Word: choson
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...there are more animals than just horses.” Beyond these equestrian pieces are animals as diverse as the monkey, tiger, and snake. Animals of the fantasy world include the dragon and phoenix. In “Dragon amid Clouds,” a hanging scroll from the Choson dynasty of Korea in the nineteenth century, an orange and green dragon is offset by black and white clouds. The dragon, a celebrated animal in East Asia, is chasing a wish-granting Buddhist symbol in this scroll. “Dragons in the West are considered evil, whereas in Asia...
Perhaps because many of its influences came from China, Korean art rarely gets a fair share of attention in the West. Now Paris' Guimet Museum is helping right that imbalance with "The Poetry of Ink: The Literati Tradition in Korea, 1392-1910," a dazzling display of rarely seen Choson-era art from the museum's own treasures as well as private collections. As the exhibition's title suggests, the highlights are calligraphy, painting and poetry...
...have been considered the "three perfections," fitting pastimes for scholar-officials, or literati, who for political or personal reasons, often had little else to do. The idea of using simple calligraphic brushstrokes to create lyrical paintings (many of which featured poems along their borders) reached Korea in the early Choson period some 600 years ago. Judging by the Guimet show, which runs until June 6, the technique thrived in the Land of Morning Calm. The museum has turned its exhibition space into a haven of tranquility, with rooms of graceful scrolls and elegant screens as well as antique furniture, porcelain...
...Guimet curators make the point that by blending Song and Ming styles, the Choson artists created their own pictorial vocabulary, one more personal, more poetic and closer to nature than their Chinese contemporaries'. historically, Koreans have certainly felt that their country is one of uncommon beauty?and this delight in their natural setting is evident in the exhibition's evocative landscape paintings. The Korean artists pay particular attention to the subjects in the foreground?mountains, plants, trees, rocks?leaving the background almost empty to maximize the feeling of depth and provide a sense of perspective that their Chinese counterparts often...
...designed to be portable. As the French journalist-diplomat Georges Ducrocq wrote 100 years ago, "When they cannot enjoy the countryside, the Koreans have their screens to provide them with the illusion of it." And though people in 21st century Paris can't go back to the kingdom of Choson, they have the Guimet exhibition to gain an enchanting sense of a country in love with its own beauty...