사라진 곳에 대한 기억

우정아(Woo Jung-Ah) 한국근현대미술사학회 2007 한국근현대미술사학 Vol.18 No.-

‘뮤지엄’의 폐허 위에서: 1990년대 한국 미술의 동시대성과 신세대 미술의 담론적 형성

우정아 ( Jung-ah Woo ) 미술사와 시각문화학회 2017 미술사와 시각문화 Vol.20 No.-

Since the 2010s, art historians and critics have paid great attention to the 1990s as the original moment of Korean contemporary art. By the late 1980s, the Korean art community was split between two opposing factions: monochrome paintings (Dansaekhwa) and ‘People’s Art’ (Minjung misul), pure art and politically engaging practices, the institutionally established and the anti-institutional. However, at the beginning of the 1990s, such dichotomy disappeared with the end of the Cold War, the advent of postmodernism, and the emergence of the new generation. It is generally agreed that the advent of the new generation artists led to the long-awaited globalization and contemporaneity of Korean art. Among the thriving artist groups of the late 1980s, in particular, the group Museum, which was organized in 1987 by the young artists in their twenties from Hongik University, such as Nak-beom Koh, Kyeong-ae Noh, Hye-kyeong Myeong, Bul Lee, Seung Jeong, Jeong-hwa Choi, and Seong-min Hong, has been widely acknowledged as the representative group of the new generation that initiated both the theories and practices of contemporary art. Through a series of controversies, the ‘new generation’ was characterized as freely using installation and multi-media, being cynical or indifferent about institutional authority and political ideology, focusing on the popular culture and commodity, exposing vulgar and kitschy sensibility, preferring the ephemeral projects, and having a playful and light-hearted attitude. This ‘new generation’ was regarded as the outcome of postmodernism as a part of the global phenomenon. Despite the heated debate about the ‘new generation’ and ‘postmodernism,’ however, there has been no deeper analysis about the Museum’s artistic practices beyond the simple labeling of the new generation and postmodernism. Consequently, the explicit bifurcation between the group Museum and the nature of ‘new generation’ has been widely ignored. This research is an attempt to examine the process of discursive construction of the new generation around the activities of the group Museum, and to evaluate the nature of ‘contemporaneity’ in the art of Korea.

논고 : 검은 옷을 입은 뉴욕의 수도승 ; 애드 라인하르트의 <블랙 페인팅>과 오리엔탈리즘, 추상표현주의

우정아 ( Jung Ah Woo ) 미술사와 시각문화학회 2003 미술사와 시각문화 Vol.2 No.-

The critical discourse surrounding Ad Reinhardt (1913-1967) has been focused either on his connection with me New York School or his influences on Minimalism. Consequently, his religio1l5 orientation toward art and acknowledged attraction t0 the Eastern philosophy have been widely ignored. Therefore, this paper is devoted to elaborating the “Oriental ideas inscribed in his work, especially Black Paintings mat were executed in his later career(1960-67). However, my concern is less about identifying the characteristics of me “Oriental” sensibility than about tracing the various discursive contexts defining and creating the Eastern aesthetics surrounding his work and criticism, I show that Reinhardt`s seemingly authenticated knowledge of the East has relied on me absent signifier of the mythic Orient, which is fraught with Orientalist overtones. In the later part of this paper, I suggest that Reinhardt was alienated from his contemporary critical Context of Abstract Expressionism due to his explicit reliance on the Eastern an and philosophy, on one hand, and on the other, the implicit association through Zen Buddhism with the artists, such as John Cage, F1uxus, and Beat poets to name the most prominent few, who were marginalized in major context of American art of the late 1950`s and the 1960`s. I am firmly of the opinion that the Eastern orientation sprinkled an irritating flavor in Reinhardt``s aesthetics for the Greenbergian-typc of American modem art. It is dear that Clement Greenberg`s rigorous denial of Oriental influence was pan of his effort to eliminate the alibi of non-American and non-European aspects from the Abstract Expressionism. As a result, I argue, under the Greenberg``s aegis, such an odd grouping of New York School pantisans has been packaged as “American-Type” painters, while Reinhardt`s Eastern sensibility has been marginalized in the triumphal history of American modem art.

특집1 : 오노 요코의 <그레입프루츠(Grapefruit)>: 공포와 좌절, 아브젝시옹(abjection)의 퍼포먼스

우정아 ( Jung Ah Woo ) 미술사와 시각문화학회 2007 미술사와 시각문화 Vol.6 No.-

Yoko Ono`s Grapefruit: The Performance of Horror, Frustration, and Abjection Jung-Ah Woo This paper deals with Yoko Ono`s Of A Grapefruit in the World of Park in its multiple forms of poetry, musical score, and performance. The artist`s seemingly private desire for acceptance and her fear of rejection are accounted for in terms of the fundamental loss of nation. This locus of loss is further related to Ono`s exploration of the structural impossibility of representation. In place of conventional representation, Ono`s works mobilize fragmented texts, hidden images, and disorderly theatrical ambience as a means to reenact the psychophysical effects of the horror, as well as generate the anxiety, of the ultimate failure of communication. Indeed, Ono`s profound anxiety in relation to the devastating impact of recurring war and the pressing question of art`s political responsibility were implicitly and explicitly inscribed in her body of works. The tension between the ascetic, sophisticated, and highly aesthetic realm of the Zen paradigm and the violent, corporeal, and extremely resistant sphere of authentic Japanese culture fueled the dynamics of Ono`s practices within the context of Japanese avant-garde art of the 1960s. The issues of cultural origin are theorized in terms of the abject and poetic language as conceived by Julia Kristeva. Ono`s Cut Piece, undoubtedly her signature work, is a startling embodiment of the longing for a collective unity on the one hand, and a horrific display of violence against differences for the sake of the unified community on the other. Significantly, this frustrated desire for communal unity was later channeled into political protest during the turbulent era when memories of Hiroshima overlapped with the disaster of the Vietnam War.

물질의 소멸과 예술의 탄생: 마르셀 뒤샹의 <분수>와 펠릭스 곤잘레스-토레스의 <러버보이>

우정아 ( Jung Ah Woo ) 미술사와 시각문화학회 2008 미술사와 시각문화 Vol.7 No.-

The social phenomenon after the recent tragic loss of Sungnyemun and the ensuing polemics surrounding its reconstruction initiated serial questions about the status of a symbolic object in a national community. In this paper, the case of Sungnyemun is critically interpreted in order to expand the inter-related issues of material culture study and art history: first, how to distinguish a simple object and a symbolic artifact; second, how the material objects are imbued with immaterial values, including aesthetic originality and cultural significance; third, how to understand the interaction between society and symbolic objects, through which the individuals are socialized and the collective identity of a community is constructed. The following analyses of Marcel Duchamp`s Fountain and Felix Gonzalez-Torres`s Lover Boy, the two most prominent artistic models that address these issues will shed a new light on the meanings of original artwork and its discursive relationship with community. In the case of Duchamp`s best-known readymade, Fountain, the original work was mechanically produced, while the process of its reproductions was highly controlled and the outcomes were carefully crafted by the artist. The range of histories of the things functioning as replicas of the lost Fountain reveals the intensity of the aspiration of the author to preserve the authenticity of the original and subsequently the authority of the artist by putting the copies in circulation. Gonzalez-Torres, in contrast, suggested the economy of gift by presenting piles of candies and endless copies of paper, which are free for the audience to take home. Thus, his works defy the traditional value system sustaining the superiority of originality, uniqueness, and authenticity. I argue that Gonzalez-Torres`s body of works ultimately creates a new mode of community, which is bound less by the desire for possession, rather than by shared responsibility of meaning.

줄리안 슈나벨의 신표현주의 회화와 미술사의 차용에 대하여

우정아 ( Jung Ah Woo ) 미술사와 시각문화학회 2013 미술사와 시각문화 Vol.12 No.-

In 1979, Julian Schnabel, American artist and filmmaker, first presented his “plate paintings” - large canvases pasted with broken ceramic plates - claiming to have been inspired by the works of the 19th-century Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi, among others. The “plate paintings” were immediately praised and embraced by the art market, under the notion that they heralded the return of expressive painting after two decades dominated by minimalism and conceptual art. In tandem with the thriving stock market of the 1980s, the price of Schnabel`s paintings soared, achieving new highs month after month. Contrary to the unanimous applause from the market, however, art critics were united in their suspicion of Schnabel`s success. While the conservative critics justified Schnabel`s appropriation of the old masters in the context of respecting authority and traditional values, they largely denounced the aesthetic and technical quality of the works. Meanwhile, to the more progressive parties, who embraced post-modernism and post-structuralism in the discourse of contemporary art, Schnabel was a reactionary figure who overtly relied upon antiquated concepts, such as tradition, authority, and the individual hero. Notably, however, the heated debate that arose regarding the status of appropriation, the authority of the artist, and the authenticity of a painting primarily revolved around Schnabel`s persona and his unprecedented success, rather than the works themselves. In the mid-1990s, after the burst of the art market bubble and the crash of the stock market, Schnabel transitioned into a successful career as a film director. In 2007, for example, he won the best director award from both the Cannes Film Festival and the Golden Globes for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. While Schnabel`s authority and authenticity as a painter has always been doubted by critics and art historians, he has undoubtedly gained respect and appreciation as a film director. This study compares various aspects of Schnabel`s paintings - their subject matter, the mode of reception, and their emotional (or even physical) impact on the viewers - with those of his films, especially The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I argue that the “subject” of Schnabel`s paintings and films is a male “hero” whose life is ensnared in frustration, self-negation, and social alienation, and whose sense of self is badly fragmented by either physical or psychological difficulties. Furthermore, I contend that Schnabel actively attempts to transpose this sense of fragmented self onto the viewer, not only through iconic representation, but also through phenomenological impact.

한국 현대미술에 나타난 개념미술의 담론적 형성과 실천의 양상: S.T 조형미술학회를 중심으로

우정아(Jung-Ah Woo) 한국미술사교육학회 2021 美術史學 Vol.- No.41

본 논문은 한국 현대미술에 나타난 개념미술의 담론적 형성 과정과 실천의 양상을 살펴본 연구이다. 한국에서 개념미술을 본격적으로 시도한 사례로는 1969년부터 1981년까지 미술가 이건용과 평론가 김복영의 주도로 활발하게 활동했던 미술 그룹 ‘S.T 조형미술학회’가 손꼽힌다. 이건용과 김복영은 일종의 스터디 그룹으로부터 출발하여 해외 미술의 최신 조류와 이론을 적극적으로 연구하고 집단 토론을 거쳐 한국 미술의 맥락에 맞게 수용하고자 시도했다. 그러나 1980년 이후 민중미술의 도래와 함께 ST는 서구 미술의 무분별한 모방이자 군부독재라는 암울한 현실에 무감각한 고답적 미술이라는 비판을 받으며 그룹으로서는 해체를 맞았다. 역설적이게도 개념미술의 복권은 1990년대 중반 이후, 민중미술계열의 평론가들에 의해 시작됐다. 성완경과 박찬경 등은 정치적으로는 진보적 의식을 갖추었으나 미술의 양식에 있어서 사실주의적인 구상회화라는 보수성을 벗어나지 못했던 민중미술을 개념미술의 매체와 형식에 대한 논리적 고찰을 통해 쇄신하고자 했다. 결과적으로 그룹으로서 ST가 한국의 미술계에 끼친 가장 큰 영향으로 미술이 ‘회화’라는 관습적 매체로부터 완전히 벗어나던 시기에 서구로부터 쏟아져 들어온 설치와 행위, 사진과 언어 등 다양한 매체들을 실험하면서 그 형식의 당위성 혹은 논리성을 집요하게 추구하고 미술의 본질을 질문했던 학구적 태도라고 볼 수 있다. 본 논문에서는 개념미술에 대한 실험과 사유를 가장 치밀하게 전개했던 ST에서의 김복영과 이건용의 이론 및 작업을 중심으로 당대의 맥락을 파악했다. 이를 위해 논문의 전반부에서는 참조의 대상이었던 해외 개념미술의 전개를 한국 미술계의 상황과 교차하여 살펴보고, 이후 김복영의 이론과 이건용의 실천을 당시 한국 사회의 정치적 한계 안에서 중점적으로 분석했다. 본문에서는 김복영이 표상의 수단으로서 이미지의 작용을 연구하며 한국 현대 미술을 개념미술이 아닌 ‘사물의 언어’로 규정하게 된 과정과 이러한 논리적인 표상의 수단으로서 오브제에 천착하다 작가의 신체를 활용한 이벤트로 나아가게된 이건용의 작업의 전개를 살펴봤다. This study examines the discursive construction and the conditions of practice of conceptual art in Korea with a particular focus on the ST Group’s critical and artistic activities. ST Group was founded by artist Lee Kun-yong and critic Kim Bok-young in 1969 and dispersed in 1981. ST Group was initiated as a study club of like-minded artists, who discussed the current art and newly released criticism from abroad collectively as a way to incorporate the recent developments into Korean art world. However, in the wake of Minjung misul’s emergence in the 1980s, ST Group’s academic tendency was criticized as being blindly accepting Western influences while being ignorant to the dire political reality of the military dictatorship. In the mid 1990s, ST Group was ironically reinstated by the very critics of Minjung misul. Both Sung Wan-kyung and Park Chan-kyung rediscovered conceptualism’s experimentations on new artistic media and the logical analysis of forms and styles, in an effort to renew Minjung misul’s formally retrograde styles and attitudes. In short, ST Group’s major contribution to Korean art is their scholarly effort in searching for the meaning of art per se, and the logical necessities of various artistic media that began pouring into Korean soil. The discourse and practice of conceptual art in Korea, as such, has been constantly changing since its advent in the 1970s. As a consequence, in Korean contemporary art, the term “conceptual” would refer to a wide variety of tendencies, forms, styles, media, and attitudes. In order to understand the initial context of conceptual art, I analyzed the contemporary discourses, both political and critical, where Kim and Lee’s theory and practices were first formulated, against the backdrop of conceptual art’s progresses in the US and Japan.

<오리엔탈 마이노리티 이그조틱>

우정아(Woo, Jung-Ah) 서양미술사학회 2016 서양미술사학회논문집 Vol.45 No.-

본 논문은 미술가이자 이론가였던 박모(朴某, 1957-2004)의 작업을 그의 포스트모더니즘론을 중심으로 살펴본 연구이다. 포스트모더니즘의 실체와 그 한국적 수용의 가능성에 대한 논쟁은 1980년대 말부터 1990년대 초까지 몇 년 동안 치열하게 전개되었다. 박모는 이 논쟁에 참여했던 거의 유일한 미술가로서, 그의 작업은 스스로의 발언을 작품으로 구체화해야 하는 시도의 결과물이었다. 본 연구에서는 박모의 작업 노트 중 유학 시절인 1984년부터 귀국 즈음의 1995년까지의 작성분과 그 기간 동안 여러 미술 잡지에 기고한 원고를 작품과 함께 병치하여 살펴보았다. 1990년 작, <오리엔탈 마이노리티 이그조틱>은 작품 제목이자, 작업 전반의 키워드라고도 할 수 있다. 광고 화보 같은 인물 사진에 서툰 서예체로 영어 단어의 한글 발음을 적어둔 이 작품은 서구인들을 위해 ‘전통’을 전형적인 소재로 축소 환원하여, 스스로 막연한 과거로 회귀하는 제3세계의 ‘역(逆)오리엔탈리즘’에 대한 냉소적 반응이라고 보인다. 1980년대 중반의 작가 노트에는 민주화 투쟁으로 수많은 젊은이들이 희생당하고 있는 한국을 떠나 미국에서 살아가는 상황에 대한 죄책감이 만연해있다. 의도적으로 어설픈 작품을 만들고, 편의를 거부한 금욕적 생활을 유지하며, 종종 위악적인 언행을 일삼았던 박모의 행보는 이와 같은 혼란의 시대를 살아가는 미술가로서의 ‘진정성’의 발로였다고 할 수 있다. 박모는 ‘포스트모더니즘’이라는 이론적 기반 위에서 ‘한국성’이라는 사회, 문화적 특수성을 드러낼 수 있는 미술의 새로운 형식과 매체를 만들어내고자 부단히 노력했다. 대단히 짧은 경력에도 불구하고 그의 영향력이 지속적으로 거론되는 이유는 ‘진정성’에 대한 신념과 이를 작품으로 구현하기 위해 타협하지 않았던 그의 태도 때문이라고 생각된다. This is a study of the works by Korean artist Mo Bahc(1957-2004) in relation to his postmodern theories. In Korea, the heated debate on the nature of postmodernism and its applicability to the Korean condition was going on from the late 1980s to the early 1990s. Bahc was a rare artist who actively participated with the debate, and therefore, his artworks are the results of the effort to visualize his own words. Oriental Minority Exotic(1990) is not only a title of Bahc’s work, but also a keyword that encompasses his entire body of works, as Bahc understood his own identity as ‘a minority artist,’ who came from the oriental and exotic country of the third world. Bahc’s dictation of these three English words into Korean letters in dumb calligraphy on the typical portraits of different races seems to be a sarcastic remark on the ‘reverse Orientalism’ of the third world, which espouses the newly invented tradition for the sake of the Western audiences. Honesty(1994) is an installation of cardboard boxes and a recorded song, Honesty, which was translated into Korean and sung by the artist. The artist’s note of the mid 1980s reveals that he had the guilty conscience because of being away from the dire situation of Korea, where the young students were sacrificed for the democratization movement. The artist’s deliberately faulty works, extremely ascetic life style, and the occasional dysphemism can be seen as a means of his self-punishment. For the sake of the ‘honesty,’ I believe, Bahc was determined to remain as an ‘unheroic’ artist. The artist’s legacy is this commitment to the ‘honesty’ and the incessant effort to create an alternative ways of art-making, based on the theories of postmodernism, that represents the social and cultural reality of Korea.

이우환의 <관계항>에서 최정화의 <인류세>까지: 비인간 행위자로서의 플라스틱과 한국적 모더니즘의 물성(物性)

우정아 ( Jung-ah Woo ) 한국미학예술학회 2021 미학예술학연구 Vol.63 No.-

This study explores the sociocultural meaning of plastic based on the works of Choi Jeonghwa, and reconsiders the status of plastic both as object and material in the historical context of Korean modernism. It specifically focuses on Lee Ufan’s artistic practices and critical discourses, which became highly influential in the development of experimental art of Korea in the late 1960s that was inclined to emphasize materiality and sheer objects. Lee argued for encountering the “world as it is,” as an alternative to European modernism’s anthropocentrism and the bipolar value system. This paper analyzes the discourse of materiality of Korean modern art in terms of new materialism and the Actor-network theory (ANT) of Bruno Latour, as a way to avoid the essentialist perspective of Dansaekhwa that emphasized spirituality and “Korean-ness” in its promotion. If we reconsider materiality not only as an artistic medium, but also as a “non-human actor,” as suggested by Latour, it will shed new light on the progress of Korean art from the experimentation of the 1960s to Choi Jeonghwa’s active involvement with plastic as a primary material.

상실의 공동체 혹은 공동체의 상실

우정아(Jung-Ah Woo) 한국예술종합학교 미술원 조형연구소 2010 Visual Vol.7 No.-

In this paper, the arson case of Sungnyemun and Haegue Yang’s installations are examined in terms of the psychosocial impact of loss and nostalgia in unifying individuals into a collective community. The social phenomenon after the recent tragic loss of Sungnyemun has proved that the individuals living in this current world of uncertainty desperately long for the complete belonging to a holistic community, which ultimately leads to a nationalist fervor. Nostalgia, sense of loss, and desire for community have become primary concerns of Haegue Yang’s practices, especially Sadong # 30, her first solo exhibition held in Korea in 2006. The artist invited spectators to a deserted house at Sadong in a dilapidated district of Incheon. Though the entire experience is charged with psychic intimacy and physical unity with the space, the individuals are fundamentally alienated from one another by the heterogeneity of their own corporeal perceptions and spatial experiences. Yang’s works thus abound with the sense of alienation and the loneliness of being disconnected. Yet, the artist neither speaks of this anxiety nor appreciates its libratory potential: she requires us to contemplate this state of displacement as an ontological reality. I contend that the disconnected subject in Yang’s practices suggests an alternative mode of being as conceived in Jean-Luc Nancy’s notion of “inoperative community.”