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.

오늘날 디자인과 사회 또는 디자인과 인간의 관계는 “현실성”을 중심으로 논의되고 있으며, 나아가 물질과 정신이라는 의미론적 구분을 통해 디자인의 의미와 본질이 규명되고 있다. 특히 사물이 생성되는 과정에 사건으로서의 “현실성”이 개입됨으로써 디자인은 “이해의 대상” 또는 “현재의 구성 요소”로 인식되기에 충분한 것으로 여겨진다. 나아가 디자인이 개발되기 위해서는 인간과 환경으로부터 요구되는 “필요”가 반영됨으로써 독자성을 상실하게 된다는 사실이다. 따라서 디자인을 독립적 대상으로 이해하려는 시도는 무모한 것이며, 관계성이 전제된 전일주의(holism) 관점에서 ”현실성“에 근거한 탐색이 의미를 지니게 되는 것이다. 이에 본 연구 제 2단원에서는 마르크스주의 사상가인 루카치의 사유의 개념인 리얼리즘과 그로부터 비롯된 예술론에 관계된 5가지(총체성, 특수성, 카타르시스와 유적인 것, 상징)의 개념에 대하여 고찰하였다. 이에 근거하여 제 3단원에서는 5가지 개념을 기반으로 디자인과의 관계성에 대하여 고찰하였다, 이를 통해 디자인이 리얼리즘적 대상이라는 사실이 확인되었으며, 향후 산업디자인은 더욱 구체적이며 사실적인 일상적 미메시스를 상정(上程)하게 될 것으로 예상된다.