Page 143 - Korean Buncheong Ceramics, Samsung Museum Collection (great book)

Given the modern, sometimes even avant-garde, resonance of Joseon-period buncheong,
the greatest challenge for contemporary Korean potters borrowing from it is how to create works
that echo that powerful tradition, remain one step ahead of today, and at the same time move
beyond the framework of Japanese interpretations. Some of the younger and midcareer artists
incorporating buncheong modes into their works successfully negotiate the two main strands of
contemporary ceramics: the vessel, with its utilitarian connotations on the one hand, and sculpture
on the other. One such artist is Lee HunChung (b. 1967), whose diverse repertoire includes highly
personal and thoughtful representations of the buncheong vocabulary (see cat. 73). Though thrown
on the wheel, this globular jar has a slightly asymmetrical shape and a rim that has an unfinished
look. The artist used iron-rich local clay from Yangpyeong, Gyeonggi Province, where he lives and
works, mixing in a small amount of kaolin (usually reserved for porcelain). After brushing the vessel
with white slip, Lee applied a clear glaze containing a trace amount of copper, which, fired in a
wood-burning kiln, yielded subtle splashes of vibrant colors like purple. Color and sculptural forms —
some of Lee’s works defy conventional vessel shapes — are among the ways that Lee animates his
buncheong-inspired works with an individualistic and contemporary vision.
An art form that flowered, in its original incarnation, for less than two hundred years,
buncheong resurfaces in surprising and invigorating developments that go beyond, but ultimately
return to, the Korean peninsula. The multifaceted revivals in Edo-period Japan attest to both the
considerable potential of buncheong and the creative responsiveness of the Japanese potters and
consumers. The many iterations of buncheong in Japan — the Korean-made domestic products, the
Korean-made exports, the reimagined Japanese works — embody not only the physical re-formations
of the objects following their movement in temporal and geographical spaces, but also cultural and
symbolic transformations. The Japanese fascination with buncheong resulted in both the legitimate
and illegitimate transfer of the objects to Japanese collections from the fifteenth century on, during
times of peace between the two cultures and during such tumultuous eras as the Imjin Wars of
the end of the sixteenth century and the colonial period of the first half of the twentieth. The deep
appreciation of buncheong by the Japanese also facilitated its enduring legacy and, aided by
Korean lovers of traditional art, its rediscovery in the twentieth century.
Today, buncheong’s very contemporary appeal continues to draw longtime enthusiasts and
new admirers. In excavating and embracing the buried tradition of buncheong, the Koreans may
have reclaimed a part of their cultural heritage, but this ceramic’s influence and incarnations have,
in many ways, spread globally. Beyond modern and contemporary artists in Korea and Japan, and
owing in part to the works of twentieth-century studio potters like Bernard Leach who drew from
East Asian sources, a number of potters in the West, including in North America, have been inspired
by, and continue to reinvent, buncheong idioms and the creative possibilities of white slip.

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