Research/Fūdo Is Not Landscape/Argument VII
Academic edition · Fūdo Is Not Landscape · Argument VII · 22 / 34
Labour and Animals Reveal the Relations and Choices of the Body
Haenyeo, Farmer, Tiger, Horse
Byun Shi-Ji’s bodies are not the bodies of isolated people. The breath of the haenyeo, the tilt of a body holding a plough, the horse that has worked alongside people, and the tiger that passed beyond its given symbolism to gain a lean body show that the body forms in relation to work, animals, tools and terrain. The labouring body is not read first as a symbol of suffering; it is analysed as posture left by repeated activity.
Structure of the argument
- Claim
- The body is not an isolated individual. It forms in repeated relation with work, animals, tools and terrain, and that relation remains on the canvas as a form of body the painter chose.
- Evidence in the works
- Haenyeo (1979), The Sea Is the Haenyeo’s Tears (1989), Plowing (1979), Tiger (1985), The Gaze (2001). Tiger depicts an animal absent from Jeju, painted on request, yet it received the same lean body—showing that the form of the body came from the painter’s choice more than from the subject.
- Primary sources
- The remarks “I don’t paint fat haenyeo” and “I don’t paint running horses” (family testimony heard directly by the author); Nevis’s record that he spoke of the horse as a companion in labour; the artist’s writings and testimony on Jeju horses, haenyeo and farming.
- Counter-examples
- In Hope, Will, Peace, and Love (1994) there is a figure raising both arms and two people sitting leaning on each other. These gestures do not come from work. The horse in The Gaze (2001) also stands alone, not working. The proposition that the body forms through its relation to labour does not apply to such bodies.
- Limits of the sources
- Family testimony must state when it was first recorded and its exact context, and the life history of Jeju haenyeo and horses must not be equated directly with the painter’s choices.
- Difference from existing art history
- Labour is read not only as class representation or social realism but as a network of tasks made together by place, work, animals and tools.
- Provisional conclusion
- The fūdo body is not “the typical Jeju person.” It is a form of body the painter chose, made by repeated work and relation. The scope of this argument is limited to scenes of work and companionship.