Oriental Painting for Unity of Reality and Ideal

Landscape and Heart

Honorary professor of humanities, Kim Woo-chang at Korea University, published an essay on the oriental painting. The subtitle of the book is “Meditation on Paintings in the Orient and a Utopia.”

Professor Kim compared oriental paintings and western paintings by using elaborate and analytic words and approached the utopia of the forefathers based on the deepest understanding of the Orient.

-- Many people are not aware that you are approaching the concept of the Orient through paintings.

“I liked drawing ever since I was young. Back then, people told me I was quite good at painting…Although it is a artificial composition, drawing is better than writing, I think, when you want to express yourself.”

He has a clear perception in drawing. In the preface, he said, “Even when it is seen as a simple depiction, it (a painting) includes an epic of human beings from a cosmological view or from an ethical and social perspective in the context of a society.”

-- You wrote in your essay that the viewpoint of the Oriental painting is within the landscape of a picture, while that of the western painting is at one point from which one sees the landscape.

“In the Orient, subjectivity and objectivity are not strictly divided, and the experience gained under such condition is important. On the contrary, westerners look at an objective from one viewpoint and compose the world based on one’s own logic.”

-- Western paintings, which are composed logically, seem more realistic than Oriental paintings, which put importance on experienced reality.

“Of course, for most people, it’s easier to understand the reality when it is analyzed and composed from one viewpoint than to understand the reality as a whole based on experience. But, in the first case, so much which is not in a compositional frame is missing.”

Since the Oriental landscape painting is a drawing of the utopia where a painter want to be, others who cannot feel the utopia may think the painting is less real.

-- An esteemed scholar of Chosun Dynasty Park Ji-won once emphasized the need to look at objectives from a distance just like looking at a room through a window not to fall into arbitrariness.

“Objectivity is not always good. Confucianists of the Chosun Dynasty looked at others and the nature based on their own experience, and this gave them a deep understanding of the true substance of human nature. True, they could fall into dogma because they didn’t know how to see the world effectively.”

“The Oriental landscape painting was about the utopia of balanced nature, but at the same time, it was firmly based on real experience,” said Professor Kim. “An ideal life in the tradition of the Orient means a tranquil heart and surroundings and a peaceful relationship with others.”

-- It seems one can see the world better from more various perspectives when a person sees things in perspective from one viewpoint like in the case of the western painting.

“You can have infinite new opportunities and freedom when you erase the ego and see things in perspective. Than is, you can compose a space wherever you want according to your point of view. It gives a possibility to conquer the nature, but more fundamentally, a possibility to liberate human beings.”

Professor Kim, a scholar of English literature and a literary critic, is deeply interested in the Orient. However, he does not stick to the restoration of the Oriental tradition. “The best we can expect is the advent of the future where the east and the west, and tradition and modernity can harmonize,” Professor Kim said.

Hyoung-Chan Kim khc@donga.com