2009, Vol., No.25

Rethinking Deconstructivist Architecture with Gilles Deleuze’s Fold Theory: Focused on Frank O. Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, and Peter Eisenman

박하나 | 2009, (25) | pp.7~29 | number of Cited : 4

Deconstructivist Architecture is a trend of architecture that has a striking contrast to Modernist Architecture which represents clarity and perfection. Deconstructivist Architecture combines heterogeneous elements and is characterized by the induction of instability through physical tilting and distortion. Deconstructivist Architecture became a global trend in the 1980s. The term, ‘Deconstructivist Architecture’ was first used in an exhibition ‘Deconstructivist Architecture’ at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1988. The curator of this exhibition, Mark Wigley, related Deconstructivist Architecture to the Russian Constructivism which is known to break the traditional composition of architecture using asymmetrical geometry. He created the term ‘deconstructivist’ by adding the prefix ‘de-’ to ‘constructivist’ to imply that Deconstructivist Architecture drew from Constructivism, yet constituted a radical deviation from it. Contrary to his argument, however, many architectural theorists considered that Deconstructivist Architecture derived from Jacques Derrida’s philosophy known as ‘Deconstruction’. The opinions introduced above accurately explained some parts of the traits of Deconstructivist Architecture, however Mary McLeod contended that these views could only be restrictively applied to few of the architects among the seven architects who attended the Deconstructivist Architecture exhibition. Furthermore, due to Deconstructivist architects shifting to a new trend of architecture called ‘Folding Architecture’ in the 1990s, a new theory was needed to read the works of Deconstructivist Architecture. In this thesis, I tried to look into the new architectural trend of Deconstructivist architecture through Gilles Deleuze’s ‘Fold’ theory, concentrating on Frank O. Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, and Peter Eisenman - the three most extremist Deconstructivist architects. The concept of Deleuze, ‘The Fold’, comes from Leibniz’s philosophy which contends that the smallest unit in the World is a fold and not a point, and that it is categorized into ‘the pleats of matter’ and ‘the folds in the soul’. Folds of a surface wall of a cave, origami and waves of water are examples of the pleats of matter that is visible. On the other hand, ‘the folds in the soul’ are those that are not visible-the folds that are inherent but not seen until they actually unfold. I have remarked that when these folds (‘pleats of matter’ and ‘folds in the soul’) appear in spatial environment they translated into organic space, space of ‘event’, and ‘affective’ space. Gehry’s designs such as ‘bentwood furniture’ and the ‘Guggenheim Museum’ in Bilbao are representations of ‘organic’ space, where the concept emerges from curvilinear, harmonious and inseparable forms. Koolhaas’ design concept of the ‘Seattle Public Library’ and the ‘House in Bordeaux’ is to create an indeterminable space by leaving the space changeable and/or empty. This can give rise to unpredictable ‘events’ in architecture. Eisenman’s project like ‘Alteka Office Building’ is architecture in movement. The concept is to create an ‘affective space’ rather than to pursue an effective space. The affective space can not be seen through a perspective view, but it can only be perceived through a different sense ‘the aura’. In summary, the works of the Deconstructivist architects, Gehry, Koolhaas and Eisenman, in post 1990 are architectural works that are based on the concept of infinitely continuous folds rather than the concept of separable points. Deleuze’s concept of visible and invisible folds can be seen in these specific works as organic space, space of ‘event’ and ‘affective’ space. The new approach analysis of the Deconstrutivists Architecture proposed in thesis allowed the reinterpretation of ‘Folding Architecture’, once treated separately, in relation to the Deconstructivists Architecture. Furthermore, the significance of this thesis is the provision of a somewhat more diverse interpretation field by escaping from the fragmented point of view regarding Deconstrutivists architects and their respective works.

The “Crisis” of Masculinity: Duchamp, War, and Nationalism

Dong-Yeon Koh | 2009, (25) | pp.31~57 | number of Cited : 3

This study explores Marcel Duchamp’s notions of war and masculinity, first by dealing with Duchamp’s early machine drawings produced before and after the outbreak of the First World War and then by concentrating on his portraits produced during 1915 and 1919, a period when he was in exile. Focusing on Duchamp’s portraits as being disguised as a monk as well as on his assisted readymade <L.H.O.O.Q>(1919), the study looks at how Duchamp deliberately complicated masculine sexualities and gender distinctions. While in exile, Duchamp, one of the best-known members of the New York Dada movement, created a number of portraits in which he appeared to be bald. His hairstyle with the mark of five stars in the back, according to Giovanni Zapperi, the author of “Marcel Duchamp’s Tonsure: Towards an Alternate Masculinity” (2007), points to the common practice of cutting the hair from the top of monks’ heads (tonsure) during the early part of the 20th century. Religious motifs can frequently be found in Duchamp’s other works, yet, as I argue, transforming himself into an image of a celibate monk might have other implications related to his ideas of war and masculinity. Duchamp’s self-portrait as a monk reflects the artist’s desire to distinguish himself from war-mongering European men at the time of the First World War. The purpose of this study, however, is not merely to contrast Duchamp’s “ambiguous” masculinity with the dominant forms of aggressive masculinity that coincided with the fanatical nationalism of the First World War. Contradictory interpretations of masculinity, as seen in war posters, psychoanalytic studies, literary descriptions of manhood on the warfront, and images of veterans will also be discussed to illustrate shifting perceptions of masculinity that were already evolving in the 1910s. The study of Duchamp’s years in New York and Buenos Aires enables us to underscore the continuation of his artistic endeavors throughout his exile period, including his search for open and unfixed artistic identities and masculinities. More importantly, the series of portraits he created during his exile, in their complication of ideas of proper masculinity, may be seen as paving a path toward “Rrose Selavy” his most notorious and important project engaging issues of gender ambiguity, which he began in 1921 while collaborating with Man Ray.

Genealogy of Anti-Museology or Cultural Revolution: The Invention of Gendaibijyutsushi(History of Contemporary Art and the Institutionalization of Art)

Sohyun Park | 2009, (25) | pp.59~94 | number of Cited : 3

PDF

Since the global trend of multiculturalism of the 1980s, the history of Japanese contemporary art has been typified and generalized as avant-garde art history with relation to Western art history. But such perspective doesn’t question art history itself as an institution of art and fundamentally covers up the conditions that art history itself has been constructed in. This paper is about the questions of how the aspect of art institution worked as conditions constructing the history of Japanese contemporary art and what it means. For arguing those questions, I less described the embryological chronicle of art institutions in Japan than focused on the artistic practices and critical discourses in the 1960s when every art institution in Japan was questioned skeptically and denied intensely. Especially the problem of art institution in Japan resulted in the conceptual opposition between Kindai bijyutsu(modern art) and Gendai Bijyutsu(contemporary art). So we cannot access the concepts of art history without thinking about the problem of art institution. Since the modernization of Japan, the key concept with regard to the problem of art institution has been the Kindai Bijyutsukan(museum of modern art), the art institution as an embodiment of Kindai Bijyutsukan in which the conceptual opposition between Kindai Bijyutsu and Gendai Bijyutsu developed was Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum established in 1926. In the 1960s, that museum where Yomiuri Angdepangdang(independent exhibition) was held was the stage of anti-museology. Because the anti-art artists who exhibited their works at the Yomiuri Angdepangdang questioned totally and protested the meaning of art institution fiercely. Their anti-art was antithesis against the Gadan(Japanese established art world) and its practice called as Kindai Bijyutsu staged at Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, and at the same time responded to the issues of Anpotōsō(struggle against the security pact) of their time. By doing that, their anti-museology developed to the practices of cultural 94 revolution, whose representative agents focused on in this paper were art critic Haryū Ichirō, Bikyōtō(artists joint-struggle coucil), and Hanbakukyōtōha(joint-struggle group against '70 world exposition). But the practices of cultural revolution were weakened and finally exhausted by the year of 1970, and in reality there was no political place in which their cultural revolution could be realized. Such a change led them another kind of practice constructing alternative art history as a critical artistic practice. Constructing new art history was on the assumption that art history included complications and cracks and could be an object of perpetual questions and debates. Also, since opposing to Kindai Bijyutsu of Gadan, their new art history was constructed with historical avant-garde movements or groups which appeared outside of Gadan and named as Gendaibijyutsushi(history of contemporary art). However, the boom of constructing art museum in the 1970s and the global multiculturalism in the 1980s made that Gendaibijyutsushi institutionalize as a part of the established art history. As a result of it, the historical context of antimuseology and cultural revolution was eliminated, and the conceptual opposition between Kindai Bijyutsu and Gendai Bijyutsu was dissolved into the chronicle of art history, though the practices of anti museology and cultural revolution strived to crack the established art history.

Serial Image in Modern Paintings: from Monet to Richter

Hyun Ae Lee | 2009, (25) | pp.95~122 | number of Cited : 4

This study is based on the groups of modern paintings in which the same motif is repeated in a similar size, material, technique and composition on at least two canvases. I will argue that this display of serial images in a space and the viewers’ experience of it are the remarkable phenomenon both of modern art and of the art market. In addition, my research is purposed to reveal the historical, philosophical and mathematical meanings of the series as well as the structure of its repetition. The creation of art works in series has a long tradition. A series has become a conventional format in modern art since Gustav Courbet and an artist’s choice to make a series of things has represented his own attitude. In my article, this will be examined chronologically through four artists. 1) My starting point will be Claude Monet’s well-known groups of canvases created in the 1890s: the Grainstacks and the Rouen Cathedral series. These are paradigmatic of the Modernist series in which the artist’s vision generates variations on the single unifying motif. Why did Monet repeat one motif over twenty times and think it important to display them altogether at the same time and space? Above all, this was because, through this simultaneous presentation of serial works, he could more easily visualize the continuity of time as well as make the viewers reach the perception of the difference in the repetition of each instantaneous moment. 2) Besides Monet, there were a lot of artists who created series as a unity and sometimes displayed them with some aesthetic and conceptual aspects of installation as an ensemble. In the 1920s and 1930s, Alexej von Jawlensky repeated “Savior’s Face” again and again and painted “Meditation” actually over thousand times. In his series of this human face, the principle of life and dead ― the greatest and the most tragic repetition of mankind ― is embodied with the language of relief and reflection. 3) Since 1965, Roman Opalka has painted the “Detail” of the amazing work. For his series <Opalka 1965/1 ― ∞>, he wrote white numbers on black canvas, read the painted numbers and recorded them on tape and then photographed a self-portrait before the painting completed each day. To quote his words, “he painted the body of time” and his 122 paintings are “Sfumato of a being”. His repetition of numbering is an activity of memory which can tide over the flow of time. 4) At the 1972 Venice Biennale, Gerhard Richter showed 48 Portraits in the German pavilion. The portraits of 48 historic figures derived from pictures in an encyclopedia were painted on the same size canvases. Richter treated the 48 faces equally in black and white when he forgot some more important scholars of the 20th century. For him, it made no sense to know who is who. He turns his attention to showing the macro structure of the display in series and the crossover image of individuals and mass ― the part and whole. In conclusion, modern art is no more temporary imitation but becomes continuous repetition, of which originality might be composed of plurality and multiplicity.

Amazons of Russian Avant-Garde Art

Nan Ji Yun | 2009, (25) | pp.123~152 | number of Cited : 2

By reexamining the works of women artists who were active in Russian avant-garde art, this essay attempts to establish their place within art history. Almost 30 women artists can be named as active participants in Russian avant-garde art, and these women were closely engaged near the centre of the art movement. Here, the larger context is provided by the radical changes taking place in Russian society at the time, led by the ideologies of the socialist revolution. Women artists were not excluded from the societal call for women to join in the revolution as proletariat warriors. However, despite such appearances, there are many examples of women artists in revolutionary Russia who failed to break completely from their supporting roles or peripheral positions in the male-centred avant-garde art movement. Women, while still confined to roles defined by patriarchal conventions, were at the same time burdened by social duties imposed under the pretext of social participation; hence, in some aspects, women bore an even greater load than before. Despite their active participation, women were designated to positions subordinate to men; even in later art history, they are described as mere inserts within a history of avant-garde art led by men. This paper reviews the works of five major women artists who were at the vanguard of Russian avant-garde art to more fairly evaluate their position in the art of those times. Alexandra Exter(1882-1949) was a seminal avant-garde artist who moved across Russia, France, and Italy, experimenting and popularizing Cubo-Futurism. In addition, through her activities in education and curating, she was an important leader of Ukrainian avant-garde art, spreading new art in the Ukraine. Her rhythmical city landscapes fused the principles of Futurism with experiments in the form of Cubism, merged with traditional Ukrainian colours. Exter took the foreign trends she encountered and reinterpreted them through her own roots and in so doing eventually extended into abstract art. She revealed herself to be a total artist, applying her painterly experiments to stage and wardrobe design for various projects including Salome(by Oscar Wilde, 1917). Along with her husband Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova(1881-1962) presented the Rayonist Manifesto in 1913 to become a founding member of the movement. Although Goncharova is said to have received the full support of her husband, she also played an independent role within the avant-garde circles in Moscow. Especially in realizing avant-garde art theory through her works, Goncharova was much more proactive than her husband. The geometrical structures of Cubism, the dynamic ‘force-lines’ of Futurism, and the colours of Orphism all came together in her paintings, which were almost like a blueprint for the Rayonist Manifesto, clarified into a final form integrating those three trends. Based on her writings on abstract art theory in 1913, it was already evident that Olga Rozanova(1886-1918) was one of the leaders guiding Russian avant-garde art into the abstract art movement. She deeply sympathized with Malevich’s Suprematism, and Malevich in turn believed in her so much that he hailed her the “only true Suprematist.” However, Rozanova proposed a Suprematism through colour, and realized this in her works; in this respect she can be distinguished from Malevich. The simplified colour fields and colour bands that formed her later works surpassed Malevich and presaged the colour field abstract paintings of the mid to late 20th century. Rozanova also developed pictopoésie, which fused together painting with ‘zaum’, a trend that influenced the Russian avantgarde literature of the era. She worked as a book designer as well. Through a series entitled Painterly Architectonics, Liubov Popova(1889-1924) provided a prototype for Constructivist painting. To her, more than anything, painting was a kind of architectural structure built of elements such as space, lines, colours, movement, and texture. Rather than viewing art as a representation of the mind, she firmly held to the Constructivist view of art as the construction of material elements. Especially after the 1917 revolution, she followed the route of Constructivism that identified artistic revolution with social revolution and gradually progressed into Productivism, which linked art to industrialization. During this period she also engaged in stage design. Her stage for Fernand Crommelynck’s play The Magnanimous Cuckold(1922) was a typically Constructivist design as it was closely fused with the acting, and also could be easily assembled and transported. Another Constructivist artist, Varvara Stepanova(1894-1958), experimented from the beginning with the concept of total art through picto-poésie, which combined art with literature. Her works are similar to Rozanova, but with letters and forms more organically 152 woven to create an integrated picture. In addition, Stepanova created pictures combining abstract forms with human figures through which she realized true Constructivist methods by actively employing functional tools like the ruler and compass and mechanical processes such as stenciling. She also turned to Productivist art by way of the revolution. In addition, she participated actively in stage art; her stage design for Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin’s play The Death of Tarelkin(1922), along with Popova’s work, remains a representative example of Constructivist stage design. The activities of women artists like these account for a major part of the history of Russian avant-garde art. In particular, following the revolution, a shift occurred towards a total art encompassing all art genres and an everyday art that sought to fuse art into life, and in this process, the role of women artists certainly cannot be overlooked. Women were not simply followers of male artists, but created their own forms; and especially in those realms traditionally assigned to women, such as textile and clothing design, women played an even more leading role. The demands of art and society at the time brought about women’s participation, and with this, women not only gained entry into the male sanctuary of art, they also became catalysts for changing that sanctuary. More than anything, women’s fluid ability to move freely between art and everyday life resulted in the ‘secularization’ of ‘sacred’ art. All this might be blasphemous if viewed through the filter of the ‘high art’ rhetoric of modernism, but through a different filter of ‘art within life’, it is a very delightful rebellion. If Russian avant-garde art—which has been constructed as the axis of modernism and thus reduced to the single aspect of being the origin of abstract painting—is scrutinized from a different perspective, women and their place will surface. Likewise, if we focus on the women, Russian avant-garde art will emerge with a different face, revealing a true avant-garde spirit that goes beyond the internal formal experiments of abstract art and strives to expand into realms external to art. This alternative view suggests that perhaps women were on the frontlines of the revolution. It is possible that art in revolutionary Russia was led by the Amazons of the Avant-Garde, as in the title of the Guggenheim exhibition. At the least, it is clear that women were there ‘together’ with the men. While women could not be active ‘subjects’ in the ‘great’ utopia dreamed of by men, they were artist-subjects of another kind, who dreamed of ‘another’ utopia, and thus created another face of avant-garde art.

Andy Warhol and Popular Culture

Kang Tae Hee | 2009, (25) | pp.153~178 | number of Cited : 8

PDF

Andy Warhol’s legacy can be summarized with the two terms Warhol Effect and Warholism. Warhol Effect means the lasting halo effect of the artist’s presence after the death which was demonstrated by the highly successful auction sale greeted like an exhibition, and the occasion proved Warhol’s death does not effect or diminish his fame at all. Warholism tells another important phenomenon that has affected art world for almost 40 years after his death. The term, coined by the critic Max Kozloff in 1965, denotes the impossibility of deciding the final meaning or intention of art works and further, of art criticism and interpretation. Warhol’s radicality lies in his destruction of the distinction between art and commerce and redefinition of the relationship between art and popular culture. This radicality is related to the early English IG artists and theorists’ approaches to pop art, which welcomed the new popular arts such as movie, advertisement, TV, car design, etc. as art. Their observation was one of the earliest in terms of the emergence of postmodernism through pop art and culture. In order to understand Warhol’s legacy properly, it is necessary to study the popular culture, culture industry, pop art and postmodernism and to check the relationship between ‘high and low’. We experience the explosion of culture nowadays and this ‘cultural turn’ resulted the so called ‘aesthetization of everyday’ long ago. Popular culture is expanding its parameter and permeates our life everywhere, and high and low is ever more blurred. To investigate the dynamics of high and low, it is necessary to understand the meanings of popular culture and Theodor Adorno’s argument against culture industry. The relationship between and Pop art and postmodernism has generally been considered a matter of fact, but there were few concrete studies. Andrea Huyssen is one of the few and he believes Pop was the precursor of postmodernsim started in the States in the late 1950s. For him, Pop was the context from which the concepts of postmodernsim was formulated in the broadest sense and it is the most meaningful opposition against the modernism’s severe animosity toward the popular culture. Pop is not limited to a certain art historical period, nor it is confined to art alone. That is why Warhol’s insight toward the ever more expanding popular visual culture is a gift and burden as well for us all.

Mass Media and Art in the 1990s: From Rodney King Incident to O.J. Simpson Trial

Kim Jina | 2009, (25) | pp.179~211 | number of Cited : 2

PDF

In recent decades, the United States had undergone a series of striking political and social events—the Gulf War, the Rodney King incident, LA riots, the 9/11 terrorist attack, and the Iraq War, to name a few—that raised profound questions on the issue of national identity. It is also notable that news such as the O.J. Simpson trial had entered a new phase that somewhat resembles show business. These events together constitute a revolution in communication where the audience can witness such historical events live in their living rooms. Blended with commercial mechanism and cutting-edge technologies, the news does not reflect what actually happened. Rather, it manipulates the event itself and constructs history. This paper will investigate the way American art has reacted to television news that deals with major historical events such as the Rodney King incident, LA riots, and the O.J. Simpson trial. A videotape of the police beating Rodney King, accidentally taken by a plumber George Holiday, was repeatedly broadcasted throughout the US and became a revelation of the deeply rooted racial conflict. Because police officers involved in the incident were all acquitted, it later became one of the major motives behind the so-called LA riots—the first multi-racial conflict in U.S. history. The most striking aspect of the Rodney King incident and the LA riots was that they were delivered directly to the audience through videotapes and live broadcasts. During the trial, the King videotape was fragmented into a row of still images and different connotations were interpreted. This process exposed a paradox where there was violence but no one could identify it. This suggests that even real-time videos can tell different stories depending on the point of view and how they are interpreted. Adrian Piper’s work Black Box/White Box(1992) features, in two enormous roomshaped boxes, the Rodney King videotape repeating itself, president George Bush’s statement to the nation when he sent troops to Los Angeles, the photo of the president and an LA police officers shaking hands, and Marvin Gaye’s song “What’s Going On” released in 1971 in the climax of anti-war and civil rights movements. President Bush declares the use of military forces to deal with the incident, while King, who is supposed to be the victim, says “Let’s get along” in an interview, and Gaye’s lyrics call for love. Meanwhile, when the Rodney King video itself was exhibited in 1993 at the Whitney Biennial, it signified a new power in the art institution. Holiday’s video and others seemed to be connected to the appropriation art in the earlier periods that directly borrowed subjects and styles from mass media sources such as TV, advertising, and photo journalism. However, the insertion of the Rodney King video worked in quite a different manner from the earlier appropriation. What was at stake in this selection for an art exhibition was the institutional power; in this case, it was the curator’s power to include or exclude a certain work rather than the artists’ choices. Here the curator acts as a mega-artist. Warren Neidich’s Camp O.J. employs a more novel approach to television news, whereas Piper’s work directly borrows videos and photograph images. The Simpson trial in 1995 changed the way television approached and covered news by creating sensationalism. Neidich took behind-the-scenes photographs of the Simpson trial, and this came to be known by the media as Camp O.J.—the press area located across the street from the LA Courthouse. The C-print photo series taken with a fisheye lens appear as if they were reflected through a convex mirror. A closer look of the dizzy image shows reporters checking their make-up and practicing in front of the camera. Sometimes they are indifferently looking around or even dozing off, which will never be broadcasted on TV. Neidich’s work also captures fragments of the news-tainment industry. Many mail orders were created such as a local newspaper advertising a wager on the trial, a USC football team helmet, and a videotape of the trial. Neidich’s decision to photograph Camp O.J. discloses a different, new reality existing behind television screens to viewers. Art works mentioned so far in this paper emerge from a keen question on the 1990s news images that often resemble an entertainment business mingled with live broadcasts on violence and crime. Furthermore, by revealing the structure of the ever-expanding myths underlying visual information, these works lead to a number of ethical issues such as whether the reality reflected by media actually exists, what values society is willing to compromise with for entertainment, and the way in which the media repeats and expands images of crime and violence, driving viewers impassive to justice.

KJCKorea
Journal Central

Journal of History of Modern Art 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.77

2009, Vol., No.25