[KS] Korean term for wabi-sabi and its origin

[McCann, David]

Wabi-sabi might also be a good way to describe some of the ascribed aesthetics and the felt emotions when all those Korean potters-- entire villages-- were taken to Japan by Hideyoshi's forces. 

David McCann


On Nov 18, 2013, at 7:47 AM, Frank Hoffmann <hoffmann at koreanstudies.com> wrote:

> Dear Dr. Lee:
> 
> Questions countering your (forwarded) question:
> 
> (1) I see your student is familiar with Japanese concepts like 
> wabi-sabi, with interpretative models. In that case I wonder what came 
> first, his awareness of this Japanese concept or his "observation" of, 
> as he says, the "*intentional* qualities" of "imperfection, 
> impermanence, and incompleteness"?
> 
> (2) Furthermore, I also do not think your student will get very far 
> even asking this question in this particular way. At least since the 
> later 1970s, and then very intensely so during the 1990s, there has 
> been a bulk of literature--there where conferences, workshops, and also 
> exhibitions that all dealt with the issue of Yanagi Sōetsu (alias 
> Yanagi Muneyoshi), colonialism, colonialist aesthetics, and his implied 
> concept of "beauty of sadness" (hiai no bi 悲哀の美) that he claimed he 
> "observed" in Korea and that he consequently applied to all things 
> Korean, that made up the essence of his understanding of Korean art and 
> crafts. Most obviously, when a colonizer who goes by--I simplify, but 
> not too much--"wabi-sabi," intentional incompleteness, then claims to 
> have found that same beauty of incompleteness being produced as 
> "un-intended incompleteness" (in Korea) to result in the same beauty, 
> then that is for him like gold made from water drops. That same claim, 
> though, reinforces the colonizer's (Japan) superiority over the 
> colonized (Korea), as it shows that the colonizer is smart enough, is 
> sophisticated enough to appreciate such aesthetics, while the colonized 
> "subjects" as producers of such appreciated objects are on the 
> primitive site of things: they produce beauty without even 
> understanding and appreciating what they do there. ... If I try a 
> little harder, I can rephrase this in more scholastic terms. However, 
> THAT is the very basis of the discourse, and your "wabi-sabi" plays 
> very directly into that. 
> <YiInsong_repros.jpg>
> 
> That whole discourse has also been immensely important when discussing 
> modern/modernist works of Korean art from the colonial period. A good, 
> clear-cut example, are the above works by Yi In-sŏng, one reproduced on 
> the cover of Sunyoung Park's brilliant translation of short stories by 
> some writers that themselves are counted among 'colaborators' -- BUT 
> produced just amazingly sharp and enjoyable stories, and on the right 
> the marketing of the best known of Yi's paintings that had been 
> attacked all through the 1980s and 1990s for its "colonizer's 
> aesthetic," the mimicking of Paul Gauguin's Tahiti series, the 
> modernist colonial "local color" style. I had given this example here 
> on the list before and I am repeating myself. What is new is that in 
> the past few years the situation has changed from what we saw in the 
> 1990s, that after everyone has had so tremendously much fun playing the 
> pointing fingers, post-colonial suffering and abuse card, now the 
> discourse has finally opened. In literature that happened a little 
> earlier than in the visual arts. Aesthetics (bad term, though--lets 
> just say 'taste & appreciation') is now being RENEGOTIATED, as it 
> always is as time goes by and our economic interests and political 
> ideologies etc. change--art history 101. That 'wabi-sabi' and 'hiai no 
> bi' crap will unlikely get its change now either, but the discourse is 
> now being informed by marketing strategies rather than those 
> post-colonial bad guys/good guys, heroes/collaborators monologues.
> 
> A 2008 example from _Japan Focus_:
> http://www.japanfocus.org/-Park-Yuha/2923
> "Victims of Japanese Imperial Discourse: Korean Literature Under 
> Colonial Rule"
> Park Yuha (transl, by Gavin Walker)
> 
> ... as I said, art critics and historians are always late in the game, 
> but we finally get there (maybe when the in literary theory are up the 
> the next step).
> 
> 
> Best,
> Frank
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Sun, 17 Nov 2013 17:20:52 -0800, Junghee Lee wrote:
>> Dear members,
>> 
>> One of students asks me the questions about "wabi-sabi."
>> 
>> In the Korean aesthetic realm, is there a concept similar to that of 
>> the Japanese aesthetic paradigm "wabi-sabi"? If so, what is the 
>> Korean term for this concept?  
>> 
>> He said he noticed when he visited Korea, the intentional qualities 
>> of "imperfection, impermanence, and incompleteness," or "beauty at 
>> the edge of nothingness." 
>> 
>> He asks "From what era/age does it originate?"  "Is the origin 
>> Chinese, or does it have indigenous Korean roots?"
>> 
>> Please let me know the answers to these.
>> 
>> Thank you.
>> 
>> Best wishes,.
>> 
>> Junghee Lee
>> -- 
>> Junghee Lee
>> Professor of Art History
>> School of Art and Design
>> Portland State University
>> P. O. Box 751
>> Portland, OR  97207-0751
>> U. S. A.
>> leeju at pdx.edu
> 
> --------------------------------------
> Frank Hoffmann
> http://koreanstudies.com