[KS] cultural object circulation in the late Choson Dynasty query

Sun Oct 3 21:59:35 EDT 2010

Sorry to be so lengthy & bold," NO: GREAT! Werner

Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2010 03:56:24 -0700
To: koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws
From: hoffmann at koreaweb.ws
Subject: Re: [KS] cultural object circulation in the late Choson Dynasty query

Post Scriptum:

We might as well put a date on the reappearance in the interest in Koryô celadon in Korea: the year 1908.

But let me first make this claim: neither in China nor in Korea would anyone before the early nineteen hundreds have had any interest in Koryô ware. By then China and Korea had discovered blue-whites (and Europe had), and after that they were able to even produce fine glazed wares in more than two colors, e.g. with red and blue and yellowish-brownish tones. Why would anyone would want to go back to those archaic greenish wares once they could enjoy all those colors?

Much of the answer, I think, lies in the West--in European aesthetics and tastes. This is not exactly part of an elementary intro, so allow me to bridge this a little with some bold examples:
When seeing in person the Before-and-After of the mid-1980s Sistine Chapel restoration that turned Michelangelo's gracefully stale and serious yet already exciting frescoes into a Walt Disney-esque version with bright and flashy colors that even the Las Vegas remake can't surpass, I was totally stunned.

Colors MORE impressive here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sistine_Chapel_ceiling_left.png

Stunned, because it had shattered my (and that of most others in my and earlier generations) concept of pretty much everything that was out there in terms of "classical" aesthetics. A couple of years later I had to digest the fact that the old Greeks had actually also imitated Walt Disney. Neither temple facades nor vases had been plain marmor and/or whitish: new chemical analysis and new reconstructions show that Walt had been the mastermind behind it all.

In short: From some time after the Lutheran reformation and until very recently, that is during the centuries of the Protestant drive for industrialization and modernization (in the interpretation of Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, and also, of course, in the spirit of Immanuel Wallerstein's Modern World-System analysis, Europeans have equated the monochrome and monotone, the life-less, with the classics, our admirable classics. The images to be published in your Ilias edition would not have looked like Mickey Mouse or The Pink Panther--they might have been b/w lithographs or later b/w photos of some color-less Greek statues or reliefs.

While 18th and 19th century Europe was so deeply in love with its own monochrome/monotone construction (rather than re-construction) of classical Greece and Rome, it sure also enjoyed the blue-white Chinawares and even the multi-colored wares. So far for the "exotic" Other. Yet, who would not also look for the "classics" within the "exotic" East. The "classics" would need to be, OF COURSE, monochrome and monotone! It could hardly be Walt-Disney-esque, not according to Max Weber, they would not been classics then, not in the pre-21st century understanding of classics. (We Northern Europeans still think so today, in spite of knowing better. Ask me.) Something like Koryô celadon or later Chosôn period white wares would fit the aesthetic bill.

Now you might say it's not the Europeans, it's the Japanese. Right, yes. It certainly gets somewhat complicated here, as many different factors come into play--such as the fact that the Japanese did have a long-standing aesthetic preference (or at least strong appreciation) for monochrome objects (of course not limited to monochrome, but certainly a high acceptance). While this is correct, the Japanese established in their Western-inspired modernization process institutions that were molded largely by the concepts of European institutions. From uniforms to art and crafts exhibitions, industrial exhibitions, museums, collecting and collections, etc., all and everything followed within this modernization process. As you are also aware of, we see parallel to this some back-to-the-roots movement, the urge to strengthen Japanese traditions and aesthetics--that already starts with Okakura Tenshin who reinvented Japan's own traditions and even brought Nihonga to places as far away as India, and it ends with the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in the 1940s. In very many cases, without wanting to simplify this too much, we see in this process a replacement of certain objects of desire by other objects of desire (as collector's items) within the same or a very similar institutional (originally European) framework. The very interesting point here is, that, while the objects are replaced, many of the formal and aesthetic attributes do not get replaced. Koryô celadons are a great example of exactly this; they have all the attributes a European collector wanted to see: classic antiquity, monochrome color, rareness, done in lost technique, symbolizing a lost high culture.

>From the Korean point of view: Koryô wares start to become of interest again when the modernization process seriously begins in Korea. Before the early 1880s the term "misul" (art) does not exist in Korea, and it is not really being used much until the 1900s. After that we have "arts and crafts" and we have crafts exhibitions, as crafts are an important part of the Western modernization process:

1893: Columbian Exposition in Chicago (with Korean participation)
1900: Exposition Universelle in Paris (with Korean participation)
1907: National (Korean) Fair in Hansông (Seoul)
1907: National Inheritance School for the Industry established in Hansông (Seoul)
1908: Hansông Fine Arts Factory established by the royal government to substitute
      for the Punwôn which had heretofore been in charge of producing crafts for
      the royal family and the palace, thus replacing the traditional crafts
      production with a modern manufactory that would produce modern designed
      items (the royal Toan-sil, Dept. of Design, was now actually located inside
      that factory).
1909: construction of the Yi Royal Museum (Yi Wang-ga Museum) in Hansông (Seoul)
1912: opening of the Yi Royal Museum
... and so on

Please note that at the time (same as in Europe and the U.S.) "arts" and "crafts" went usually hand in hand, and so we do not only talk about the EXHIBITION of existing art work, or whatever we consider art, but also about the PRODUCTION of arts and crafts, and the exhibition of methods showing how arts and crafts are being produced. (This was before the invention of terms like outsourcing.)

In this connection we see that the production of porcelain and other wares becomes profitable again, and in 1907 and 1908 we see one American and several Japanese manufacturies and kilns opening production around Korea--some of the Japanese brand names are still known today in this industry ... and yes, it was an "industry" now, an industrial production. Also in 1908 in P'yôngyang a porcelain manufactury gets opened by some Korean entrepreneurs, the P'yôngyang Chagi Chejojusik Hoesa gets established there (note the "-jusik" part). Wall Street comes to P'yôngyang. That company produced all kind of wares, mostly for the Japanese market, and remakes of antique celadons are also part of their program (not really sure about Koryô porcelains at this time though, before 1910).

 Kyôngsang Pangnamhoejang, 1907 (entrance)

 Yi Royal Museum, 1912

Sorry to be so lengthy & bold,
Frank

-- 

--------------------------------------
Frank Hoffmann
http://koreaweb.ws 		 	   		  
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