우청 황성하(又淸 黃成河)의 회화 연구

Abstract

Woo Cheong(又淸) Hwang Seong-ha(黃成河, 1891-1965), as a figure who tenaciously worked in traditional Korean painting, lived during the most turbulent time period in history, as he was born at the end of the Joseon Dynasty. Until the mid-1960s when he died, Hwang worked vehemently on writing prose, painting, and creating poetic lyrics in harmony with paintings and thus became well-known as one of the most illustrious artists who persistently held on to the legacy of traditional Korean painting. Nevertheless, the needed research and analysis concerning Hwang’s life or his art world is currently insufficient. When taking a look at the overall work done by Hwang, he rarely used strong coloring or extremely narrow brushes except when he illustrated tigers. In which case, he used mostly light coloring with ink (水墨淡彩), especially with fully ink-wet brushes for undaunted touches (潤筆) as opposed tobrushes made of bristly hair(渴筆) in order to create subtle differences in shade. This characteristic is often seen in the 50 year period of his art making and confirmed in his Jidu-Hwa painting (指頭畵, a painting created by the tip of fingers instead of brushes). In his painting of mountains and rivers, there is not much Bubyeok-Jun (斧劈皴 strong brush strokes that make the surface of a mountain or rocks have anax-cut texture) and instead a lot more of Mijeom-Jun (米點皴, making dots with brushes slanted) and Pima-Jun (披麻皴 depicting thread-like scenes as in a hemp plant) are seen. Most of them were thoroughly based on the existing strict rules of Oriental painting, except for a few of the depictions of true landscapes. Hwang introduced to his painting both Mibeop-Sansu (米法山水, a technique used when drawing branches of a tree or the overall shape of a mountain, by spreading ink and overlaying ink dots instead of making a clear outline) or Ni Tsan (倪瓚式, a technique with an archaic and serene touch due to its brief composition and depiction). In the case of figurative painting, Hwang used Yuyeop-Jun (柳葉皴 thick brush strokes like willow leaves) or Jeongduseomi-Myo (釘頭鼠尾描, brush strokes that begin strongly like nail heads and become narrow like rat tails) for GoSa-Hwa (portraying old gentlemen), while using Jeolro-Myo (brush strokes used for depicting drapes of cloth that appearquite sharp like broken reeds) for Doseok-Hwa (道釋畫 portraying old monks and gods, including Buddha). Therefore, it can be seen that he used different kinds of rendering methods depending on the category of painting. When painting Youngmo-Hwa (翎毛畫, paintings of birds or beasts) for subjects such as Korean shaggy dogs or tigers, Hwang mainly used his fingers and the subjects’ full-faces or profiles seemingly reveal a type of dignity and authority. The Four Gracious Plants (四君子) were completed mostly with thin coloring using ink and a lot of them were produced through the club activity called Geumranmukhui. As a literary man who wrote traveling verses, Hwang is regarded an artist with remarkably versatile talents in all-encompassing realms such as paintings of mountains and rivers, figures, birds and beasts, flowering plants, The Four Gracious Plants, and calligraphy. While living in the confusing environment influenced bydifferent styles at the end of Joseon Dynasty in the city of GaeSeong, his hometown, Hwang made every effort to pass the legacy of traditional Korean painting on to the next generation through his life-long determination. More specifically, he took the lessons of senior painters to heart based on Namjonghwa-Beop (南宗畫 and took this as the background for creating his own painting style. Therefore, Hwang hopefully will remain as a calligraphic painter who kept a sense of pride in traditional Korean painting even in the rapidly changing era when new Western styles and different ideologies caused many problems in the society.