2012, Vol.36, No.

The Configuration of the Visual Arts Images for Sustainable Community (Ⅱ) - Cold war and Global Contemporary Art Revisited

Su-Mi Kang | 2012, 36 | pp.5~46 | number of Cited : 1

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This research was began to consider the subject that how visual arts are configured with social consciousness and practice for the sustainable community in 2009. The first achievement of my research, which title is “The Configuration of the Visual Arts Images for Sustainable Community(Ⅰ) - The Crux of Avant-garde and Mass Culture” was published in this journal of aesthetics in 2010. As the following research, this essay deal with the visual images in cold war era and the global era, these periods are related in political, economical and cultural point of view. It is useful to remind ourselves that cold war era was a period of strong political tension and diverse artistic challenge between the East and the West. And we have to pay attention to a situation that the field of art and culture as well as political and economical sector becoming controlled by global capitalism the here and now. I will argue that artworks and images produced under state cold war during 1947-1991 and globalism after the cold war should rather be considered in more complex terms. For the second chapter of the present essay, I want to focus on the ideological function of visual image as a social imaginary. Twentieth-century political ideologies, be they socialist, capitalist or fascist, had striven to transform and transcend the natural world through material power by building mass utopias. The root of consumerism in our global capitalist society is connected with the policy on which the west did to promote the east's collapse. That is my suggestion for the third chapter. In this chapter, I will compare the art works between 1960-80's and 2000s, and examine their limitation or capacity for sustainable community. From my observation, It seems like more and more global capitalist system is forcing from all nations to individuals to consume the same kind of culture and life. If contemporary art would be configured as the counter social imaginary with concerning history, society and the public, the force can be reduced.

Theoretical Examples for Art Discourses in the age of Convergence - W.J.T. Mitchell and Erwin Panofsky

Shan Lim | 2012, 36 | pp.47~70 | number of Cited : 7

This research paper explores theoretical examples for art theorist who has to take the creative imagination with critical judgment required in this age of convergence. For doing this, I compare visual culture theorist W.J.T. Mitchell's hypericonology method and art historian Erwin Panofsky's iconology method. The first chapter describes various convergent phenomena at every section of society. The second chapter then explains the significance of the most-talked-about topic ‘Convergence’ by tracing the knowledge production based on the self-controlled research pattern of modern discipline system. The third chapter provides the historical and conceptual background of artistic convergence from Horace's Ut pictura poesis to contemporary new media art. The forth chapter analyses Mitchell's hypericonology with his two terms - ‘hypericon’ and ‘metapicture.’ As a kind of hyprid type, each term is employed for revealling a dialectical field beween discourse and vision. Mitchell invents the term hypericon as a central role of encapsulating an entire episteme, a theory of knowledge. Metapicture is a piece of moveable cultural apparatus like hypericon. They do not merely serve as illustrations to theory; they picture theory. In Panofsky' iconology, on the other hand, the ‘icon’ is absorbed by the ‘logos,’ or a scientific discourse. With reinforcing the system of intrinsic meaning, Panofsky must have depended upon the rule and moderation of modern isolated discipline system. Consequently, this paper argues that contemporary art theorist must give prominence to the form of art practices as a strategy of resistance. It also suggests the fact that Mitchell's hypericonology reflects on the intersections of visuality, language, and similitude, and give us a useful perspective on the convergent art practices.

Cultural Politics of International Biennale

Joon Lee | 2012, 36 | pp.71~99 | number of Cited : 4

With the acceleration of globalization phenomenon throughout the world, explosively booming international biennales have taken over some of traditional functions of art museums and alternative spaces. They have also dominated cultural discourses, after the perceived worldwide crisis of art criticism. Further, they have exerted a considerable influence on art market. This thesis, first, will examine the importance of international biennales with a focus of their institutional aspects. It will then analyse from the point of view of cultural politics how the attributes of these exhibition sites have been altered by ideologies, cultural influences or economic capital of the dominant social class. In this thesis, I will analyse how biennales could become the most influential exhibition space and a site producing cultural discourses of the 21st century, taking over the roles of art museums, alternative spaces and art criticism. Biennales which emphasize changes and innovations have become a site in which vanguard curators and artists compete with each other for the recognition of their meaningful differences. They have also become a strategic site for searching for the future of contemporary art. Through a critique of the worldwide boom of biennales which have become the host city’s marketing tool for cultural products under neo-liberalism, I will examine a phenomenon, in which certain influential international curators and exhibition organisers have become a powerful elite group through these biennales. I will also point out the still Western-centered structure of these biennales and the cultural hegemony of this elite group, which are evident in their influences on non-Western regions and art market. Further, the thesis will criticize the homogenization of non-Western biennales caused by the hegemonic monopoly of globe-trotting Western curators in biennales whose worldwide expansion is riding on the globalisation wave. It will also point out how avant-garde art practices seeking innovation and change have become institutionalized and a commodity by the culturally dominant sections of society, such as exhibition organisers, collectors and sponsors, as well as art market and cultural capital. It is, therefore, necessary to critically examine contemporary art and exhibition systems, which are increasingly dictated by the rationale of neo-liberalism, along with the globalization of finance, trade and services.

Meta-criticisms of Lee Joong Seop’s Myth – on the basis of Mythologies by Roland Barthes

Hur Nayoung | 2012, 36 | pp.103~142 | number of Cited : 5

The debate on Lee Joong Seop who will be represent of Korean modern art history has been continuously over 60 years. In this way, he became well knew to the general public and was as stable as nobody should be How to evaluate his art works. In this regard, many people argue critically that the myth of Lee Joong Seop overshadows the fair criticism of his works. As such, this article tries to raise a question of whether the myth of Lee Joong Seop should only be interpreted negatively. First of all, the concept of myth is discussed. Myth has been studied in a variety of ways in many research works. In such research, while novel ideological views have been proposed as mythos that complements the limitation of logos, the rules of myth according to ethnological and anthropological views have also been studied. In these processes, myth is linked to semiology in that it has a narrative structure. Such link between semiology and myth is extended more in terms of subjects when it comes to Roland Barthes. Barthes extended the concept of myth to the general cultural phenomenon without limiting it within the context of stories of gods or specific narratives of ethnic characters. Especially, he extracted paroles that have various substances from cultures and analyzed myth that was formed within such. Myth, as Barthes sees it, is identified through the significant structure that has double systems, which are a step forward from semiology. We tried to apply the significant structure of myth, as Barthes discussed, to the myth of Lee Joong Seop. In addition, we took critical writings on Lee Joong Seop, in which the signification process of his myth occurred, as our text for such applications. This is a meta-critical attitude, which does not analyze works of Lee Joong Seop but the criticisms on him and his works that have been written for 60 years since his death. While there are many research methods on employing meta-critical views, this article adopts more objective and formal New-Critical views since it aims to analyze the significant structure of the myth of Lee Joong Seop and this view is in agreement with that of Barthes in the analysis of myth. As a result from examining on the basis of Barthes' “Mythologies” and meta-critical views, several paroles implying the myth of Lee Joong Seop could be extracted and three myths should be found through this. The first is the myth of a genius artist. During the Japanese colonial era, despite a Korean, he got recognized to overcome the age limitation. And he painted creative works, like the paintings on silver papers for the period of refuge. The second is the myth of tragic life that cannot but sacrifice his living. Living in the Dark Age, parting a family, he lived poorly to get sick. However, he produced works continually. Critics have analyzed his works base on his tragic life. The third is the myth of impossible dream that was not realistic. His works are in a bright mood in spite of hard conditions. He expressed a utopia with missing family regarding happy kids on them ideally. Such paroles with respect to the life of Lee Joong Seop can be easily seen in many critical writings. Therefore, it has not been surprising that we have learned the myth of Lee Joong Seop through various writings about him. Just as in the principle of myths that Barthes suggested, the myth of Lee Joong Seop became the nature rather than historic facts. And It is possible for the significant structure that apply to the Korean art.

The Cinemnemonics of Postfilmic Cinema

Kim, Seonah | 2012, 36 | pp.143~172 | number of Cited : 9

Film studies has rapidly changed since the 1990s. The death of cinema and media convergence have been claimed, while films that privileges its power of audio-visual attention and the modulation of speed as well as its capacity to restore memory in the evolution of the digital technology are emerging. Cinema is the first mnemonics produced externally in forms of audio-visual materials: montages and duration of human's mind, consciousness and memory. In a word, cinema is cinemnemonics. This paper will attempt to grasp the way that memory recurs and its modus essendi, considering today's cinema as cinemnemonics: which memory it insists or not; how it visualizes the memory; and which memory it intends to forget or encourage. In other words, the mode and transformation of cinemnemonics as such will be explored along with the co-evolution of the digital technology, examining contemporary memory-films: Blade Runner(Ridley Scott, 1982), Strange Days(Kathryn Bigelow, 1995), Memento(Christopher Nolan, 1999), Being John Malkovich(Spike Jonze, 1999), The Matrix(Lana Wachowski, Andy Wachowski, 1999), Minority Report(Steven Spielberg, 2002), Donnie Darko(Richard Kelly, 2001), Old Boy(Park Chan Wook, 2002), The Final Cut(Omar Naim, 2004), Bad Education(Pedro Almodovar, 2004), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind(Michel Gondry, 2004), The Jacket(John Maybury, 2005), Cache(Michael Haneke, 2005), Inception(Christopher Nolan, 2010), Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives(Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010) and The Tree of Life(Terrence Malick, 2011). In conclusion, it suggests that postfilmic cinema as cinemnemonics constructs the mole memory as well as the molecular memory in the age of high-spectacle society, and thus constructs the rhizome-memory conceptualized by Deleuze through the depersonalized mode and transformation among nature, human, and technology.

Theory and Practice of Sociology of Art during the Liberation Era - focused on the texts of Han Sang-Jin in the 1940's-1960's

Hong Ji Suk | 2012, 36 | pp.173~200 | number of Cited : 3

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2012, Vol.36, No.