Arts of Korea

A New Permanent Gallery Debuts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

NEW YORK CITY - The inaugural exhibition in the new permanent Arts of Korea Gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, features the finest examples of art in all major media, including 22 national treasures, many of which have never before been displayed in the West.

Drawn from the collection of the National Museum of Korea in Seoul as well as from important private collections in Korea, Japan, and the United States, and including works from the Metropolitan's collection, it is the first comprehensive display of Korean masterpieces to be seen in the United States in nearly 20 years.

Bringing together 100 works dating from the Neolithic period through the Nineteenth Century, this exhibition examines four major areas of traditional Korean art - ceramics, metalwork and decorative arts, Buddhist sculpture, and painting.

Together with the catalogue and educational programs, the exhibition highlights the distinguished cultural and artistic legacy of Korea and the historical context in which the objects were created. The 512-page catalogue - which introduces significant developments in the history of Korean art and presents important new findings in Korean art studies to the public and to scholars - is one of the few volumes on Korean art to be published in the English language.

Two earlier exhibitions surveying the history of Korean art and drawing upon public and private collections in Korea were presented in 1957 and 1979-81 in a number of venues in the United States, including the Metropolitan Museum. Since that time, significant advances in art-historical scholarship in Korea and new archaeological findings throughout the peninsula have led to a more thorough and critical assessment of Korean art as a distinctive tradition, particularly in its relationship to the art and culture of China and Japan.

The present exhibition incorporates recent scholarship in the analysis of stylistic and technical developments in the various media and the examination of the social and cultural context in which the works of art were produced.

Ceramics

The Korean ceramic tradition has long been admired in China and Japan, and more recently recognized in the West. Forty ceramics on view - ranging from the earthenware of the Neolithic period to the celebrated celadons of the Koryo dynasty (918-1392) and the white porcelains and punch'ong ("powder-green") ware of the Choson dynasty (1392-1910) demonstrate the skill and ingenuity of the Korean pottery.

Among these objects are an imposing bird-shaped vessel of the late Second to Third Century, which represents one of the earliest known Korean ceramic sculptural forms; a mid-Twelfth Century celadon bottle (kundika) with an incised and carved design of waterbirds and willows; a Twelfth Century celadon maebyong (prunus vase), embellished with an underglaze iron-brown and inlaid design of ginseng leaves; a Fifteenth Century punch'ong bottle with an incised design of fish; a striking Seventeenth Century porcelain jar that has an underglaze iron-brown design of bamboo and plum; and a large porcelain jar produced in the second half of the Eighteenth Century that is decorated with a lively design of a tiger, magpies, and haet'ae (mythical lion-dog) painted under the glaze in cobalt blue and copper red.

Gold

Spectacular gold ornaments such as an elaborate crown and delicate earrings produced from the late Fourth to the Sixth Century, in the Three Kingdoms period (57 BC-668 AD) reflect the sumptuous lifestyle and authority of royal families of Korea's first centralized states. The exhibition also includes a wide variety of bronze objects that were created using a technology imported from northern China around the Tenth Century BC.

Buddhist Works

Buddhism, introduced from China in the Fourth Century, flourished throughout the peninsula in the Unified Silla (668-935) and Koryo periods, when Korean artists produced some of the world's most sophisticated and technically accomplished Buddhist works. The importance of Buddhism in daily life and its pervasive influence as a creative and spiritual force in early Korean society are seen, for example, in silver-inlaid bronze incense burners and vessels, as well as bronze bells and gongs made for use in temples. Among the monuments of Buddhist art is a large gilt-bronze image of the bodhisattva Maitreya, from the late Sixth Century, whose contemplative expression epitomizes the powerful presence of Korean Buddhist sculpture. Portable shrines and reliquaries exquisitely crafted in gilt bronze are evidence of the increasingly personal expression of Buddhist devotion in the Koryo dynasty. Although suppressed by the state, Buddhism continued to find expression in the arts of the Choson period.

Scholar's Accessories

Elegant yet restrained lacquerware, furniture, and other scholars' accessories became popular in the Fourteenth Century with the rise of the Yangban, the members of the "two orders" of civil and military officials who dominated the political, economic, and cultural life of the Choson dynasty.

Paintings

While there is evidence of a diverse painting tradition in Korea, most of the earliest surviving paintings are Koryo Buddhist devotional icons. Prized in China and Japan, where many of them were preserved in temple collections, these works include images of Buddhist deities and illuminated manuscripts.

The inaugural Arts of Korea exhibition includes: an early Fourteenth Century hanging scroll, "Water-Moon Avalokiteshvara," depicting one of the most popular Buddhist deities of the Koryo period wearing beautiful robes and sashes; a hanging scroll dating from the first half of the Fourteenth Century, "Amitabha and Kshitigarbha (Chijang)," which combines the Buddha Amitabha and the bodhisattva Kshitigarbha in one composition and represents the only known example of this iconography in Koryo Buddhist painting; and the Fourteenth Century Illustrated Manuscript of the Lotus Sutra, a folding book with elegant calligraphy written in silver pigment and a frontispiece executed in gold portraying popular tales from the sutra.

In addition to court-sponsored secular painting, works attributable to individual artists became more numerous in the Choson period. Among them were the preeminent court painter An Kyon (active circa 1440-70) and the literati artist Chong Son (1676-1759), who saw themselves as heirs to a long tradition of scholar-artists in China.

While deeply indebted to the themes, techniques, and critical tradition of Chinese painting, Korean artists sought to create individual stylistic vocabularies, especially in landscape painting. This new interest culminated in the so-called true-view landscape movement of the Eighteenth Century, which advocated the depiction of actual Korean scenery as an alternative to the classical themes of Chinese landscape painting.

The Eighteenth Century also saw the emergence of a unique tradition of genre painting, whose acknowledged master practitioners, Kim Hong-do (1745-1806) and Sin Ynk-bok (circa 1758-after 1813), portrayed the daily life of all classes of Korean society - from carpenters and iron forgers to aristocrats and scholars - in all its variety and liveliness. An album painting of a dancer performing to the accompaniment of a small troupe of musicians, Dancer and Musicians, demonstrates Kim's remarkable talent in conveying sensitive observations of narrative detail.

The exhibition was organized by Wen C. Fong, consultative chairman, department of Asian art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in cooperation with Chung Yang-mo, director general, the National Museum of Korea, Seoul. An advisory committee of leading senior Korean art scholars also helped organize the exhibition and produce the catalogue.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, Arts of Korea, with essays by Chung Yang-mo, Ahn Hwi-joon, Yi Song-mi, Kim Lena, Kim Hongnam, Pak Youngsook, and Jonathan W. Best. The coordinating editor of the catalogue is Judith G. Smith. Published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the hardcover edition is $50, and is available in the Museum's Bookshop.

The exhibition design was by Michael Batista; graphics by Jill Hammarberg; and lighting is by Zack Zanolli.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is at Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street, 212/879-5500.