Though Kim Chong Yung (penname: Woosung; 1915~1982) is a monumental figure in the history of modern and contemporary art in (South) Korea who played a pioneering role in the introduction and establishment of abstract sculpture, he was also a calligrapher-painter who left some 4,000 calligraphic works, drawings, and paintings. Indeed, he already received the highest award in a nationwide traditional East Asian calligraphy contest at the age of 18, even before his initiation into sculpture, and was also assessed by a master as the creator of “unearthly calligraphy.” Presumably, such calligraphy and paintings on his part-who perceived tradition through a historical consciousness of living in the past, present, and future at the same time-were not intended to revive an era of calligraphy and paintings but were based on his realization of their value as holistic expressions. In particular, when even discarded studies are taken into consideration, he must have drawn and painted nearly every day. Amounting to over 3,000, these drawings and paintings seem like the will, existential thoughts, and meditations of the artist, who sought to embody all kinds of creative conditions and to turn creation into daily life, unifying the two. They also seem like the products of “playing in the arts” or “samadhi [meditative absorption] of playfulness” for fostering and maturing true, life-saving dao (way) that crisscrosses Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism and brings about the consilience of life and the arts. The self-portrait is one of the genres that Kim enjoyed working in. The most accessible and freely adaptable genre, self-portraiture is special to the artist as a means of self-representation as well. These self-portraits neither indulge in narcissism nor depict an idealized self. Nor do they seem to be representations of an intense mind. One plain self-portrait executed around 1973 as an ink wash painting in the dry-brush idiom bears repetitions of the phrase “Painting a painting each day” in the semi-cursive script (xingshu) and the cursive script (caoshu) of traditional East Asian calligraphy. Judging from this, the work seems to record Kim’s will to turn creation into everyday life and to unify life and the arts. As for his portrait paintings, a considerable number of them depict his family members. These are said to amount to over 300. Kim seems to have depicted his wife and children as everyday subject matter perhaps because he usually stayed at home, which he, like the scholar-gentry of yore, saw as a place of enlightened refuge, where he could know the world and observe the principles and phenomena of heaven without even venturing out through the door or looking out through the window.