The Iconography of Korean Buddhist Painting (review)

BOOK REVIEWS153 foremothers. But is it really possible to compare a group of women who entered the political fray fresh from the struggle for national liberation and sustained by an optimistic faith in the democratic potential of the new Korean Republic with another group of women appointed to the much-discredited National Assembly of the 1970s and 1980s? In these recent decades, was the National Assembly the most effective forum for political women in Korea? Perhaps the true heirs of the "pioneer generation " were not the female legislators who voted with their party against reforming the Family Law in 1985, but the many women who tirelessly testified, lobbied, and demonstrated on behalf of reform—and in 1989 prevailed. Laurel Kendall American Museum of Natural History The Iconography ofKorean Buddhist Painting, by Hendrik Hjort Sorensen. Iconography of Religions, vol. 12, no. 9. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1989. This slim volume of 21 pages of text accompanied by 48 black and white plates discusses in 9 pages large-scale Korean Buddhist hanging and framed scrolls and wall paintings, their painters, motifs, ritual uses, and relationship to the Buddhist canon and to temple structures. This is followed by 12 pages briefly describing the plates. Needless to say, it is difficult to cover these topics with any depth in so few pages, and it is disappointing to see important topics such as these treated in a cursory manner. Perhaps it is understandable that some topics such as the painters be treated in a single paragraph since the focus is iconography. However, even this main concern is given short shrift when the author essentially presents a list of commonly illustrated figures such as Vairocana, Sakyamuni, or Amitabha. The subject and meaning of much Buddhist art remain relatively consistent regardless of the place of production because the basis for depictions rested in common scriptural and textual sources. Thus, the pictorial representation of Sakyamuni's life in a series of eight events, for example, can be found from India to Japan. What is far more significant is the subtle differences imparted to these subjects due to the aesthetic preferences and historical contexts of indigenous cultures in specific geographic areas. Precisely those points at which standard iconography is modified and adapted to become Korean Buddhist iconography is what we need and expect to understand from this book, 154BOOK REVIEWS but Sorensen does not deal with this issue in an insightful way. He does not ask, for example, whether there might be uniquely Korean details in Korean versions of the eight events of the life of Sakyamuni, and seems to be unaware of or uninterested in the importance of such questions. Sorensen points out, for example, that the Koreans preferred the theme of Avalokitesvara with the Willow Branch to other variations, such as the 1000 armed Avalokitesvara that was so popular in China and Japan, but he suggests no reasons for this, nor does he review the iconographie features of this image of Avalokitesvara. The lack of detail, references, and discussion raises serious questions about Sorensen's understanding of what an iconographie study should accomplish. Merely naming deities in photographs does not constitute iconographie investigation. An iconographie examination should provide the reader with an understanding of the details of the posture, costume, attendant figures, and objects from which is derived the identification of a subject. Moreover, the author should provide the authoritative sources that verify the identification of the subject matter, be it folk or classical, written or oral sources. Sorensen does none of this. The following entry (p. 6) under "Arhats and Patriarchs," for example, makes clear the problems with Sorensen's approach: The Pratyekabuddha, also known as the "Solitary Sage" (Kor. tokson). Occurs as a single painting. Sometimes it is confused with renderings of the Mountain Spirit (Kor. Sansin). Old examples of this type are rare. Sorensen does not explain that pratyekabuddhas are generally regarded as a classification of a type of enlightened being rather than a single specific deity, and that illustrations of pratyekabuddhas are fairly rare in China and Japan. He does not detail those features that will allow us to distinguish this "pratyekabuddha-solitary sage" from other figures in Korean religious art, not even...