in Korea and Japan, 1200–1600 533
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calligraphy the art of
expressive, decorative, or
carefully descriptive hand
lettering or handwriting.
colophon in East Asia, a
statement added to a work
in which the writer (the
artist, patron, or an admirer)
records information or offers
commentary. Colophons may
include dates, locations, and
names of artists and patrons.
contour line the outline that
defines a form.
buncheong a variety of
Korean stoneware created
with white slip.
incised cut or engraved.
Copyright © 2022. Thames & Hudson, Limited. All rights reserved.
demonstrate the Confucian ideal of a reciprocal relation-
ship between emperor and members of the civil service.
Officials served the emperor not only by administering
the realm but also by lending legitimacy to his rule. In
return, the emperor provided officials with employment,
rank, and recognition. By demonstrating the subject’s
merit, this portrait brought honor to Sin’s family and may
have been the focus of rituals of venerating ancestors.
As Neo-Confucianism gained favor relative to Buddhism,
ancestral rituals became increasingly important.
In East Asia, government officials were also scholars
of history, religion, literature, and art. Sin Suk-ju was
especially skilled in linguistics and played an important
role in inventing Hangul, the system for writing Korean,
which is used to this day. Sin was also knowledgeable
about art; in 1445 he authored Record on Painting, which
documents 222 paintings and calligraphies in the collec-
tion of Prince Anpyeong (1418–1453). Predating the Italian
Renaissance architect and writer Giorgio Vasari’s Lives
of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects by
a century, Sin’s Record participates in an East Asian tra-
dition of art-historical writing. That tradition stretches
back to Record of Famous Painters of All Periods (847 ce),
written by the Tang dynasty official Zhang Yanyuan.
Zhang’s scope was encyclopedic, whereas Sin’s Record
focuses solely on Prince Anpyeong’s collection.
an gyeon, dream journey to peach-blossom land
Throughout the Record, Sin attests to Prince Anpyeong’s
antiquarian taste for Chinese paintings of the Song and
Yuan dynasties. According to the Record, the prince also
owned thirty-six paintings by the Joseon court painter
An Gyeon (active c. 1440–1470), whose style suited Prince
Anpyeong’s taste. Sin writes, “Having studied many
ancient paintings, [An Gyeon] grasped all their essen-
tials, combining the strengths of various masters … Search
antiquity and still one rarely finds his equal.” In 1447,
the prince commissioned yet another artwork from An,
Dream Journey to Peach-Blossom Land (Fig. 32.4).
The landscape opens from right to left. It is painted
on silk (which has darkened over time) with ink and light
colors. Toward the upper-right corner are a few modest
buildings overlooking a mist-filled grove of flowering
peach trees, which are enclosed on all sides by strangely
shaped, unevenly eroded peaks. Next, visible at interludes
from the center to the left of the scroll, water flows through
a narrow gorge to the foreground. A winding path nearby
suggests the tenuous connection between the dreamlike
peach grove at right and the more restrained, mundane
world to the left, which concludes the composition.
The landscape’s structure reverses typical composi-
tions on the subject of the peach-blossom spring (see
Fig. 67.12), a utopia described by the Chinese recluse and
poet Tao Qian (365–427 ce). Traditionally, viewers would
follow the fisherman-narrator’s journey on a stream that
winds through grove and grotto into paradise. Instead,
viewers unrolling An’s painting begin with the paradise
of peach trees and then leave it behind, as if returning
from a reverie. The painting was commissioned by Prince
Anpyeong, who had woken from a dream in which he
found himself in the fabled land. The scroll’s inverted
structure adheres to the prince’s recollection of this
dream, recorded in the colophon at the end of the hand-
scroll (not pictured).
An Gyeon’s style—watery passages, fog-filled atmos-
phere, irregular contours, careful shading, and finely
detailed trees and buildings—draws inspiration from
the Northern Song court painter Guo Xi (see Fig. 31.4),
whose paintings An would have seen in his patron’s col-
lection. An has adapted those techniques to respond
directly to Prince Anpyeong’s experience by creating an
innovative composition imbued with the mysterious
immediacy of a dream.
buncheong ware The scholar-official culture of Joseon
informed not only painting but also ceramics, fueling
interest in austere, plain white porcelain. From the
Confucian point of view, plain porcelain vessels sug-
gested values of restraint, moderation, and integrity, in
contrast to finely polished or ornate pieces, which were
seen as superficial or merely decorative. First invented
in China, porcelain came into wide use after the Joseon
court established official kilns in the 1460s. At about the
same time, a new type of stoneware emerged from the
celadon tradition. This new type, buncheong, involved
adapting some celadon techniques for decoration, such
as inlay and incision, but it used coarser clay and relied
more heavily on white slip.
Because porcelain potters met the needs of the court
and elite consumers, buncheong potters were free to

32.4 An Gyeon, Dream Journey

to Peach-Blossom Land, Joseon
dynasty, 1447. Handscroll: ink and
light colors on silk, 15¼ × 41¾ in.
(38.7 × 106 cm). Important Cultural
1"
Property of Japan, Tenri Central
Library, Tenri University, Nara, Japan.

534 Part 3 | The Spread of Religions

Robertson, Jean, and Deborah Hutton. The History of Art: a Global View (Combined Volume) : Prehistory to the Present, Thames & Hudson, Limited, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central,
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1"
experiment with less refined, more audacious, and even
witty designs to appeal to popular taste, as opposed
to that of the scholarly elite. Some buncheong imitate
plain white porcelain, while others are painted with iron-
oxide patterns. Still others—such as this flask—feature
a touch of humor in its underglaze carved decoration
(Fig. 32.5). With white slip covering all but the foot and the
mouth, this flask could have been an economical alterna-
tive to porcelain. But the carved shapes of a half-dozen
fish transform what would have been a plain, austere
vessel into a whimsical one. A single upside-down fish,
which swims in a direction opposite its mates, has been
cleverly squeezed into the negative space formed by its
immediate neighbors. Variation among the fish forms,
too, suggests artistic inventiveness. Thus, the flask may
have once provided both a delightful image and delicious
drink to accompany a meal of fish.
The unpretentious, imperfect qualities of buncheong
also found favor among aficionados overseas. Wabi-cha,
a style of Japanese tea ceremony emphasizing rustic
Copyright © 2022. Thames & Hudson, Limited. All rights reserved.
Robertson, Jean, and Deborah Hutton. The History of Art: a Global View (Combined Volume) : Prehistory to the Present, Thames & Hudson, Limited, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central,
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Created from aus-ebooks on 2022-05-20 11:09:02.
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qualities, fueled an interest in Japan for collecting 32.5 far left Flask with Fish,
buncheong. In the late sixteenth century, the warlord Buncheong ware, Joseon
period, 1400–1499. Stoneware with
Toyotomi Hideyoshi launched a series of invasions underglaze carved decoration,
into the Korean peninsula. The invasions failed, but 8¾ × 7⅞ × 5⅛ in. (22.2 × 20 × 13 cm).
Hideyoshi’s forces captured thousands of Korean potters, Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois.
relocating them to Japan and effectively ending the
buncheong tradition. Hideyoshi’s invasions, known as
the Imjin Wars (1592–98), also mark the end of the early
Joseon period.
Civil War and Art of Kamakura Period
Japan, 1185–1333
Over the course of the late Heian period (794–1185) in
Japan (see Chapter 27), the power of the nobility in Kyoto
declined as military landowners in the provinces forged underglaze a color or design
alliances with ambitious leaders of competing clans applied to pottery before it is
at court. Rivalries led to civil wars. These wars ended glazed and fired.
in 1185 when Minamoto no Yoritomo (ruled 1192–99) emaki (also emakimono)
vanquished his enemies. In 1192, he received from the Japanese term for a handscroll
emperor the title of Sei-i Taishōgun (commonly known as painting typically viewed in
sections, from right to left. It is
“shogun”) and established a new form of government,
wider than it is tall, and when
the bakufu. Also known as the shogunate, the bakufu is a rolled up, it is easily stored and
form of military government that preserves the emperor portable.
as a figurehead while the real power is exercised by a
shogun, the military leader and de facto ruler. While
the emperor continued to reside in Kyoto, Minamoto
located his government headquarters in Kamakura. Not
surprisingly, the Kamakura period (1185–333) brought not
only military themes to art, but also a pressing need to
rebuild devastated structures, resulting in fusions of
old and new.
night attack on the sanjō palace Long-standing
artistic conventions and terrifying events of civil war
come together in several extant emaki, or handscrolls,
that portray events of the Heiji rebellion (1159–60), a con-
flict between the Taira and Minamoto clans. One such
scroll, Night Attack on the Sanjō Palace, depicts the dra-
matic kidnapping of the retired emperor Go-Shirakawa,
the slaying of his military supporters, and the burning of
his palace in 1159 (Fig. 32.6). In this detail, smoke billows
32.6 left and above Unknown
artist, Night Attack on the
Sanjō Palace (details). From
the Illustrated Scrolls of the Events
of the Heiji Era (Heiji monogatari
emaki), Kamakura period,
second half of thirteenth century.
Handscroll: ink and colors on paper,
16¼ × 22 ft. 11¾ in. (41.3 cm × 7 m).
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston..
Chapter 32 | Transformative Eras and Art in Korea and Japan, 1200–1600 535
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