Keumgangsan, or the Diamond Mountains, looms large in the Korean imagination. Located in the northern half of the peninsula, which already is 70 per cent mountains, Keumgangsan’s 10,000 peaks, became a storied place of longing and nostalgia. Throughout the dynasties, countless painters, poets, and bureaucrat scholars made the epic trek to witness and record its waterfalls, lagoons, and temples. Even second-generation me wants to step foot there. In Korean, one doesn’t ascend the mountain but enters (ibsan).
Born around the turn-of-the-century in 1887, Elizabeth Keith was a Scottish painter who lived in Japan in the 1920s. She traveled widely throughout the East, including Japan-occupied Korea. Through her woodblock prints, ink and color on paper, she was one of the rare ones to show ‘the Orient’ through Western eyes and to a British audience.
... She writes reverently about seeing them:
I would not have missed the grandeur for all the danger. Sometimes a mountain-top would appear like the dome of a great cathedral. Then the tops would look like jagged spires. . . . The beauty of the climb was a revelation to me.
Yet the prints that she did are so funky. It’s almost shocking to see! In the painting at left, there are dragons in the mountains. Maybe she was hallucinating! You would never see such literal, and at the same time fantastical, elements in a traditional Korean painting of Mount Geumgang. In the painting at right, she shows Buddhist deities floating down. She probably knew about the Buddhist association with the mountains, and possibly on her trips she saw rock carvings of Buddhist deities. But she chooses to make the mountain into a Buddhist paradise.
Sumi Hansen: She brings to life the name “Nine Dragon Falls.”
Soyoung Lee: Exactly. This is something only a foreigner would do! It’s perfect that way.
My fam begs to differ.
Mom: Hmph 😡 What a waste of beautiful scenery. This picture has 4 goblins 👹 Come on!
Sis: Not pretty
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https://asianartnewspaper.com/diamond-mountains/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/arts/design/south-korea-north-korea-metropolitan-museum-diamond-mountains-olympics.html
https://www.metmuseum.org/articles/diamond-mountains-curator-conversation
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/748556?exhibitionId=%7B819ce136-609d-427a-9d49-2d5ddd39ac7f%7D&oid=748556&pkgids=472&pg=0&rpp=20&pos=18&ft=*&offset=20&locale=en
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https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG33586
https://www.biblio.com/search.php?stage=1&result_type=works&keyisbn=elizabeth+keith+old+korea