The semiotic, one of Julia Kristeva's most important propositions, refers extensively to the pre-Oedipal phase, which signifies the beautiful chaos that cannot be fully described by the discipline of the symbolic. The semiotic released in the symbolic expands the limit of the subject and society, exhibiting the revolutionary power, which provides possibilities of exits, and brings about changes. By de-constructing coercive order, this revolutionary power elicits the lawless ethics where no empowered law exists. Kristeva regards art as atypical passage, through which the semiotic can come to the fore even in the symbolic. In contrast especially to literature that uses language as a medium, visual art can surpass the linguistic limitation because it is positioned as 'the thing going beyond a name even without a name' in the symbolic. Focusing on Jackson Pollock, Hans Haacke, and Robert Wilson, this paper examines the stereoscopic understanding of the semiotic, which Kristeva explained from the perspective of the visual representation of the semiotic. This paper also conducts analysis on Yayoi Kusama's work, which successfully achieves the representation of the semiotic. Art resuscitates the signification of creation and negation, diverging from identity by endlessly de-constructing history, concepts, ideologies, philosophy, and aesthetics, inherited through the representation of the semiotic. Art has the power to subvert the symbolic value system and create a new equilibrium and harmony, thereby conducive to a socio-political revolution. Therefore, art can create a lawless space, which retains a dynamic potential to exclude socio-cultural contrivance.

This paper investigates the biblical and political implications of Ai Weiwei's work entitled <S.A.C.R.E.D.>, which was shown at the 55th Venice Biennale in Venice, Italy, 2013. With the biblical Passion images and metaphor of Christ, Ai is finely depicted as Christ and martyr while having suffered during his detention by Chinese authorities for 81 days. Tracing back to such biblical theme as suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ, Ai has played in six large boxes called Supper, Accusers, Cleansing, Ritual, Entropy, Doubt, into which the viewer can peek to see him eating meal, asleep in bed, taking a shower, on toilet with two uniformed guards. The title is reminiscent of religious artifacts by the Italian Old Masters in the church of Sant'Antonin, which represent the invisible holiness. The installation in individual boxes in the church should be interpreted in the context of Christ's Passion such as Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, Last Supper, Arrest, Mocking, Crucifixion, Deposition, and Lamentation implied in the Stations of the Cross and the Temptations of St Anthony, to whom the church is dedicated. Through the religious images, the viewer can assume Ai's propaganda to the concrete figures of Christ and the Saint to create his own self-portrait. Conceived with the wooden-stool sculpture <Bang> in the German pavilion and with <Straight>, his massive accumulation of crushed rebars from the children's schools collapsed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake at the Zuecca Project Space, Ai in <S.A.C.R.E.D.> can be interpreted as having made a dialogue between the martyr and the dissent artist. <S.A.C.R.E.D.>, Ai's first work made in response to his own trauma and memories during his detention, has surprisingly positioned him as Christ, a saint, and a martyr, although he denied it. This study aims to explore Ai's use of the biblical iconography as metaphor, which reinforces his own torture, claustrophobia, enclosure, surveillance, and humiliation, especially in relation to his detention.

This paper investigates the influence of chronophotography on twentieth-century modern art. Etienne-Jules Marey, nineteenth-century French physiologist, invented chronophotography to analyze the locomotion of animals. Although Marey’s experiments with photography were resulted from his scientific intention to investigate movements, his chronophotography has a substantial impact on twentieth-century art. First of all, French academic artists had corrected the leg positions of galloping horses by referring to photographic records provided by Marey and Eadweard Muybridge. However, scientific instantaneous photography was not well received by the art world. It had to counter fierce criticism from the artists, Auguste Rodin in particular, and writers who believed in artistic conventions. Since Marey’s death, a number of artists have reevaluated the significance of his photography and adopted it in expressing their individual visions of modernity. František Kupka in Puteaux Group was one of the first avant-garde artists who were deeply influenced by Marey’s photography. Marcel Duchamp referred to Marey’s chronophotography, which introduced him to the idea of mechanization as an alternative to a sensible beauty. Italian Futurists also used Marey’s photography as their visual reference to express the dynamic sensation of the passage of time. Giacomo Balla was familiar with Marey’s photography and directly influenced by his chronophotography. While taking Marey’s image as a model, Anton Bragaglia tried to overcome the limit of his instantaneous photography by stressing the continuous trajectory of movement, with which to address photodynamism. Despite its strong impact, Marey’s photography encountered stiff resistance from the art world, which valued the conventions in art over the novelty in technology. It should be noted that Umberto Boccioni criticized Bragaglia’s active use of photography because Boccioni did not accept photography as art medium. The apparent conflicts and ambivalence in accepting Marey’s photography by the Futurists, who promoted the idea of dynamism, show the complex relationship between art and science, art and photography.

This paper examines the Japanese contemporary art’s affinity with subculture by looking into the work of Aida Makoto (1965-), who employs visual and narrative elements drawn from Japanese contemporary subculture in expressing his explicit ‘anti-modern’ or ‘anti-western’ view. The flourishing subculture in contemporary Japanese society could have been resulted from the lack of modernist culture or system. This can be related to the troubling issue of modernity in Japan, which was once the earliest ‘modernized’ nation in Asia, yet totally defeated in WWII. Although the seminar of ‘kindai-no-chokoku (overcoming modernity)’ held in 1942 did not produce any productive discussion on overcoming the west, it served as a theoretical background to justify the Japanese invasionist policy and the eventual fantasy to overcome the West. Upon the forced ending of WWII by the attack of two atomic bombs, however, the issue of modernity in Japan in relation to the west became more complicated. Aida approaches complicated the issue of modernity in Japan by touching on the following four aspects;a hatred of the generalized notion of western modernity, a resistance to Modernism as an artistic style, a cynicism about Japanized Modernist art, and an unresolved relationship between Japan and ‘modernity,’ addressed by ‘kindai-no-chokoku.’ It should be noted that Aida’s adoption of subculture reveals his evasive view avoiding modernist methods. By drawing on Japanese subcultural media such as manga, animation or games, which is largely (science-)fictional, tragi-comic, slapstick or nonsensical, Aida attacks modernism by curtailing its seriousness. Instead of providing a serious criticism of modernism, Aida’s work widens the gap between the historical reality and what is represented. By means of exaggerated and comical attacks, Aida ironically achieves a gradual deconstruction of the authoritarian modern.

Since the publication of Erwin Panofsky's Studies in Iconology in 1939, the controversial term 'iconology' has replaced the conventional term iconography as a new art historical methodology. However, Panofsky's real legacy lies not in the invention of a new methodology, but in the popularization of art history by applying simple terms and a synoptical table of 'iconological interpretation.' Panofsky's concept of iconology was inherited from that of Aby Warburg who extended the methodological boundary of the study of art while focusing on the complexities of social context in the 1910s. By adopting the old term 'iconology' used in a study of artistic symbolism, Warburg coined the term 'ikonologische Analyse,' to explain his method of analyzing visual motifs in connection with social life outside art. Panofsky contributed to popularizing an art historical methodology, with which to interpret visual motifs through a systematic strategy of relating images to concepts, which follows a simple process from 'pre-iconographical description' through 'iconographical analysis' to 'iconological interpretation'. While adapting himself as an immigrant art historian to the unfamiliar academic atmosphere in the Unites States, Panofsky endeavored to make his theory of iconology more lucid and accessible to a general audience. By using major technical terms in English instead of German that conveys a multitude of meanings, Panofsky was able to popularize his art historical methodology. Panofsky's writings made a significant contribution to a shift in art history from an academic discipline to a new object of public interest in the 20th century.

This paper explores a psychoanalytic reading of the characteristics of Nan Goldin's photography. Goldin, as one of the most prominent artists in new documentary photos in America, has been highly evaluated by her subjects of love and death in her tribes, who are mostly homo-sexual, drag queens, AIDS patients, and drug addicts. She emphasizes her work as a visual diary of her daily life, and attempts to capture a proper memory of her entourage. Upon the loss of her old sister Barbara at the age of 13, Nan left her family and began to take photographs as a desperate effort to forget her tragic loss. Her sister Barbara's premature death due to her suicide left her an indelible trauma, on which she has perpetually pondered. Trauma is a type of damage to the psyche that occurs as a result of a severely distressing event. Sigmund Freud theorized it from physical wounds to psychological symptoms, which might be caused by a depressed sexual desire in early ages and repeats unconsciously in dreams and actions. There are debates on its unique characters, which neither be represented, nor properly remembered, nor verbally claimed, nor clearly experienced. However, Michael White and Judith Herman believed that linguistic expressions could help to heal trauma and that making narrative stories about lives could consolidate the role of the subjectivity. Psychoanalytic studies on trauma and its therapy sheds light on Nan Goldin's photographs of her friends with daily routines. The artist might work as the subject of the story telling. However, her photographs lack the context to develop stories, while providing little concrete meanings or messages. Instead, Goldin communicates with the viewer through her feelings to the image. As the narrator, Goldin strengthens herself as the subject of the emotion and it could enhance sympathy between the artist and the viewer.

This paper examines two key elements of “contraction” and “expansion” in relation to the way in which Wonil Rhee used space in his curatorial practice. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze’s notion of "the fold (le pli)" in a close reading of one of his last texts published in 2010, it explores the implication of the elements in the theoretical context of Rhee's curatorial practice. Along with such concepts as “postcolonialism,” “Asianness,” “technology,” and “creative paradox,” the elements serve to deconstruct confrontations between west/non-west, the cultural colonizer/the cultural colonized, thereby challenging conventional boundaries. The logic of resistance and confrontation in Rhee's early curatorial practice has gradually given way to that of “hybridization, openness, intersection, assimilation, conciliation, and communication” through metaphors such as “thermocline” and “poktanju” (bomb drink; a kind of cocktail comparable to American boilermaker), which he addressed in the exhibition at ZKM in 2007. This show provided a turning point presenting the “pocket model,” that Rhee drew from Deleuze's concept of the fold. Analyzing the exhibitions Rhee curated after the ZKM show, this paper delves into the notion of flexible space, which constantly oscillates between “contraction” and “expansion,” a space that operates like the fold of Deleuze. There is a cycle of innumerable inflection in the world of the fold, creating decentralized, uncertain, and diverse spaces. The inside of the fold is the space of potentiality where differences keep arising but are not realized. This space is after all realized from potential space through the systemization and rearrangement of time. The fold is like the “organ without the body” or the “egg.” This paper suggests that Rhee’s “thermocline” or the “pocket model” unfolds the movement of creation where the fold transforms itself through a repetition of “contraction” and “expansion.”