1960년대 이후 한국 현대미술에 관한 사회학적 논의: 브르디외(Pierre Bourdieu)의 '자본' 개념을 활용한 사회구조적 분석

Abstract

In the field of research on Korean art history, there have been lots of excellent papers working on certain specific period or genre of Korean art. However, it seems very few of which research scope cover overall period of history of Korean art with a macroscopic perspective. Nor has been many dealing with various genres of korean art crossing over from one to another via synthetic viewpoint. This paper thus attempts to fill this gap by trying a relatively new research methodology. It adopts sociological approach to look at Korean art since 1960s. Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of‘capital’is a theoretical framework through which I would like to explore the discourse of art history via a more structural and less microscopic perspective. Bourdieu has presented the most elaborate theoretical statement about the structure of cultural fields. He goes beyond the Marxist concept of class as a system of property rights and introduces a more complex class notion that takes account of different forms of capital－that is, social and cultural as well as economic. He defines the structure of a field as a network, or configuration of objective relations among positions. Utilizing Bourdieu’s concepts of capital as theoretical framework, my research on Korean contemporary art since 1960s attempts to analyse what has constituted the dominant power structures of art world and how the mainstream has been formed and progressed. In my article, the concept of‘cultural capital’has been imported to the field of art history to look at the past half-century history with a macroscopic perspective. Revealing the relations and networks that art practice has with political, economic, social and symbolic domains, I try to shed light on art-making in relaiton to the social‘field’as Bourdieu emphasizes. What is beneficial about sociological approach is that it allows us to face the fact that mainstream of art movement or even art historical stream is hardly formed only by aesthetic movement. My research thus explores Korean art practice since the 1960s and its relation to cultural phenomena in various domains, ranging from the political attributes to the power structure of art associations and social network of alumni of art college to the economic situation in Korean society. This concept of‘capital’is important because it has improved our understanding of hierarchical structure and social network that are maintained in art world. The art world is a complex site where social and cultural resources are intricately intertwined. This research thus aims to analyze the impact of capital in Bourdieu’s term, on Korean scene especially, and eventually how dominant history of Korean art is constituted and directed for the last 50 years or so. Bourdieu’s theory assumes that differences in capital endowments are in fact related to the social structure(social topography) of cultural field in signigicant way. I intend to unlevel the complicated relations between forms of capital and social structure in Korean art since 1960s. Bourdieu’s concept of capital refers to a generalized‘resource’that assume monetary and nonmonetary as well as tangible and intangible forms. He distinguishes between three general types of capital, that are Economic capital, Cultural capital, and Social capital. According to him, dominance of specific forms of capital is characteristic of different types of social fields. Here I suggest another form of capital, that is, Political capital to be added for a proper analysis of stratification of Korean art world. Looking into those ways in which the various progressive art groups, art associations and art movements are constituted and developed, my article aims to enlighten the inner strata which are formed by political, economic, social and symbolic capitals. Basically, it follows general development of Korean art history since the 1960s. If I look through what were major art events which led every decades from the end of 1950s, Korean Art Informel movement started as regarded as the initiating point for Korean modern art. In the 1960s-70s, there happened lots of challenges of art groups against authority of the national art exhibition or other official institutions of Korean art. In the 1970s was there the ink painting revival movement from the side of Eastern(Korean) painting. And from the 1970s to the early 1980s, it was Monochrome painting that led the mainstream of Korean Modernist art as its mainstream. Rejecting the Monochrome movement, Minjung Art in the 1980s resurrected popular traditions against commercialized capitalist world as part of social movement. Afterwards, the postmodern trend became a major force in Korean art world after the mid-1980s. There organized numerous small groups which made multi-media based artworks pursuing counter-cultural movement. And one can think of the 1990s especially as internationally extending decade for Korean art world. Newly formed Gwangju Biennale and Korean exhibition space inside Venice Biennale took significant roles in that period. Not to mention, participation in those international art fairs and art events was crucial for an artist’s career. In the 2000s, what was most distinct was emergence of alternative space, and on the whole the relationship between artwork and its market has got quite intimate and artist cannot help becoming sensitive to it more than before. Following the trajectory which Korean art history led on, this paper tried to reveal what has involved to allow it has become the mainstream of Korean contemporary art along with its socially culturally inevitable conditions.