Toward Image: The politics of 'Non-representation' in contemporary art criticism

재현에서 이미지로: 현대 미술비평의 탈재현 전략

The politics penetrating through the contemporary art since modernism to postmodernism is to accomplish the 'Non-representation' in the artworks. This study argues that postmodernism did not put an end to the formalistic feature of modernism but intended to accomplish it. Modernist art aimed at purity, i.e. self-referential and self-definition art advocated by Clement Greenberg, and it carne to the end by accomplishing flatness and materiality. It was an 'evasion to the matter' which allocated the object from visuality of outer object to the psychic image of the subject. It failed being 'non-representational' as what it really achieved was transition of object. Jean Baudrillard's theory tried to overcome the representational quality by 'being simulacre'. In the representative artworks of the past, the meaning of artworks was reverted under the outer context or object. The meaning again failed being 'Non-representational' as it was restored to the psychic image of the subject in modernist artworks where the definite illusion was demolished Meanwhile, artwork advocating simulacre acquired Non-representational quality by liberating from both models. It did not deconstruct the self-referential tendency of modernism but maximized the Non-representational modernistic principle. After creating 'Non-representation' through simulacre, the existential status and function of an artwork is the inclination and moral of contemporary art as 'Non-representation'. The image theory of Henri Bergson sets the existential status of 'image' as it does not belong to either subject nor object. It provides significant foundation for arguing the existential status of simulacre. Moreover, though an artwork as a fragment forming a movement image in the world cannot represent the object, it can however sustain certain kind of fractal resemblance with the world by letting the two parties communicate. The theory of sense by Gilles Deleuze is of profound significance as it specifically indicated way how the stage of absorption through the unity of subject and object is realized in forms of artworks, and configured the latent and invisible energy.