Park Han-sol reports on Korea's financial regulators, along with fintech and insurance. She previously wrote about the art world, from biennales and exhibitions to fairs and auctions, with a focus on Seoul and the figures shaping the scene. Before joining The Korea Times, she spent a year at ABC News' Seoul bureau, contributing to coverage of major Asia-Pacific events.
Korean portraiture to be displayed at San Francisco's Asian Art Museum
“Portrait of Lee Sam” (1751) / Courtesy of the Hampyeong Lee Family
By Park Han-sol
By Park Han-sol
The exhibition, “Likeness and Legacy in Korean Portraiture,” a showcase of portrait paintings spanning from the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) to the contemporary era, will be held at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco from Aug. 27 to Nov. 28, the Korean Foundation (KF) announced Wednesday. This exhibition is the first major show of Korean portraiture to take place in the United States.
The highlight of the event is a series of eight unfinished draft portraits depicting the “Bunmu meritorious officials” (or bunmugongsin in Korean) (1751), which were commissioned by Joseon King Yeongjo (1724-1776) to recognize the officials' military achievements in quelling an armed rebellion led by Yi In-jwa during the fourth year of the king's reign.
These rare surviving works attest to the detailed depictions of the sitters' facial expressions and features reflecting their individual personalities, under the influence of neo-Confucian ideals.
When such official portraits were completed, one copy would be stored in the royal court, while others were sent to the sitters' family members for use in special ceremonies or ancestral rituals.
“High School Uni-Face: Girl” (1997), left, “High School Uni-Face: Boy,” (1997) by Suh Do-ho / Courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong and Seoul
The exhibition also includes modern and contemporary works painted from the Japanese colonial era (1910-1945) to today.
The photograph series, “High School Uni-Face,” by the renowned installation artist, Suh Do-ho, consists of two digital composites of high school student portraits lifted from yearbooks before strict school dress codes were loosened in the early 1980s. As a composite representation of the faces of an “ordinary boy and girl,” the series “comments upon the pressures of conformity,” according to the museum.
Other noteworthy contemporary portraits have been drawn by pioneering artist Yun Suk-nam, who revives the unsung heroes of history by creatively utilizing discarded objects and weather-beaten wood. In this exhibition, her imagined portraits of the 16th-century women poets Heo Nanseolheon (1563―1589) and Yi Maechang (1573―1610), of whom there are no official visual records, will be on display.
“What makes 'Likeness and Legacy' unique is that we move beyond a specific moment in time to pair traditional draft paintings with a selection of finished portraits on silk, as well as contemporary approaches to portraiture by Korean and Korean American artists,” the museum's associate curator, Hyon-jeong Kim Han, said in a statement.