‘日本美術像’의 變遷 = Images of Japanese Art in Transition : How the West Perceived the Essence of Oriental Aesthetics from the "Impressionistic" Interpretation to the Controversy of Oriental Aesthetics (1880-1940)

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

How did Westerners conceive and fancy Japanese art and its history? And, how did the Japanese react to Western representations of Japanese art? These are the questions to which this paper tries to provide some answers by framing an analysis in an historical perspective. The pioneering investigations into Japanese art and its history began in the second half of the nineteenth century. In the first phase of Western attempts at interpreting Japanese art the Japonisant-Impressionistic view was predominant (1880-1900). While many French Japonisant critics praised Hokusai as standing on the highest peak of Japanese art history, main stream Anglo-Saxon connoisseurs refused to agree with the French and put more emphasis on ink painters like Sesshu, as the incarnation of Japanese Quatrocento. This was faithful to the Anglo-American predilection to the Italian Renaissance. From the fm de siecle, the decorative aspects of Japanese art came into the Westem focus in the vogue of Art nouveau, but these impressionistic or/and decorative interpretations were rejected by Japanes authorities which consciously emphasized classical aspects of Japanese Art, The first official version of Japanese art history, L' Histoire de I' art du Japon was published first in French translation at the occasion of the Parisian World Fair in 1900. In this book, as well as in the accompanying exhibition, the Buddhist antiquities were conspicuously put to the fore so as to convince Western observers of the presence of the heretofore unrevealed treasures of Oriental art as specimens which could stand in rivalry with Greco-Roman masterpieces. While the Japanese tried to boast of their millenarian aesthetic tradition, the japonisrne fever faded out rapidly in the Occident. At the turn of the twentieth century, European taste took a keener interest in the Expressionistic and mystical aspects of Orienal art. This tendency and preference for medieval Zen Buddhism, which was mainly concocted in the Gem1aI1 speaking world, is still dominant today. In the 1920s, under a cosmopolitan climate, many Western intellectuals (like Romain Roland or Herman Hesse) experienced an "awakening" to the Orient, which included China and India, and attempts were made to establish A History of World Art in which the Orient was supposed to occupy an equal position (Henri Focillon or Rene Grousset). Almost simultaneously, some Asian scholars remarked on the similarities between Expressionist art theory and Oriental tradition, which resulted in the nationalistic reaction that can be characterized as the "return to the Orient" by the Asiatics in the 1930s. When Spengler s "Decline of the West" appears, it served as a rallying cry for Asia -centnc ideologies that sought to formulate their own "Oriental aesthetics" as an antithesis to Westem aesthetics (feng Zikai, Kinbara Shogo etc} By chronologically tracing these transitions in Western aesthetic appreciations of Japanese art and the Oriental reactions to them, the paper tries to critically clarity the cultural as well as the political background which brought about controversies and vicissitudes in value judgments on things Oriental.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• 들어가기
• 印象主義적 日本美學의 성립
• 세기말 美學과 裝飾의 나라 日本
• 日本側의 公式 自畵像의 형성: ‘古代’의 創成
• 禪 예술관과 신비주의적 해석
• ‘東洋’에 대한 각성
• 表現主義와 東洋回歸
• 코스모폴리티즘과 國粹的 反動: 세계미술사의 構想
• 결론을 대신하여
• ABSTRACT