김환기 조형 세계의 문학적 재해석－‘전위’와 ‘전통’의 관계를 중심으로－

Abstract

Kim Hwan-ki, who represents the Korean modern art world, begins collaborating on literature and art in a solidarity of artists called ‘writer- painter’. The 1930s and 40s, when Kim Hwan-ki actively interacted with the literary world, were a time when artists’ subjective views, senses, and new visual experiments were shared and approved through the windows of writers. Considering Kim Hwan-ki’s literary aspect, active exchanges with literary people, and the situation in the art world at that time, the transformation of the painter Kim Hwan-ki’s world of formative is newly discovered based on the literature field. Kim Hwan-ki’s abstracted form experiments begin with Literary coterie magazine, such as “Sam-Sa Mun-Hak”, “Mun-jang”. If he experimented with the liberation of the subjectivity in the name of ‘Avant-garde’, the matter of the subjectivity reappear in the name of ‘tradition’ after “Mun-jang”. The traditional orientation of “Mun-jang” is not based on the material but on the expression of subjectivity in the process of selecting and activating traditions, in other words, it is in the way of thinking. This project is a traditional way of thinking that projects meaning rather than the appearance of things, while revealing the aspects of the ‘modern’ subject in relation to subjective perspective. The point Kim Hwan-ki was interested in throughout the “Mun-jang” was not a matter of ‘Korean’ or ‘ethnic’ characteristics revealed in terms of materials, in the process of selecting and activating it, it was an oriental tradition of reading the inner meaning from the outward appearance of an objective object. And from this was the discovery of Western modern expressions and principles. Kim Hwan- ki’s interest in the liberation of surrealistic spirit has shifted to the expression of his subjective view of the (Korean) object, which meets reasons of literati painting for coordination and unity with nature. In Kim Hwan-ki’s work, the sense of lyricism is a reflection of the subjective view through fundamental communion between man and nature. After the experiment with ‘Avant-garde’ and the ‘tradition’ in the way of reasons, the matter of subjectivity that Kim Hwan-ki continuously sought is completed with pure abstractions of ‘dot’ and ‘line’ reduced as implications of unknowns.