2002, Vol., No.14

A Study on Georges Seurat's Le Cirque: The mass society and the position of the artist

Chun, Kyung-Hee | 2002, (14) | pp.7~32 | number of Cited : 0

In <Le Cirgue> Seurat presents the interpretation of the mass society absorbed in mass entertaimnent and the position of the artist in that society. The arena of the circus is a place where the illusion consumed by tl1e mass society is provided. The illusion is created by artists' expertise and highly delicate skills. Seurat caricatures the entire society absorbed in the illusion created by the female acrobat, Through the image of mass entertaitunent called circus, He hinted about the elements of division, existing in the unified facade of the mass society indulging in the same entertainment at the same time, by separating the classes of the crowd. The clown in the foreground is the self-portrait symbolizing the position of the artist as an interpreter of the mass society. He is the symbol of the self alienated avant-garde artist who cooly examines the whole society at a distance. Seurat, unlike the Impressionists, didn't represent the experience of me mass culture as instant sensations. He tried to present the explanation of the social mechanism creating the illusion of the mass culture through a pictorial system based on the symbolist theories of expression-the theories of expressing emotions by the directions of lines and colors of Humbert de Superville and Charles Henry. Seurat's objective and impersonal way of interpretation is expressed through abstract forms and the inhumane figures diagranunatized like machines. The distance between the viewer and the scene is presented even more clearly by the curtain, which serves as a double frame. It implies that the spectator looking at the painting is not looking directly at the scene but indirectly through the inter pretation of the clown in the foreground. Besides, the frame of the picture painted in blue stresses the fact that the image Seurat presents is not the reality itself, but a creation of the artist. Such distancing clarifies that the world of circus he presented is not the reproduction of the reality which can be absorbed in,but a world of illusion.

Objective of Study

Yun, Min-Hie | 2002, (14) | pp.33~55 | number of Cited : 0

Orlan's 'Carnal Art': Post-human Feminist Body Art in the Making

Chaeki Freya Synn | 2002, (14) | pp.57~84 | number of Cited : 0

This paper examines, from a feminist perspective, conceptions of the body proposed by the multimedia and performance artist, Orlan. The paper addresses rather exclusively on one of Orlan's major performances entitled 'The Reincar nation of Saint Orlan', a series of cosmetic self-reinvention process mostly undertaken in the 1990s. This paper is concerned with issues of identity and bodily self in relation to post-structuralist ideas and recent developments in gender studies as they show points of intersection with the works of Orlan. The paper argues that Orlan's work, which demonstrates a form of body in a constant state of fluctuation, has been a consistent and probing investigation of a female identity compatible to the politics of representation in the 1990s. In order to discuss the above-mentioned thesis, the main body of this paper consists of two parts. The early part of the paper is focused toward the discussion of a female subjectivity in relation to Orlan's body alteration project. This discussion begins with the commonest misinterpretation of the objectives of Orlan's cosmetic surgery that Orlan is following the culturally determined canons of beauty simply to be more beautiful. While comparing Orlan's surgical performance to cosmetic surgeries done in general, I will discuss Narcissism and deliberate acts of alienation from self-indulgence. By drawing on to psycho analytical/ media theories, I will elaborate on the mechanism functioning behind the artistic mediums of cosmetic surgery video, which in turn will help explain the female subjectivity prevalent in Orlan's work. In the second part of the paper, I intend to situate Orlan's bodywork in the context of earlier(70s, 80s, and 90s) female/ feminist body art practices. This part addresses the shift from celebratory, affirmative female imagery typical of feminist art in the seventies, to the semiotic analysis of images of women which, in the eighties and nineties, problematized the question of sexual difference as one of representation. Given such historical backdrop, I argue that Orlan's performance iconographically de-stabilizes the previously existent representational codes by using them in an entirely different manner. Unlike artists of the earlier times mentioned in this paper, Orlan no longer leans on the over-determined socio-sexual status but seeks deliberate escape from it by denying any possibility of fixations in her images. The broad spectrum touched by 'The Reincarnation of St. Orlan' is further discussed towards the end of this paper. Not only bodily identity, but also personal, gender, cultural, and national identity demonstrates the various scopes of meaning Orlan's work may bring to us.

A Study of Sherrie Levine's Rephotography

Ho-Kyung Moon | 2002, (14) | pp.85~112 | number of Cited : 1

In the late 1970's, art historians began to discuss photography using diverse theoretical paradigms. Theoreticians associated with October magazine, greatly influenced by poststructuralism, recognized that photography can subvert modern art and emphasized its function. Their position is consonant with photography criticism in the late 1980's that called into question the definition of photogra phy as modern art during the 1950's and 1960's. Such photography was later reappraised and has even been credited with overcoming the economic recession of the art world during the 1970's. However, it is an insular category that neglects the multiplicity of photographic practice. My thesis is a study of Sherrie Levine's rephotography, a technique whereby the artist photographs reproductions of the art works of modern masters and then shows the photographs as her own work. I examine the reasons why Levine's Rephotography, as a work of appropriation, constitutes postmodern art. First, I acknowledge that Levine's rephotography demonstrates the collapse of modern aesthetics. Originality and authorship are both the motives and the tenets of art in the modern era, but Levine posits that an original work cannot exist in the artwork fundamentally. Levine's position has its historical roots in Marcel Duchamp's Readymade, the Dada practice of collage and montage, and in Pop Art's mass media images. She utilizes a recycling of existing photographic images and asserts that the originality of artwork is not an essential element of the form. Levine's rephotograph y announces "the death of the artist". The concept of "the death of the author" developed from poststructuralism, which addresses the notion of an autonomous subject. Levine's rephotography works refute the romantic concept of the individual artist as having a fixed character and place of origin. At the same time, her work emphasizes active viewing in order to create the meaning of the artwork. Second, I examine Levine's rephotograph y as a resistance to a system that values the works of masters at the expense and exclusion of other artists. Western art history epitomizes the praise of man's desire and its results, so Levine's rephotography, which appropriates only the works of great modern male artists and the images of "the Other" in their works, expresses how difficult it is to be a woman artist. Her rephotography deconstructs the tenets of modern art. It represents a break with modern photography rejecting photo graphy's traditional relationship to the outside world and criticizes the museum as an institution. Her rephotography exposes the concepts of original artwork and the personal artist, elements that form the basis of art museums, demonstrating that photography is complex, multi-layered, and central to discourses other than "art photography". But, I consider whether the critical effect of rephotography is valid. Levine's appropriation of exclusively male artists' works represents "wo manliness as a masquerade". Her behavior may be interpreted as the use of famous names and works in order to gain recognition for herself. When Levine's work is treated by museums in the same manner as other postmodern art works, it enhances the value of the original work of art as well as becoming another original work itself Her work accommodates itself to the marketplace of art. We must conelude that the strategy of appropriation can hardly maintain its deconstructive and critical powers when it joins the mainstream of culture.

Remote Sensing Image and Postmodern Art

Lee Young-Jun | 2002, (14) | pp.113~134 | number of Cited : 0

"Remote Sensing Image and Postmodern Art" deals with the change brought about to our visual perception by the eye of the satellite. Remote sensing refers to technology of obtaining image data of earth surface using aircraft or satellite geared for various purposes such as military, science, assessment of natural resources and business. This essay focuses on a different perspective and vision enabled by remote sensing images. These days, satellites such as Landsat, Spot, Cosmos, Ikonos are used for this purpose. Remote sensing is becoming more and more important in interpreting, communicating and production of images along with ever refined machine and method of analysis in both the area of military and civilian. The presence of satellite fills the whole space above the earth with almighty and omnipresent vision like the panopticon suggested by Jerem y Bentham as an apparatus of modernizing vision. But unlike panopticon, while rendering its presence invisible above 800km above sea level, the satellite does not produce a subject. That is related with the character of the vision of the satellite. Unlike the gaze of a person that responds to someone else's vision, the vision of surveillance intensified in the satellite destroys the subject in a one-directional , non-dialectical communication. The gaze of satellite photographs fits into the general trait of war in the sense that the body captured in an image is not appropriated in a proper sense but transform and dismember it into a form of data. In satellite photographs the dialectic of mutual recognition and identification through the exchange of gaze does not occur. When the subject of the surveillance is no longer human but machine, the gaze gets a pointedness that watches the object only in order to obtain specific data. The surveillance by vision machine elaborated by Paul Virilio in his book Vision Machine has a significance differentiated from the conventional method of observation. Recently, following this insight into the perception of vision machine, there emerge artists who use satellite images for their work. Then, what does it mean to locate the image of science and technology within the domain of art? Is it a displacement of the border between art and technology? Or is it an expansion of the domain of art? In 2002 San Paulo Biennale, the Ukranian artist Taras Polataiko exhibited satellite pictures of 11 metropolitan cities of the world such as Berlin, Tokyo, Beijing and so on. This attempt seems to draw our attention to the new perspective of the satellite msion along with surrealistic colors and forms. On the other hand, if the machine of art, not the machine of war makes use of satellite, it will be from a different context. But if the border between the art and other domain of human activity such as technology were ever broken down, there should be a fissure through which the existing way of art disappears. This means the ultimate disappearance of the existing model of the artist. But in the case of Polataiko, this model is still working, with just the replacement of the spectacle of art with that of technology. In the space outside art, the satellite has taken the place of an artist, for the satellite is related with the matter of visual sensation of the world in terms of what Virilio has called the "logstics of military perception". In military visual perception is as sensitive an issue as it is in art. According to the former US secretary of defense Perry, "once you can see the target, you can destroy it." In this world, the true postmodern artist is the satellite.

Lee Ufan and Korean Monotone Paintings in the 1970's

Kang Tae Hee | 2002, (14) | pp.135~160 | number of Cited : 6

1970's in Korea was an unfortunate period when severe political circumstances regulated the social and cultural atmosphere of the country. As a result, many critics defined the decade as the period of conceptualization and uniformity. The Korean Monotone(Dansaek) Paintings were the mainstream of the period, and they absorbed the diverse small group movements in 2D(painting) and 3D (object and installation) from the first half of the decade. Lee Ufan was one of the most important energy of the period both with his works and with theory and aesthetics. As is well known, he was the leader of the Monoha and was also the figure who influenced most of Korean Dansaek painters. He was also the bridge between Korean and Japanese modern art, and his Monoha theory was extremely popular to the Korean young artists. Monoha was a matter-oriented movement but matter itself was not the point. It was the relationship between matter and man, and consequent relationship between world and man. This Monoha was active between 1969 and 1971 in Japan and Lee retired from the debate on Mohoha in 1971 and tried to find a new way in painting. He exhibited his first monotone paintings < From Point> <From Llne> in 1973 although he did not give up his scupture. In Korea, his Monoha theory which was on 30 so to speak, was translated into Dansaek Paintings while its material character was also emphasized to sust.'ill1 the com munication between matter and man. In fact, Lee Ufan made it clear that Mohoha was not about matter, and his pain tings had nothing to do with material side of the medium. Dansaek painters once kept the material side only to reduce it in order to reach the spirituality of the aesthetics. of traditional paintings. Also, Lee's early illusionistic paintings before Monoha was important because his <Phemomenon and Perception> made by broken glass plate with a rock was not a Mohona but a trick work which was widely excercised by pre-Monoha artists then. Further, Quac Insik, a Korean artist who setteled in Japan since 1950 and helped and led Lee to modern art, was claimed as a forerunner of the Monoha by a few critics such as Minemura Toshiaki. Lee denied his role in Monoha and influence from him, but certain works and his early interest in matter tell that was not the case.

Contemporary Art and the Photography

Kim, Hye-Joo | 2002, (14) | pp.161~176 | number of Cited : 1

The New Vision of Photography and the Avant-Garde in the Twenties: 'The Politics of De- Framing' in works of Rodchenko and Moholy-Nagy

Park Shin-Eui | 2002, (14) | pp.177~201 | number of Cited : 0

Photographs in Conceptual Art - A Study on works of John Baldessari

Hyesook Jeon | 2002, (14) | pp.203~238 | number of Cited : 1

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2002, Vol., No.14