The Portland Art Museum on Park Avenue in Portland, Oregon, possesses in its Asian collection a stunning munjado screen made of ink and pigment on paper. The characters on this eight-panel folding screen represent principles of Confucian morality, considered the cornerstone of Korean society: hyo (filial piety), che (brotherly love), ch'ung (loyalty), shin (trust), ye (propriety), ui (righteousness), yon (integrity), and chi (sensibility).
The paintings that embellish these stylized Chinese characters are called "munjado" and were used in Korean households of the early nineteenth century Choson Dynasty to teach important Confucian virtues to children. The munjado also served as daily reminders to adults about exemplary lifestyle values they should uphold.
Munjado Letters
The characters on munjado screens generally are Chinese rather than Hangul, the Korean phonetic alphabet invented in the 1400s. Although Hangul was adopted as the official Korean alphabet, the prestige of Chinese ideographs remained strong so they continued to be used by the educated classes.
In this screen, the stylized Chinese characters have added pictorial elements with symbolic significance.
For example, in the second panel from the left in the museum’s photo, the letter che (brotherly love) is represented in beautiful curving calligraphic form charmingly decorated with multi-colored birds, trees, and flowers. Indeed, the symbol takes on the shape of an orange and yellow parrot with a long green tail perched in a rough-trunked tree that rests on a chest of drawers. It also incorporates the stark black stylized and curving calligraphic form that sprouts a multi-petaled blossom and another delicate bird.
Resemblance to Illuminated Manuscripts
The Korean choice to embellish a munjado character so that it takes on pictorial elements of nature is similar to the Medieval European practice of creating historiated initials in illuminated manuscripts.
A historiated initial is an enlarged letter, situated at the beginning of a section of text, that contains a picture. In the famous Book of Kells, written in Latin, large individual capital letters at the beginning of each paragraph are decorated in astonish detail with brightly colored entwinements of birds, snakes, distorted men and animals fighting, swallowing parts of one another, or performing all sorts of acrobatic feats. Occasionally the figure of an angel or an Apostle peers over the top of a letter while his feet jut out beneath. The illustrations serve as symbols of religious faith.
Incredibly, it is said that modern viewers can't see all the detail without a magnifying glass even though these instruments were not available to the monks who illustrated the Book of Kells at the time it was created.
Though created in differing contexts (east versus west), a similarity exists between the decorations in munjado characters and historiated initials since both serve as icons of faith and as aids to the study and practice of an observant and conscientious life.
Source:
- Portland Art Museum.
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