• The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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• no.2
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• pp.27-48
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• 2004

Robert Rauschenberg's artistic career has often been regarded as having reached its culmination when the artist won the first prize at the 1964 Venice Biennale. With this victory, Rauschenberg triumphantly entered the pantheon of all-American artists and firmly secured his position in the history of American art. On the other hand, despite the artist's ongoing new experiments in his art, the seemingly precocious ripeness in his career has led the critical discourses on Rauschenberg's art to the artist's early works, most of which were done in the mid-1950s and the 1960s. The crux of Rauschenberg criticism lies not only in focusing on the artist's 50's and 60's works, but also in its large dismissal of the significance of the imagery that the artist employed in his works. As art historians Roger Cranshaw and Adrian Lewis point out, the critical discourse of Rauschenberg either focuses on the formalist concerns on the picture plane, or relies on the "culturalist" interpretation of Rauschenberg's imagery which emphasizes the artist's "Americanness." Recently, a group of art historians centered around October has applied Charles Sanders Peirce's semiotics as art historical methodology and illuminated the indexical aspects of Rauschenberg's work. The semantic inquiry into Rauschenberg's imagery has also been launched by some art historians who seek the clues in the artist's personal context. The first half of this essay will examine the previous criticism on Rauschenberg's art and the other half will discuss the artist's 1955 work Rebus, which I think intersects various critical concerns of Rauschenberg's work, and yet defies the closure of discourses in one direction. The categories of signs in the semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce and the discourse of Jean-Francois Lyotard will be used in discussing the meanings of Rebus, not to search for the semantic readings of the work, hut to make an analogy in terms of the paradoxical structures of both the work and the theory. The definitions of rebus is as follows: Rebus 1. a representation or words or syllables by pictures of object or by symbols whose names resemble the intended words or syllables in sound; also: a riddle made up wholly or in part of such pictures or symbols. 2. a badge that suggests the name of the person to whom it belongs. Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged. Since its creation in 1955, Robert Rauschenberg's Rebus has been one of the most intriguing works in the artist's oeuvre. This monumental 'combine' painting($6feet{\times}10feet$ 10.5 inches) consists of three panels covered with fabric, paper, newspaper, and printed reproductions. On top of these, oil paints, pencil and crayon drawings connect each section into a whole. The layout of the images is overall horizontal. Starting from a torn election poster, which is partially read as "THAT REPRE," on the far left side of the painting. Rebus leads us to proceed from the left to the right, the typical direction of reading in a Western context. Along with its seemingly proper title. Rebus, the painting has triggered many art historians to seek some semantic readings of it. These art historians painstakingly reconstruct the iconography based on the artist's interviews, (auto)biography, and artistic context of his works. The interpretation of Rebus varies from a 'image-by-image' collation with a word to a more general commentary on Rauschenberg's work overall, such as a work that "bridges between art and life." Despite the title's allusion to the legitimate purpose of the painting as a decoding of the imagery into sound, Rebus, I argue, actually hinders a reading of it. By reading through Peirce to Rauschenberg, I will delve into the subtle anxiety between words and images in their works. And on this basis, I suggest Rauschenberg's strategy in playing Rebus is to hide the meaning of the imagery rather than to disclose it.

• The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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• no.13
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• pp.73-95
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• 2012

In terms of element and process, art today has already been fully systemized, yet tends to become even more systemized. All phases of creation and exhibition, appreciation and education, promotion and marketing are planned, adjusted, and decided within the order of a globalized, networked system. Each phase is executed, depending on the system of management and control and diverse means corresponding to the system. From the step of education, artists are guided to determine their styles and not be motivated by their desire to become star artists or running counter to mainstream tendency and fashion. In the process of planning an exhibition, the level of artist awareness is considered more significant than work quality. It is impossible to avoid such systems and institutions today. No one can escape or be freed from the influence of such system. This discussion addresses a serious distortion in the selection system as part of the system connotatively called "art museum system," especially to evaluate artistic achievement and aesthetic quality. Called "studio system" or "art star system," the system distinguishes successful minority from failed absolute majority and justifies the results, deciding discriminative compensations. The discussion begins from work by Hunter Jonakin and Dan Perjovschi. The key point of this discussion is not their art worlds but the shared truth referred by the two as the collusive "art market" and "art star system." Through works based on their experiences, the two artists refer to these systems which restrict and confine them. Jonakin's Jeff Koons Must Die! is avideo game conveying a critical comment on authoritative operation of the museum system and star system. In this work, participants, whether viewer or artist, are destined to lose: the game is unwinnable. Players take the role of a person locked in a museum where artist Jeff Koons' retrospective is held. The player can either look around and quietly observe the works, which causes a game-over, or he can blow the classical paintings to pieces and cause the artist Koons to come out and reprimand the player, also resulting in a game-over. Like Jonakin, Dan Perjovschi's some drawings also focuses on the status of the artist shrunken by the system. Most artists are ruined in a process of competition to survive within the museum system. As John Burger properly pointed out, out of the art systems today, public collections (art museums) and private collections have become "something unbearable." The system justifies the selection system of art stars and its frame of reference, disregarding the problem of producing numerable victims in its process. What should be underlined above all else is that the present selection system seriously shrinks art's creative function and its function of generating meaning. In this situation, art might fall to the level of entertainment, accessible to more people and compromising with popularity. This discussion is based on assumption and consciousness on the matter that this situation might cause catastrophic results for not only explicit victims of the system but also winners, or ones defined as winners. The system of art is probably possible only by desire or distortion stemmed from such desire. The system can be flourished only under the economic system of avarice: quantitatively expanding economy, abundant style, resort economy in Venice and Miami, and luxurious shopping malls with up-to-date facilities. The catastrophe here is ongoing, not a sudden emergence, and dynamic, leading the system itself to a devastating end.

• Journal of Service Research and Studies
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.1-18
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• 2022

This study was conducted to prove that the service philosophy is the development principle of human society in the service age. From ancient times to the present, the service philosophy was tried to show the wisdom of the development of human society in all earth spaces including the East and the West. In addition, it tried to prove that the service philosophy was at the center of the development wisdom of many countries and individuals who flickered on all space on earth and all human time. The study showed that the differences between countries were in software rather than hardware. Furthermore, it was analyzed that countries with a service philosophy embedded in the center of software such as spirit and culture made a great contribution to human society. The cases of Greece and Rome, the Republic of Venice, the Republic of the Netherlands, followed by the United States and modern Korea prove this, and the Soviet Union can be seen to disprove it. The former was a society in which state-run software was strong, and the latter was a society in which hardware was strong. There is a big difference between the case of the state, which citizens have autonomously organized and operated, and the case of the upper-level state-led operation. Since the leadership of the upper classes is not based on the service philosophy, the accumulated software power is weak, so it can be said that the accumulation of wisdom in human society is weak. Therefore, while the essence of human society so far has been a society of self-centered animal ecosystems led by selfishness, the human society in the service age from now on can be said to be a society of plant ecosystems where mutual respect and self-centeredness coexist. Just as the society centered on the service philosophy in the past human society prospered and left a greater legacy to mankind, it is suggested that the human society in the future service era should be a human society of a plant ecosystem centered on the service philosophy. Further in-depth studies related to this are needed in the future.