The purpose of this research is to examine the paradigm of art that underwent changes several times prior to the emergence of the discourse on post-media in the late 1990s from a media perspective. This thesis is divided into three major periods aroun...
The purpose of this research is to examine the paradigm of art that underwent changes several times prior to the emergence of the discourse on post-media in the late 1990s from a media perspective. This thesis is divided into three major periods around which historical transitions in the art history of the 20th century were made. I analyze how artists related media to their art making and what were the characteristics of artworks in relation to media by each period. Through this analysis, I study how the concept of media in each period changed and what the significance of it is.
At the pinnacle of modernism from the 1930s onwards, art began to pursue the autonomy of art, breaking the long tradition of representing the outside world. Abstract art that was developing its purity through explorations of formalistic aspects of media in that period became the major force in modernist art. Greenberg’s theory of formalism, which argued that art ought to develop its own purity by focusing on the characteristics of media unique to each medium, supported this. In company with abstract art, progressive and experimental modernist artists at that time adopted actual objects from life and actively embraced media that came along with the advancements of science and technology, broadening the horizons of art. Also, photography and film, media rooted in technologies, endeavored to be accepted as legitimate genres of art. Notwithstanding these efforts, painting continued to enjoy special privileges. While painting and sculpture were still considered to be high art, other genres including photography were deemed to be lower. In that period, a hierarchy between the genres was prevalent.
At the advent of the 1960s, there were art forms that could not be discussed using Greenberg’s concept of formalism. Decisively, the geography of art underwent a major change upon the emergence of pop art, which adopted non-art media from life and employed a form of mass media. Upon witnessing Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes, Arthur Danto declared “the end of art,” which is to say that the idea of developments and advancements in art ceased to exist. From this point on, art pursued diversity and pluralism and no media could immediately be recognized as art media. In addition, new genres born with the developments of new media, such as photography, film, and video, were recognized as art equally as important as painting. Hence, art became more diverse and enriched.
By the mid-1990s, media experiences due to the developments of digital technology were popularized, and artists’ attempts to adopt cutting edge media technologies exponentially increased. New media art combined with computer technologies were developed whilst sensitively responding to the jolts of newness achieved by digital technologies. However, the competitive adoptions of new media technologies among the artists gradually became so common that they was no longer new. After new media art lost its status as new art, art using new media and art using traditional media were mingled together in various ways, resulting in artworks that transcended the existing media-specific art. As a result, the distinction between genres in art collapsed and the geography of art media faced a change.
Many scholars defined this condition of art, in which the distinction between media, or between art media and non-art media, is ambiguous, as a post-media condition, comprehensively discussing the shifted status of art media.
Rosalind Krauss developed the concept of post-medium to progress a discourse that reaffirmed the importance of media in art. She argued by employing the concept of technical supports that in the post-medium condition, art does not exist based on physical properties of a specific medium; rather, technologies and systems that make them possible replace medium-specificity. Her discourse on post-medium has a distinctive logical structure from that of other scholars.
Peter Weibel argued that in a condition where media experience is universal, no art can exist unless media is the premise of it, defining it as the post-media condition. He thinks that the essential facets of ‘post-media’ consist of two aspects: the equality and the mixture of media. His main idea is that the mixed-media condition had arrived in which the individual identity of every aesthetic media collapses and they are mixed together after going through certain periods. According to Weibel, the equality of media had been reached by the late 20th century, and the mixture of media is still ongoing today. In contemporary art, a specific media no longer enjoy a hegemonic status; instead, every media co-influences each other and excises the right of decision. Also, he emphasizes that under this post-media condition, the status of a receiver has changed.
Lev Manovich defines a traditional classification of genre by media as an outdated practice. Today’s media condition is possible through socioeconomic study of a condition where a single media is variously presented, circulated, and divided into extended meanings.
On the other hand, Nicolas Bourriaud diagnosed today’s art condition with the term post-production instead of post-media. He maintained that in today’s media condition, artists ought to focus on reproducing forms, contents, methods of art that already exist, rather than aim at a new type of art.
In this research, I explored how the conventional concept of media consisting in the autonomy of art in the history of art after the 20th century changed, while going through different periods with relevant cases. This attempt to survey art history around the idea of the media will be a pivotal signpost in comprehending the stream of art phenomena of each period. And the post media discourse, in a recognition of today’s cultural, social, technological changes and applications of them, will provide a new perspective in order to diagnose art phenomena today and even the more complicating phenomena coming tomorrow.
，韩语论文范文，韩语论文网站 |
