The Cultural-Cognitive, Normative, and Regulative Legitimacy of Artworks: Focusing on the Case of Cho Young Nam’s Ghost Painter

The purpose of this study is to understand the legitimacy of artworks implemented in society beyond the art world through the case of Cho Young Nam’s ghost painter. This article theoretically reviewed the legitimacy of artworks in three pillars (cultural-cognitive, normative, and regulative) drawn from the neo-institutional approach and the perspective of the sociology of arts. A qualitative case study, then, was conducted on Cho Young Nam’s Hwatu paintings by mainly collecting secondary data such as newspapers, the written judgments of courts, books, journal articles, and so on. As a result, this study found the existence of experts, the public, and the judiciary, both inside and outside the art world, who are involved in the legitimation of the art. Accordingly, this study is meaningful in understanding that the discussion on the legitimacy of artworks is conducted at normative and regulative levels in addition to the cultural-cognitive layer by intermediaries in the art world that have been stressed in previous research. However, this study discusses that the arguments about the legitimacy of Cho Young Nam’s Hwatu paintings at the level of cultural-cognitive continue, albeit reserving judgment of the judiciary on and ethically criticizing by the public that legitimacy. This implies that the debate about the legitimacy of artworks within and outside the art world is again limited to the inside of the art world.