Fish

Byeon Gwan-sik, Joseon Period 20th Century (1899~1979)

Sojŏng (小亭) Pyŏn Kwan-sik learned painting from his maternal grandfather Cho Sŏk-jin (趙錫晉). He further developed his artistic foundation through study in the ceramics division of the Industrial Training Institute of the Japanese Government-General of Korea, as a research student at the Calligraphy and Painting Fine Arts Association, and as an auditor at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts; through these experiences he gradually freed himself from the influence of An Jung-sik and Cho Sŏk-jin and arrived at a distinctly personal pictorial manner.

He was particularly accomplished in landscape painting, and the defining characteristics of his style — forceful, abbreviated brushstrokes, a richly saturated ink tonality, a characteristic use of pepper-dot clusters, and a quality of form that is somewhat blunt and unrefined — together produce a distinctly Korean lyrical sensibility of considerable depth. These qualities find equally vivid expression in the recurring motif of figures in traditional Korean dress and wide-brimmed hats, bent at the waist and leaning on walking staffs as they make their hurried way through the actual landscapes of the Diamond Mountains and other scenic sites. It is for these qualities that his landscape painting is regarded, among such contemporaries as Kim Ŭn-ho (金殷鎬), Hŏ Paengnyŏn (許百鍊), Pak Sŭng-mu (朴勝武), No Su-hyŏn (盧壽鉉), and Yi Sang-bŏm (李象範), as the work most thoroughly imbued with an indigenous Korean aesthetic.

This painting of the mandarin fish reveals a dimension of Pyŏn Kwan-sik's art beyond his identity as a landscape painter. Though less pronounced than in his landscapes, the short, forceful, and somewhat parched quality of the brushwork allows a characteristic aspect of his manner to be glimpsed. The mandarin fish (ssogar i, 鱖魚) was conventionally associated, through its homophonic connection with the word for the royal palace (gwŏl, 闕), with the aspiration to pass the civil examinations and attain official advancement; in this work, however, the subject appears to have been chosen without any such symbolic intent, as a painting purely for aesthetic enjoyment.