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Bamboo in the Wind

Yi Jeong (Taneun), early 17th century. Korea, Joseon dynasty.

You are here

Thirty works are on view at a time, ten to a room. Every day at midnight UTC, the ten that have hung longest go back into storage and ten others come out, so each work hangs for three days and then rests for three. A work always returns to the same place on the same wall.

A tall hanging scroll of ink bamboo, thin stalks and sharp dark leaves bending in wind, with a calligraphic title above.
Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0). Select it for the full size.

Yi Jeong was a member of the Korean royal family, a descendant of King Sejong, and he became the most celebrated bamboo painter of his day. Bamboo bends in the wind and does not break, and painters and poets in Korea and China treated it as a picture of character. Here, slender stalks rise and lean while the leaves are blown into sharp dark points. Some leaves are painted in black ink and others in a paler gray, so that the near and the far branches sit at different distances. The whole picture is made with a few kinds of stroke, repeated with control. You can almost hear the leaves.

Look closely

  1. Find which way the wind is blowing.
  2. Compare the dark leaves with the pale ones. Which seem closer?
  3. Look at the joints of the stalks. How does the painter mark them?

While you sit

Bend a little, like the stalks, and let the wind pass through.

Your seat in the galleries: a narrow ebony bench with a pale linen cushion, ink on paper.

About the work

Title
Bamboo in the Wind
Artist
Yi Jeong (Taneun)
Date
early 17th century
From
Korea, Joseon dynasty
Medium
Hanging scroll; ink on silk with gold on colophon
Size
Image: 45 1/2 x 21 in. (115.6 x 53.3 cm)
Rights
Public domain
Image
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0)
Record
The museum's page for this work

The words on this page were written for the campus, not taken from the museum's label.

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