[KS] North Korean temple photos

[Best, Jonathan]

Frank's email raises for me, an art historian in part of my head and most of my teaching, interesting questions on the relationship between the aesthetics of religious art and architecture and the political/economic power of a society.  Assumptions on the part of the "average" believer of the ritual efficacy/appropriateness of the form of a sacred structure or object is more important than its aesthetics per se. Think of all the churches scattered over the world, what percentage of them are architecturally distinctive, much less significant in an aesthetic sense?

Jonathan

________________________________________
From: Koreanstudies [koreanstudies-bounces at koreanstudies.com] on behalf of Frank Hoffmann [hoffmann at koreanstudies.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2014 3:37 AM
To: koreanstudies at koreanstudies.com
Subject: Re: [KS] North Korean temple photos

Dear Dr. Saeji, and All:

You wrote:

> At this point in Korea people see a traditional bldg with traditional
> eaves and dancheong paintings on it as as anonymous and
> interchangeable as apartment buildings. People have no training, no
> understanding of how to spot the architectural differences or the
> variation in dancheong.

That is, after thinking twice, not really such a bad and inappropriate
comparison as you meant to say. In a private message someone wrote me
that Changan-sa and the Buddhist monastery photo on that Korean blog
(by Weber) are "totally different in every way." Well, I think such
statements are based on pre-modern and modern Western concepts of
architecture and art that we have since the Renaissance. Buddhist
temples and monasteries throughout Korea and also compared to those in
China were *not* "totally different in every way." Changan-sa and
Yujŏm-sa, for instance, were similar in structure, but not just these
two. These were, before anything, religious places. The concept of
"art" that comes since the Renaissance in the West with that essential
idea of "originality" and therefore a strong emphasis on difference
(and I'd argue already much earlier than the Renaissance) had no weight
in East Asia. Buddhist architecture, sculpture, and painting were
declared "art" by who? It ALSO is a question of cultural (and therefore
ethnic) identity! That might sound flashy at first, and 1990-ish. Yet,
it seems important when we talk about Buddhist "art" what template we
pull over the object's head, how we dress up our baby, how we present
it. When you interview the people who live in some of the famous huge
apartment buildings by Le Courbusier, they do not even have no clue
that they live in such art historically famous houses, they pretty much
all hate it (I am not making that up). Buddhist monasteries were looked
down on in the late Chosŏn period, monks were looked down at and talked
down to, and Christianity did the rest. The only concept that then
(let's skip the colonial period with its Japanese version of Buddhism,
which never "convinced" Koreans), after liberation, took effect, and
what we still see now in the present Korean corporate bling-bling
culture, is basically the same template created by high-class Western
collectors (and the Asian art museums that serve them): Buddhist "art"
as collectable and displayable artifact -- the seated Buddha next to
your fireplace. AND THAT has to differentiate itself from your golf
partner's, of course, who has one from China or Thailand, it has to be
"original." Now, since nobody can go back a 100 years, since Korea like
the rest of the world, is now a "Renaissance" country that proudly
displays its "objects" in exhibitions at the MET and titles such shows
"Art of the Korean Renaissance" (2009), and all that -- the issue of
cultural and ethnic identity seems just an overstated and useless
academic construct. However, it *is* still essential when dealing with
Buddhist architecture and sculpture, etc. -- so we are reconsidering
what was in each historical period, and how it was perceived. And here
is "anonymous and interchangeable" not always that wrong as it might
seem. So we do not try to understand that with our originality
eyeglasses. This is a complex issue, and in some short email posting it
is not possible to discuss this appropriately -- so, please forgive the
shortcuts.

For a good "entry point" to such topics, if interested, I suggest the
following conference volume (not particularly on Buddhist art though,
but also):

  Naomi Noble Richard and Donald E. Brix (ed.),
  _The History of Painting in East Asia: Essays on Scholarly
  Method_. Taipei: Rock Publishing International, 2008.


Best,
Frank


--------------------------------------
Frank Hoffmann
http://koreanstudies.com