Samdup’ algyon, an eight-armed avenging angel wreathed in flame, wields a battle axe in the face of the enemies of Buddha. He snarls above a sea of faces with bulging eyes, their hands clutching swords, beads and fans, their bodies frocked in vivid robes. The vermillion-shrouded Mountain God stares out from beneath him, and Dragon King meets your gaze with lizard eyes in a human face. They are the lords of the earth and sea, respectively. Identical septuplets in intricate embroidered costumes, sage and inscrutable in expression, rule over Heaven from positions around those two, each representing one of the seven stars of the Big Dipper.
These are only four of the deities evoked in one of the paintings in “Gods, Demons and ?Generals: Icons of Korean Shamanism,” an exhibition on display through December 9th in the Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies. Korean Shamanism is a religious tradition that traces back to the 4th century B.C.; its pantheon of deities including those mentioned above as well as Princess Hogu, who mediates the Korean shamanistic version of couples therapy.
The religion is animistic, like Japanese Shinto, meaning it posits many spirits that inhabit natural objects. Unlike Shinto, however, Korean Shamanism has only a small body of central lore, meaning that shamans must improvise most of their prayers and invocations. Some shamans, called destined shamans, can allow deities or revered ancestors to access their bodies, in a ritual of possession called kut. Most shamans were and continue to be women, and, in the face of Confucian doctrine—which historically isolated and disenfranchised them—Korean women turned to Shamanism to find a common voice.
The paintings displayed in the exhibition date from the early 20th century, and are intended to adorn shamanistic altars. This adornment, in the words of visiting lecturer and Korean Shamanism scholar Michael Pettid, “gives a face to the gods.” This they certainly do, with bright and idiosyncratic uses of color and perspective.
Several of the paintings show particularly unique traits: the wispy and cloud-like white moustache and beard against the intense red background of “Mountain God” is breathtaking, as is the subtle but horrifying combination of reptilian and human features in “Dragon King.” Another two paintings, both entitled “Guardian Spirits,” look like group photos of the whole pantheon, with each god rendered in exquisite detail, but also part of a populous large-scale composition.
“There’s this welter of symbols, where each has meaning and its icons, and then you zoom out and see the larger narrative,” noted Zack Davis ’08.
Davis also appreciated the exhibit given the foreignness of its artistic style to his experience with art.
“If you want to know just how little of the world’s culture you know about…at all…it’s a good lesson,” he said.
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