An exhibition dedicated to the fantastic trompe-l'œil knowledge of 18th- and 20th-century Korea. We went for you:

Books piled to the ceiling, scrolls, brushes, a vase, a pair of glasses: on these Korean folding screens, everything is painted and nothing actually exists. The Guimet Museum is dedicating its autumn season to chaekgeori, the trompe-l'œil library, a pictorial movement that reigned for two centuries in Korea and that France is almost completely unaware of. The story begins in the palace.

At the end of the 18th century, King Jeongjo commissioned his court painters to create these illusionistic bookshelves, where knowledge is displayed without a single volume being legible. The model originates from the Chinese imperial collections, the perspective of the treatises that the Jesuits had brought to Beijing. The result is unique to Korea and takes the name chaekgeori, literally “books and objects.”

Then the movement leaves the court for scholars’ homes, becomes populated with everyday objects, fruits and flowers, and breaks free from the perspective it had borrowed. The compositions become ethereal, almost dreamlike, and these painted libraries take on the appearance of a waking dream three centuries before the Surrealists. With loans from the National Museum of Korea, the Louvre, and the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore, this trompe-l'œil art is one of the most beautiful ideas of the Parisian Asian art season.

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33/34 National Museum of Asian Arts - Guimet
35/36
Until January 4, 2027
6 Place d'Iéna, 75116 Paris - Metro: Iéna (Line 9)
Open daily. Except Tuesdays, January 1st, May 1st, and December 25th. 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM

Price: €15 - Reduced price: €12 - Free for under 26s

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