The Meeting of Korean and Western Art in the Late Joseon Period
VIEW EVENT DETAILSPlease note, this program will take place in The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s Brown Auditorium Theater, Caroline Wiess Law Building, 1001 Bissonnet, Houston, Texas 77005.
The late Joseon period in Korea is characterized by two seemingly opposed trends of culture: inquiry into things Korean and investigation into things Western. Western civilization and culture, which the Koreans were first exposed to by way of China, appeared to be almost a “shock” to them. From the Three Kingdoms period on, Korean culture developed its uniqueness while receiving continuous stimuli and influence from the continental Chinese culture. But the Koreans never considered it “foreign.”
In their writings, Korean scholars of the eighteenth century, however, expressed their surprise when they saw the life-like Western-style paintings in the Jesuit church in Yanjing. It was also during this period that the Koreans developed a distinctly Korean landscape painting called “true-view landscapes,” which depicted uniquely Korean scenery based on actual observation, a practice of Western origin.
This lecture will examine how the contact with Western art was reflected in Korean paintings of the late Joseon period in the areas of portrait, figure, animal, landscape, and chaekkeori (scholars’ paraphernalia) paintings.
About the Speaker
Yi Song-mi, Emerita of Art History at the Academy of Korean Studies, previously served as Dean of the Graduate School at the Academy, and was Professor and Director of the University Museum at Duksung Women’s University in Seoul. She was a member of the National History Council of Korea and served as the President of Korean Art History Association. Overseas she is a member of the Asia Society Global Council, and also served as a member of the editorial board of Archives of Asian Art.
Since the early 1990s, she has been conducting in-depth research into the court documents of the Joseon dynasty collectively known as uigwe (book of state rites). In September of 2011, she was awarded the medal of the "Order of Civil Merit (camellia)" from the Korean government for her advisory work for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in the negotiation for the return of the uigwe documents from France as well as for her research and publications on them. Professor Yi was educated at Seoul National University (BA), the University of California, Berkeley (MA), and Princeton University (PhD). Her recent publications on Korean painting include the award winning Joseon Dynasty Books of Royal Wedding in Art Historical Perspective (Korean, 2008), Korean Landscape Painting: Continuity and Innovation Through the Ages (2006), and Searching for Modernity: Western Influence and True-View Landscape in Korean Painting of the Late Choson Period (2014).
Presenting Partner
Event Details
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Brown Auditorium Theater Caroline Wiess Law Building 1001 Bissonnet Houston, Texas 77005