friendly tiger - poster

Do tiger images have meaning in Korea?

Geographically, Korea has many mountainous regions where many tigers have lived since ancient times. Since people often encountered tigers in the mountains, unlike the dragons in the legend, they are not abstract, but concrete and often the subject of paintings. In real life, tigers are fearsome animals, but the tigers depicted in folk paintings are very cheerful and not scary, but friendly and humorous like a cat. Therefore, the tiger is portrayed as a friendly animal in Korean folk tales and folk images.

There are several reasons why the image of the tiger was drawn as the subject of folk tales and folk images.

Firstly, it expresses the socio-critical consciousness of the Joseon Dynasty through humor, and the tiger symbolizes a nobleman, while the magpie, which was often drawn together with the tiger, is drawn as a satirical image symbolizing the common people, and symbolizes the rabbit the merchants.

Secondly, at the beginning of the New Year, the tiger image, which was used to drive away evil spirits by sticking it on the front door or the back of the house, was drawn with a dignified but playfully humorous expression. The tiger image for this purpose has a protective meaning to prevent harm and preserve good fortune.

The reason why it was painted in a humorous and emotional way, despite the fact that it has the meaning of banishing ghosts rather than a satirical meaning, is probably because it is an image that is placed around the house every day and must be inhabited together.

From a religious perspective, in Confucianism, the tiger is an animal that helps people or returns human favors by being touched by human piety. In shamanic belief, the tiger is depicted in connection with the worship of mountain gods or the ideology of the four gods. In Buddhism, it is also associated with the mountain gods, a native belief in Korea, and tigers are worshiped as messengers of the mountain gods or as mountain gods in every temple.

The tiger in folk images does not have a wild and fierce appearance, but rather a smiling, sometimes silly, comical appearance. Believing that he ward off evil spirits, he took a place in households and naturally became a friendly and sympathetic figure.

The “friendly tiger” mural printed on a poster was carefully restored by artlia.

Those

• Original title: Tiger
• Artist: unknown 
• Date: Approx. 1955
• Format: painted on our own Korean paper
• Original size: 82 x 54 cm
• Genre: Korean Folk Painting (Minhwa, 민화) 

Quality of image resolution