ScholarWorks@숙명여자대학교

초록

This study investigates the concept of Seopjeong (攝情), one of the aesthetic approaches employed by Yun Shouping (惲壽平, 1633–1690), a renowned literati painter of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. Focusing on his flower-and-bird paintings, the paper examines the characteristics of his pictorial practice and color techniques. Motivated by a critical awareness of the weakening aesthetic consciousness in contemporary East Asian painting—particularly the loss of the traditional philosophy that sought to express life through resonance with nature—this study reinterprets Yun’s Seopjeong not as a mere projection of emotion, but as a process of artistic self-cultivation grounded in the Neo-Confucian epistemology of Gewu Zhizhi (格物致知), or “investigating things to extend knowledge.” This research reveals that Yun Shouping, through his use of the Mogu (沒骨, “boneless”) technique in colored flower-and-bird painting, neither suppressed nor indulged in emotion, but instead pursued its purification and contemplative refinement. By responding to the qi (vital energy) and essence of nature, Yun sought to embody the unity of mind and nature through pictorial expression. His works reflect not only the vitality of life, the beauty of emptiness, and the spiritual clarity of jingjing (淨靜), but also extend beyond technical innovation into an ontological aesthetics grounded in resonance. Through this analysis, Yun’s flower paintings are re-evaluated as a creative turning point that both inherits the epistemological and self-cultivational aesthetics of traditional East Asian painting and opens new possibilities for colored ink painting. Ultimately, the study argues that Yun’s artistic philosophy provides profound philosophical and aesthetic insight for the future direction of contemporary Korean painting.

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