In God Pictures in Korean Contexts, Laurel Kendall, Jongsung Yang, and Yul Soo Yoon present an engaging foray into the realm of shaman paintings in Korea, exploring the circulation of these paintings among shamans, art collectors, museums, and merchants, while delineating the multiple valences of meaning created by these often overlooked yet ubiquitous artworks. The three authors, well-known scholars of Korean shamanism and folk art, provide a series of perspectives on the shifting terrains of use and interpretation that characterize this art. Never forced, the authors' voices blend together, while taking advantage of their varying intellectual traditions. As such, the book is a model of the benefits of collaborative work on complex cultural phenomena.

The book is arranged into five chapters. The first chapter, “The Lives of Korean Shaman Paintings,” introduces the reader to the intellectual trajectories of the three authors and their intersecting approaches to shaman art. They pose the question “when is a Korean shaman painting?”—disrupting the easier questions of what and how—and, in that rhetorical gesture, open the discussion to a thicker understanding of the dynamics of these artworks. In this interrogation of the life and hard times of Korean shaman paintings, the authors engage with the various groups who have a stake in the paintings—from artists to shamans, to gods and spirits, to collectors—and explore how and why they interact with the paintings.

The second chapter provides a much-needed history of the art form. The paintings, which depict the numerous gods and spirits that populate the Korean shamanistic spirit realm, become inhabited by these spirits through the intervention of the shaman through ritual practice. At the end of the paintings' ritual life cycle, the spirits are removed and the artworks, if deemed worthwhile by collectors, move into a secondary form of circulation, the market of private collectors and museums.

The third chapter focuses on the collection of these artworks, using Picasso and discussions of the primitive in modern twentieth-century art as a means to address the complex shift toward shaman-art-as-collectible that occurred in the closing decades of the twentieth century. Nancy Abelmann's useful concept of “compressed modernity” (p. 59) provides a theoretical framework for understanding the trajectory followed by paintings in this aftermarket. The authors explore in detail what imbues a painting with a degree of collectability, noting that Korean collectors transform the artwork into a “vehicle of nostalgic longing” (p. 66). The recurring vignettes of the experiences of a dealer and a scholar who engage in multiple collecting trips offer ethnographic insight into the shaman painting market, and the challenges posed by collecting materials that, when identified as worth collecting, often still have an important ritual role to play in a shaman's practice. As the authors note, “the art market cohabits with a living shaman practice that makes its own demands upon dealers and collectors” (p. 66).

Chapter 4 invites the reader into a shaman shrine, and reveals the authors' ethnographic mastery at its best. Filled with engaging descriptions of shamans' relationships to their paintings, as well as to those of colleagues and teachers, the chapter provides a thick description of the paths that shaman paintings take—from the shamans' initial ritual needs to the acquisition of paintings as part of establishing an individual practice, to the shaman's daily use of the paintings. This path continues on through the decommissioning of the paintings as sacred objects, often after a shaman's death, and the paintings' potential move into the aftermarket as collectibles.

The craftspeople behind shaman paintings are the focus of the fifth chapter, which provides an intriguing look into the various tensions between local painters and the Chinese workshops that create less-expensive works.

The small volume is a treasure trove of information, and offers a sophisticated guide to understanding not only the history of shaman paintings in Korea, but also the transformation of these sacred paintings into objects of collection. The photographs of paintings, shrines, and altars provide a rich visual anchor for the discussions. Occasionally, the authors use terms that are not fully explained until later—so, for example, one encounters “runners” (p. 15) early on in the description of the emerging market for shaman paintings, but does not get an explanation of the term, a translation of a Japanese loanword, nakama, until several chapters later (p. 59). Apart from these very minor issues, God Pictures in Korean Contexts is easy to follow, and the arguments are lucid, sophisticated, and refreshingly straightforward. The thorough bibliography and excellent indexing make the book a joy to use. It should find a welcome place on the bookshelves of people interested in Asian art, Asian religions, and Korean art history, as well as in anthropology, folklore, and material culture. The volume acts as an excellent addition to Laurel Kendall's significant contributions to the study of Korean shamanism stretching now over three decades.