| Title | A story from one’s interiority overcoming the logics of newness - Jin … | |
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“A story from one’s interiority overcoming the logics of newness” Jin Hwi-yeon (Professor of Sungshin Women's University) - Tradition of newness and thirst of the 21st century The 20th century was the age of “newness.” This “new thing” ignited by modernism educated the public and thrilled artists by emphasizing the features that changed compared to the past time in terms of both form and content. However, skepticism and criticism about the possibility of complete “newness” arose one after another in the 1950s, when modernism was at the last stage. There was discussion on insignificance of expectation of the relative state of “newness” because the analysis of linguistic semiotics proposed that there was no “signified (signifi?) in perfect pair with “signifier (signifiant)” and it viewed incompleteness of symbols due to infinite nature that fail to reach “signified.” In the end, anything is something different and there is no standard for comparison. However, despite this limitation by nature, we can assume that some positive expectation of difference is hidden in “newness.” If complete newness is theoretical error, we can give this name “newness” to someone belonging to the art world or something that can stimulate an idea and inspiration of the public.
The expectation of newness changed its color, after the 1950s when the trends of postmodernism to resist the essence and category of modernism as well as anti-modernism trying elements disregarded by modernism in the formative and conceptual manner started to give shape in earnest. For instance, instead of delivering a new high-level result through unprecedented forms or techniques, they started to pay attention to twisting based on the materials of the past art through “difference, as is the case of Picasso or Mondrian. This kind of effort expanded to “postmodernism” and the audience reached the stage of having to read a long manual of the work, only to understand why the work before their eyes should be meaningful and in what the work is different from the previous ones.
Rosalind Krauss views that postmodernism is against creativity or originality by nature. She judges that postmodernist art only focuses on creation of differences based on repetition while the spirit of newness pursued by modernism failed to be recognized as values any longer. Fredric Jameson, in his book “Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” argues that postmodernism is characterized by pastiche, posthistory and a process of extinction of “narrative.”
Today, many artists strive to achieve de-authorization through small rebellion, resistance, twisting and de-positioning regarding art, social system, customs and modernist elements within the frame of such postmodernist features. Though their works look intellectual and witty, they are based on the assumption that they understand the general context of art history. On the other hand, regarding these works with possible reduction of visual satisfaction, others try to satisfy newness and novelty through large-scale visual works while focusing on “spectacle” based on exaggerated appearance of works and excessive capital (e.g. Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, Olafur Eliasson, Rem Koolhaas and Frank Gehry).
On the other hand, after judging that newness with diverse economic functions will not be created in the form of art, considering the development situation of visual art so far, some encouraged fusion and mixture in consideration of deficient competency of creating newness. It was possible to manifest motive power of newness through mixture of heterogeneous elements (genre, content and form) and completely ill-matched components. However, the result of this fusion did not always conform to the direction expected by the public.
Though newness is still desperately wished, it is not clear which aspect of this can satisfy the public. The answer can be found from huge projects through concentration of capital or media-concentrated art based on new technology. However, today’s art is still producing unfamiliar differences and circling around us. Maybe Korean artists are discovering new opportunities in the frame of tradition of newness.
- A story about “me”
Recently, Korean artists are receiving much attention and great evaluation in the global art world. Many are invited to international exhibitions and the number of artists sharply increased while the diversity of works has expanded. In particular, the number of female artists is conspicuously on the rise, and their works deliver delicacy and perfection-oriented refinement and “particularity” with different perspectives as unique property of women. Korean female artists are displaying their competency of empathizing with the public. This is possible because of they are accustomed to or trained by “sharing and communication of their stories, marking particularity of women. In the use of social communication channels through social media, today’s active trends, women outstrip men in all age groups. They spend much more time than men in such channels. In the public stages and places, women perceive their feeling with sensitivity and often deliver such feelings in public.
Male artists compared to heroic creators of modernism-pursued newness of form and diversified visual codes. On the other hand, today’s diversity is explored by some voices that are individual and small yet interesting. There are various ways to create and propose “one’s own story.” However, it is possible to create the most universal and independent situation that starts from “me” and establishes relationship with the world, by talking about anxiety and desire of complex psychological state coming from emotional processes through experience, anger, sadness, joy, love, passion, depression, hope, delight, despair and complex of inferiority.
Artists are supposed to continuously observe themselves and inquire into people. Lately, there is an increasing number of people collecting stories while travelling around the world. We listen to their stories of adventure and the society discovers diversity and newness through the individual experience of others, enjoying sensuous and intellectual joy out of that.
- Power of hidden stories Adrian Piper, who carried out activities as an artist and philosopher since the late 1960s, made a very unusual work. Piper, as the first black female professor of philosophy in America and the first black female conceptual artist, regarded her skin color as the most powerful feature of identity. In the series of “Catalysis,” she shows up in the public places with weird aspects, causing unpleasant feeling to others, for example, staining her clothes with some smelly materials, wearing clothes with half-dried paint and holding a towel in the mouth. She had this intention of observing reaction of others from the literal perspective of catalysis and visualized herself as an object of rejection with an isolated aspect. In “Food for the spirit,” she took pictures of herself reading “Critique of pure reason” of Kant while fasting for one month. Though her body gets thinner and thinner, her spirit becomes richer and richer reaching the high-level philosophical knowledge. Through this contrast, she demonstrates her desire of transforming into a new self by embracing rationality and intellect of a white man. Afterwards, in her “Mythic being,” the work combined between text and photography, replaced her long complex of inferiority of being a “non-white” person with a black hero. By changing herself as a black villain man, she reveals the disruptive state between reality and ideal through a new identity with a free and commanding presence no one can repress while knocking down white men. What makes her works interesting is that she reveals desperate processes of obtaining dignity through the gap and struggle between her substance and the object of desire, beyond mere manifestation of correlation between herself and environment and display of experience of her own. The trial of Piper to express human essence through her own story has much to imply today.
- Image requires a new method of existence in the changed environment.
In the last century, art focused on newness through changes of hardware such as existence of work, role of artists and the public, materials, expression and acceptance, space and environment, science and technology. Today, art is focusing on other themes covering “my’ stories and individual concern and action of my experiences and psychological state.
Female artists of Korean painting and artists using traditional materials are standing at the crosswalk of a complex and open identity, with which they are familiar with diverse media or materials (carrier) to express their own stories. The effort of understanding the domain of human desire and combining it with materials (media) has been constantly accelerating along with technology development. Those who use new media with completeness have exercised their influence on the society along with the artists discovering the new concepts. Today, the meaning of art does not really lie in how to deliver techniques. Technique is nothing but a means of transport required for the process of listening to each one’s voice. Instead, it will be important to watch independent experience and manifestation of emotions based on deep thinking of human beings.
By concentrating on emotions hidden in myself and meeting “my own emotions” different from those of others, it will be possible that small yet interesting contents can change into a discourse to replace the frame of newness. I believe that it will be a big pleasure to discover a new seed from the works full of will to discover something inherent in oneself.
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