Hyeonjae(玄齋) Sim Sa-jeong(沈師正)(1707-1769) was a leading literary painter of the late Joseon period along with Gyeomjae. He enriched his idiosyncratic and original style based on the preceding Southern Chinese literati style, and went on to pioneer the ...
Hyeonjae(玄齋) Sim Sa-jeong(沈師正)(1707-1769) was a leading literary painter of the late Joseon period along with Gyeomjae. He enriched his idiosyncratic and original style based on the preceding Southern Chinese literati style, and went on to pioneer the indigenization of the Southern Chinese literati painting.
The numerous studies conducted on Sim Sa-jeong have shown that Sim Sa-jeong lived a tough, poor and tragic life but has generally been interpreted as a painter, who indigenized the Southern Chinese literati style by combining it with the aesthetics of Joseon and expresses solitude and self-consciousness, a painter who devoted himself to realizing ideals and emotions. To achieve a more comprehensive understanding of Sim Sa-jeong art world, along with reflection upon his style, this study examines Sim’s aesthetic consciousness based on the ideological foundations of his art world.
Despite being a typical literary painter, Sim Sa-jeong did not write a single book on his works, making it hard to directly comprehend the ideology of his painting. However, thankfully, perceptions of his paintings and the painter’s aesthetic consciousness can be understood through the critiques, postscripts, and epitaphs of such top-notch critics of the era as Kang Se-hwang, Nam Tae-eung, and Sim Ik-un.
Sim Sa-jeong created his own original painting style as the only window through which he can communicate with the world, by incorporating a new, original painting style into the traditional techniques, using his subjectivity and awareness with which he read with his eyes and mastered with his heart, in order to express his message to the world and reveal his very existence.
The aesthetic consciousness that forms the basis of Sim Sa-jeong’s painting world can be summarized as the beauty of “cheong-gi” (淸奇: extraordinarily eccentric atmosphere) and the natural beauty of “yung-hwa-cheon-seong” (融化天成). These virtues are the foundations of his creation and art world. In his work, he condensed the beauty of “cheong-gi,” a fresh and clean energy from which all worldly desires were removed, and clearly manifested his aesthetic consciousness “yung-hwa-cheon-seong” derived from nature, where things become harmonized effortlessly.
Even though Sim Sa-jeong failed to harmonize with the real world and was not free from worldly prejudices, he still achieved the natural beauty of “yung-hwa-cheon-seong” attuned to his aesthetic demand to become one with nature, as well as the freedom of life, which we may well consider to be true beauty. In sum, Sim Sa-jeong’s own aesthetic consciousness of “yung-hwa-cheon-seong,” truly unique to him, should alone lead to a reassessment of his standing because it represents his artistic goal of respecting the meaning of life and an honest expression of his sensibilities and true beauty.