CHAPTER IX.
A GLANCE AT KOREAN ART.
“Far Eastern art draws its inspiration from Nature, not from man. It thus stands, in the objects of its endeavour, in striking contrast to what has ever been the main admiration and study of our own, the human figure. A flower, a face—matter as it affects mind, mind as it affects matter—from such opposite sources spring the two. Art, or the desire to perpetuate and reproduce the emotions, must, of course, depend upon the character of those emotions. Now to a Far Oriental Nature is more suggestive and man less so than with us.”—Percival Lowell.
The subject of Korean art is vast, intricate, and difficult. It could not possibly be covered, even in the most superficial way, in one chapter, or in a series of several chapters. But it would be preposterous to altogether exclude it from any book whose pages are devoted to Korea generally. For perhaps the most really interesting thing about Korea, and certainly one of the most interesting things to be said about Korea is this:—Korea was the birthplace of a great deal that is finest and highest in the art of that wonderful art country—Japan.
A great deal that is most distinguished in Korean art, past and present, is undeniably indigenous to Korea, but, on the other hand, the Korean artists have borrowed or absorbed a good deal from the arts of other countries. In the early days of its prosperity Korean art seems to have owed a great deal to China. But, even in its infancy, through the long years of its magnificent splendour, and in these days of its decay or of trance, Korean art always has had, and has, a marked individuality, and bears the indubitable hall-mark of genuine originality.
In the beginning, then, Korean art was probably a mingling of the national expression of an intensely artistic people, and what was most striking in the rich, but less graceful art of China. Under the Sung dynasty, between the years 960 and 1333 A.D., lay the most brilliant period of China’s literary existence, and perhaps the most brilliant period of her art life. And it was also between these years that Korean art reached, and for some time maintained, its highest perfection.
No careful art student who visits both countries, or has access to typical collections of the art productions of both countries, can fail to observe that apparently either Persia has distinctly influenced the art of Korea, or Persia’s art been distinctly influenced by Korea. Probably both are true. Persian embassies and Korean embassies were wont to meet in Pekin. Very probably showed each other the presents sent by their respective masters to the Chinese Emperor. These presents were always largely made up of works of art. And their inspection probably led to an interchange of presents between the embassies themselves, and later on, to reciprocal studies, between Persia and Korea, of the art methods of the two countries. Korea has excelled in fret-work, in scroll-work, and in a great variety of arabesque decorations, and in all of these has very largely followed Persian lines.
The key-note of Korean art, as the key-note of all Far Eastern and, indeed, of most Oriental art, is the inferior place held in it by the study of the human figure. Far Eastern art is a study of nature and of decorations. This is even more true of Korea than of China or Japan, though the Koreans excel both the Chinese and the Japanese in their drawing of animals. The chief characteristic of Korean decorative art is its chastity. One cannot fail to be reminded by it of the severe simplicity of old Grecian art. A good specimen of Korean pottery or porcelain is never heavily covered with decoration. A Korean vase, or a Korean bowl, is simple and elegant of outline, and the surface is finely finished, but probably three-fourths of that entire surface is undecorated. The old specimens of Japanese Satsuma (the Koreans taught the Japanese how to make Satsuma) are usually distinguishable from the new and cheaper, because the former are touched with decoration, and the latter are hidden beneath it. The Koreans use colour very lavishly when they use it at all. But conventional design, conventionalized decorations, and decorations which are more exact copies of nature, whether in black and white or in colour, they use very carefully, and never crowd them together. Their porcelains are not so glazed as those of Japan, and the usual, or favourite colour is a creamy white. The dragon, which is so conspicuous a personage in all Far Eastern art, is perpetually drawn by Korean artists in colour, and by Korean artists in black and white, but is rather sparingly used on the Korean pottery; which in this differs from the potteries of China and Japan. The mythical animals and the symbolical animals, though they all figure largely in Korean art, are not often found on Korean porcelain. The Koreans value highly all sorts of crackle ware, and have been excelled, I fancy, in its manufacture by no other people.
Griffis says: “Decoration is the passion of the Orient, and for this, rather than for creative or ideal art, must we look from this nation, to whose language gender is unknown, and in which personification is unthought of, though all nature is animate with malignant or beneficent presences. Abstract qualities embodied in human form are unknown to the Korean, but his refined taste enjoys whatever thought and labour have made charming to the eye by its suggestion of pleasing images to the imagination. His art is decorative, not creative or ideal. His choice pieces of bric-a-brac may be rougher and coarser than those of Japan, but their individuality is as strongly marked as that of the Chinese, while the taste displayed is severer than that of the later Japanese.”
Perhaps the design that they most often employ, in their decorative art, is the well-known “wave-pattern.” We find it on their porcelain, on their bronzes, in the most conventional of their pictures, and even on their coins. Some one has suggested that it is perhaps used on the small copper coins to symbolize their circulation and fluctuation in value. The wave-pattern symbolizes successive and interminable wave-motion. The love of the Korean artist for water in nature, and for conventionalized water effects in decoration, amounts to a passion. Water in some form or phase is introduced into almost every Korean picture, and on to the majority of the porcelains, bronzes, the lacquers, and into the carvings. We find the wave-pattern beautifully executed on curtains and panels, on armour and on weapons. It often circles the columns of a building, and is conspicuous in interior architectural decorations. A strand of twisting, turning, curling waves is commonly the handle of a fine Korean teapot, and many a Korean dish, or vase, or bowl rests upon a porcelain or bronze bed of seemingly angry waves. The Japanese have seized upon the wave-pattern, and have vastly improved it. It is doubtless through their much exported, and much copied wares that we have become very familiar with it; and I have not infrequently seen it mingled with incongruous European patterns, in fancy printing, both in London, on the Continent, and in America—used for the background of decorative initial letters, or introduced into fancy tail-pieces.
The chrysanthemum was the favourite, the most favoured, and the most studied flower in Korea long before it became the imperial flower, the badge of Japan. The Koreans have always been, and are, wonderfully skilled in rearing it; and in reproducing it in colour, in black and white, in relief, and in conventional designs. We find it whenever we turn our eyes toward Korean objects of art. We find it, or some design suggestive of it, in Korean brocades, and in Korean carvings, and many of the most beautiful Korean borders have been designed from ingenious arrangements of its petals. In several ways the chrysanthemum lends itself with peculiar facility to Korean art ideals. It is rich, splendid, and varied in colour, and the Koreans have a passion for colour. It is interesting and noble in shape, and comes out splendidly in relief, or in half-relief. It is beautiful, but unique, and sometimes even grotesque in outline, and all the Eastern peoples admire the grotesque. Certainly the artists of Korea and of Japan understand the grotesque’s usefulness in art above all other artists, and employ it to relieve gentler, simpler forms of beauty, which might grow monotonous if used perpetually. Clouds and stars and the sun are utilized in a variety of ways by the Korean decorative artist. And a conventional pattern, called “the dragon’s tooth,” is extremely striking, and is nicely adaptable to vases or dishes that are big at the base, and small at the top.
Lacquer has been for centuries as commonly used in Korea as in Japan, but it has never reached the perfection, the artisticness in the former country that it has in the latter.
Korea was once the store-house of innumerable and invaluable works of art; art treasures of great variety, fine in design, excellent in execution, and rich in symbolism. To-day there are comparatively few art treasures in Korea. The nobles and the rich men probably each have a few hidden away. The king has a number. And some are still to be found in the ostracized monasteries, in the nunneries, and in other unexpected places. But Chosön is no longer the great art treasure-house she once was. In the palaces and the temples of China and Japan are to be seen many of what were once Korea’s most prized works of art. And these have been taken as booty from Korea, or sent by Korea as tribute. But the peninsula has not continued in her old glory of art production. Korean art has deteriorated in quality, and in many of its branches shrunk to something nominal in quantity, because great bodies of her best artists and artisans have been sent to Japan, or have gone there. Keenly alive to all that is beautiful in nature, and all that is most exquisite in art, the Japanese readily appreciated the high degree of excellence that had been attained by the artists of Chosön. Not content with taking to Japan the most perfect specimens of Korean art, the Japanese offered every inducement to the best Korean artists to settle in Japan, and spread throughout Japan their superior knowledge of art, and skill in art work. To the instructions of the Koreans the Japanese owed their unrivalled skill in making the beautiful Satsuma faïence, and the almost as beautiful Imari porcelain. The Koreans taught the Japanese how to carve wood, and then, apparently, forgot how to do it themselves; though there are still in Korea some very beautiful specimens of fine carving, especially in the royal palace at Söul. The majority of Japanese patterns for brocades and for stuffs, and many of their favourite designs for embroidery, are purely and indisputably Korean.
A scholar, who seems to me always anxious to do Japan full justice, has written:—
“The existence of any special traits or principles of decoration, or a peculiar set of symbols in Korean art, has been thus far hardly known. When fully studied these will greatly modify our ideas of Oriental art, and especially of the originality of the Japanese designers. Korea was not only the road by which the art of China reached Japan, but it is the original home of many of the art-ideas which the world believes to be purely Japanese.”
The Japanese themselves, to be fair to them, do not claim to have a largely original art, and my attention was first called to the magnitude of Japan’s art debt to Korea by a Japanese gentleman in Tokio.
Old Persian writers express the greatest admiration for Korean porcelains, and for the beautiful decorated saddles that were sent to Persia from Chosön. The Koreans still excel in the making of gorgeous and (after once the eyes grow accustomed to their gorgeousness) really beautiful saddles. They are inlaid with pearls, and are richly embroidered. Bows and arms and fans are among the many things that the Koreans used to, and still do, make. They are beautiful with pearls, with jade, and with gold and silver and iron inlaying. The Koreans once made splendid and beautiful bells, and were expert in all sorts of metal work, but they have lost or laid aside these arts to a very great extent. There are still some very fine bells in the peninsula, and some beautiful Korean bells in Japan, but their manufacture dates back a long time. And this is also usually true of many of the best specimens of all kinds of Korean art-work that we find in Chosön or in Japan. It is true of most of the beautiful images found in the temples, and many of the vases, the braziers, the incense-burners, the trenchers, the kettles, the bowls, the decanters, and the censors, all of which are exceedingly graceful in form, pure in outline, and decorated with simplicity and dignity.
The throne in the palace of Söul is a very beautiful example of well-controlled art. It is simplicity itself, but it is as majestic as it is simple; perfect in every detail, royal in its proportions, and in severe but perfect taste.
Among the minor arts that still flourish in Korea is that of toy-making. The Korean toy-makers really are artists, and the playthings of the children of the well-to-do are so carefully designed and so faithfully executed, that in their little way they have every claim to be considered works of art. Armour, palanquins—indeed, all the impedimenta of Korean daily life, and of the daily life of old Korea—are reproduced with minute exactness, and very wonderful toys are made out of bits of tiger skins and of the fur of the tiger and other wild beasts.
The battle-flags and the banners of Korea are interesting both to the student of history and the student of art. The mysticism and the symbolism that is so characteristic of all Korean art is noticeable on almost every Korean flag.
The strange animals that we find in Korean art, animals that are like none that ever lived, are symbolical, and, to the Korean mind, typify a great deal that the Koreans think it important to remember.
A branch of art which is much thought of in Chinese-Asia, and is there indeed a fine art, is pen-work or brush-work. In this art the Koreans are as adept to-day as they ever have been—as adept as the Chinese or the Japanese. Fine specimens of calligraphy are written with a brush—written upon scrolls of silk or of soft paper, and are either put away to be treasured, or are hung upon the walls as ornaments of great interest. The last time I was in Tokio the wife of a Japanese official, whose home is very rich in paintings, both European and Japanese, showed me, with great pride, her collection of such scrolls—scrolls, all of which were specimens of fine writing. Very much such scrolls form the principal wall decoration of the study of the Chinese minister in London, and such scrolls are among the most cherished household goods of every well-to-do Korean. The Koreans write with the greatest ease and elegance, and it is almost as natural for them to draw and paint very fairly well as it is for them to write.
The making of fine pottery is almost, if not quite, a lost art in Korea, but they still know the secret of, and still make and use, the exquisite tints and the matchless colours that characterized their glazes in the days when Korean art was at its greatest height. The Korean potters are among the nomads of the peninsula. A family, or several families, of potters choose some spot where wood and clay are convenient, and there they build their huts, and there they live till the wood or the clay is exhausted. All Korean pottery is fired in ovens that are heated with wood. There are no great potteries in Korea or in Japan. Each specimen of their art is the individual work of an individual, and in this, perhaps, lays one of the secrets of the fascination of any genuine work of art from these countries. The most beautiful piece of porcelain that has ever been made in China, Japan, or in Korea, has probably been made in some humble little hut and fired by an insignificant-looking little oven.
I have spoken elsewhere of the famous Chinese lion, or Korean dog. It is more grotesque than beautiful, and is chiefly interesting because it has so strong a hold upon the affections of three so different peoples. For a conservative Asian, he is a very great traveller, is this Korean dog. He has found his way into every fancy bazaar, and every cheap notion shop in Europe and America; and we really feel quite as if we had met an old friend when we stumble upon him in Yeddo, in Pekin, or in quaint Söul.
It is being constantly urged against Far Eastern art that it is artificial. Mr. Lowell refutes this so clearly, so distinctly, with so much discernment, and to my mind, so convincingly, that I feel it would be a pity to refute it in any other words. He says:—
“Far from being artificial, Far Eastern art is emphatically natural. The reason that it does not so appear to us at first is due to two causes. The first is very simple—an absence with us of what the Far Oriental sees around him at home. A picture of snow-peaks would undoubtedly appear conventional, in the sense used above, to a man who had dwelt all his life on the plains, and never heard of such things as white-headed mountains. The second cause is that certain very salient features of his landscapes have engrossed the Far Oriental attention, to the partial neglect of other less striking but, perhaps, even more common scenes.
“Every traveller knows the effect of this in other things beside art. Narrators insensibly, if not on purpose, pick out the salient points of any land to give an idea of it to those to whom it is an undiscovered country. The result is, that on acquaintance no country seems so odd as imagination, fed on a few startling facts, has pictured it to be; and yet, for all that, the facts may be perfectly true. Now, what we do to give others an idea of foreign lands, the Far Oriental does to give himself an idea of his own. His art, by reason of this strong simplicity, is all the higher art.”
Landscape gardening holds a prominent place among the arts of Korea, and is as well understood, and as generally practised to-day as it has ever been in the history of the peninsula. Water forms the principal, and the indispensable feature of every Korean garden. Indeed, the pond, which must be in the centre of the garden, often takes up nine-tenths of the garden’s entire area. This pond is always called a “lotus pond.” Usually the lotus is there, but not always, and its absence only emphasizes the title of the pond. It is interesting to notice how indispensable the sight of water is to the Koreans, and it speaks a great deal, I think, for their genuine love of Nature.
Korea is so surrounded by water, so intersected with rivers, and has so many high hills from which water can be seen for some distance, and down which rivulets and waterfalls break, that every Korean must be very familiar with water in all its moods and tenses. But he does not tire of it. On the contrary, a Korean who has his domain on the very sea-shore, will dig up the larger part of his garden for the sake of having an artificial lotus-pond; that he may sit on the artificial island in its centre and fish and dream and watch the water. Fantastic groups of strange rock work are put in almost every Korean garden: groups to which European eyes have to grow very used before they can see any beauty in them.
Korean music, like almost all Asiatic music, requires a great deal of study before we can at all understand it or like it. Its scale differs entirely from our gamut—differs even more than do Korean instruments from ours. Japanese music is of Korean origin, but has changed greatly of later years. But all classical Japanese music is still identical with Korean music, which has changed little or not at all. Korean government labourers are called to and released from their day’s work by music, and to music do the gates of a Korean city close or open for the day.
When Korea was in its infancy she was thrown into intimate contact with China. Korea had not had time to develop a literature, and so she very naïvely adopted the literature of China. Chinese literature is the classical literature of Korea still. The great majority of Korean books (and they are not surprisingly many), are written and printed in Chinese. The Koreans have neglected their own language and its literary possibilities for centuries. Still there is considerable poetry written in the Korean tongue (but in the Chinese character almost always), and we may consider the writing of this poetry as one of Korea’s national arts. “Poetry parties” are a popular form of Korean picnics. A number of friends meet at some unusually beautiful spot. They have been preceded by servants carrying writing materials and wine. Very gravely the competitors (for such they are) set to work. They sun and joy themselves in the beauty of the scene, they sip the cup that cheers, but alas! intoxicates too! and when they have enough assimilated the beauty of the scene and the gladness of the wine, then they write verses. The verses take the form of songs, or are ballads in praise of nature. They write of the bamboo, of the stars, of the storm, of moonlight and of sunrise, but never of woman!