Adoption and transformation of the Mi tradition in landscape painting of the late Choson...

Columbia University

1993

387 p.

The painting mode of Mi Fu and Mi Yu-jen dominated landscape painting of the late Choson period (1700-1910). This dissertation examines the process of transmission of the Mi style to Korea and its "Koreanization" during the late Choson dynasty. The concept of the so-called "Mi style," referring to both Mi Fu and Mi Yu-jen, is manifold. First, the names of the two Mi are associated with the Chiang-nan area. Second, the Mi school is related to the ideal of literati painting. Often, Mi school paintings are equated with the generic term yun-shan-t'u (pictures of cloudy mountains), where paintings are composed of summer scenes with low hills interspersed with clouds and fog. Lastly, the most easily recognizable technical elements that are often related to Mi school painting are the "Mi dots," the horizontally laid, multiple, short texture strokes defining mountain surfaces. In the history of Chinese painting, the Mi landscape mode had a long-lasting influence, going through various stages of transformation and adaptation. This dissertation begins with a brief introduction to the current scholarship on the history of Korean painting. Chapter One traces the development of the Mi school within the history of Chinese painting from the early Yuan through the late Ming dynasty. Chapter Two deals with the literary sources and paintings of the late Koryo (fourteenth century) through the early Choson period (1392-1550). Since during this period there are no direct literary references to the Mi tradition, the discussion remains hypothetical. In examining the literature of the period, writings on painting are also pointed out as an aid to reconstruct the artistic trends of this early period, from which few paintings survive. Chapter Three examines the mid-Choson period (1550-1700) when direct references to Mi begin to appear both in literature and painting of the time. This period can be considered as the beginning of the Mi tradition in Choson dynasty Korea. Chapter Four, the major portion of this dissertation, discusses the paintings as well as the written records of the late Choson period (1700-1910) when the Mi technique was most popularly adopted. This period has been considered to be one of the cultural renaissance with great developments in popular literature and paintings in a Korean mode seen both in terms of style and theme. Thus the significance and the mode of adoption of the Mi style, as a Chinese-derived element, is examined in the larger context of Choson painting. This study of the transmission of the Mi school to Korea attempts to illuminate the general pattern of cross-cultural interaction between China and Korea: the process of transmission, adoption, assimilation, and transformation.

Английский