신라토우의 현대적 변용에 관한 연구

Abstract

Art is one of man's most fundamental activities and derives from the instinct hidden deep inside. In other words, man directly and indirectly expresses what he sees, hears, and feels freely about the objects and phenomena around him and creates a work in the process. That is how art is made. Cavemen in ancient times drew murals on cave walls depicting what they desired and shaped animal bones, clay, wood, fish and shellfish into human or animal figures. Man has constantly described the human body in his works from ancient times to the present day. The human body makes a good material to deliver a strong message by the artist's emotions as it allows for the expression of ideas and feelings pursued by man and possesses an infinite life force, sense of movement, and feeling of massiveness. It has been an object of concern and source of creation in free, diverse expressions throughout history. There are many different media to create artistic works, and clay is one of them. Man created the most basic and earliest formative art work with clay. The very first formative works made of clay were small figures around 10,000 B.C. They seem to have been used for primitive religious ceremonies or magic practice. People in ancient times must have had no difficulties obtaining clay in nature, finding out that they could create various shapes with it, and accidentally discovering that heating made clay hard and firing at high temperature made it hard as a rock. Closely related to human activities, clay was used to make various kinds of earthenware, clay icons and objects to be buried with the deceased. Earthenware and clay icons are some of the oldest technological and artistic products of mankind and the majority of previous artifacts from the prehistoric age. Clay icons were made throughout the world including Asia and Europe thousands of years ago. They usually reflect the cultural characteristics and aesthetic consciousness of a region whose people had their own unique experiences with the environment and society in which they grew up and operated. Thus the human-shaped clay icons widely vary in terms of shape across different regions even though they were made of the same material. Clay icons usually refer to human figures made of clay, but its broad definition also includes the realistic expressions of animals, everyday objects, and houses in addition to the human figure. Ancient people chose proper objects and turned them into clay icons to which they projected their instinct of the preservation of the species, desire towards the superego, hope to repel evil, and desire to live forever. Shilla's clay icons reflect the spirit and life of our ancestors and further their concept of the present and life after death. Although they are small in size being 10cm or so, they fully deliver the artists' emotions and wishes. The Shilla people granted meanings only to the parts they were interested in or in need of. For purposes of symbolization, they adopted such formative techniques as exaggeration, emphasis, distortion, and simplification. Shilla's clay icons are the incantation of the Shilla people's wish for fecundity, prosperity and other wishes, and the representation of their permanent world view of life through death. It is the usual case that they present the Shilla people's simple emotions and lifestyle in a natural and distinctive manner based on folk beliefs. The formative aesthetic senses reflected in Shilla's clay icons evolved and were passed down to the celadon, Buddhist statues, and Chinese ink water containers of Goryeo and the small white porcelain whose excellence was widely known in Chosun. In modern days, the formative works of pottery, which was a simple vessel for everyday living in the past, have grown in scope and diversity of shape. Ceramic art on the theme of the human body has also started to take an important position. Considering that the origin of ceramic sculpture of the human body was ancient clay icons, it will be highly essential to examine the clay icons excavated in many countries and Shilla's clay icons in terms of aesthetic values, symbolism, and formative nature to the growth of modern ceramics and the revival of the true meanings and values of traditional Korean ceramics. The investigator decided to represent the modern people and their diverse inner feelings in small clay icons of 10~35cm just as ancient people represented their spirit and lifestyle in their clay icons. I examined the lifestyles and mental states of modern people in depth in order to express them into formative aspects. Living in modern times, people enjoy material richness and convenience thanks to rapid advancements in science and machinery, but at the same time, suffer from spiritual dearth and emptiness caused by human isolation, solitude, anxiety, and loss of humanity in the midst of their material richness. Being chased by painfully busy daily routines, they have lost their mental stability and wander around with no direction. We naturally find their isolation, anxiety, loss, and nihility familiar to us because they are our self-portraits. Realizing that the inner conflicts and loss of ego do happen to all of us, I expressed the inner problems and the inner world of humans in the various shapes of the human body. In the creative process, I focused on pure formative compositions and image expressions rather than concepts, ideas, or thinking methods. By adopting bold exaggerations and omissions observed in Shilla's clay icons, I tried to imbue the human body with many different emotions. I also told a story about the life of modern people by depicting their tiring daily lives and diverse inner sides including life and death, tragedy and comedy, man and woman, hope and anxiety, love and hatred, and success and failure. I hope that my clay icons will help today's modern people reassure the existential value of humans through their representative images, restore their lost ego and humanity by overcoming isolation, loss, despair, and helplessness, and lead a human life. I also intended to inherit and continue the traditional beauty of Korea by modifying Shilla's clay icons in modern senses.