ARTIST NOTE

Dream on Top (Excerpt)

Korean art culture has developed under the desire for ‘good fortune’ and ‘wish-fulfillment’. Such desire was commonly shared from the top of the hierarchy, the King, to the bottom, the working classes, hence, paintings of ‘The Sun and Moon and Five Peaks’ and ‘The Ten Symbols of Longevity’ were given to the King and majority of the court paintings were limited to this atmosphere. Of course, parade paintings created for the purpose of historical records are excluded. Even realistic portraitures of figures are made to pay respect for ancestors, but also intrinsically, for the spirit of the ancestors to protect the descendants. This goes the same for nobleman and literary scholars. While the classical scholars have expressed the ideals of living freely at-ease on the mountains and waters like the Taoist hermits, the common people’s folk paintings can be interpreted in the same manner.

Some depicted the Four Guardians to ward off the evil spirit, some portrayed the Ten Symbols of Longevity to wish for good health and longevity and some decorated a newlywed’s room with young children’s paintings to yearn for fecundity. Freshly drawn water, enshrinement of one’s ancestral table at home, guardian tree of the village are also ways to wish for good luck and to ward off evil spirits, and they can all be seen as longing for good fortune, the underlying spirit and consciousness of Korean people. The Art of Korea is a spectrum that visually embodies these longings.

The main motive of <Dream on Top> are the Twelve Zodiac Guardians. “Originally, the Twelve Zodiac Guardians are ancient gods positioned on the twelve points of the compass, protecting the Buddhist chanting the Yak-Sa-Kyung(Medicine Buddha Sutra, Korean medicinal dictionary). The Twelve Zodiac are depicted as gods with faces of rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, ram, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig and human bodies. This belief seems to have derived from Taoist’s Four Symbols, but the Korean Twelve Zodiac Guardians are closely related to medicinal faith. Records from the reign of Sundeok Queen of the Shilla Period depicts a renowned priest, Milbon, curing the queen and other patients with the Yak-Sa Kyung. The Three-Storied Stone Pagodas in Wonwonsa Temple site in Gyeongju (Historic Site no. 46) was sculpted as the first formative art for the Twelve Zodiac Guardian Gods to protect the defense and as a symbol of national unity.”

I would like to shed new light on Korean Art through appropriating the Twelve Zodiac Guardians to the works of <Dream on Top>. It may seem foolish to pull out the banal topic on the identity of Korean art, but I persist on continuing this unanswerable process, because I believe that no one other than those who have specialized in Korean Art can have a discourse on such topic.

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