Okinawa International University Symposium — 'Mt. Geumgang Paintings' (Shin Jang-sik) (2011)

I have painted it since '93 — has it been more than twenty years now? Geumgang was once space; now it feels like time. Mt. Geumgang of twenty years' time.

Geumgang stands there as space, yet it abides with the twenty years of time in which it met me. Through 365 days, through twelve months, Geumgang was together with my time. And it dwells, too, within the paintings in which I tried to hold its beauty. The Twelve Scenes of Mt. Geumgang (金剛十二景) are a small fruit born within this time and space. Time shared with me — and so, twelve scenes.

Spring, summer, autumn, winter — the twelve meetings of earth and moon changed Geumgang's beauty, and I longed to paint what they held. The memory of sharing that changing time by the measure of the moon, and the beauty of the space-time meeting Geumgang in the days to come — may it meet my paintings once more.

Paintings of Mt. Geumgang

Shin Jang-sik (Professor, Kookmin University; Painter)

1. The Tradition of Mt. Geumgang Painting

Paintings of Mt. Geumgang are countless — from the Goryeo monk No-yeong's Buddhist 〈Painting of Kṣitigarbha〉, to Gyeomjae Jeong Seon's 〈Geumgang Jeondo〉, the album leaves of Kim Hong-do, the many minhwa, and modern works such as Haegang Kim Gyu-jin's 〈Mt. Geumgang〉 and 〈Chongseokjeong〉 (painted after a sketching journey by order of Emperor Sunjong during the colonial period) and Sojeong Byeon Gwan-sik's 〈Samseonam〉. Mt. Geumgang painting, in particular, is a sanctuary in the history of our painting — the place where, from Gyeomjae Jeong Seon onward, our own aesthetics were established by sketching the beauty of our land from the actual scene (silgyeong). The inspiration for our painting in our age, made from our own, must surely be sought here.

2. Division and Mt. Geumgang

And yet since the division, not a single painter in the South has painted Mt. Geumgang. Even from imagination and materials, would it not be good to attempt Mt. Geumgang painting anew at this moment? With this thought I began, and from my 1993 solo exhibition through 1998 I have presented five solo exhibitions on the theme of Mt. Geumgang. In truth, my experience as assistant art director for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1988 Seoul Olympics gave the initial momentum: from interest in the formal vocabulary hidden in folk subjects — cheongsachorong, drums, gongs, flags, Gyeongbokgung — I worked under the theme of "Arirang." Afterward, expressing the animation and vitality dwelling in our land through subjects such as cockscomb, wild grasses, the pine, and Bukhansan, I came naturally to think: if so, why not paint Mt. Geumgang, the sanctuary of our painting? That simple thought was the beginning of my Mt. Geumgang painting. Considered in the pictorial context of Mt. Geumgang as well as in its cultural-political weight, the "Mt. Geumgang" rendered by a painter of this age, who confronts the unrelenting reality of division, is yet another story of unification.

3. Mt. Geumgang Found Again

Now, having met Mt. Geumgang several times, perhaps that animation and shinmyeong (exalted spirit) will seep into my paintings as well. There remain many places I have not directly seen — Chongseokjeong, Singeumgang, and so on — but perhaps the shinmyeong and vitality our people carry are now possible within Mt. Geumgang paintings. Will a time not come, in the future, when the division of our nation is overcome and Mt. Geumgang is reborn as a symbol of the nation? Then I shall see it to my heart's content. I hope, too, that some measure of this shinmyeong and vitality will be expressed in my paintings.

4. Ideational Mt. Geumgang Paintings

1993–1998 — Painting Mt. Geumgang without having visited carried no small number of regrets. Yet I could not erase from those paintings the hope that one day I might go. This work, begun long ago, was accompanied by research on Mt. Geumgang painting as a pictorial value. The works of that time, of which one could without exaggeration say they were ideational sansu (the East Asian landscape painting tradition), were thin in the connection between actuality and form, and drew doubtful looks from those around. My efforts to overcome this point appeared as research into old Mt. Geumgang paintings and the gathering of photographic materials, but a landscape painted without on-site experience was inevitably, perhaps, a painting in the head rather than in the heart. The black-and-white photograph from my 1996 solo exhibition catalog — me looking off into the distance with a cigarette — quietly shows my position standing at the clear fork between ideational sansu and true-view sansu (jingyeong sansu). A painter standing before the wire fence of the armistice line carries the air of one who longs for, or foresees, crossing it soon for Mt. Geumgang.

5. Realistic Mt. Geumgang Paintings

I approached Mt. Geumgang as a symbol and have now met its actuality. To paint the mountain yet to surpass the order of so-called representational sansu — that of merely transcribing the mountain — may be my principal task. Yet I have sought to step out of that frame, toward reading the actuality of Mt. Geumgang. The Mt. Geumgang paintings after my visits to the mountain differ in many ways from those before. First, ideational sansu can now turn into jingyeong sansu (true-view landscape). My recent works are jingyeong works of Mt. Geumgang, made on the basis of materials gathered by my own sketches and photographs on site. What I mean here by "the turn from ideation to true-view" is the process of finding "the union of actual landscape and painting." To speak — through Mt. Geumgang — of the animation of nature and the people, and further to take up concretely the contemporary and on-site (the situation including division) — this is the singular possibility that my painting cannot abandon. It is the work of attaining, through the union of symbol and actuality, an authenticity that runs through life and art.

6. Prospects for Mt. Geumgang Painting

Mt. Geumgang is my Mt. Geumgang, and our nation's Mt. Geumgang. I hold this hope: that one day, painters from the South and the North together may paint Mt. Geumgang on its very soil, debate our art, and exhibit in Seoul and Pyongyang — would not our symbol thereby be made still more precious? Would it not be possible to meet through the sensibility common to our people? Not meeting an empty mountain devoid of people, but meeting the mountain together with its people — the joy then would be greater still.