Page 9 - 김남표 개인전 2023. 5. 10 – 5. 30 나마갤러리

The Open “Place” and the Horizontal Sublime

In the early 1980s, the reinstatement of painting settled as an agenda in the United States and Europe. At the exhibition A New Spirit in Painting (1981) held
at the Royal Academy of Arts in London as well as the exhibition Zeitgeist (1982) held in Berlin, the new paintings presented by Georg Baselitz (1938-), Anselm
Kiefer (1945-) and Sigmar Polke (1941-2010) emerged as an attention-attracting issue in the art world. On the other hand, in the United States, Eric Fischl (1948-
) and Julian Schnabel (1951-) led in heralding the advent of postmodernism. Another discussion that intensified during this period originated from the event
where photography began to take center stage of contemporary art. The topic of discussion centered on Jeff Wall (1945-) and Cindy Sherman (1954-) dealt
with sentimentalism, which may have brought diversity to the realm of painting, but it failed to reinforce painting. Here, the reinstatement of painting refers to
figurative painting. Before this period when painting was reinstated, a series of aspects that were following abstract expressionism, minimalism, and pop art
after having undergone modernism drove figurative painting to expulsion.

The teleological cosmovision of Aristotle (384 B.C.-322 B.C.) in which the world history continues under certain purposes and fulfills such purposes serves as the
foundation of theology. However, the mathematics and physics-based cosmovision overturned the teleological worldview. Modernism is the result of the event
where science replaced theology. In a word, modernism is the secularization of theology. Modernism locks the value of the other-worldly in the perspective of
this-worldly. It also denies the supernatural world, proclaims the death of God, and drags down vertical values to a horizontal level. The greatest thing about the
worldview prior to modernity can be found in the fact that it presumed “a maximally perfect being (ens perfectissimum)” and formed the concept of which the
universe had been established in hierarchical stages. The history of modern science is the result of a process they had been persuading that science displays far
more reliable results for reality compared to the sacred Bible. Science is almost similar to modern belief, namely, the modern pace. Science only the explainable
world as substance while ignoring the systems of the vertical dimension valued by people until then, such as values, meaning, purposes, qualities, the invisible
and the superiors, etc. Science or modern belief, after all, is no different from the secularization of metaphysics.

Modernist painting is a manifestation of nihilism in that it does not involve any purpose (God’s purpose) on the other side of the world. Abstract expressionism
was a continuation of nihilism in the sense that it pulled out images from the abyss of the unconscious, while minimalism, which applied the concept of
placement of industrial processes to art, is considered deepened dramatic nihilism. On the other hand, pop art was also another expression of nihilism as a style
with sharpened materialism.

Entering the 1980s, movies such as Star Wars (1977), The Godfather (1972), Mad Max (1979), and Blade Runner (1982) began to overwhelm pure art in terms of
spectacle and narrative. The paintings posterior to the 1980s had the obligation to express the world of truth untold by the films. Some paintings revealed the
origins of culture and history (Anselm Kiefer), while some maniested the meaning of the human hands going beyond machines (Gerhard Richter). At the same
time, paintings also spoke about the possibility of elevating the statues of human existence through allegory (Sigmar Polke).

What happens in Korea is quite similar to these phenomena. Modernist-centered painting tried to rely on traditional thinking by strengthening the concept of
“valuing the root,” while Minjung art strived to find the best way to express how people were struggling in harsh reality. However, the former had a hard time
finding justification in the content, while the latter suffered from absence of aesthetic forms. It was because the remarkable understanding of Agnes Martin
(1912-2004) with respect to Taoist philosophy was much more profound than ours, and the love of David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974) for the people was far
truer than ours. Moreover, sentimentalism through photography was gradually arriving in Korea. Sentimentalism is ambivalent. It is positive in that it enriches
diversity, but negative in that it tends to fragment consciousness.

Here, we ought to remember the great proposition argued by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804): “Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts
are blind.” 1) The same way, content must be balanced with concept in the world of painting as well. We call a painting that has attained a perfect equilibrium
in terms of both content and concept “a masterpiece.” Kim Nampyo (1970-) considered restoring painting balanced with content and concept. Neither purism
under the banner of modernism, nor art for life asserted by Minjung art, or the features of photography that intends to directly convey individual emotivity,

1) Copleston, Frederick, A History of Philosophy: Wolff to Kant Vol.6(Burns & Oates: Wellwood, 1999), p. 247.:

7