A rare exhibition of Korean folk paintings, or "minhwa,"
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Folk painting exhibition to show emotion, identity of Koreans
Tiger-Magpie painting
19th century
Collection of Kurashiki Museum of Folkcrafts
By Kim Tae-shik
SEOUL, Sept. 2 (Yonhap) -- A rare exhibition of Korean folk paintings,
or "minhwa," held by Japanese collectors will open at the Seoul Museum
of History in downtown Seoul next week.
The museum organized the "Happy! Joseon Folk Painting" exhibition
jointly with the Japan Folk Crafts Museum in commemoration of the 2005
Korea-Japan Friendship Year. A total of 120 masterpieces produced
during the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) will be displayed from Tuesday
until Oct. 30.
The minhwa on display were mostly collected by Muneyoshi Yanagi
(1889-1961), a Japanese art critic who admired the Joseon Dynasty and
its arts. Yanagi, who spearheaded the Japanese folk crafts movement,
loved Korean folk art very much.
The organizers set up the exhibition under two main themes: "nature"
and "human." Works under the nature theme include "flower and bird"
paintings, "tiger-magpie" paintings and landscapes. As for the human
theme, there are folk art figure paintings depicting traditional
stories; ancestral shrine paintings used on memorial days for
ancestors; scholar's paintings that decorated men's quarters; and
ideographs illustrating Chinese characters of the "eight Confucian
virtues," namely filial piety, brotherly love, loyalty, trust,
propriety, righteousness, integrity and sensibility. The exhibition
also shows royal court paintings from the Seoul Museum of History
collection, on which minhwa were modeled upon.
Flower and Bird painting
19th century Private collection
Among the important works on view will be a colorful foldable screen
embroidered with 10 longevity symbols; an eight-panel "hwajodo" (flower
and bird painting) reminiscent of modern abstract paintings; a
"hojakdo" (tiger-magpie painting) in which a tiger has four eyes; and a
scholar's painting showing sophisticated techniques as one would only
see in a royal court painting. The viewers will also have a chance to
experience the mastery of court paintings, especially an 8-panel screen
depicting bizarre stones and peonies, which was originally collected by
Unhyeon Palace in Seoul.
Ideography of the Chinese character 'propriety'
19th century Japan Folk Crafts Museum
A seminar in conjunction with the Art History Association of Korea will
accompany the exhibition under the theme "Minhwa and Muneyoshi Yanagi."
Speakers include Hong Sun-Pyo, chairman of the Art History Association
of Korea, Shinzo Ogyu from the Japan Folk Crafts Museum and 3 other
scholars from both countries. They will discuss research activities and
trends regarding Korean folk paintings, as well as their connection to
Yanagi. The seminar starts at 10 a.m. on Sept. 8.
Scholars say minhwa reflect the emotion and identity of Korean people,
representing their backbone and faith with depictions of tigers,
magpies, flowers and other subjects. They range from scrolls of the
king's palace to humble drawings for the populace.
Minhwa also showed Korean rituals, from a baby's hundred-day-old party
to the moment of death, through schooling, marriage and peaceful old
age. Even mortuary tablets were shown on the folk paintings.
8-panel screen embroidered with 10 longevity symbols
19th century
Japan Folk Crafts Museum
Minhwa were also used to decorate the interior of residences and
demonstrate shamanistic faith. Folk paintings depicting a carp leaping
in a waterfall symbolized good performance in school or state-held
exams for civil servants as well as many offspring.
The word minhwa, however, did not originate from Korean people. It was
Yanagi who used the term for the first time. Yanagi advocated using the
term to describe such paintings that were produced among the people,
painted by the people and distributed by the people.
Yanagi is one of the most well-known Japanese names in Korean artistic
circles. Yanagi authored many books and articles on Korean arts,
including "Korea and its art," in which he stated that he appreciated
Korean art for its simplicity and spontaneity. He also established a
Korean Folklore Art Museum in Seoul.
10-panel screen depicting 10 longevity symbols
19th century
Seoul Museum of History
The following are details of the seminar and exhibition.
Seminar
Title: Minhwa and Muneyoshi Yanagi
Date: Sept. 8
Time: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Speakers: five including the chairman of the Korean Art History
Society, Hong Sun-Pyo
Happy! Minhwa Exhibition
- Minhwa depicting nature: flower and bird paintings, tiger-magpie
paintings, landscapes
- Minhwa expressing the desires in life: folk art figure paintings,
ancestral shrine paintings, scholar's paintings, ideographs
- The prototype of minhwa, court paintings: paintings of 10 longevity
symbols, etc.
Participating museums: Japan Folk Crafts Museum, Kurashiki Museum of
Folkcrafts, Shizuoka Municipal Serizawa Keisuke Art Museum, Koryo
Museum of Art, Tenri University Sankokan Museum, and the Seoul Museum
of History.
For more information, log onto Seoul museum's homepage at
www.museum.seoul.go.kr or call 02-724-0114.
k...@yna.co.kr
(END)
ggg
By Julian Ryall in Tokyo
Wednesday 01 December 2004, 17:53 Makka Time, 14:53 GMT
Expert Toshiyuki Kono says tracing art is nearly impossible
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Looted from temples, monasteries and grave sites across Korea in the
early decades of the last century, hundreds of thousands of works of
art are today in museum stores or the hands of secretive collectors in
Japan.
And while Europe has made major efforts to resolve the question of
ownership of works collected by the Nazis and subsequently pillaged
during the second world war, notably by the invading Russian army,
little has been done in East Asia to track down treasures that were
the victors' spoils.
"The situation is very complicated," says Toshiyuki Kono, a law
professor at the University of Kyoto and a member of a Unesco team
examining how to deal with objects whose provenance is unclear.
In Europe, ownership disputes between museums, middle-men and people
claiming to be the descendants of the owners of items - many of whom
died in Nazi concentration camps - have reached the courts. In Japan,
however, it is harder to determine ownership, even if an item is
located.
Missing proof
"There is no proof that the Japanese government or the military
arranged to systematically take art to Japan, so we have to assume
that some of it was done through legitimate transactions," says Kono.
"Some deals were clean; others were different shades of grey - all the
way down to black," he adds. The problem will be determining which
items were purchased on the market and which looted.
Complicating the matter further was the recognition in 1910 by Great
Britain and the United States of Japan's annexation of the Korean
peninsula. This allowed Japan to act within international law when
moving cultural artefacts around its territory.
"We do not know when most of these items came to Japan and the trade
in cultural objects is very long and difficult to trace," says Kono.
"That makes it almost impossible to apply the rules set up to resolve
the problem of 'Holocaust art' to the East Asia situation."
Cultural heritage
Invaders and more peaceful visitors returned to Japan with items as
far back as the Asuka Period, the 160 years before 710 CE, as well as
the invasions of the 1590s under the shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
The Imperial Palace is home to
thousands of treasures
The first Japanese archaeologists went to Korea in 1900 to survey
sites, but the digging expanded rapidly with annexation 10 years
later. The Japanese were particularly interested in Korea's famous
green celadon pottery, which local people took for granted, according
to Cheeyun Kwon, an art historian at Seoul National University.
For example, Hirobumi Ito, a former Japanese prime minister and later
an adviser to the puppet Korean king, amassed a large collection of
celadon, says Kwon.
"He gave these as gifts to members of the Meiji government and the
emperor, with Japanese records showing this."
Black market
An almost frenzied excavation of tombs - including royal tombs - led
to works ending up on the black market.
Today, research by the Korean government suggests that 29,000 items
are held in galleries and museums. In total, some 300,000 works are
believed to be in Japan, meaning the vast majority are in the hands of
private collectors who are unlikely to want the government to know
about them as they may have been purchased on the black market and
bypassed tax laws.
In other cases, archaeologists know exactly where individual items
ended up.
Tenri University, in the central Japan city of Nara, is in possession
of a painting known as the Mongyu Towondo (Dream of Playing in a Peach
Orchard) that dates back to the 15th century. The work was bequeathed
to the university in 1953 by the family of its founder, but had been
in the Shimazu family of southern Japan since Hideyoshi's invasions.
The question remains; was it purchased or pillaged?
Imperial legacy
A spokesman for the Imperial Household Agency confirmed that the
Museum of the Imperial Collection has a large Korean collection, but
was unable to comment on the provenance of any of the works or those
lining the walls of the Imperial Palace.
Japan is still reaping the legacy
of its imperial past
The problem of looting of cultural treasures is not limited to the
last century, however. There is still a very active black market for
artefacts that are stolen from temples and monasteries in South Korea,
according to Hyung Il Pai, an associate professor in the history
department of the University of California, Santa Barbara.
"Monks have drawn up a list of items, especially folk art, that have
been stolen because there are no guards or security at remote temples
or monasteries," she said. "The thieves simply break off the lock and
cut pictures out of their frames and are gone into the forests by the
time the police arrive the next day.
"They appear usually on the black market in Hong Kong, getting there
via northern China," she said, adding that a colleague who had visited
the national museum in North Korea said the entire collection was made
up of replicas because the originals had been sold off for hard
currency.
Relations
Relations between Seoul and Tokyo have improved markedly in recent
years, as both sides try to move beyond Japan's sometimes brutal
colonisation of the peninsula, although there remains a degree of
anger in South Korea that more efforts have not been made to locate
and return looted items.
Relations between South Korea
and Japan have improved
Part of the problem, according to Yoko Hayashi, an assistant professor
at Japan's Shobi University, is the failure to recognise by some
private collectors that the real value of their hidden collections
goes beyond a price.
"There is a lack of perception of these items as cultural property
that should be commonly held," she said. "Japanese people and the
government do not understand that even though they are privately
owned, they do not belong to them; they belong to humankind."
Grey areas
The Japanese government's position is that the 1965 normalisation
treaty between Seoul and Tokyo has settled all claims on cultural
properties and that it is unable to force items that are in private
hands to be returned.
And while Japanese individuals have returned items to Korea - a
collector of roof tiles returned 1082 items from his collection in
1987 - a lot more important art works are simply unaccounted for.
"We should not take as the starting point that all the items are of
questionable provenance," says Kono.
"But it there are some in a grey area when we have to apply a moral
principle. We must make these people collectors that by voluntarily
returning these pieces, it will help many people and the culture of
the world."