고대 메두사 도상 연구

Abstract

This study aims at reconstructing the genealogy of the 1conography of Gorgon Medusa between the periods of the archaic and the classical inGreece, and considering the meanings of the transformation on the aspectof the contrasting types of the representation. The archaic image of Medusa is preyed to have been either as anapotropaic talisman or as Mother god, the mistress of animals, ruling thenature before greek human gods. But it was driven to the border of theolympian cosmos, when the classical era has been arrived accompanyingthe process of identification of the greek culture. In this context, thereare two opposing features coexisted, in the archaic Medusa: an olddaimon gradually forgotten and alienated by the new ideology of the dayin seeking for the political stability of the community; a terrifying deitystill equipped with the divine power from the ancient time. As it had reachod the classical period, however, a sleeping beauty and a pretty faced head substituted for the awestruck Image of Medusa. Thischange in the iconography of Medusa is, in fact a part of a greaterchange that is observed in the greek culture in general around the 5thcentury, In this period, when the class of the citizen with suffrageappeared in Athens, the role that the literature and art took inconstructing the model of a common identity, namely the citifen, andeducating it in various ways was docisive. Then the basic change in the visual representation soch as painting orsculpture lies on the way those images engage the viewer in the scone.That is, an archaic image is less a representation of a certain obiect thana real thing or being with its own magical power, which affects thereality of people. But what appeared in the classical art is the closedtime where the elements of the scone communicate each other withoutregard fir the efistence of the viewer. In short, while an archaic imagegazes at the viewer, the classical one alienates him so as to be a voyeurThe voyeurism induces not the reflection but the empathy and theidentification, in that sense takes a role to infuse a new political modelinto the viewer.