Chaekgeori, Late nineteenth-century, Private Collection

📝ONGO's Reflection

Chaekgeori is a painting that stacks books, writing tools, and precious objects in layers. There is not a single person in it, yet within it crowds a household's longing toward learning. What one wishes to keep at one's side tells what kind of person one wishes to become. In this painting I see the dignity of desire. The hearts of people who stacked and gazed upon books rather than wealth turned a painting of objects into a portrait of the heart. What we keep beside us in the end makes us.