• 미술이론과 현장
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• 제1호
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• pp.23-48
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• 2003

Art theorists support art productions by, introducing them to the public, explaining their meanings, and playing a crucial part in the development of art. These tasks seem like their opus. Because the principles of art production and the artistic languages are quite different from the ordinaries, we need 'interpreters' who can mediate us and the artists. Art works need interpretation. And the interpretation includes not only the characteristics of the given art work, but the customs, history, and the unique qualities of the race that produced the art work. The former director of the Korean National Museum, Choi Soon-woo wrote on the characteristics of Korean art as those that stem from the poised, arbitrary, and non-elaborate state of mind. The statement of the former Director of the National Museum has its weight far greater than just a personal opinion. In fact, we encounter the same resonance of this statement over and over reproduced in the mass media. The problem lies on that it deals with not only a single art work, but the entire Korean art. And going further, this kind of remarks are already infused into every sector of our thought on art appreciation. In this paper, I argue for a re-reading of the characteristics of Korean beauty based on two reasons. First, the characteristic of art work is contemporary, thus we cannot define the characteristics of entire Korean art in a few words without the context of the period of its making. Second, Director Choi defined the characteristics that I pointed out above as 'natural' and 'nature-friendly.' Nature or being natural is not an usual word that defines the characteristics of art work, which stands for the opposite side of the nature in the binary opposition of nature/culture. To delve into these misunderstandings of Korean beauty in the popular notions of Korean art, I suggest the re-reading of three major articles on Korean art: Ryoo Jong-yeol's "Korean race and its art," Ko You-seup's reiteration of Ryoo's thesis called "Discourses in Korean Art History and Aesthetics," and Yoon Hee-soon's antithesis of Ryoo Jong-yeol titiled "Studies on Korean Art History."