"Munjado (Ideograph Painting) during the Joseon Dynasty: The Relation between Confucianism and Folk Art"

Byungmo Chung, Professor, Department of Cultural Properties, Gyeongju University

DATE:	Friday, August 29, 2008
TIME:	4:00 PM to 6:00 PM
PLACE:	IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor
FORMAT:	Colloquium
SPONSORS:	Center for Korean Studies

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This lecture will address the ways in which Confucian ideology affected folk art and its evolution into a decorative art during the late Joseon Dynasty  (eighteenth to nineteenth century).

Munjado folk art, on which I will focus, is one that is shared by many countries that are under the cultural rubric of Chinese characters. These include China, Japan, Vietnam and Korea. The popularity and artistic value of munjado reside in the fact that each character carries an image and a story. As is widely known, Chinese characters are pictograms that copy the shapes of objects. They are also ideograms that symbolize the meanings of the characters. While artists in the other countries chose to use the commonly repeated characters that represent the three auspicious wishes--Happiness, Success and Longevity--Korean artists during the Joseon Dynasty chose to draw characters that stand for  the Eight Confucian Virtues--Filial Piety, Brotherly Love, Loyalty, Trust, Propriety, Righteousness, Integrity and Sensibility.

My investigation is of the following questions: Why did Confucian munjado become popular during the Joseon Dynasty? Why did the people of Joseon choose filial piety over happiness? Why was patriotism privileged over longevity?
 
In this lecture I will demonstrate that munjado during the Joseon Dynasty is a product of historic circumstances, in particular of Confucian ideology. Joseon's Royal Court executed a cultural education policy that inculcated Confucian ideology in its people. This cultural promotion explains in part why Confucian munjado became popular at the end of the Joseon Dynasty. Furthermore, one should not overlook the fact that Confucian munjado gradually gained popularity amongst the common people because of their desire to adopt the culture of the aristocrats (yangban) who would display munjado screens and discuss the Confucian ideology contained in the characters.
 
Drawing on the two social aspects--the governmental policy and the desire for social status--I will analyze how Joseon's munjado evolved from one that imitates the Chinese counterpart that focuses on telling stories behind the characters to its own autochthonous style that emphasizes simpler symbolic images. In other words, unlike the Chinese case that includes narrative drawing inside each character, Joseon's munjado came to emphasize its decorative quality by either simplifying the narrative aspect or by embellishing the characters. Thus, Joseon's munjado settled itself as a decorative art rather than an artistic arrangement of a text.