Treasures from Korea

Treasures from Korea Romantic sensibilities are revealed in San Francisco

Although Koreans call their country Choson, or Land of the Morning Calm, its history has been anything but. Subject to sporadic invasions by Chinese, Japanese and Mongols. Korea has long suffered the imposition of foreign political, religious and aesthetic traditions. Understandably, its art was long considered provincial and derivative. Spurred by archaeological discoveries of the past five decades though, historians have finally begun to recognize the Korean achievement, which Americans can now see in the most comprehensive exhibition of Korean art ever assembled.

Organized by the National Museum of Korea, "5,000 Years of Korean Art" opened at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, and during the next two years will travel to six other U.S. cities. In order to assemble this dazzling show of 345 objects, both public and private collections in Korea were virtually stripped. There are treasures of gold and gold enameling discovered in tombs as recently as 1974, and menacing guardian figures found in the ruins of a Buddhist temple. There are scrolls and paintings, daggers and belt buckles, masks and fans. All the traditional motifs and idioms of East Asian art appear in Korean work--dragons, Buddhas and bamboo trees--but most have been somehow changed, made Korean with an indigenous fluency that renders them distinctive.

Funeral ornaments dating back to the Old Silla dynasty (5th-6th century A.D.) display a barbaric splendor never before found in East Asia. Discovered amidst a stash of weapons and earthenware, a crown glitters with spangles of gold and jade that adorn its antler-like shafts. This animal symbolism, some historians believe, attests to the shamanistic beliefs of the early Koreans and suggests that they had more in common with the nomadic horsemen of the Siberian steppes than with their Chinese neighbors.

Through Chinese domination, however, Buddhism consolidated its hold over Korea by A.D. 527 and for almost a millennium served as the chief source of inspiration. Granite caves were carved with figures of the "Enlightened One," and hundreds of effigies were made for temples. These Buddhas gradually took on a distinctly Korean look. More naturalistic, more linear and more attenuated than the Chinese models, they also began to reflect the features of their creators: faces grew rounder and cheekbones higher. Head bent in contemplation, a bronze Maitreya (a young Buddha) possesses a native spontaneity and grace. Similar figures later appeared in Japan, establishing Korea as the transmitter of Buddhist thought from the mainland.

In ceramics, Korea was unsurpassed by her neighbors. During the Koryo dynasty (A.D. 918-1392), even the Chinese praised Korean pottery, marveling that "the secret color of Koryo is the first under heaven." The secret color was celadon, a haunting shade of pale green applied in rich, oily glazes. Breaking from the self-conscious traditions of the Chinese, the Korean potters indulged their own romantic sensibilities, producing elegant, elongated vessels. Some bloomed into flowers and animals--a water dropper took the form of a monkey; a tea dish the shape of a water lily.

During the 16th century, there was a shift in Korean painting from the religious to the secular--a shift that paralleled a similar movement in Europe. By the Yi dynasty (A.D. 1392-1910), Confucianism was in the ascendance in China and hence in Korea as well. With a philosophical stress on the practical, artists turned to landscapes and portraits. The scroll painting of Yi Chae by an anonymous artist, for instance, depicts a Neo-Confucian scholar in a realistic, unsentimental manner.

Other artists began to limn scenes from daily life. In contrast to the sedate, idealized renderings of the Chinese, there is a certain humor, a realism bordering on caricature in these works: in one, a scholar pulls up his robe to dip his toes in a cool stream; in another, a group of women enjoy their day off in the country. As such depictions of manners and mores demonstrate, the Koreans were survivors who never lost the ability to find pleasure and beauty in the everyday.

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