Painting the 12 Spectacles of Mount Kumgang "Here and Now"
On November 18, 1998, a tour ship set sail for Mount Kumgang. Though access was limited to the outer Kumgang area, it was the first time in more than 50 years for South Koreans to set foot in the Kumgang Mountains. This event marked the reopening of exchanges between the North and the South on the divided Korean peninsula, and in June 2007 parts of the inner Kumgang region also were opened to tourists. In July 2008, however, the program was discontinued, and Mt. Kumgang went back to being an object of aspiration, as in the classical song Longing for Mount Kumgang, a Korean favorite.
Mt. Kumgang is known for its distinct appearance in each season. Poetic names have been given it, such as bongrae in the summer when shades of green cover the landscape, pungak in the fall when the tinted foliage spreads throughout the peaks and the valleys, and gaegol in the winter when the leaves are gone and the rocks are revealed. During the Goryeo Dynasty, paintings of Mt. Kumgang formed a significant part of tributes to China, and in the Joseon Dynasty many artists explored the mountains in attempts to express their beautiful form. There is a story from the late Joseon period about an artist named Choi Buk, a successor of the Jingyoung (real landscape) painting style, who tried to jump into Guryongyeon pond while traveling through the Kumgang Mountains. He is said to have exclaimed, "It would be fitting for a celebrity like myself to die at such a celebrated mountain." The story reveals the extent to which these mountains have been a cherished destination since long ago.
Artist Shin Jangsik had been painting the Kumgang Mountains for some time before they were opened to visitors. Upon the start of the tours, he boarded the Hyundai Kumgang, the first vessel to sail from Port Donghae to Port Jangjeon. Since then he has visited Mt. Kumgang often and with increasing exhilaration, and has brought back beautiful scenes of the mountains in his picture-planes. Mt. Kumgang has motivated his work, and moved him to search for the reasons behind it. His works, while true to the real landscapes, do not simply represent the scenery. Through them Shin reveals the skin and the inner flesh of Mt. Kumgang, by his own unique method. And this would be impossible without the sense of awe he feels toward the mountains.
Having continuously painted the Kumgang mountains as he sees and feels them first hand, and having shown them in numerous solo exhibitions, Shin Jangsik is now holding an exhibition on the theme "12 Spectacles of Mt. Kumgang." To provide some traditional background: Chinese Confucian scholar Zhu Xi, who founded Neo-Confucianism in his hometown in Mt. Wuyi, Fujian Province, left a poem titled Wuyi-jiuquge (song of the nine river bends in Wuyi), which expressed the beauty of nine valleys in the Wuyi Mountains. Later, many artists made paintings based on this poem. Another example is Xiaoxiang Bajing-tu (picture of eight scenes of the Xiao and Xiang rivers), which are paintings of the beautiful scenery surrounding the Xio River and Xiang River, flowing into Dongting Lake, located midstream in the Yangtze River. While these theme-based paintings used famous scenic places as subject and subject matter, portraying each spectacle in a series consisting of eight or nine pieces, another Eastern tradition with a long history was seasonal paintings (sagyedo), which showed the scenes of spring, summer, autumn and winter in a certain landscape. Though Mt. Kumgang is a vast, deep mountain range with many mysterious scenes, Shin approached it by painting the 12 months of the mountain landscape. This shows his intention to include time in the works, in addition to space.
The charm of his 12 Spectacles of Mt. Kumgang increases as we savor them one by one, as if we were reciting 12 poems. The works can be appreciated in many ways, such as grouping them according to certain times of year, or considering them as a single organism as we travel through time. For example, in Light of Okryudong, in which the pine tree in the foreground is done in silhouette while the mid-range scene of the rocky mountains is fully depicted and the distant view is expressed in a blue tone; Spring of Onjeongri, in which flowers in full bloom are painted against a background of the hazy Sujeong Peak; and Light of Sujeong Peak, in which the shades of green deepen—in all of these scenes, viewers can feel the vibrant life of spring in the mountains through the use of light. Next we come to Light of Manpokdong, which reveals nature maturing with fresh trees and plants at their height; the July Manmulsang, concealing itself in the rain; and Summer of Haegeumgang, where the coastal rocks stand tall as they face the waves in the scorching sun; and we feel as if we are truly immersed the full beauty of the Bongrae Mountain. We then step into the Pungak Mountain, in the climax of its beauty in the Baekdudaegan mountain range of September, worthy of the title "Geumsugangsan (beautiful rivers and mountains like silk embroidery)"; Samseonam in its brilliant new costume; and Jipseon Peak with its bizarre rock formations exposed in preparation for winter. Finally, we are humbled by the perpetuity of nature at Biro Peak, welcoming a time of silence. After viewing the Light of Cheonhwadae, named for its resemblance to flowers blooming in the sky, a painting of the snow-covered peaks and mountains in a blue tone, spectators then arrive once again at Manmulsang, now surrounded by trees and plants just about to sprout their buds of life.
Flowing through this travel in time is the light of Mt. Kumgang. In Shin's work this light emerges in a bluish hue. It is the auspicious energy that intertwines his works, and the driving force that gives them life. Mt. Kumgang must be reopened, even if it is for the sole reason of being submerged in that light once more. Shin Jangsik's 12 Spectacles of Mt. Kumgang exist before us in the present tense, because they enlighten us of the fact that the Kumgang Mountains are "here, now."
Choi Taeman, Art Critic
