The Surface and the Line

Chaekgeori

This four-panel screen represents the Korean still-life genre, chaekgeori, which features objects that would be found in a scholar’s study. Brushes, inkstones and books point to the importance of learning in Joseon society. Along with these tools of study, collectible items, many with Chinese origins, are featured notably and often set upon custom-made stands. Most scholars of the era aspired to possess antique foreign items, such as bronze incense burners and archaic forms of pottery from China. The objects that appear here are fairly standard, in that they can be found across the genre of chaekgeori screens. This particular painting tradition, which treats objects as worthy of sustained visual focus, began in the late 18th century in the Joseon period, possibly influenced by western painting traditions that came to Korea by way of Qing China. Although the items seem to float in space and some are not rendered to scale, various illusionistic techniques have been deployed to indicate depth. For instance, the stacked books recede along a shared orthogonal axis. By contrast, rounded objects are rooted into their settings by conveying a robust sense of volume, but without casting shadows. Additionally, a book is held open, secured by its own weight, a strategy that suggests that the forces of gravity are at work. Joseon Korea was a deeply Neo-Confucian society that valued simplicity and starkly rejected materialism and all of its pretensions. The chaekgeori, as a genre, thus teetered on a fine line. It expressed the social propriety of learned men along with their acts of conspicuous consumption, which could be conceived as morally questionable.

For more examples of screens like this one, check out the examples in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.

See if you can spot the various objects that are featured in the screen!Click "Here they are" for the answers!

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