본 논문은 데미안 허스트의 2017년 전시 ≪믿을 수 없는 난파선의 보물≫전이 그가 오 랫동안 다루어 왔던 믿음의 문제와 결부되어 있음을 밝히고 비평적으로 재조명한다. 그동안 삶과 죽음을 다루는 작가로 알려진 허스트는 이 전시에서 자신의 작품들이 고대 난파선에서 인양된 유물이라 주장하면서 ‘정당화된 믿음,’ ‘역사,’ ‘신,’ ‘종교’와 같은 다양한 질문들도 같이 인양해왔다. 여기서 그의 예술은 서사와 이미지의 결합을 통해 우리의 정당화된 믿음 체계를 해체하는 수단이 된다. 본 논문은 이 전시에 대한 다양한 평가들을 고려하고 믿음 체 계와 연관된 문제들을 비판적으로 검토한다. 이 전시가 던지는 인지적 혼란을 허구적 재현의 대상으로, 혹은 재미와 흥미의 요소로서 전적으로 수용하기는 어렵다. 본 논문은 그가 지속 적으로 천착해 온 종교의 문제와 이 전시가 밀접하게 결부되어 있음을 드러내고자 한다. 이 전시에서 그는 고대의 종교였던 신화를 허구적인 서사의 층위로 끌어내려 해체하는 대신, 자 신의 서사를 만들어낸다. 그에게 신화는 서사와 다름없는 것이기에 서사의 창작은 신화의 창 조이며, 이는 종교의 기원이 된다. 이 전시의 도발적인 질문들과 숨겨진 주장들은 예술의 존 재론에 대한 숙고를 촉구한다. 이와 동시에 이 전시는 상품미학과 결합한 예술과, 서사의 창 작자로서 작가 자신을 부각시키고 있다. ≪믿을 수 없는 난파선의 보물≫전으로 인양된 난 제는 믿음을 다루는 허스트가 예술-종교라는 주문으로 관람자를 미혹한다는 것이다.

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) has been widely regarded as the most original and brilliant English landscape painter in the 19th century. Admitted to the Royal Academy Schools in 1789, Turner was a precocious artist and gained the full membership of the prestigious Royal Academy in 1802 at the age of 27. Already in the 1800s he was recognised as a pioneer in taking a new and revolutionary approach to the art of landscape painting. Among his early works made in this period, The Shipwreck, painted in 1805, epitomizes the sense of sublime Romanticism in terms of its dramatic subject-matter and the masterly display of technical innovations. Of course, the subject of shipwreck has a long standing history. Ever since human beings first began seafaring, they have been fascinated as much as haunted by shipwrecks. For maritime societies, such as England, shipwreck has been the source of endless nightmares, representing a constant threat not only to individual sailors but also to the nation as a whole. Unsurprisingly, therefore, shipwreck is one of the most popular motifs in art and literature, particularly during the 18th and 19th centuries. Yet accounts, images and metaphors of shipwreck have taken diverse forms and served different purposes, varying significantly across time and between authors. As such, Turner’s painting registers a panoply of diverse but interconnected contemporary discourses. First of all, since shipwreck was an everyday occurrence in this period, it is more than likely that Turner’s painting depicted the actual sinking in 1805 of the East India Company’s ship ‘The Earl of Abergavenny’ off the coast of Weymouth. 263 souls were lost and the news of the wreck made headlines in major English newspapers at the time. Turner’s painting may well have been his visual response to this tragedy, eyewitness accounts of which were given in great quantity in every contemporary newspaper. But the painting is not a documentary visual record of the incident as Turner was not present at the site and newspaper reports were not detailed enough for him to pictorially reconstruct the entire scene. Rather, Turner’s painting is indebted to the iconographical tradition of depicting tempest and shipwreck, bearing a strong visual resemblance to some 17th-century Dutch marine paintings with which he was familiar through gallery visits and engravings. Lastly, Turner’s Shipwreck is to be located in the contexts of burgeoning contemporary travel literature, especially shipwreck narratives. The late 18th and early 19th century saw a drastic increase in the publication of shipwreck narratives and Turner’s painting was inspired by the re-publication in 1804 of William Falconer’s enormously successful epic poem of the same title. Thus, in the final analysis, Turner’s painting is a splendid signifier leading the beholder to the heart of Romantic abyss conjoing nightmarish everyday experience, high art, and popular literature.