God Pictures in Korean Contexts

Laurel Kendall; Jongsung Yang; Yul Soo Yoon

Laurel Kendall, Jongsung Yang and Yul Soo Yoon

God Pictures in Korean Contexts

The Ownership and Meaning of Shaman Paintings

University of Hawaii Press | 2015

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780824857097

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Contents

About this book

Shamans walking on knives, fairies riding on clouds, kings with dragon mounts: They are gods and they are paper images. Some are repulsed and unsettled by shaman paintings, some cannot stop collecting them, and some use them as sites of veneration. Laurel Kendall, Jongsung Yang, and Yul Soo Yoon explore what it is that makes a Korean shaman painting magical or sacred. How does a picture carry the trace of a god and can it ever be “just a painting” again? How have shaman paintings been revalued as art? Do artfulness and magic ever intersect? Does it matter, as a matter of market value, that the painting was once a sacred thing? Navigating the journey shaman paintings make from painters’ studios to shaman shrines to private collections and museums, the three authors deftly traverse the borderland between scholarly interests in the material dimension of religious practice and the circulation of art.

Illustrated with sixty images in color and black and white, the book offers a new vantage point on “the social life of things.” This is not a story of a collecting West and a disposing rest; the primary collectors and commentators on Korean shaman paintings are South Koreans re-imagining their own past in light of their own modernist sensibility. It is a tale told with an awareness of both recent South Korean history and the problematic question of how the paintings are understood by different South Korean actors, most particularly the shamans and collectors who share a common language and sometimes meet face-to-face.

Author information

KendallLaurel:

Laurel Kendall is Curator in Charge of Asian Ethnographic Collections in the Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, and also teaches at Columbia University.

Reviews

This book will be of great interest to specialists of Korean art and to those studying museum conservation of "folk art" and questions of meaning in painting.

Frontmatter Free access PDF PDF	i
Contents Free access PDF PDF	v
Preface and Acknowledgments Free access PDF PDF	vii
1. Introduction: The Lives of Korean Shaman Paintings Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	1
2. What Are Shaman Paintings? Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	17
3. Korean Shaman Paintings Collected Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	45
4. Painted Gods at Home Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	69
5. Gods Painted, Gods Bought and Sold Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	95
Coda: Painted Gods in Museums Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	123
Notes Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	133
Bibliography Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	139
Index Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	149
About the Authors Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	161

God Pictures in Korean Contexts

The Ownership and Meaning of Shaman Paintings

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