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A Critical Study on Identity Discourse of Korean Monochrome Painting from the Postcolonial Perspective

윤진이 1

1서울대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Korean Monochrome Painting of the 1970s is supposed to present the Korean cultural identity on the ground of asian union-naturalism. And it is appraised to be the stereotyping of Korean modern art in both academic and artistic practice in view of cultural nationalism. It is assumed that it was occurred naturally in Korea without influences of other theories or movements such as Minimalism, Modernism of the West, and Mono-ha, Orientalism in Japan etc., in the context of Identity Discourse which argued Korean Monochrome has special characters such as “white, nonartificiality(artless art), no-materialization.”This thesis, however, aims to examine the Identity Discourse of Monochrome Paintings from standpoint of postcolonial hybridity theory. It is stated that the identity of colonizing subjects and that of colonized subjects are complex, flexible, ambivalent rather than unit, fixed, homogeneous and their cultural identity is formed through encounter of various layers of cultures. Because of that, the main purpose of this paper is to reveal the relationship between Identity Discourse and Mono-ha including Lee Ufan’s concept and criticism which expropriated Nishida Kitaro’s Philosophy in the light of Japanese Orientalism. Nishida incorporated ideas of both Zen and western philosophy, was aimed at bringing the East and West closer. Nishida’s concept is the logic of the place(場所, topos) of Nothingness(無) and a non-dualistic concrete logic, meant to overcome the inadequacy of the subject/object distinction essential to the subject logic of western ontology. Likewise Lee Ufan rejected Western notions of representation, focusing on the relationships of materials and perceptions. He presented works made of raw physical materials that have barely been manipulated so as for spectator to experience the relationship thing and body in the world without representation. In this article, furthermore, I tried to clarify the isomorphism of the Identity Discourse of Monochrome in terms of on-material neutral structure and Japanese Orientalism, especially Yanagi Muneyoshi’s white and Mingei theory in which he discovered and praised the beauty of naturalness and pureness derived from the Korean folk made ynameless(unknown) craftsman, as well as Nishida’s concept of Nothingness. Indeed, Yanagi’s Mingei, “people’s art” theory was itself a result of his study for Korean pottery, which had been made to be used in the normal person’s everyday life, they had a common, free, healthy nature. Yanagi’s concept laid the groundwork of a Korean Orientalism. So I intend odiscuss three types of Orientalism, concentrating of their relation, intertextuality, mechanism of their formation from the early modern to postcolonial era. Orientalism coined by and discussed in the work of Edward Said by which the East (or Orient) was created to be a viewpoint, as held by someone in the West. East is seen variously as exotic, mysterious, irrational, and so on. Western notion of Orientalism, by the way, was transformed oriental Orientalism or reverse Orientalism by Japanese in the early 20th. Most of all, this thesis focus on Korean Orientalism art theory which formed in mimicry of Japanese Orientalism which supported Japanese imperialism and colonialism. Because of influence Korean Orientalism, the concepts of Identity Discourse of Monochrome paintings need to be reconstructed from the postcolonial theory.

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