Research/Fūdo Is Not Landscape/Argument V
Academic edition · Fūdo Is Not Landscape · Argument V · 15 / 34
Fūdo Takes Form in Colour, Line, Empty Space and Light
The Grammar of the Jeju Paintings
The proposition that fūdo becomes form must be tested through concrete changes in colour, line, empty space and light. The color of dried grass works not as a local colour but as the colour of long-lasting time; the black line not as an outline but as a record of force and posture; empty space not as lack but as a coloured field that makes relation possible.
Structure of the argument
- Claim
- The color of dried grass, the black line, coloured empty space and non-directional luminosity of the Jeju paintings form one connected grammar of form.
- Evidence in the works
- Solitude (1995), Hallasan (1987), The Sea of Jeju (2011), Tropical Sun (1983).
- Primary sources
- The oral account that white things turn yellowish under strong sun; testimony on why he chose black; the note that “what is not painted holds up what is painted.”
- Counter-examples
- The deep green night of Wind (1991), the surface covered in heavy brushwork in Apparition (2003), and the pinkish surface of The Departing Boat (1979) are hard to explain by broad fields of the color of dried grass alone. This grammar is limited to a main recurring tendency, not a single style covering the whole Jeju period.
- Limits of the sources
- Pigment, value and surface texture cannot be settled from online reproductions alone. They must be checked directly against key originals or colour-managed high-resolution material.
- Difference from existing art history
- Like Dansaekhwa, he reduces colour and reveals the flat surface, but Byun Shi-Ji keeps figures, distance and narrative motifs to the end. The purpose and effect of the reduction differ.
- Provisional conclusion
- The color of dried grass is not a pigment name but an interpretive colour name that holds long duration. The form of the Jeju years is not a marker of place but a grammar that organizes relations.