자연과 예술-존 듀이의 <경험과 자연>을 중심으로

Nature and Art in Experience and Nature by John Dewey

이 연구는 존 듀이의 <경험과 자연>에 담긴 자연-경험-예술의 관계를 살펴본 것이다. 그는 현대사회의 예술 개념에서 혼란의 문제점을 지적하고 이 문제점을 희랍의 예술 개념과 비교하여 자연-경험-예술의 관계 속에서 예술을 재정의하였다. 자연을 완전함과 불완전함으로 나누고, 불완전함을 채우는 것을 유의미한 경험, 즉 예술적 경험이라 한 것이다. 이때 예술은 제작과 감상 두 활동을 결합한 것이며, 제작은 유의미한 경험을 만드는 활동이고, 감상은 유의미한 경험의 의미를 향유하는 활동이다. 결국 듀이의 예술은 감상(목적)을 위한 제작(수단)과 제작(수단)을 위한 감상(목적)이 유기적으로 상호작용하는 것인 셈이다. 이러한 개념 체계에서 미술(fine art)과 실용예술(useful art)의 구분은 불필요하며, 오직 의미있는 경험과 무의미한 경험만이 성립하고, 모든 의미있는 경험은 예술적 경험, 즉 예술인 것이다.

John Dewey compared the concept of art in ancient Greece with that of modern society, highlighting the clarity and coherence of the former and the confusion surrounding the latter. As a solution to this conceptual disarray, Dewey proposed a new understanding of art based on an organic relationship between nature, experience, and art. In ancient Greece thought, production and consumption, creation and appreciation, and practice and contemplation were separate activities. Production, creation and practice were considered to have a low social status, whereas consumption, appreciation and contemplation were considered to have a high social status. The former involved manipulating incomplete nature, while the latter was considered as contemplating complete nature. The Greek experience was a practice belonging to the former category, while theory of rational thought was a mental activity belonging to the latter. The Greek experience was synonymous with art, referring to the activities of carpenters, doctors, painters, craftsmen, and so on. Dewey suggested that modern experience is a natural event that includes both meaningless, simple experiences and meaningful experiences. He defined a meaningful experience as one that reaches meaning. For him, an artistic experience should mean the meaningful experience, which redefined art as the activity giving the meaning to experience. Unlike ancinet Greek art(skill), modern art referred exclusively to the activities that produced aesthetic products created by painters, sculptors, and so on. Dewey recognized that this had caused significant confusion in conceptual framework, leading him to propose a new concept.. He defined art as any activity involving the creation and enjoyment of new meaning through production and appreciation, respectively. He believed that appreciation of art leads to creative production, and that production gives rise to appreciation of new meanings. Art is both a production activity that gives meaning to incomplete nature in order to create complete nature, and an appreciation activity that guides production activities by realizing complete nature, expressed in a meaningful way, through knowledge or theory.