본문 바로가기
  • Home
Basic Search

Korean Appropriation of Avant-garde Art (1) - Jean Cocteau and Yi Sang

Song Minho 1

1단국대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This paper is the first article of a sequential project that aims to investigatehow the artistic practices of the Western Avant-garde influencedKorean artists. This article investigates, in particular, the issue of how anessential part of modernist thought in Yi Sang’s works was affected byJean Cocteau’s cubism art. Literary writers in colonial Joseon, includingYi Sang, Jung Ji-yong, Kim Ki-rim and Park Tae-won, could read almostall documents and books on Western literature and art, including theworks of Jean Cocteau, through their Japanese translations. Through theseJapanese translations, they could also participate in the artistic universalityand modernity. The translation of Jean Cocteau’s works published inJapan in the 1930’s was obtained and it was confirmed that the words ofJean Cocteau cited by Yi Sang were mostly quoted from the Japanesetranslation. Finally, attempts were made to pinpoint the exact point atwhich Yi Sang’s intervention into modernist thought, through JeanCocteau, took place. The idea of avant-garde art that Jean Cocteau had advocated at the timegained concrete form through the Cubist artistic practices of Picasso inpainting and Eric Satie in music, etc. The artistic philosophy of Cubismwas derived from Einstein's theory of relativity which produced the perspectiveof a scientific understanding of the dimensional structure of theworld. Thus, Cubism was an artistic practice based on rigorous scientifictheory, which was the reason why it could be an international thought. Yi Sang also participated in the avant-garde stream of thought throughthe early series poems, “3 dimension/angle blueprint.” Furthermore, inadopting a variety of poetic images from Jean Cocteau’s poems, in theprocess of understanding and accepting his overall art world, Yi Sang createdhis own artistic world. In particular, the fact that the images of the‘angel’, ‘Venus’ and ‘arm stump’ etc. present in Yi Sang’s early poemsreveal the influence of Jean Cocteau, and the way in which Yi San consideredthis impact as an opportunity for new creation is identified in thispaper.

Statistics

  • 550 Viewed
  • 247 Downloaded

Tools

Issue List

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
Basic Search Advanced Search