The Court and the Common Folk, and their Art

Chinese objects and iconography, how different could they possibly be from Korean objects and iconography? Let’s compare, shall we?

Figures 1 through 4 are examples of so-called “court-style” ch’aekkado. Those feature a relatively large proportion of foreign objects and Chinese-based symbols and icons. We can see them in Yi Ŭngnok’s ch’aekkado, and we can see them in these four screens too. The similarities reveal certain conventions in terms of iconography, style, and even color palette. The objects are neatly placed on their own shelves, and the compositions look very orderly – the paintings seem like a complete whole.

But now look at figure 5. At first glance it looks strikingly similar to a court-style ch’aekkado, but take a closer look at the shelves and you might notice a difference in the objects and the colors. More of the flowers and fruits are native to Korea, and the color-scheme is much livelier. On the right-hand side, the shelves form a swastika, the symbol that represents Buddhism in much of East Asia. Buddhism in Korea became strongly repressed once the Neo-Confucians came into power. Adhering to Buddhism, the former state religion, was seen as heterodoxy, and the religion was branded as being for commoners. In short: although this screen still very much resembles the court-style screens, we see native elements entering the genre.

Now look at the ch’aekkŏri (see the extension from step 1 for a detailed explanation of ch’aekkŏri) in figures 6 to 8. Where in fig. 5 the native Korean elements were only few in number, in these screens they feature prominently. Eye-catching is the recurrent color-scheme of red, blue, green, yellow, black and white. These colors (based on fengshui 風水) are strongly associated with Korean folk culture and religion (Buddhism and Korean Shamanism, and even national identity. Take, for example, the South Korean flag: the yin-yang symbol in the middle is not black and white, but red and blue. Other typical Korean motifs we see in these ch’aekkŏri are native Korean fruits and flowers (e.g., apples, pears, melons, mandarin oranges and eggplants, and peonies, lotus flowers and roses of Sharon, etc.), animals from folkloric tradition (ducks, deer, tigers, turtles, peacocks, etc.), clothing items and headwear, as well as everyday objects that in Korea have a symbolic meaning (e.g., bow and arrow, knives, brushes, fans, etc.). This goes to show that Chinese influenced iconography and native Korean iconography can be quite different. And as time went on, ch’aekkado and ch’aekkŏri painters started introducing more and more native elements in their works, replacing the Chinese ones.