• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.898-918
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• 2022

Contemporary fashion research has paid increasing attention to the sublimity in the context of postmodernism. Sublimity is considered essential in contemporary fashion design as it arouses complex emotions which verbal expression cannot describe. Therefore, contemporary fashion designs need to be interpreted in terms of the sublimity. Through a detailed review of literature, the present study discusses Kantian and Lyotardian sublimity as main theories representing conventional and cotemporary concepts of sublimity. This paper selected five Korean fashion designers who won the prize of Samsung Design Fund from 2006 to 2019 and actively introduce their works every year. Images were collected to analyze their designs introduced from 2018 S/S to 2019F/W at their website. In addition, formative and color characteristics were analyzed to identify the changing features of s sublimity. Major findings of analyses are as follows. First, all designers' collections reflected both male and female sublimity with the respect to its formative characteristics. Color characteristics of sublimity indicated that Jeong, Wook Jun's collections represented features of male sublimity and other designers works showed elements of female sublimity. Essentially, the typical contemporary concept of the sublimity was found in the designs of Seo, Hye In. Consequently, female sublimity is more inclusive than male sublimity, while being opened to otherness.

• Journal of Science of Art and Design
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• v.3
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• pp.178-224
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• 2001

This thesis aims to suggest the notion of the sublime as one of the common elements of contemporary plastic arts, as a new key for the reading of our visual environment. The concept of sublimity has been one of important categories in traditional aesthetics since the eighteenth century; beyond the domain of this tradition, however, it is rigorously investigated in sociology, literary criticism, visual art theory and post-structuralist philosophy, especially the investigation of post-modern conditions by Jean-Fran cois Lyotard. Jean-Fran cois Lyotard defines sublimity as the elemental feature of the late twentieth century visual arts based on post-structuralism and suggests the feeling of the sublime as dominant sensibility in post-modern society. According to Lyotard, the sublime is a contradictory feeling of pleasure mixed with suffering as in the theory of experimental avant-gardes; the post-modern sublimity is the feeling of suffering or agony when we feel in confronting the new and the unknown. The investigation of the sublime based on Lyotard's perspectives, therefore, is meaningful in decoding contemporary visual arts. This investigation, therefore, mainly deals with the post-modern concept of the sublime and contemporary visual arts viewed in the sublime.