Changing Notions of “Feminine Spaces” in Chosŏn-Dynasty Korea: The Forged Image of Sin Saimdang (1504–1551)

Facts about Sin Saimdang, the most famous female artist in Korean history, are scattered and none of the remaining works attributed to her can be confirmed as authentic. Since her death every century has contributed new ideas about the painter and her oeuvre. By discussing texts from the sixteenth century through the twentieth, this article investigates how concepts of “feminine space”—in the sense of ideas of femininity in an artist's oeuvre and in the physical, economic, and social spaces of women—changed and created a phantom of an artist whose personality and artwork have disappeared due to the continuous reconstruction and manipulation of (art) history.