| dc.description.abstract | This dissertation is the fruit of cross-cultural and comparative research on Chinese and Korean court documentary painting, a genre that depicted important state rituals, court ceremonies, and political events taking place within and beyond the palace complexes. In spite of the historical and artistic interconnections between these court-documentary traditions, previous scholarship has focused only on one court or the other. Thus, my study aims to identify the distinctive strands of Chinese and Korean pictorial traditions and practices in the production and consumption of court documentary paintings. It also traces intercultural exchanges of ideas, artifacts, and practices and their contributions to the development of new pictorial themes and styles. This investigation concentrates on the reigns of the Kangxi (r. 1661-1722), Yongzheng (r. 1723-35), and Qianlong (r. 1736-95) emperors of the Qing dynasty of China and those of Kings Yeongjo (r. 1724-76) and Jeongjo (r. 1776-1800) of the Joseon kingdom of Korea. Under these eighteenth-century monarchs, both China and Korea enjoyed political stability, economic prosperity, and cultural diversity. With the strong patronage of these rulers, the courts of these early-modern East Asian states became the centers of intellectual and artistic innovation, inspired in part by imported ideas and practices and in part by the existing pictorial traditions of their respective states. Court documentary paintings sponsored by Qing and Joseon rulers developed strikingly similar themes, including the rulers' ritual activities and outings. The shared themes in eighteenth-century court documentary paintings were far from coincidental. In addition to the increasingly frequent exchanges of diplomatic missions and material goods between China and Korea, which existed prior to the eighteenth century, a single, overarching idea contributed to the development of this pictorial genre in the eighteenth-century Qing and Joseon courts. Literally translated as Central Florescence, Zhonghua (meaning civilization, limited to that of the Han Chinese) was the shared political vision between the Qing and Joseon ruling houses. The desire to claim possession of Zhonghua, or the center of civilization, played a pivotal role in the development of the rulers' ritual activities and outings and motivated the production of eighteenth-century Qing and Joseon court-documentary paintings that highlighted those events. Thus, eighteenth-century Qing and Joseon court documentary painting is a consummate example of an art form that flourished across borders. | |
