God pictures in Korean contexts: the ownership and meaning of shaman paintings

Abstract

Shamans depicted walking on knives, fairies shown riding on clouds, kings astride dragon mounts: some find such pictures unsettling, some charming. Pursued by collectors, venerated as seats of gods, Korean shaman paintings are all of these Laurel Kendall, Jongsung Yang, and Yul Soo Yoon explore what it is that makes these works magical or sacred-more than just paintings. What does it mean for a picture to carry trace of a god? Once animated and revered, can it ever be a mere painting again? How have shaman paintings been revalued as art? Do artfulness and magic ever intersect? Is market value of a painting influenced by whether or not it was once a sacred object? Navigating journey shaman paintings make from painters' studios to shaman shrines to private collections and museums, three authors deftly navigate borderland between scholarly interests in production and consumption of material religion and consumption and circulation of art. Illustrated with sixty images in color and black and white, book offers a new vantage point on the social life of things. This is not story of a collecting West and a disposing rest: primary collectors and commentators on Korean shaman paintings are South Koreans re-imagining their own past in light of their own modernist sensibility. It is a tale that must be told together with recent history of South Korea and an awareness of problematic question of how paintings are understood by different South Korean actors-most particularly shamans and collectors who share a common language and sometimes meet face-to-face.