An artist, Oh Yun(1946~86)’s theory of people’s art during his final period issummed up in his essay ‘Expansion of Artistic Imagination and World’(1985).Emphasizingthe mystic and traditional characteristics of Oh Yun’s artistic oeuvre during his final period,some critics focus on Oh Yun’s experience of medical treatment and shamanistic custom atJin Do island, and his belief in Jeung San Do, the dao of Jeung-san, the Ruler of theUniverse. However, they forget the practical intention and implication of his theory of artduring his final period, which aimed to overcome the contradiction of revelation itself. Oh Yun’s essay criticized the loss of artistic imagination and the ignorance oftraditional culture that resulted from the elevation of science to a religion, and insisted thatthe stereotyped idealism, scientism and elitism in art should be overcome in order torecover the full reality in realism and to continue traditional cultures. The essay iscomprised of 18 paragraphs. Oh Yun criticized monochromatic art, conceptual art, hyper-realistic art, objet d’art,and neo-dadaist art, saying that they were simply mechanical forms of modern art derivedfrom scientism and a fetishistic lens culture. In addition, he criticized naturalism in art,which had continued as a tendency in the development of western art, for the samereason. He pointed out that even the world of realism had been diminished by elitestereotypes and diagrams. He declared the need to overcome the imitation of shells orstereotyped propaganda, and recover full realism, which seems to have started with areflective examination of current problems in ‘Reality and Utterance’, in which heparticipated. Especially, he thought that universality and the extension of full realism could be achieved by building on the views of traditional cultures, which is meaningful. This logic issame as the theory of epic theatre that Bertolt Brecht(1898~1956)has developed under theancient Greek masque and Pieter Bruegel the Elder(1525~69)’s story-like picture style. Theuniversality of realism and the extension of acquisition to include incantation art,rather thanmove toward incantation art, is what Oh Yun intended to propose in ‘Artistic Imagination’.This attitude is same as Bertolt Brecht’s aesthetic viewpoint in the 1930s. But regrettably,Oh Yun’s style wording, which seems covert and far-sighted, is often misunderstood as‘mysticism’. In the flow of people’s art in the 1980s, Oh Yun was a traditionalist in a narrowsense, and an realist in a broad sense. However, his critical mind, which comprehendstradition and reality, was attempting to expand universality and extend full realism, and thisattempt found many sympathizers and had an influence on the next generation of people’sartists, such as 「Levee」which is field-centered, to which we should pay attention. Thismeans that while their works thought about ‘tradition’, we should be careful not to connectthem with‘aesthetic conservatism’or ‘classical art’. This is the why the meaning of Oh Yun’stheory of art during his final period should be closely examined again.

Ⅰ. 서론
 Ⅱ. 텍스트 다시 읽기 — 과학의 종교화와 상투성에 갇혀진세계
 Ⅲ. 표층적 언설 — 물신숭배적 렌즈문화와 기계적·경향적현대미술 비판
 Ⅳ. 심층적 내포 — 지식인의 자만과 상투적 도식성에 대한거부
 Ⅴ. 자기반성적 전망 — 총체적 리얼리즘
 Ⅵ. 전통의 이해와 계승 문제
 Ⅶ. 결론
 참고문헌
 Abstract

• 박계리(한국전통문화연구소 연구원) | Park, Carey