The Significance and Limits of Lee Quede's Anatomical Drawings / 체질인류학회지

ABSTRACT

In 1951, in the midst of the Korean War, artist Lee Quede produced anatomical drawings to teach artistic anatomy to his student Lee Ju-yeong while interned in the Geoje prison camp. Comprising 2 books and spanning over 48 pages, 74 drawings were produced alongside explanations in a textbook format. The table of contents was ordered starting from body proportions, then the skeleton, the muscles, and the head. By part, there were 4 drawings of the trunk, 51 of the head, 7 of the arms, 9 of the legs, and 3 of the full body. Though the drawings of the head and face are both high in number and in detail, there were many errors in his depictions of the bones, and the boundaries between the structures of his muscle drawings were drawn so unclearly as to be indistinguishable. The essential forms, proportions and movement are included, but his disproportionate dedication to the head and the incoherent way that the book is arranged with no relevance to its table of contents leave something to be desired. It is regrettable that Lee Quede's return to North Korea meant that his drawings were not widely used, but despite this, I believe that these are invaluable documents in assessing the influence of Japanese artistic anatomy at the time, as well as the introductory circumstances of Korean artistic anatomy.