Conference "Ancient Art of Korea"

June 8, 2022 / 6:00 p.m. 

@ KU Leuven Brussels Campus, Hermes Building (2, rue d'Assaut, 1000 Brussels), classroom nr. 4207

Free (Reservation strongly recommended)

Lectures will be held in French

This lecture is organized on the occasion of the publication in French of the book Fresques de Koguryŏ. Splendeurs de l’art funéraire coréen (IVe au VIIe siècle) at Hémisphères Éditions. The lectures will be given by YOU Hong June, Professor Emeritus of Myongji University in Seoul and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Academy of Korean Studies, and RYU Nae-young, Translator of the book in French and Doctor of Art History.

*This event is organized in collaboration with KU Leuven.

Koguryŏ Wall Painting in Northeast Asian Art

Lecture by Hong June YOU, Professor Emeritus of Myongji University, Seoul, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Academy of Korean Studies, Former Director of the National Heritage Office

From the 4th to the 7th century, sumptuous funerary frescoes were made in the Korean kingdom of Koguryŏ, testifying to a developed civilization. They are found today in China, in the area of Jí’ān, and in North Korea, in that of P’yŏngyang.

These representations reveal a great cultural mix, influenced as they were by arts and techniques from China or Central Asia, and which in turn influenced the art of Japan. The very varied subjects painted on the walls and ceilings of the chambers and sepulchral passages present countless figures based on Chinese cosmology, steppe culture, Taoist thought or Buddhist beliefs. This lecture will highlight the main characteristics of this pictorial art of North-East Asia.

History and Typology of the Reproduction of Koguryo Funerary Wall Paintings

Lecture by Nae-young RYU, doctor in art history, specialist of the Korean scholar painter YUN Du-seo

The funerary murals of a hundred earthen burial mounds with stone-lined chambers from the kingdom of Koguryŏ have naturally been invisible since their completion. It is only in modern times that the graves were excavated. The first to take photographs of them was the French sinologist Édouard Chavannes during his trip to China and present-day North Korea in 1907. From that date, the representations of the murals, discovered little by little, over the course of Japanese, North Korean, Chinese and South Korean archaeological sites and scientific works are beginning to multiply and to be declined on multiple supports and in multiple techniques.

This lecture will aim to briefly retrace the history, over a hundred years, as well as the typology of the different modes of reproduction of Koguryŏ funerary paintings: black and white photographs on glass plates, enhanced photographs, color photographs, copies life-size or reduced-size paintings, line-drawn surveys of walls or details of figures and patterns, sections of spaces reconstructed in 3D, manual and digital “restoration” of images, etc. 

It is through this particularly rich set of reproductions that we can now know, in such depth, these founding paintings of Korean art, the originals of which are practically inaccessible today.

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 Gravemaster's wife of Anak number 3