The purpose of this research is to describe the change of historical meaning and new effort displayed in contemporary jewelry compared to traditional precious jewelries. I investigated and arranged the historically evident data to highlight the advent...
The purpose of this research is to describe the change of historical meaning and new effort displayed in contemporary jewelry compared to traditional precious jewelries. I investigated and arranged the historically evident data to highlight the advent and development of modern art jewelry. I put the fundamental research background on arrangement of cultural value of modern jewelry particularly focusing on the European and
American artists who are influenced by modernism. Especially in the history of 20th century's contemporary jewelry, 1960s to 1980s are known as the most revolutionary era. I examined emotional background and detailed examples of the world-renowned artists who were distinguished in that particular era. As a result of the research, I found that such new movement had its background on several significant social phenomena: numerous people earned an opportunity to receive high education because of economic boom and social equality occurred in 1960s; new artists with new philosophy and radical expression arose with the drastic increase of art schools, and began to challenge the fixed idea of jewelries that the former generation accomplished, and continued to expand their ideas. Since it was the time in which new materials developed in the overall fields of design and novel techniques to handle them were actively researched, the traditional value of jewelry that symbolized wealth and social position jumped to a movement to grope for new and radical meanings as well as the effective use of diverse materials. Accordingly, I gave an overview of the influence that modern art had on jewelry artists in the early 20th century, and inquired into the formation of mutual relation between modern arts and jewelry. Based on such analysis, I researched what kind of indigenous cultural background and characteristic that modern jewelry solidified the foundation on in order to develop, and groped for that the possibility of its aesthetic expression to expand.