게인즈버러의 영상 상자와 18세기 광학 장치에 관한 연구 = A Study on Gainsborough’s Show Box and the 18th Century Optical Devices

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship of the art and technology focusing on the case of Thomas Gainsborough. This representative figure of the 18th century English Painting invented a ‘show box’ in the early 1780s. It was a device which consists of candle-lit wooden box with a lens and oil landscape paintings on glass slides. Gainsborough’s intension was to make an illusion which was constantly changed with the light effects and loose brushwork. The spectator viewed the transparencies through a large round peep-hole, fitted with a magnifying lens. He also used this device as a trial work-out for a major composition. Unlike the Renaissance tradition of linear perspective system, the optical devices and perspective systems of Gainsborough’s era were to represent the world image as in time and motion.
Gainsborough’s show box was highly influenced by the technology-based theatre culture and popular spectacles of London life. One of these spectacles was Loutherbourg’s Eidophusikon, a miniature theatre with special effect of light and movement. He was an French painter and scenographer who created an new forms of stagecraft during his time in the Drury Lane theatre. Loutherbourg’s theatrical entertainments integrated the virtual reality of the scenic illusion with the special effect of light, sound, and movement. As a result, a new realism encouraged the viewers to be absorbed into the illusion the theatrical world. He proceeded further in Eidophusikon, where the scenic illusion itself is a protagonist of the performances. Such scaenographic entertainments became very popular in the late 18th century London. the panorama theatres and Dioramas are other examples which provided artificial imitations of the actual world, by means of new vantage points and moving sceneries.
While the traditional linear perspective system and mechanical devices the Renaissance and Baroque painters used were means to visualize the objective form of the world, the optical devices and illusionistic technologies of the 18th century were to grasp the constantly shifting images of the world. Gainsborough’s show box and contemporary optical media of the theatrical entertainments are fine examples where the aesthetic intension achieved with the help of the mechanical illusions. The virtual reality of these devices reveals an acute sense of time and movement in our visual perception, which became the fundamental feature of the English Romantic landscape paintings after Gainsborough.

국문 초록 (Abstract)

인즈버러의 영상 상자는 18세기 말 영국 사회에서 자연과 세계에 대한 인식이 어떻게 변화되었는지 보여주는 사례이다. 당시 영국 사회는 급속한 경제 성장과 더불어서 중산층 시민들을 위한 여흥거리들이 급속도로 발전했으며, 극장 무대를 비롯해서 다양한 영상 장치들이 보편화되기 시작했다. 이 분야에서 선도적인 역할을 했던 루테르부르의 에이도푸시콘을 비롯해서 다양한 광학 장치들이 연극의 무대 구조와 회화의 표현기법, 전시 형태 등을 변화시켰다. 광학 이론과 도구들을 회화 기법에 활용한 것은 르네상스 이후 유럽 화가들 사이에서 지속되어 온 관행이었으나 18세기 말에 이르게 되면 그 변화 양상은 새로운 전환기를 맞이하게 된다. 선 원근법을 통해서 시점과 시야를 고정하고 회화의 프레임 안에서 자연의 영속적인 이미지를 재현하려던 기존의 표현 방식 대신에 빛과 시점의 변화에 따라서 시시각각으로 변화하는 자연 현상의 순간성과 연극적 효과, 가상성을 추구하는 이러한 경향은 영국 낭만주의 풍경화 장르가 발전하는 토대가 되었다.

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