Korea: Art and Archaeology

Jane Portal provides a balanced history of Korean society and its art from Paleolithic to modern time. Her writing style is lucid and factual with few opinions. She has references throughout the text. The photographs are gorgeous and are of the seminal items from the culture. She is a scholar for the lay reader. It is clear why the British Museum published this work. It is an excellent comprehensive history of Korea and its cultural arts.

This seems to be a meaningful addition to scholarship of Korean art and archaeology in English-speaking countries. However, I felt that there are too much of general information and less of discussions of major issues in Korean archaeology or visual features in the works of art. All these make the book appear something between a travel guide and an academic book.

Very interesting book on Korean art, how its art began and changed with its history, its relationship with the arts of China and Japan, and to some extent the Korean people. It starts in the Neolithic times with some interesting ideas on early future-to-be-Korean people based on artifacts and ends with the 20th century (mostly paintings) though the bulk of the book covers the 3 Kingdom, Koryo and Choson periods. A sentence in the intro in particular "The tremendous Korean input into many aspects of Japanese culture has been undervalued." in some ways sets the tone of the book.Organized, well-written, accessible to laymen, good glossy pages, and the vast majority of illustrations is presented in full colored.