1980년대 한국 형상조각 연구: 인간 조각을 중심으로

Abstract

This is a study of the figurative sculpture that appeared for the first time on Korea’s sculptural scene in the 1980s. Korean modern sculpture began with realist works that explored the form of the human body, before moving toward contemporary human figure sculpture as it developed new formal ways of depicting the human body. But the human figure sculpture that appeared in the 1980s was characterized by its attempts to reflect human life, unlike aestheticist sculpture, which focused on form. Rather than expressing beauty through the theme of the human body, it uses humans to reflect life and contemporary trends, concentrating on sculptural content rather than form. This study focuses on sculpture from the 1980s, which shows a different developmental process to that of conventional human figure sculpture. Referring to the sculpture of the 1980s as “figurative sculpture”, a term used at the time, it aims to comprehensively examine the characteristics and tendencies of this genre, while seeking to determine its significance within the field of contemporary Korean sculpture. In this study, I begin by establishing figurativeness as a concept. Through figurative art, which can be seen as the term from which “figurative sculpture” originated, I make it clear that the concept of figurativeness was an expression of artists’ contemporary consciousness, and attempt to establish the concept and scope of figurative sculpture. Based on this, I identify trends in the genre by focusing on exhibitions and the activities of groups between 1980 and 1991, and examine the genre’s thematic and formal characteristics through individual artists who explored figurative sculpture in the 1980s. As an expression of artists’ consciousness of their times, figurative sculpture revealed their individual experiences and thought, and was based on various themes including life, society and culture. It also experimented formally with ways to effectively convey its themes. By driving a thematic and formal broadening of sculpture in this way, figurative sculpture laid the foundations for contemporary sculpture.