미술작품에 나타난 공포의 표현과 심리적 이해에 관한 연구 = (A)Study on the expression and psychological understanding of FEAR shown in the works of art

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

A study on the expression and psychological understanding of FEAR shown in the works of art


Park, Sun-Young
Major in Arts Education
Graduate School of Education
Korea University
Supervised by Prof. Rhee, Ki-Bong

Before modern times, most of the expressions of fear shown in a work of art have largely been modified as the term of ''anxiety''. However, the direct expression of excessive aggressiveness and cruelty shown in modern art will make more appropriate use of the term of ''fear'' with a clear concrete object of threat rather than the term of ''anxiety'' as the unclear fear without any concrete object of threat. It is because some forms shown in the art related to fear are thought to provoke an instantaneous sense of fear even momentarily rather than bring about an unclear sense of uneasiness.
Fear attracts a person''s attention as a new genre in a cultural area today. The term of ''fear'' in fine art is replaced by an academic term symbolized by psychologists, which is also applied to explaining the works of expressing it. The typical examples include Sigmund Freud''s concept of the uncanny -anxious strangeness- and Julia Kristeva''s abjection-humbleness and sickeningness.
As the key word in this thesis fear is emotional condition of terror and dread. It responds to a particular object and situation, but occurs in most of people. Thus, it is the universal emotion and object to overcome. Freud who associated it with human instinct said that it was generated by the fear felt by human consciousness for unsatisfied, oppressed desire to be released to the outside.
Fear is the one which most of people want to turn their faces away from and evade, whether consciously or unconsciously. However, in the area of art, a group of artists create works by using it as their own expressive language. This study presupposes the question of ''why'' regarding it, and aims at clarifying the understanding of their inner motives. It did not use an analysis of artists or an aesthetic viewpoint but a psychological approach. It presented from a consistent viewpoint the theories of the psychologists with the view that fear was associated with human oppressed instinct.
The researcher derived the following conclusions from the study.
fear shown in a work of art is not from the outside but from the artist''s own inside by human alienated instinct. Artists recognize themselves as fully integrated beings and try to achieve the purpose of existential pursuit through accepting and acknowledging instead of denying and oppressing consciously the fact that fear is generated in their own inside. The works which express it also reflect the times and the society which they belong to, from which I could also get the conclusion that the works were intended to awaken human violence and cruelty shown by the times and the society.
If one aspect of human alienated, oppressed instinct generates fear as mentioned as a presupposition and conclusion in this thesis, I think that more studies on what are symbolized by the works which express fear will need to be made in various domains, and expect that more useful, better studies will be made later.