동양화 읽는 법 How to Read Eastern Art

책 소개

This book explains the principles underlying traditional East Asian paintings and provides a roadmap for better understanding those artworks. In the East, men of letters were the main producers and consumers of art; they equated paintings with poems that had to be deciphered. The author relies on his training as an anatomist and his extensive knowledge of Chinese classics to identify and classify recurrent subject matters and to extract their respective meanings. He translates these objects into a lexicon that can be used to communicate specific messages.

책의 제목 「동양화 읽는 법」에서의 ‘동양화’는 중국, 한국, 일본을 관통하는 ‘동양의 그림’ 혹은 ‘동양그림’을 의미하며, 시기적으로는 동양 3국에서 1910년대까지 그려진 그림을 주대상으로 한다. 한중일 동양 3국에서 1910년대까지 그려진 그림은 모두 의미를 담고 있는데, 그 의미를 글자로 바꾸어 ‘읽어서 감상하는 방법’이 있었다. 이 책은 이에 대해 소개하기 위해 쓰였다.

책을 읽으며 평소 동양화를 접하며 가졌던 의문들, 즉 ‘백로는 왜 한 마리만 그리나?’ ‘학은 어째서 파도치는 바닷가에 그리나?’ ‘모란꽃에는 왜 나비를 그리지 않나?’ ‘게는 왜 갈대꽃을 물고 있나?’ ‘쏘가리는 두 마리를 그리면 모반죄라는데…’ 등에 대한 해답을 얻을 수 있다.

먼저 실례의 도판과 캡션을 읽고 그림이 가진 뜻의 대강을 알아낸 후, 여기 해당하는 본문을 읽어 더 상세한 지식을 얻을 수 있도록 구성하였고, 평소 접했던 동양그림에 그려진 소재에 대하여 궁금한 경우는 색인을 통해 찾아볼 수 있다.있었다. 이 책은 이에 대해 소개하기 위해 쓰였다.

About the author

(조용진)

After majoring in traditional East Asian art at the College of Fine Arts and Graduate School of Fine Arts, Hongik University, Chou Yongjin studied human anatomy for 7 years at the School of Medicine of the Catholic University of Korea, and subsequently received a doctoral degree in fine arts from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music (now Tokyo University of the Arts). He has taught at various institutions (Kunsan National University, Seoul National University of Education, and Hanseo University) and has been giving talks about his ongoing research on art history, and its links to neuroscience and physiognomy. He is Director of the Korean Phenotype and Culture Institute.

번역 Translation: Ji-yung Kim

(김지영)

Holds a doctoral degree in linguistics from the University of Massa\-chusetts Amherst. Taught linguistics at Georgetown University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Seoul National University. Has been working full-time as a freelance translator (English-Korean, Korean-English, French-English) since 2008.

Table of Contents

Preface....v

Introduction....viii

Chapter 1: Questions That Cross Our Minds as We View Eastern Paintings

Irrational details....3

Paintings with the same format....7

Events that did not take place in the real world....13

Art is a cultural compact....17

Appreciation of Eastern art should begin with an Eastern approach...18

Eastern paintings are for reading....19

A lone heron on a pond with a withered lotus is a typical example of art-reading....25

The forgotten principles of art-reading....29

Chapter 2: Homophony-based Reading

Distortion of the magpie and the tiger....37

It should be a pine tree, a magpie, and a leopard in the painting....37

Countless examples equating homophony with synonymy....38

Mere homophony is sufficient....39

A trend especially pronounced in ideogram systems like the Eastern culture....42

Why pair the crab with reeds?....42

Two crabs holding reed flowers in their mouths....45

White deer paired with Chinese juniper....49

Spelling longevity (壽) with a Chinese juniper....51

Writing longevity (壽) in 16 different ways....51

The reason for pairing the bamboo with rocks....53

So long as we are drawing a bamboo, let us draw a Phyllostachys edulis....55

What is an autumn cricket doing on a summer orchid?....57

The creepy bat signifies fortune....59

Reeds and wild geese symbolize a comfortable old age....61

Cat paintings congratulate someone who just turned 70....63

Cat-and-butterfly pairings....65

A cat next to chrysanthemums....67

Owl paintings with the same congratulatory meaning....69

The ingrained belief in the power of language or letters....71

The act of sedition by National Academy (成均館) students under King Sejo....73

Bookcase paintings in the study....75

Chapter 3: Allegorical Reading

The winter bird mandarin duck on a pond in July....85

The contents of the Five Blessings, revised in Tang China....87

Guo Ziyi and his many descendants....87

Pomegranate paintings denote a wish for many sons....89

Peony paintings stand for wealth and nobility....91

The Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms is responsible for the mistaken belief that peonies are odorless....93

Peonies were painted without butterflies as early as the Tang Dynasty....95

Queen Seondeok was unaware of the principles of art-reading....97

The iconography of Hanafuda....101

Pairings of peonies and a rooster....109

Peonies with a vase....109

A pine tree, bamboo, and a pair of white-headed birds....111

Peonies and plum blossoms do not bloom at the same time....113

Crane paintings....117

A crane with a pine tree....119

A crane by the rolling sea....121

The pine and the lingzhi mushroom....123

The lingzhi mushroom means, ‘to have one’s wish realized’....123

Most paintings of vessels with cut branches (器皿折枝圖) express a wish for happiness in this life....125

The rose is a symbol of youth....127

The peach should be painted green....129

Donfang Shuo (東方朔) of the three thousand jia and the peach....131

It is incorrect to draw Dongfang Shuo as a grizzled old man holding a peach....133

The ugly black crested myna denotes filial piety....137

Goldfish paintings convey the message, ‘May gold and jade fill your home!’....139

Lotus paintings encourage a thrifty lifestyle....141

Chrysanthemum paintings symbolize longevity....143

It is wrong to pair the chrysanthemum with multiflora rose hips....145

Seeking meaning in objects is a cognitive attribute specific to humans....145

Finding meaning in the shape or biology....147

Art-reading principles may sometimes restrict artistic expression....149

Minnows and duckweed....151

Why draw the carp in twos?....155

Minnows, duckweed, carp, water pepper, lotuses, mandarin ducks, wild geese, and reeds....157

Chapter 4: Reading Art by Invoking Classical Quotes or Anecdotes

Pictures were also used in the pursuit of spiritual values....163

The moral of The Three Hibernal Friends concerns the society of good friends....165

Flowers from all four seasons in the same painting....167

Even paintings of foot-bathing mean something....169

If the water of the Canglang is clean....169

The reason scholars adopted the character 滄 in their pen names....171

The Four Books and the Three Classics at work even in palatial architecture....173

The patterns shaped like the calyx of a persimmon were inspired by the Classic of Poetry (詩經)....177

Paintings of three fish belong in the study....177

Qi Baishi’s message in his painting of three fish....179

Paintings of nine fish....181

“Long live the homeland” (江山萬代)....183

Nine quails....187

Quails stand for comfort and peace....187

Fish idling about....189

Nine herons....191

The foremost consideration(s)....192

Art criticism in the East....193

The Four Grades....195

A boy pointing at a mountain shrouded in clouds....199

Scene of an old man fishing....201

Painting of a middle-aged man fishing....203

The Eight Anecdotes....205

Ear Bath in the Yingchuan....205

Painting of four old men playing Go....207

Sailboat against an autumnal backdrop....209

Staring at Nanshan leaning against a pine tree....211

Pointing at wild geese in flight....211

Admiring a waterfall....213

Standing on a bridge on a donkey’s back as a blizzard howls....215

With the plum blossom as wife, and the crane as son....217

Painting as another medium depicting the ideals of Eastern scholars....219

Chapter 5: How To Appreciate Contemporary Korean Art

How to appreciate contemporary Korean art....223

Eastern art and Western art are fundamentally different....224

Western artists paint as they see, whereas Eastern artists recorded what was....225

Art criticism in the East versus the West....227

Paintings that are read do not exist in Europe....227

What every Korean artist longs for....228

The factors that have landed Korean painting in its current quandary....238

The fundamental problem of Eastern art in Korea-a dead end....245

Twenty years later: The artistic community in Korea today....246

Five requisites for the establishment of Korean art....247

Bibliography....250

Index....252