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The Introduction of the Term, ‘Fine Art’ and its Social and Historical Cognition in Korean Modern Period: Focused on the Experiences of World Exhibitions during the Open-port Period

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1한국예술종합학교

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ABSTRACT

The term of ‘Fine Art’ was firstly introduced to Korea in the process of inspecting foreign institutions for building a modern nation after Open-port and has been generalized as a social and a historical notion of art. The systematization of the fine art is mostly overlapped with a process of social changes toward the modern nation through trying to apply the new institutions to whole korean society. Thus, the cognition process of ‘Fine Art’ shows not only a process of acquiring the modernity but also a convergence of erecting the visual regime in Korean society. This study sets forth beforehand that ‘Seeing’ is not a mere physiological perception but the socially, culturally and historically conditioned activities. Therefore, it is essential to analyze the historical environments and social conditions of Korea during the conflict period between the old and the new idea after Open-port. It is also fundamental to examine the discourses among the intellects and primary references in those days for the contextual understanding around the notion of ‘Fine Art’. The first use of the word ‘Fine Art’ was in a formal report of Chosun official group for inspection of Japanese modernized social system in 1881. Newly translation words such as ‘Fine Art’, ‘Museum’ and ‘Exposition’ which was appeared in the report related to the agriculture-commercial business meaned that the fine art was introduced as a part of industrial promotion policies and as a kind of institution for enlightening the people. The fine art was contextualized notion through the national code for civilization or industrial reinforcements or powerful nation in those days. From the beginning of the introduction, the notion of ‘Fine Art’ is equivalent to the modernized visual experiences because of its new word, new notion and new function of ‘Seeing’. The visual-oriented spaces such as exposition and museum were also introduced in Korea as a enlightenment mechanism and it formulated the modern visual culture through collecting, classifying and visualizing the things. Korean government participated in 36 the world exhibition in order to observe the modernized western world and to announce Korea’s autonomy in international society. It has been known that the world exhibition was the cultural-political event of constituting the world image in a symbolic way such as civilization versus savagery, the western versus the non-western and the development versus the delay. The first official participation in the World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893, and in the Exposition Universelle de 1900 of Paris were the cultural experiences to realize the civilized and modernized nation as the goal to achieve. The vision or way of seeing was also newly emphasized factor in the systematization of the fine art. Especially displaying the things or arranging ‘founding world’ in the form of displayed items was a systematic factor to reinforce the specific national images to the publics. This means that there are not only the specific gaze which has been constructed in the public visual regime but also the specific representation system which has constructed modern national images by the visual devices. Modern period of Korea mainly from the Open-port to the Japanese annexation was the extremely confusional period. The systematization of the fine art proceeded in this collision period between the old and the new idea. Therefore, studying on this theme is inevitably to examine how the notion of the fine art was transformed in the social, historical and discourse contexts. Its aim is not for reconstruction of the origins but for restoration of the process in the systematization of the fine art. It offers another chance to reflect today’s notion of fine art and also to examine a phase of visual culture in Korean society.

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