Arts | October 2022 - Browse Articles

17 pages, 16959 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Appropriating Canaanism: Ruth Patir’s Reanimation of Judean Pillar Figurines

by Hava Aldouby

Arts 2022, 11(5), 108; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050108 - 21 Oct 2022

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This article addresses a body of works by the video artist Ruth Patir, in which Israeli womanhood in the 2020s is interrogated through Iron Age female statuettes, known as Judean Pillar Figurines. By means of motion capture technology and 3D animation, Patir features [...] Read more.

This article addresses a body of works by the video artist Ruth Patir, in which Israeli womanhood in the 2020s is interrogated through Iron Age female statuettes, known as Judean Pillar Figurines. By means of motion capture technology and 3D animation, Patir features contemporary Israeli women uncannily moving and speaking through the bodies of millennium-old female figurines, whose history and function are still under debate. In Petah Tikva (2020), Patir situates these hybrid figures in a modern IVF clinic, offering a biopolitical perspective on Israeli society’s compelling maternal impulse. Marry Fuck Kill (2019), in turn, ponders Israeli women’s legitimation of their femininity, across the generational gap between the artist and her mother, here cast in the role of an imposing Iron Age figurine. The paper addresses Patir’s work in both biopolitical and phenomenological terms, arguing that the sensual appeal of the archaeological objects often undermines the videos’ political critique. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Renegotiating Identity, Reenacting History – 21st Century Art in Israel)

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14 pages, 596 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Ballet and the Renegotiation of Identity among Jewish Orthodox Women in Israel

by Janice L. Ross

Arts 2022, 11(5), 107; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050107 - 21 Oct 2022

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Abstract

This article explores how competing images of Jewish corporeality and gendered identity are emerging in Israel through classical ballet by religious girls and women. It traces the cultural, political, and religious implications of this in the context of masculine Zionist ideals of the [...] Read more.

This article explores how competing images of Jewish corporeality and gendered identity are emerging in Israel through classical ballet by religious girls and women. It traces the cultural, political, and religious implications of this in the context of masculine Zionist ideals of the valorization of the corporeal. Focusing on a group of pioneering Israeli women it traces how they have reshaped the study of ballet into a liberatory yet modest practice for Orthodox women across a range of Israeli religious communities. The revolutionary efforts that linked the founding of the state of Israel with a new body are viewed through a revised feminist perspective, one within the paradigm of a religious counterrevolution. Just as the laboring body of the secular folk dancer of the Yishuv has stood for socialism, egalitarianism, and muscular Judaism while relegating the religious body to the sidelines, it is possible now to read an image of the return of the religious, via the feminized body of classical ballet, as emblematic of the new Jewish woman of Orthodox communities. I argue that through the study of ballet a politics of piety is operating among Orthodox Jewish women making it a medium through which they are changing assumptions about agency, patriarchal norms, and nationalist politics. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Renegotiating Identity, Reenacting History – 21st Century Art in Israel)

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18 pages, 948 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Rerooted and Reimagined: Dance, Palestinian Women, and the Reclamation of Urban Spaces

by Hodel Ophir

Arts 2022, 11(5), 106; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050106 - 21 Oct 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2775

Abstract

Manar Hasan employs the term “memoricide” to describe the systematic eradication of Palestinian society from modern memory, a process, she points out, that occurred not only through the destruction of its major cities, but also through the erasure from public consciousness the inhabitants [...] Read more.

Manar Hasan employs the term “memoricide” to describe the systematic eradication of Palestinian society from modern memory, a process, she points out, that occurred not only through the destruction of its major cities, but also through the erasure from public consciousness the inhabitants of those cities, and specifically the Palestinian women who once played highly visible, integral roles within them. This paper enters into conversation with Hasan’s argument in its exploration of the work of Palestinian choreographer Shaden Abu Elasal, focusing on dances performed in urban spaces—locations from which she draws historical and creative inspiration to imbue her choreography with layers of meaning. I show how through her choreography, Abu Elasal reroots and uproots herself from the place in the very same acts of dance. She resurrects both the city and the women, revealing the obscured and retrieving the forgotten. I argue, then, that in staging dances in what Marc Augé terms “anthropological places” in Israel/Palestine, locations saturated with historical and conceptual significance, Abu Elasal both deepens her roots to the land, her land, and rises anew from it, freeing herself of its heavy shackles. Moreover, by reintroducing specifically Palestinian women dancers as elements of the “flesh and stone” of Israel/Palestine, spaces rife with histories of trauma, dominated by patriarchy and a Zionist ideology that privileges Jewishness and whiteness, Abu Elasal excavates a forgotten past, negotiates a restrictive present, and shapes a future for herself and her community. The paper brings together the ideas of anthropological space, which recognizes the identity of place as not merely physical but comprised of the breadth of human activity (symbolism, history, imagination, vision) that has taken and is taking place in it; and dance’s power to inspire a sense of losing oneself or transcending the existing, tangible world. In both ideas, consciousness and the material, stone and body, entwine and shape one another in the ongoing process of (re)forming identity and reclaiming history. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Renegotiating Identity, Reenacting History – 21st Century Art in Israel)

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15 pages, 5633 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Representation of Corpus Patiens in Russian Art of the 1920s

by Nataliya Zlydneva

Arts 2022, 11(5), 105; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050105 - 20 Oct 2022

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Abstract

Similar to the Russian historical avant-garde of the 1910s, which predicted the war and the social revolution of 1917, the late avant-garde of the 1920s anticipated the advent of the totalitarian terror and the Stalinist repressions of the 1930s. In figurative painting, this [...] Read more.

Similar to the Russian historical avant-garde of the 1910s, which predicted the war and the social revolution of 1917, the late avant-garde of the 1920s anticipated the advent of the totalitarian terror and the Stalinist repressions of the 1930s. In figurative painting, this manifested itself in a specific visual “lexicon” and modality (bodily violence and the fragmented body, frustration, motifs of loss, death and general catastrophe), as well as in the expressive style (that inherited but not duplicated the models of European expressionism). In addition to proposing an analytical classification of semantics and poetics of the painting of the 1920s, the present article discusses the issue of the representation of political power in visual art and the presence of archaic roots in the corpus patiens (lat.) motifs. It examines artefacts made by eminent as well as little-known painters of the late avant-garde, including Kazimir Malevich, Alexander Tyshler, Kliment Redko, Georgy Rublev, Aleksandr Drevin, Boris Golopolosov and others. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Slavic and Eastern-European Visuality: Modernity and Tradition)

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21 pages, 6758 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Visuality of Hortus Mirabilis in Krystyna Miłobędzka’s Poetry—A Study of Selected Examples

by Dorota Walczak-Delanois

Arts 2022, 11(5), 104; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050104 - 18 Oct 2022

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Abstract

Krystyna Miłobędzka (born 1932) is one of the most interesting and unique phenomena of the Polish poetry scene of the 20th and 21st centuries. Two characteristics of her poetry, the visual character of her many poems and her preoccupation with the concept of [...] Read more.

Krystyna Miłobędzka (born 1932) is one of the most interesting and unique phenomena of the Polish poetry scene of the 20th and 21st centuries. Two characteristics of her poetry, the visual character of her many poems and her preoccupation with the concept of the garden-world, are worth a closer look. Miłobędzka’s poetry refers to the topoï of the garden-world in single poems and cycles of poetic texts. Her hortus mirabilis, inserts itself into the sphere of the metaphysical reflection of nature, giving Miłobędzka’s poetry a specific dynamic in which the “I”—the gardener—has a significant role as an observer, and as a creator of entities. The activity of looking, which happens, in fact, in all types of verbs and aspects, is in this specific sphere (look, watch, see), fundamental to defining oneself in the world and the world’s relationship to oneself. In this perspective, the image of the garden from childhood, is confronted by a necessary new visualization. The temporal aspect of the garden is at the center of existence, in the cyclical return of nature’s laws of rebirth and death, which are relevant to the personal, singular perspective of the end in many of Miłobędzka’s volumes. In Anaglify (Anaglyphs), some poems particularly fit the issue of visuality in poetry, not only at the conceptual level, the place granted to observation, the poet-particular observer, but the poem itself. They are conceived as graphic and pictorial realizations. Poems from the volume dwanaście wierszy w kolorze (twelve poems in color) or wszystkowiersze (omnipoems) are special cases of these. The selected words are conceived in color, and their arrangement on the space of the page has meaning. The parallel between looking and writing, which Miłobędzka consistently uses in her writing method and poetically admits, is also very important. Although her poetic diction alludes to historical avant-garde and linguistic poetry achievements, her lyrical savoir-faire is characterized by a certain new minimalist construction and a separate, recognizable style. Miłobędzka’s innovativeness lies in combining seemingly distant and sometimes poetically opposite categories: full, ambiguous image-in-poem and asceticism by means of expression, such as a minimal number of words. Her poetry is deeply rooted in perceiving, seeing, watching, and contemplating the world—faithful to its physicality but also open to the most essential questions of philosophy asking about existence and its limits. This new visibility of elements is reflected in authentic poetic delight and in the “visualizing” form, where the poem also becomes an image on the plane of a sheet of paper or becoming one side of the house wall as a mural poem. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Slavic and Eastern-European Visuality: Modernity and Tradition)

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21 pages, 2710 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Beyond Representation: Shanshui Motif on Chinese Porcelain and Portuguese Faience

by Mo Guo and Rui Min

Arts 2022, 11(5), 103; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050103 - 15 Oct 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3231

Abstract

With the expedition of the Portuguese explorer Jorge Álvares in 1513, Portugal took the first step toward discovering the new world. Since then, the Portuguese have become messengers between Asia and Europe. They successfully created a unique image of China in Portuguese territory [...] Read more.

With the expedition of the Portuguese explorer Jorge Álvares in 1513, Portugal took the first step toward discovering the new world. Since then, the Portuguese have become messengers between Asia and Europe. They successfully created a unique image of China in Portuguese territory by accepting and spreading Chinese culture. However, people see what they can and what they want to see, which depends greatly on their cultural and philosophical perspectives. Therefore, when the Portuguese adopted and used Chinese traditional representations to create art through the prism of their own cultural and philosophical values, their subjective perspectives became involved, which could be reflected in their artistic creations. By decoding the shanshui motif on Chinese porcelain and Portuguese faience, this study aims to discuss the differences between Chinese and Portuguese views and explore what is beyond representations, which is related to aesthetic and cultural perspectives. This indicates that imitation without understanding and modification without intention give rise to a new aesthetic value, a distinct cultural phenomenon, and a mixed heritage where two worlds subtly intersect. Full article

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19 pages, 6364 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Amira Ziyan, Hiding in the Light: A Synergy of Contrasts as a Visual Code of “Otherness”

by Noam Topelberg

Arts 2022, 11(5), 102; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050102 - 12 Oct 2022

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Abstract

This article presents an interpretation of the works by the Israeli–Druze photographer Amira Ziyan, focusing on a series of photographs from 2017. These portray reenactments of actions identified with traditional roles of women in Druze society, such as cooking and cleaning. Employing a [...] Read more.

This article presents an interpretation of the works by the Israeli–Druze photographer Amira Ziyan, focusing on a series of photographs from 2017. These portray reenactments of actions identified with traditional roles of women in Druze society, such as cooking and cleaning. Employing a unique visual language and choice of form and content, the artist depicts a confrontation between a clear set of rigid and traditional boundaries and values and a contemporary, post-modern reality in which these boundaries and values are blurred. The interpretive reading proposed here describes a synergy between visual codes of minorities and accepted visual codes of their surrounding pervasive culture in contemporary Israel. Ziyan’s work offers a glimpse into visual codes of “otherness” that express the inner world of an artist who grew up on the margins of society but strove to be accepted as an essential part of its main artistic current. Focusing on this perspective contributes to ongoing discourse regarding contradictions inherent in Israeli society and identity. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Renegotiating Identity, Reenacting History – 21st Century Art in Israel)

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13 pages, 3639 KiB

Open AccessArticle

GOR, the Group of Revolutionary Objects: Praxis and Research

by Filipe Pais and Olivain Porry

Arts 2022, 11(5), 101; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050101 - 11 Oct 2022

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Abstract

GOR stands for Groupe des Objets Revolutionaires, or, in English, the Group of Revolutionary Objects. This group was founded by Filipe Pais, Julie Brugier and Olivain Porry in 2018, in reaction to two major planetary concerns: the climate crisis and techno-solutionism. GOR, [...] Read more.

GOR stands for Groupe des Objets Revolutionaires, or, in English, the Group of Revolutionary Objects. This group was founded by Filipe Pais, Julie Brugier and Olivain Porry in 2018, in reaction to two major planetary concerns: the climate crisis and techno-solutionism. GOR, in response, opens a fictional design space for debate and aesthetic manifestations, wherein objects and machines are given autonomy, and the possibility of disobeying whilst challenging human decisions. This article is a statement about GOR’s motivations, practice and research, written by two of the group members. In addition to further introducing the GOR manifesto and the forces which have given rise to it, it reviews its artistic practices and actions conducted during art residencies and group exhibitions; it identifies two examples of how the GOR design space can yield interesting clues in research, introducing the notion of super-object and an artistic framework named COCO². Full article

(This article belongs to the Collection Review of Machine Art)

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0 pages, 3478 KiB

Open AccessEssay

What Is It about Art? A Discussion on Art.Intelligence.Machine.

by Frederic Fol Leymarie and Seymour Simmons III

Arts 2022, 11(5), 100; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050100 - 05 Oct 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 4915

Abstract

The interrelationship among art, intelligence, and machine has important implications for the visual arts as part of a general education. Here, Frederic Fol Leymarie (FFL), a computer scientist and engineer at Goldsmiths College, and Seymour Simmons III (SS3), an artist and art educator [...] Read more.

The interrelationship among art, intelligence, and machine has important implications for the visual arts as part of a general education. Here, Frederic Fol Leymarie (FFL), a computer scientist and engineer at Goldsmiths College, and Seymour Simmons III (SS3), an artist and art educator from Winthrop University, South Carolina, discuss these issues and the value of sustained cross-disciplinary conversations in addressing challenges in the 21st century. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue A 10-Year Journey of Arts)

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26 pages, 9281 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Andrey Bely as an Artist vis-à-vis Aleksandr Golovin: How the Cover of the Journal Dreamers Was Created

by Monika Spivak

Arts 2022, 11(5), 99; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050099 - 30 Sep 2022

Viewed by 1946

Abstract

Samuil Alyanski, the owner and founder of the Alkonost publishing house (1918–1923), as early as 1918 had decided to issue a journal called Dreamers’ Notes, meant to bring together the Symbolist writers remaining in Russia after the October Revolution, primarily Aleksandr Blok, Vyacheslav [...] Read more.

Samuil Alyanski, the owner and founder of the Alkonost publishing house (1918–1923), as early as 1918 had decided to issue a journal called Dreamers’ Notes, meant to bring together the Symbolist writers remaining in Russia after the October Revolution, primarily Aleksandr Blok, Vyacheslav Ivanov, and Andrei Bely. Despite the generally accepted view based on the memoirs of Alyanski, Andrei Bely played a leading role in the creation of the journal including the design of the cover commissioned by Alyanski from the famous Modernist artist Aleksandr Golovin. This article analyzes the sketches that Andrei Bely proposed as an idea for the journal cover as well as establishing their connection with the writer’s visionary drawings from the period of life when he was close to Rudolf Steiner and with book graphics from the period of his collaboration with the publishing house Alkonost. At first cursory glance, there is little in common between the cover of Dreamers’ Notes drawn by Golovin in the Modernist style and the sketches of Andrei Bely who was trying to make the journal а platform for Anthroposophy. However, as demonstrated in the article, all of Bely’s ideas were utilized by Golovin in creating his own artistic masterpiece. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Slavic and Eastern-European Visuality: Modernity and Tradition)

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21 pages, 14939 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Sergei Sigei and Aleksei Kruchenykh: Visual Poetry in the Russian Avant-Garde and Neo-Avant-Garde

by Willem G. Weststeijn

Arts 2022, 11(5), 98; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050098 - 29 Sep 2022

Viewed by 1898

Abstract

One of the characteristic features of the Russian Avant-garde is the close connection between painting and poetry. Futurist poets (Vladimir Maiakovskii, Aleksei Kruchenykh) were educated as artists, their books were illustrated by the famous painters of their time (Mikhail Larionov, Nataliia Goncharova). Some [...] Read more.

One of the characteristic features of the Russian Avant-garde is the close connection between painting and poetry. Futurist poets (Vladimir Maiakovskii, Aleksei Kruchenykh) were educated as artists, their books were illustrated by the famous painters of their time (Mikhail Larionov, Nataliia Goncharova). Some of the Futurists designed their own books and did all kinds of typographical experiments. One of the most productive writers, designers, editors and publishers of such books was Aleksei Kruchenykh (1886–1968), who only recently has been given honour where it is due. One of his admirers is the Neo-avant-garde poet-artist Sergei Sigei (1947–2014), who was the first to publish some of Kruchenykh’s hitherto unpublished works and in many respects repeated, changed, and further developed his forerunner’s experiments with typographical signs and book production. Some of Sigei’s unique handmade books are dedicated to Kruchenykh. Sigei, the leader of the group of the ‘transfurists’ (Ry Nikonova, Boris Konstriktor, A. Nik, Vladimir Erl’) may be considered the main representative of the Russian Neo-avant-garde. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Slavic and Eastern-European Visuality: Modernity and Tradition)

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17 pages, 22533 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Digital High: The Art of Visual Seduction?

by Alexander Zholkovsky

Arts 2022, 11(5), 97; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050097 - 28 Sep 2022

Viewed by 2570

Abstract

The paper focuses on the structure of an advertising image for a 2010s computer company in the neo-capitalist Moscow, Russia. The analysis looks back to the pioneering studies of advertising as a commercial “applied art” by Sergei Eisenstein, Leo Spitzer and Roland Barthes. [...] Read more.

The paper focuses on the structure of an advertising image for a 2010s computer company in the neo-capitalist Moscow, Russia. The analysis looks back to the pioneering studies of advertising as a commercial “applied art” by Sergei Eisenstein, Leo Spitzer and Roland Barthes. The picture’s plot and composition are shown to be a consistent and sophisticated near-artistic design that uses textual puns, poetic topoi and visual stereotypes (in particular, sex appeal) for the promotion of the advertised merchandise (a smartphone). The psychological naturalization of the design is clarified with references to the insights of Sigmund Freud, Heinz Kohut and Gerard Genette into the dynamics of narcissism. In a widening circle, the contextualization of the design involves: the literary topos of using birds in love poetry (made famous by its treatment in the lyrics of the Roman poet Catullus) and in painterly variations on the theme; the narcissist discourse of a modern Russian poet (Eduard Limonov); and the grand pictorial tradition of portraying a nude (Venus) before the mirror (relevant classical canvases are considered briefly). Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Slavic and Eastern-European Visuality: Modernity and Tradition)

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20 pages, 304 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Sources of the Psychology of Art and Its Place among the Disciplines That Study Art and Creativity

by Antanas Andrijauskas

Arts 2022, 11(5), 96; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050096 - 28 Sep 2022

Viewed by 2633

Abstract

The goal of this article is to analyze, on the basis of today’s research strategies and the sources that deal with the psychology of Western art during the 20th century, the emerging field of the psychology of art and of its component, the [...] Read more.

The goal of this article is to analyze, on the basis of today’s research strategies and the sources that deal with the psychology of Western art during the 20th century, the emerging field of the psychology of art and of its component, the psychology of the creative process, in different national traditions and in various fields of the humanities (aesthetics, the philosophy of art, experimental and general psychology, physiology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, art history). Through comparative analysis, this article reveals how German-speaking countries, France, Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union changed their attitude toward the artist, his creative potential, creative work, the creative process, and other problems of the psychology of art. The author devotes special attention to highlighting the distinctive ideas, theoretical positions, and main categories of the psychology of art in the West and in the great civilizations of the East (India, China, Japan). All of this has acquired exceptional importance in today’s metacivilizational culture, in which, as never before, there is active interaction between the ideas of various Eastern and Western peoples about the psychology of art. Finally, on the basis of a comparative analysis of today’s main national traditions relating to the psychology of art, this article highlights its place, functions, and role in the disciplines that study art. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Art Theory and Psychological Aesthetics)

0 pages, 11956 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Menhat Helmy and the Emergence of Egyptian Women Art Teachers and Artists in the 1950s

by Patrick Matthew Kane

Arts 2022, 11(5), 95; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050095 - 23 Sep 2022

Viewed by 3805

Abstract

The rise of Egyptian women artists and art teachers at the end of the 1940s appeared in tandem with an active women’s movement that asserted the agency of women in modern Egyptian public life. In this article, we discuss the art career of [...] Read more.

The rise of Egyptian women artists and art teachers at the end of the 1940s appeared in tandem with an active women’s movement that asserted the agency of women in modern Egyptian public life. In this article, we discuss the art career of Menhat Helmy (1925–2004), a 1949 arts graduate of the ma`had al-ali li-ma`lumat al-funun al-jamila (Higher Institute for Women Teachers of the Fine Arts), located in the working-class district of Bulaq in Cairo, and who was among the first Egyptian graduates of the Slade School of Art in London. In a series of etchings executed from around 1956 and through the 1960s, Helmy produced a visual commentary on the dignity of Bulaq’s residents, with emphasis on the active presence of women in its neighborhood and public spaces. Helmy may be viewed in context with the feminism of her fellow women artists, including Gazbia Sirry (1925–2021) and Inji Efflatoun (1924–1986), and in relation to Efflatoun’s two books on feminist causes. As new professional artists and teachers, they advocated the promotion of education and vocational choice for women. Helmy’s choice of this neighborhood as a subject for art allows a comparison to theories about Bulaq’s development and its locus for the arts for which a multidisciplinary approach is required. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Middle East Art: Memory, Tradition, and Revival)

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20 pages, 4786 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Thou Shalt Tell Thy Daughter: Mothers Tell Daughters Their Holocaust Story—Three Case Studies of Contemporary Israeli Women Artists

by Hadara Scheflan-Katzav

Arts 2022, 11(5), 94; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050094 - 22 Sep 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1717

Abstract

The story of Israel and its raison d’être are suffused by memories of the Holocaust, which construct the self-definition and identity of the state. This article examines works by three contemporary Israeli women artists—Dvora Morag, Miri Nishri, and Bracha Ettinger—who subvert the traditional [...] Read more.

The story of Israel and its raison d’être are suffused by memories of the Holocaust, which construct the self-definition and identity of the state. This article examines works by three contemporary Israeli women artists—Dvora Morag, Miri Nishri, and Bracha Ettinger—who subvert the traditional telling of history and enable rethinking of the past as the basis for the individual’s existence in the nation state. Through the works of these artists, official memory disintegrates into fragments of personal memories of the artists’ mothers, enabling a new moral, historical perspective. The reconstruction of history through stories that pass from mother to daughter contrasts sharply with Jewish tradition in which the historical story passes from father to son. The yearly Passover retelling of the Exodus admonishes “Thou shalt tell thy son on that day to say, ‘It is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt’”. The two narratives, the Exodus from Egypt and the Holocaust, are told as stories of redemption of the Jewish people—from ruin to resurrection. The art examined here reassesses the past, while unraveling parallels between the stories from a female perspective that reflects a personal moral stance. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Renegotiating Identity, Reenacting History – 21st Century Art in Israel)

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4 pages, 185 KiB

Open AccessEditorial

Global Art Market in the Aftermath of COVID-19

by Elena Sidorova

Arts 2022, 11(5), 93; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050093 - 21 Sep 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2456

Abstract

Although the global art market has often been resilient to international economic and political events, it has faced some of its biggest challenges under the influence of COVID-19. Among others, the pandemic and the accompanying restrictive administrative measures taken by world governments have [...] Read more.

Although the global art market has often been resilient to international economic and political events, it has faced some of its biggest challenges under the influence of COVID-19. Among others, the pandemic and the accompanying restrictive administrative measures taken by world governments have significantly influenced such key economic indicators as gallery employment, art sales, and the organization of international art fairs. This Special Issue studies various economic, social, and political impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global art market’s current state and future evolution. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Global Art Market in the Aftermath of COVID-19)

14 pages, 1559 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Visions of Disrupted Chronologies: Sergei Eisenstein and Hedwig Fechheimer’s Cubist Egypt

by Leanne Rae Darnbrough

Arts 2022, 11(5), 92; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050092 - 21 Sep 2022

Viewed by 1636

Abstract

By juxtaposing two ostensibly divergent characters, the Jewish art historian and Egyptologist Hedwig Fechheimer (1871–1942) and Soviet filmmaker and theorist Sergei Eisenstein (1898–1948), this paper investigates how both approaches folded time, creating Cubist chronologies. Fechheimer adapted the philological focus of her Berlin School [...] Read more.

By juxtaposing two ostensibly divergent characters, the Jewish art historian and Egyptologist Hedwig Fechheimer (1871–1942) and Soviet filmmaker and theorist Sergei Eisenstein (1898–1948), this paper investigates how both approaches folded time, creating Cubist chronologies. Fechheimer adapted the philological focus of her Berlin School contemporaries to create an ahistorical, anti-teleological grammar of ancient Egyptian art which espoused an artistic affinity between the Egyptians and the Cubist movement. Eisenstein, who held a copy of one of Fechheimer’s books in his personal library, took a similar approach in the development of his critiques of historical allegory. This paper looks specifically at two shots of a sphinx during the bridge sequence in the 1927 film October to demonstrate how they correspond to Fechheimer’s views on Egyptian art and also function peculiarly within the film. Ultimately, I aim to demonstrate how the interpellations of the sphinx demonstrate a particular critique of historicity that Eisenstein later expands upon in his Ivan the Terrible films. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Slavic and Eastern-European Visuality: Modernity and Tradition)

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26 pages, 341 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Metamodernism or Metamodernity

by Dina Stoev

Arts 2022, 11(5), 91; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050091 - 21 Sep 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 4363

Abstract

The concept of metamodernism relies on our understanding of modernism, postmodernism and the bigger cultural periods that originated them. While modernism is a product of modernity, postmodernism is not situated comprehensively within a well-defined period. Moreover, when dealing with the dichotomy of movement [...] Read more.

The concept of metamodernism relies on our understanding of modernism, postmodernism and the bigger cultural periods that originated them. While modernism is a product of modernity, postmodernism is not situated comprehensively within a well-defined period. Moreover, when dealing with the dichotomy of movement and era in the last century, we are presented with a taxonomic dilemma of conflating eras and their aesthetical manifestations. Contrary to the prevalent view of cultural shifts, here I propose a different attempt at periodising and understanding ontologically the concepts of modernism, postmodernism and metamodernism, and the related cultural periods in which they are situated. I argue that modernism and postmodernism should be considered as a continuum in a temporal sense, but not as equal orders in a categorical sense, and that postmodernism is not an apt descriptor for the period following modernity, nor for the aesthetic paradigm following modernism. To resolve this problem, on the one hand, I propose we adopt the term metamodernity, which better reflects the new era of cultural development. On the other hand, I discuss metamodernism, which is the current aesthetical, and to a degree axiological, manifestation of this new era. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Art Theory and Psychological Aesthetics)

16 pages, 2242 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Influencers: Van Gogh Immersive Experiences and the Attention-Experience Economy

by Kate Mondloch

Arts 2022, 11(5), 90; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050090 - 20 Sep 2022

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 7804

Abstract

Van Gogh immersive exhibitions—multi-sited, branded multimedia environments inspired by the artist’s life and paintings—are seemingly ubiquitous in 2022. These itinerant digital spectacles bundle reproductions of Vincent Van Gogh’s most recognizable artistic motifs with tropes of fin-de-siècle madness, bathing their visitors in an artistic [...] Read more.

Van Gogh immersive exhibitions—multi-sited, branded multimedia environments inspired by the artist’s life and paintings—are seemingly ubiquitous in 2022. These itinerant digital spectacles bundle reproductions of Vincent Van Gogh’s most recognizable artistic motifs with tropes of fin-de-siècle madness, bathing their visitors in an artistic wonderland of projected images and soundscapes spread throughout cavernous exhibition venues. The popularity of these commercial juggernauts is unmatched. At present, at least five different companies are staging competing versions of digital Van Gogh art exhibitions in dozens of cities worldwide, with a particular emphasis at present on sites throughout North America. How are we as art critics to make sense of these exhibitions as well as their influence within the institutional context of the visual arts? Taking the digital Van Gogh phenomenon as its central case study, this article investigates the emerging art-themed immersive exhibition model and explores the specific mode of spectatorship it promotes. Situating these projects within the broader framework of the contemporaneous attention and experience economies, and with an eye toward the crucial role of social media, I propose that art-themed immersive exhibitions such as the Van Gogh immersive experiences exemplify habits of digitally-mediated, 24/7 immersive attention and consumption in art and in everyday life. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Framing the Virtual: New Technologies and Immersive Exhibitions)

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20 pages, 1362 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Bridge and Narrativization of Vision: Ambrose Bierce and Vladimir Nabokov

by Andrey Astvatsaturov

Arts 2022, 11(5), 89; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050089 - 19 Sep 2022

Viewed by 2191

Abstract

The article contains a comparative study of the visual poetics observed in the literary texts of American writer Ambrose Bierce and Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabokov. In particular, the study focuses on Bierce’s short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” and Nabokov’s three [...] Read more.

The article contains a comparative study of the visual poetics observed in the literary texts of American writer Ambrose Bierce and Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabokov. In particular, the study focuses on Bierce’s short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” and Nabokov’s three short stories “Details of a Sunset”, “Aurelian”, and “Perfection”, in all three of which a number of narrative tools, images, and motifs borrowed from Bierce’s text can be found. The representation of the bridge and the narrativization of mystical insight are regarded as the principal features of the correlative imagery systems. These features are analyzed in order to discover Bierce’s and Nabokov’s understandings of the artist, visual imagination, and the freedom of will. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Slavic and Eastern-European Visuality: Modernity and Tradition)

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31 pages, 17472 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Metaphor and the Material Object in Moscow Conceptualism

by Mary A. Nicholas

Arts 2022, 11(5), 88; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050088 - 19 Sep 2022

Viewed by 2617

Abstract

Discussions of conceptual art both East and West have focused on the notion of “dematerialization” of the artwork and the substitution of “art as idea” for concrete works of art. Yet such an approach oversimplifies the role of materiality in works of conceptual [...] Read more.

Discussions of conceptual art both East and West have focused on the notion of “dematerialization” of the artwork and the substitution of “art as idea” for concrete works of art. Yet such an approach oversimplifies the role of materiality in works of conceptual art generally and underestimates the transformative role of the concrete object in early Moscow conceptualism in particular. An examination of the Nest, an influential group of artists active from 1974 to 1979, as well as other analytical conceptualists who highlighted materiality in their unofficial art practice suggests that their use of concrete objects and realized metaphors revolutionized late-Soviet unofficial art, moving it from an outdated modernist model of artistic autonomy to a more dynamic and engaged postmodernism. Their previously underappreciated contribution to the evolution of global conceptualism expands our picture of the movement as a whole and provides needed context for late-Soviet art and the post-Soviet period that followed. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Slavic and Eastern-European Visuality: Modernity and Tradition)

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20 pages, 11232 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Trickster in Drag: Vlad Mamyshev-Monroe’s Aesthetic of Camp

by Mark Lipovetsky

Arts 2022, 11(5), 87; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050087 - 13 Sep 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2016

Abstract

The article discusses an artistic method of the post-Soviet artist Vlad Mamyshev-Monroe (1969–2013) as the nexus of several traditions embedded in modernist legacy. His main genre is remastered (scratched) photographs depicting him impersonating various historical and fictional characters, from Marylyn Monroe (whom he [...] Read more.

The article discusses an artistic method of the post-Soviet artist Vlad Mamyshev-Monroe (1969–2013) as the nexus of several traditions embedded in modernist legacy. His main genre is remastered (scratched) photographs depicting him impersonating various historical and fictional characters, from Marylyn Monroe (whom he considered his alter ego) to Hitler, Jesus Christ, and Putin. His art and artistically designed image creatively develop the tradition of modernist life-creation (zhiznetvorchestvo), which he enriches by camp, thus becoming a pioneer of this elusive sensibility in post-Soviet culture. Camp, in turn, facilitates Mamyshev-Monroe’s self-fashioning as the trickster whose transgressivity and ambivalence absorb his queerness and drag spectacles, and whose hyperperformativity manifests itself in his performative art. The article analyzes how Mamyshev-Monroe appropriates various cultural material in the trickster’s way by using camp for its critique and deconstruction. The case of Mamyshev-Monroe is especially important since it demonstrates the limits of the trickster’s transgression that resists its instrumentalization by the authoritarian state. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Slavic and Eastern-European Visuality: Modernity and Tradition)

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15 pages, 10402 KiB

Open AccessArticle

New Anthropology in Works of Vasily Chekrygin

by Ekaterina Bobrinskaya

Arts 2022, 11(5), 86; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050086 - 13 Sep 2022

Viewed by 1468

Abstract

The article considers the concept of new anthropology in the works of Vasily Chekrygin in the context of the scientific and philosophical ideas of his time. Chekrygin’s anthropology drew on the new concepts of life, discoveries made in biology and chemistry and new [...] Read more.

The article considers the concept of new anthropology in the works of Vasily Chekrygin in the context of the scientific and philosophical ideas of his time. Chekrygin’s anthropology drew on the new concepts of life, discoveries made in biology and chemistry and new ideas of matter. A paradoxical fusion of scientific and occult thought, coupled with ideas of Christian anthropology, formed a crucial component of Chekrygin’s works. The artist produced his anthropological project at the intersection of two cultural paradigms: that of Christianity, on the one hand, and science and the occult, on the other. This blend of such heterogeneous concepts was not an accidental fact of the artist’s biography. It makes it possible to see certain problems and antinomies that were fundamental to the Russian culture of the 1910s through the early 1920s. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Slavic and Eastern-European Visuality: Modernity and Tradition)

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20 pages, 3591 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Metaphysics of Presence and the Invisible Traces: Eduard Steinberg’s Polemical Dialogues

by Irina Sakhno

Arts 2022, 11(5), 85; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050085 - 09 Sep 2022

Viewed by 1471

Abstract

The article examines the paintings by Eduard Steinberg, a Soviet non-conformist painter from the 1950s to the 1980s from the standpoint of the plastics of his language. The author focuses on Steinberg’s polemical dialogues with the greatest names in Russian and European avant-garde [...] Read more.

The article examines the paintings by Eduard Steinberg, a Soviet non-conformist painter from the 1950s to the 1980s from the standpoint of the plastics of his language. The author focuses on Steinberg’s polemical dialogues with the greatest names in Russian and European avant-garde art, including both common points and disagreements. By analyzing the painter’s texts through the prism of poetics of the invisible and the ontology of traces, the author observes Steinberg’s early art of the 1960s and 1970s as an attempt to create a symbolic language and attach an ideographic status to art. Through simultaneous use of two artistic strategies—mystical and religious symbolism, coupled with metageometry Steinberg arrives at optical formalism and spectator dialectics, vying to see the invisible and record the polysemantic nature of the symbolic sign. The article analyzes the influence Vladimir Veisberg and his “invisible painting” had on Steinberg, including the “white on white” style, as well as Giorgio Morandi’s still-life vision of metaphysical painting. The author believes that by relying on analogies and reminiscences, Steinberg refers his audience to his predecessors and joins them in an intertextual dialogue. A special place here belongs to Kazimir Malevich with his radicalism, his trend towards metasymbolism and the language of the basic forms—the circle, square and cross. All of these are close to Steinberg’s geometric plastics of the 1970s and 1980s. Staying true to the pure forms of Suprematism, Steinberg builds up an aesthetics of the geometric forms of his own, where abstract art comes together with the ontological progress towards God. The Countryside series (1985–1987) shows influence of Кazimir Malevich’s Peasant Cycle, some principles of icon painting and Neo-Primitivist art. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Slavic and Eastern-European Visuality: Modernity and Tradition)

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20 pages, 1326 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Indigenous Agency in Australian Bark Painting

by Marie Geissler

Arts 2022, 11(5), 84; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050084 - 07 Sep 2022

Viewed by 3189

Abstract

In the early years of the discovery of Indigenous bark paintings in Australia, anthropologists regarded this artform as part of a static and unchanging tradition. Inspired by the images of Arnhem Land rock art and ceremonial body design, the bark paintings were innovatively [...] Read more.

In the early years of the discovery of Indigenous bark paintings in Australia, anthropologists regarded this artform as part of a static and unchanging tradition. Inspired by the images of Arnhem Land rock art and ceremonial body design, the bark paintings were innovatively adapted by Indigenous Australians for the bark medium. Today, this art is recognised for its dynamism and sophistication, offering a window into how the artists engaged with the world. Within the context of recent art and anthropological scholarship, the paiFntings are understood as artefacts of Indigenous ‘agency’. They are products of the intentional action of artists through which power is enacted and from which change has followed. This paper reveals how the paintings were influential to their audiences and the discourses arising from their display through the agency of the artists who made them, and the curators who selected them. It underlines how Indigenous agency associated with the aesthetic and semantics values of bark painting has been and continues to be a powerful mechanism for instigating cultural, social, economic and political change. As such, it points to the wealth of Indigenous agency yet to be documented in the other collections of bark painting that are held in institutions in Australia and throughout the world. Full article

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20 pages, 25693 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Madeleine: Poetry and Art of an Artificial Intelligence

by Graeme Revell

Arts 2022, 11(5), 83; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050083 - 05 Sep 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3170

Abstract

This article presents a project which is an experiment in the emerging field of human-machine artistic collaboration. The author/artist investigates responses by the generative pre-trained transformer (GPT-2) to poetic and esoteric prompts and curates them with elements of digital art created by the [...] Read more.

This article presents a project which is an experiment in the emerging field of human-machine artistic collaboration. The author/artist investigates responses by the generative pre-trained transformer (GPT-2) to poetic and esoteric prompts and curates them with elements of digital art created by the text-to-image transformer DALL-E 2 using those same prompts; these elements are presented in the context of photographs featuring an anthropomorphic female avatar as the messenger of the content. The tripartite ‘cyborg’ thus assembled is an artificial intelligence endowed with the human attributes of language, art and visage; it is referred to throughout as Madeleine. The results of the experiments allowed the investigation of the following hypotheses. Firstly, evidence for a convergence of machine and human creativity and intelligence is provided by moderate degrees of lossy compression, error, ignorance and the lateral formulation of analogies more typical of GPT-2 than GPT-3. Secondly, the work provides new illustrations supporting research in the field of artificial intelligence that queries the definitions and boundaries of accepted categories such as cognition, intelligence, understanding and—at the limit—consciousness, suggesting that there is a paradigm shift away from questions such as “Can machines think?” to those of immediate social and political relevance such as “How can you tell a machine from a human being?” and “Can we trust machines?” Finally, appearance and epistemic emotions: surprise, curiosity and confusion are influential in the human acceptance of machines as intelligent and trustworthy entities. The project problematises the contemporary proliferation of feminised avatars in the context of feminist critical literature and suggests that the anthropomorphic avatar might echo the social and historical position of the Delphic oracle: the Pythia, rather than a disembodied search engine such as Alexa. Full article

(This article belongs to the Collection Review of Machine Art)

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22 pages, 3629 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Quodlibet with Meninas

by Maria Gil Ulldemolins

Arts 2022, 11(5), 82; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050082 - 05 Sep 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1977

Abstract

In Diagrammatic Writing (2013), Johanna Drucker discusses the power dynamics between texts interacting on a page. So-called autotheoretical texts often engage in similar types of performative and relational lay-outs, and yet, not much has been written about this formal phenomenon. Bearing this in [...] Read more.

In Diagrammatic Writing (2013), Johanna Drucker discusses the power dynamics between texts interacting on a page. So-called autotheoretical texts often engage in similar types of performative and relational lay-outs, and yet, not much has been written about this formal phenomenon. Bearing this in mind, I propose an experiment that performs relations by thinking with, and through, Las Meninas, a self-portrait that is not strictly about the self. All that surrounds Velázquez in the painting (the work-in-progress we do not see, the ensemble of courtly characters, the framed reproductions of masters’ works, the much-discussed mirror reflection) informs and contextualises the portrait, but also explodes it into much more. This paper thus attempts to ask whether autotheory can, by being aware of performative and diagrammatic writing, together with the use of images as citations, decentralise the auto- and become a more choral scene, a cluster, a textual quodlibet or medley. Can a form of writing make space for a multitude, or even, a multitude into a space? Can the autotheoretical self be only one more of many characters, present, with agency, but off-centred? Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Autotheory in Contemporary Visual Arts Practice)

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7 pages, 260 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Female Collectors for Exhibition History of Non-Conformist Art in France: Marie-Thérèse Cochin Gallery Case

by Ekaterina Vinogradova

Arts 2022, 11(5), 81; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050081 - 29 Aug 2022

Viewed by 1272

Abstract

The role of female collectors in the promotion of non-official Soviet art is rarely reflected in texts on the history of art. In the shadow of the well-known figures, their patronage stays obscure. This article proposes to reflect on the exhibition practice of [...] Read more.

The role of female collectors in the promotion of non-official Soviet art is rarely reflected in texts on the history of art. In the shadow of the well-known figures, their patronage stays obscure. This article proposes to reflect on the exhibition practice of the Marie-Thérèse first Gallery in order to add to art history by rethinking the context with a gendered lens. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Melting the Cold War: Politics of Exhibition-Making)

19 pages, 4704 KiB

Open AccessEssay

Trauma and Autotheory in an Expanded Practice of Life Drawing

by Gabrielle Amodeo

Arts 2022, 11(5), 80; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11050080 - 26 Aug 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2219

Abstract

This article examines autotheory and clinical trauma theory in relation to the author’s studio-based visual arts practice. This is addressed through surveying the development of the drawing series An open love letter. This ongoing series stems from an expanded practice of life [...] Read more.

This article examines autotheory and clinical trauma theory in relation to the author’s studio-based visual arts practice. This is addressed through surveying the development of the drawing series An open love letter. This ongoing series stems from an expanded practice of life drawing and explores experiences of love in relation to PTSD. Trauma is an event that fractures the sense of self, sometimes culminating in PTSD. As someone who experiences PTSD, physical symptoms (sweating, vertigo, emotional flooding) have pulsed against researching trauma. Memory, symptoms, and theory tangle together, challenging expectations of objectivity. The article addresses how autotheory supports the validity of establishing visual arts research engaged with trauma and trauma theory from the embodied experiences of a trauma survivor. The article additionally traces how readings of clinical trauma theory and autotheory inflected across each other in this research. First, through a clinical-trauma-theory reading of autotheory, it examines how autotheory positions itself as restorative of ideological dissociations. Specifically, autotheory intervenes in trends in art practices by privileging conceptual modes over the embodied and emotional. Following, this research establishes the significance of an autotheoretical reading of trauma theory to articulate the embodied experience of the theory. This demonstrates the capacity of autotheory to embrace the associations between research, practice, and lived experiences. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Autotheory in Contemporary Visual Arts Practice)

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Arts, Volume 11, Issue 5 (October 2022) – 29 articles

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