The art of Korea, which had been little removed from the influence of the Continent of China, had been expressed as a by-product of politics, culture and religion.
For that reason the aspect of mentality had been camouflaged and had become formalisti...
The art of Korea, which had been little removed from the influence of the Continent of China, had been expressed as a by-product of politics, culture and religion.
For that reason the aspect of mentality had been camouflaged and had become formalistic, so that it had not expressed the spirit of the ages.
By the great shock of a couple of wars-hideyoshi's Invasion of Korea(1592) and the Pung-cha Ho Ran(1636), however, people were awakened from the ignorance and reflected it on their realities deeply, so that it became the chance of self-discovering.
Therefore, in the 18 century of the Yoˇng and Chuˇng dynasty, the study of a practical science and the economy of the commonality grew in prosperity, and the western culture-a scientific mentality-flew into them through Catholic. In those days, all the more, wars and domestic conflicts formed a state of temporary ease and made the basis of a social culture, so that Korean were aware of themselves and expressed their culture of art customs of life, mountains and streams for themselves. And then these became the very unique Korean style and created the stage of art which only Korean could reach.
When we look into the pictorial environment of the age, many kinds of pictures like as Keuˇm-Che's(謙齊) landscape, Tanwon Kim Hong Do, Sin Yoon Pok, Keungche Kim Deuk Sin's genre picture and Whache Pyun Sang Pyuk Hyunche Sin sa Chung's realistic paintings and portraits etc. raised their heads. Besides there were problems between Nam Chong(南宗), and Puck Chong(北宗), paintings.
Among them, despite of the artical power of chinese style of paintings, there was a unique style of painting which came from Cho-Son itself, which broke from the imitation of Chinese picture albums, turned to looking around our lives and picturized the common people's lives, and then it created a new world of art which was a genre picture.
A genre picture is a painting which expresses the customs of the age. It has freshness and expresses endlessly common people's daily lives and the custom of streets.
A genre picture, which expressed objects and methods in a very Korean style with a resistant position in spite of chinese over whelming force of cultural inflow, is a pioneer of Korean style of painting and becomes very meaningful to our history of picture.
Tanwon Kim Hong Do and Heawon Sin Yoon Pok are the most representive genre painters.
Especially Sin Yoon Pok painted the senses of the flesh and mood of a women's beauty with the topic of men and women's affection on the subject of women's customs and painted a pathetic scene of shamanism and inns which is a pure genre picture.
In those days of a feudality and a through going conservative society, he produced works of art with his sense of reality and raised the meaning of a genre picture to a concrete artistic level.
Generaly speaking, art should be creative, individual, free from Vulgarity, and be faithful to the reflect of the time. Heawon Sin Yoon Pok's art influenced greatly modern paintings in the stream of times and suggested the way that Korean modern paintings take in the future.