This paper analyzes six different ways of articulating the relationship between art and politics. It calls attention to the differences that lurk behind the seemingly simple phrase—everywhere in vogue today—the “politics of aesthetics.” Five of these models are drawn from contemporary discussions regarding the politics of art. The last model is the attempt to develop an account of the politics of aesthetics that is faithful to the difficult and ambiguous dimensions of the aesthetic experience that were hinted at by the texts of classical philosophical aesthetics. Most notably, this paper is concerned with the idea that the aesthetic experience can be understood as a form of disinterested contemplation—one that is not reducible to cognitive or moral considerations—and with some of the consequences that this entails. It explores some of the political significance that can be attributed to this idea of disinterested contemplation, arguing that the aesthetic should be understood as a withdrawal from the world’s pre-established meanings. Unlike some of the other thinkers discussed in this paper, this author doubts that a single, uniform meaning can be ascribed to the aesthetic experience. I thus argue that we need to approach the aesthetic through the networks of textual significance that have been built up around it. Throughout this paper, I attempt to explain how the efforts to link art and aesthetics to politics simultaneously give rise to ideas about the nature of the human community. In looking at the sixth and final model, what I have called the “anarchical politics of aesthetic ambiguity,” I argue that the aesthetic tradition offers a rather unique way of understanding the relationship between the individual and the community. Here, we see that the aesthetic is prone to a number of paradoxes, central among them the one that makes art the bearer of a solipsistic pleasure in which we nevertheless discover our capacity for genuinely communicating with others, outside of clichés and banalities.
키워드
AestheticsPoliticsthe Politics of AestheticsCommunityDissensusConsensusDisinterested ContemplationPolitical Art
한국미술이론학회는 미술이론의 고유한 역할과 방향을 모색하고자 창립되었다. 미술창작과 해석에 필요한 제반이론을 생산하고 다양한 미술현장의 활동을 검증하고 비판하며 연구하는 학회로서 미술의 이론과 실제사이의 분리현상을 극복하는데 기여하고자 한다. 현재 미술관련 학회들의 성격이 대부분 이론영역에 치중해있고, 학과나 전공에 특화되어 있는데 반하여, 본 학회는 미술의 현장과 창작과정을 적극 반영하고 미학, 미술사 등 기존의 미술이론 영역 뿐 아니라 실기와 미술교육, 경영, 행정, 전시 등 다양한 분야를 총괄하는 학제 간 연구를 활성화시키고자 한다. 앞으로 다양한 미술이론 영역에 대한 심도 있는 연구는 물론 한국미술계의 발전과 변화에 조력할 수 있는 실천적이고 생산적인 미술이론의 형성에 본 학회는 최선을 다할 것이다.