This thesis analyzes the motive for creation, the theoretical basis, formative characteristics, and expression techniques for my works produced under the themes of 'self-denial' and 'surrealism' from 2011 to 2021 and aims to present them in a systemat...
This thesis analyzes the motive for creation, the theoretical basis, formative characteristics, and expression techniques for my works produced under the themes of 'self-denial' and 'surrealism' from 2011 to 2021 and aims to present them in a systematic manner.
A life is a long journey in which happiness and unhappiness are intertwined like warp and weft. Since it is impossible to make every moment happy or unhappy, each human being has a bright side within his or her mind as well as a dark one. To me, painting is to examine the dark side inside me. Because I was able to confront myself when I faced the dark side, the confrontation made me reflect on and overcome this as an opportunity. This experience was the driving force of my life and I found myself hardened. When we are having a hard time, we feel anxiety, depression, guiltiness and so on. I also felt these emotions during the period when I look into the inner side, but I felt something different than simply deepening the emotions. The reason I consider this feeling special is that I have moved on to philosophical and fundamental concerns such as questions about the reality of the mind and the world I perceive. I would like to explain this complex thought with the word 'self-denial'.
The self-denial mentioned in this paper has a double meaning. As the opposite of self-affirmation in psychology, it refers to a moment when the mind is painful. But it also refers to a state of being free from the anguish and obsession which is aimed for in religions or philosophy. I did not dismiss self-denial as a self-torturing emotion, but as one of the natural emotions of humans and approached from various viewpoints, looking at both the positive and negative aspects of self-denial. I would like to say through the research that the feelings of self-denial are not only painful, but also a positive device to discover oneself who has grown further.
The purpose of this study, which started with this motivation, is to find elements that the public can sympathize with from the self-denying emotions they feel in their lives and to derive the value and significance of my works by looking through the works of artists with similar motivations. Through this, I intend to establish my own formative language and explore the direction of subsequent work.
The subject of self-denial was expressed in a surrealistic image and presented in three series. In the first series, the nature was reconstructed and expressed in blue to capture 'worries' about the world. In the second series, a symbol was given to a mermaid to express the 'desire' to escape the world. The third series expresses the 'will' to accept and overcome the world without limitations in materials and form.
The structure of the thesis is as follows.
Chapter I describes the purpose and content of the study and analyzes previous studies to reveal the importance of the study.
Chapter Ⅱ is a theoretical background and philosophically examines self-denying emotions and logics of human beings, which are the basis for the production of the works. It divides self-denial into positive and negative interpretations and analyzes how it is interpreted in philosophy for each case.
Chapter III is the description of my works and explains the formative expression of each series by dividing the thoughts on self-denying emotions into three series. It also describes various art trends and theories influenced to reveal the motivation for creating works and shaping my thoughts.
Chapter Ⅳ is a formal description of my works. It is divided into erasing techniques, traditional techniques, and other techniques to describe the characteristics of expression techniques, materials, and production processes in detail. The erasing technique describes the meaning and the process of the erasing, a technique I devised.
Chapter V summarizes the contents of the thesis and describes the results and significance of the research. In addition, the limitations of the study and follow-up studies are suggested to discuss the future direction of my work.
The results of the study are summarized as follows. First, I was able to find elements that could sympathize with the public in my work, which expressed the suffering that occupies various moments of our lives and the emotion of self-denial that comes from it. Philosophy and religion held that suffering is the essence of life and that the source of suffering comes from attachment to oneself. Therefore, self-denial is the emotions that all human beings can feel in their daily life. Second, it developed the negative inner side of human beings, which artists have expressed since the past, into an original technique. By implementing the erasing technique using traditional oriental painting materials, the purpose of modern transformation of the oriental painting was achieved. Third, through the process of grafting my work with theories of various fields such as history, philosophy, religion, and art, it was an opportunity to organize my work consistently. Through this, I was able to explore the direction to develop my work.