KJC Korea
Journal Central

This study aims to reexamine the discussion of Korean contemporary art from the 1970s to the 1990s, focusing on “mediums” as a material practice. Since liberation from Japanese colonial rule, Korean art has unfolded dynamically while pursuing the continuation and development of values and traditions accepted from the West. Discussion on art is also not much different in that it was carried out centered on the discourse of identity based on the acceptance of Western culture or ethnic and nationalist ideology. However, it is questionable how faithful the writing of art history, which was based on genealogical or ideological concerns, was to the task of “what is art?” In this regard, it is an urgent task to find the possibility to read and describe Korean contemporary art in a new way. If we look into the practice of art from the point of view of mediums, we can confirm that while old and new media were mixed or collided with each other in each period, there were various emotional responses to objects and materials according to the conditions and environment of each period, such as cultural objects, industrial objects, natural objects or immaterial substances, body and actions, etc. By understanding the scope of mediums, it will be possible to open up new possibilities for getting one step closer to the artistic energy and values of Korean contemporary art.

By the 1830s, Heinrich Heine, a Parisian historian, became an important critic of Goethe’s organicism and Ranke’s ideal of objective history by rejecting the application of eternal laws of organs and reason to history. Heine’s view on history is not a progressive evolution, such as the gradual development of reason, but a throughgoing kind of vital pantheism according to which God would be manifested to a different degree in all things had we no demand that spirit only be divine, not body. Although these two anthropological concepts, body (Fleisch) and spirit (Geist), are interdependent, Christian spiritualism said the enjoyment of the senses should be suppressed, so that it demands of their followers moral conduct by denouncing matter and insisting on pure spirit. Heine’s pantheistic sensualism made him skeptical of certain teleological views of history that were also essential to the Christian idea of providence and to the historical development of this idea. In Heine’s polemic against spiritualism, the rehabilitation of the body has Saint-Simonian evidence that there has been some sort of struggle for existence between each specific idea in history. As an advocate of a materialistic (sensualistic) view of the history, Heine’s philosophy of history was foremost an anthropological attempt to reinstate the vital rights of body and matter.

The purpose of this study is to examine the intersubjective body experience with the spectator’s body based on the concept of ‘film’s body’ of Vivian Sobchack, a phenomenological film theorist. And according to the technological change of the movie, it is to reveal the various aspects and meanings of the film’s body and the spectator’s body. According to Sobchack, the film’s body is not a simple concept that refers only to the devices and their functional combinations, but the film’s body performs the activities of perception and expression while synthesizing all the devices of the movie. In addition, the spectator’s body is described as a place of perception and expression and a subject that interacts with the film. Therefore, in this study, the spectator’s body is not seen as a mere receiver but as a body that produces meaning. Since the spectator’s body experience is a sensuous and primary experience before the structured and meaningful secondary cinematic experience, the film’s body and the spectator’s body actively interact with each other as an intersubjective body experience. Based on this discussion by Sobchack, this study attempted a new interpretation of the film’s body and the spectator’s body according to the technological change of the film. The glasses for the 3D movie were viewed as the extended spectator’s body and the new film’s body. Also, the stereophonic sound of the film was also interpreted as the extended film’s body. In this way, the film’s body and the spectator’s body are not fixed, but changing.

Seung-Taek Lee has attracted attention in the Korean art world with experimental artworks, since he made his debut through a sculptural work in 1956. The experimental nature of his work has been referred to as a concept, ‘non-sculpture’ after he contributed his essay, “The origin of my non-sculpture” to a art magazine in 1980. However, the considerable errors are found in the relevant records of his works of art. Sometimes there are so many problematic errors in basic records of his works, especially documentary photography or the records of artwork such as the names, year of production, materials, techniques, size and etc. These errors not only make it difficult to identify the historical context between each works and his interaction with other artists, but also caused great confusion the understanding of his artworks. His performances and installations, which have been active since the 1980s, have been discussed through the photographic images. By the way many of them are not just records of objects or events but have been painted or collaged on photographies. Therefore taking it as an index that dictated actual works and characterizing them as an extension of the concept of ‘sculpture’ or its symmetrical concept ‘non-sculpture’. These Seung-Taek Lee’s photography works should be called his own ‘Photo-Picture’.

This paper introduces the work of Lee Hyang Mi (1948-2007) and reveals its significance. Lee graduated from university in 1971 and actively engaged in making art in the 1970s and 1980s. This study introduces the artist's unique style of painting, “color itself,” and examines the significance of this work in its time and today. In the 1970s, efforts to deviate from the narrative of works were the biggest trend in Korean contemporary art. Lee's work was also the result of reflecting this spirit of the times. The study aims to broaden the understanding of the artist and the work, focusing on the key words “Heulim, Freedom, Experiment” that the artist herself mentioned. As art critic Lee Yil said, not only are there not many artists who have worked entirely on “color openness” like “color itself,” “heulim” was also established to present objective and open works that converge into color itself. From this perspective, “heulim” is a method of solving the “openness of color,” which reduces the work to the volume of color itself. Although there are not many works by Lee Hyang Mi, they are valuable assets that can support the diversity of our art archives and art scene. It is also very meaningful to examine the activities and characteristics of the artists who deviated from the center of Seoul.

This study deals with the starting point, characteristics, and meanings of I. Kant’s and G. W. F. Hegel’s definitions of beauty. Also discussed are the development and expansion of Kant’s thought in Hegel's discussion by analyzing differences and similarities of both philosophers. The result of this study will provide a new understanding of the association between Kant’s and Hegel’s aesthetics, which are mostly interpreted from the view of the opposition of formalism and contents centered on thoughts. Although Kant’s and Hegel’s philosophical thought and definitions of beauty are different, there is certainly the same point in how they define beauty in the contexts of an attempt to find the possibility of unifying opposite situations such as object and subject, universal and particular, and reason and sensibility. Furthermore, Hegel criticized the subjectivity and abstractness of Kant’s definition of beauty, while we can see that Hegel actively interpreted the characteristics of beauty according to four moments of Kant’s judgement on taste. He accepted and developed it in his definition of beauty of art. The meaning of the contemplation of beauty that Kant and Hegel showed is important even today in that it implicates the issue of Kant’s and Hegel’s theoretical and practical philosophy and enables the recognitions of objects and oneself, the intuition, and the production of truth in the free state of being of objects and subjects.

The aim of this study is to focus on the aesthetic subject in cultural the philosophy of Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) by analyzing Cassirer’s research on the German artists Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) and Johann Chritian Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843). Cassirer’s research on Kleist and Hölderlin is useful material that can reveal the importance of the relationship between aesthetic subjects and cultural forms in his cultural philosophy, because this research contains materials that could be used to study the consciousness of the artist as an aesthetic subject and his artworks. The aesthetic subject is the perfect human being as insisted by Friedrich Schiller, a playful being in which emotion and reason harmonize, and a subject that embraces an ethical subject. As aesthetic subjects, artists lead the spirit and life of an era as a component of the dynamic activities of culture, and a new culture by stimulating the next generation’s artists through their masterpieces. The two poets covered in this study were also greatly influenced by Kantian philosophy or Deutscher Idealismus and embodied their world emotions and thoughts on life in peculiar poetic forms. Therefore, by examining the ideological changes and poetic forms of the two poets, this study tried to understand the process of becoming an aesthetic subject who agonizes and recognizes modern life and expresses it artistically. With this understanding, this study tried to recognize the importance of the aesthetic subject as a driving force for cultural development in Cassirer’s cultural philosophy.

The purpose of this study is to view the problem of perception in modern digital art as a phenomenon of “hyperembodiment” and to discuss the relationship between virtual and real space, body and virtual image from a continual perspective of mutually related affective effects, and expansion body and action. Mark B. N. Hanson defines the virtual space we experience as a mixed reality that continuously interacts with reality, and views it not as virtual, but as “real,” mediated through the body and technology. Digital art reconstructs the movement of the actor’s body by transforming the digital image into a code. In this process, the body is strengthened to function as a selective organizer of information. It is ‘affectivity’ that enables changes in the body, that is, to create experiences and relationships that transcend the limitations of the body. And digital technology becomes “bodies in code” when it is combined with the body frame of actors and receivers. Therefore, Hanson discusses the action of the “bodies in code” as making the virtuality of digital images and real space perceptible, and sees that the perception of the receiver is also changed through “bodies in code.” Therefore, perception in digital art should be discussed from the point of view of the body.