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Group sex (Kyrgyzstan, Saimal'i Tash)

Field investigations are always tough. But when I find precious materials that make me feel thrilled, I am in great ecstasy. Although it is only a moment, the fatigue of mind and body disappears. I studied prehistoric and ancient petroglyphs and spent more than thirty years searching the mountains and valleys of the world for a source of excitement to me and sleeping in dew. And of course, I have searched for new materials that have never been introduced to academia, as well as the remains that have already been named in this field.

A huge multifunctional cultural complex that combines the conditions of the space of the site with petroglyph, the shapes drawn in it, and the world of thought of the people who left it and the people living in the area. That was the source I wanted to discover. Through this, I tried to find the answer to what is the universality of 'instinct' or 'archetype' that mankind has in the past and still has. Painting on the surface of rock has continued without interruption for more than 31,000 years since the Late Paleolithic. The scope of the space where the picture is found is enormous. It is observed in all parts of the Earth, from the Oceanian continent, a country of Aborigines(native), Siberia and Mongolia which still live hunting and nomadic life, the African continent that the origin of mankind, the so-called ‘developed countries’, to Europe and the Americas, and to the Korean peninsula.

In this regard, petroglyph must have been one of the global cultural phenomena that Homo sapiens sapiens, which spread throughout the earth from the dawn of civilization history, began to draw simultaneously. So who, what did they do that for? Although the region is different, I believed that if the production of petroglyph is a universal culture observed everywhere on Earth, human instincts or archetypes would penetrate the bottom. So I wanted to know what they mainly painted, what they used for, why they painted so long, what space they used as a painting place, what formativeness of the paintings on the rocks, and how local residents recognized it.

A heeled animal and pregnant woman (France, Laugerie-Basse)

As time passed and my research experience accumulated, I was able to distinguish some elements that are homogeneous regardless of the difference of the age in which the painting was produced, the difference in the area or place, and who produced the painting. One of them is the spatial characteristics of the remains with the paintings, which are the sanctuary of religion and culture such as 'Cappella Sistina' or 'Basilica of St. Peter' of the Vatican. Those points have a universality across the world, regardless of the difference between the times, regions and who produced that.

Towoo-Jangsik Jangkyungho (Korea, Gyeongju Hwangnam-dong) 

ⓒ National Gyeongju Museum

Among them, paintings related to 'sex' are grouped together and named as 'erotic' paintings or 'coitus'. Women's genitals, androgyny, sexual intercourse, group sex, and zooerastia were key motifs of prehistoric art from the late Paleolithic period. It was produced as a sculpture as well as a painting, sometimes explicitly, sometimes symbolically embodying sexual love. Therefore, those who study not only prehistoric studies but also religious studies, mythology, anthropology, and philosophy tried to solve the essence of discourse about sex that mankind has maintained since the dawn of civilization from various angles.

Sasijangchoon (Korea, Shin Yun-bok) ⓒ National Museum of Korea

The eye-catching scene with the scene of sexual intercourse is that pregnant women, women in childbirth, and families consisting of adult men and women and children are also drawn. The statue of a cow holding a cow's horn, like ‘Venus with a Rhyton’, excavated in Laussel, France, or the head bone of a cow decorated in the remains of Catal Huyuk in Anatolia, Turkey, symbolizes pregnancy, women's pelvis, and male power.

It is not only in the West. In China, this type of petroglyphs can be observed. There are many works related to this theme in Korea. The National Treasure No. 195 'Towoo-Jangsik Jangkyungho'(a round jar decorated with a statue of a person or animal made of soil) excavated from Hwangnam-dong, Gyeongju, Korea, has a decoration that symbolizes men and women in intercourse. In addition, the songs of the Goryeo period, which depicted the love between men and women, were called 'Namyo Sangyeoljisa'(A expression of contempt for songs that explicitly depict scenes of men and women enjoying themselves in love) and were considered to be denigrated or vulgar. There is also Chunhwado (a picture of intercourse between men and women), which is both explicit and metaphorical left by outstanding painters of the Joseon Dynasty such as Kim Hongdo and Shin Yoonbok. As a result, it is confirmed once again that SEX is an instinctive act for all mankind, regardless of the East and the West, and a global universality. In modern times, erotic paintings left by Pablo Picasso, Egon Schiele and Jean Cocteau are considered to be the best in this field.

As such, discourse about sex, and the activities of producing pictures and sculptures related to it, have been loved from the late Paleolithic era until now. But academia has long been wary of looking at these works from a morbid perspective, like pornography today. In the future, I will systematically organize paintings and sculptures depicting the sex and love of prehistoric and ancient people, and study what the essence of eroticism flows at the bottom of it.