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Arts, Volume 11, Issue 6 (December 2022) – 23 articles

Cover Story (view full-size image): In 2007, a late medieval hoard was found in Wiener Neustadt (Austria), which is extraordinary in many respects, especially concerning its inhomogeneous composition. A group of rings with heraldic motives on the ring plate is particularly striking: in fact, the design of the objects provides strong arguments against their use as genuine seal or signet rings. Therefore, they could have functioned as ‘identification marks’ of their owners. On the other hand, some wealthy citizens of Wiener Neustadt maybe just wanted to demonstrate their closeness to the culture (and fashion) of the nobility. In the end, the interpretation of these rings remains speculative because the route of the individual pieces in the treasure of Wiener Neustadt cannot be reconstructed anymore. View this paper
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15 pages, 3714 KiB  
Article
Jewish Wedding Rings with Miniature Architecture from Medieval Europe
by Maria Stürzebecher
Arts 2022, 11(6), 131; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11060131 - 19 Dec 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 4062 | Correction
Abstract
Among the various types of medieval rings, Jewish wedding rings with miniature architecture have a special significance due to their special form, their importance in the Jewish wedding ceremony and their long tradition that extends from the Middle Ages into present day. This [...] Read more.
Among the various types of medieval rings, Jewish wedding rings with miniature architecture have a special significance due to their special form, their importance in the Jewish wedding ceremony and their long tradition that extends from the Middle Ages into present day. This paper will examine their function in the wedding ceremony and their role as part of marriage as a legal transaction and the symbolism of their particular design. Full article
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25 pages, 7853 KiB  
Article
Defying Ornaments
by Nissim Gal
Arts 2022, 11(6), 130; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11060130 - 19 Dec 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1652
Abstract
The article will discuss works of art produced by Palestinian artists, in which the ornament functions as an intermediary for conveying signs, symbols, messages, and identities. In Muslim tradition, the ornament represented, and visually participated in, establishing the social order, and was also [...] Read more.
The article will discuss works of art produced by Palestinian artists, in which the ornament functions as an intermediary for conveying signs, symbols, messages, and identities. In Muslim tradition, the ornament represented, and visually participated in, establishing the social order, and was also a signifier of a distinct theological, social, dogmatic, and gendered identity. The works at the heart of this article present the ornament as part of an aesthetic and ethical inquiry, a means of reenacting individual and collective history as well as preserving and deconstructing conventions, a method that is both poisonous and a remedy for social hierarchies, fixed identities, and oppressive power relations. I argue that the ornament represented in contemporary Palestinian artworks reflects a destructive or constructive urge, which Mark Wigley describes as an: “elaborate mechanism for concealing and preserving, if not constructing, identity.” Full article
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19 pages, 28245 KiB  
Article
Xianbei Zoomorphic Plaques: Art, Migration, and Human-Environment Entanglement
by Fan Zhang
Arts 2022, 11(6), 129; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11060129 - 19 Dec 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1846
Abstract
This paper adopts an ecological perspective to investigate the visual and material remains associated with the Xianbei people, a nomadic group active in Northeast Asia from the turn of the common era to the early medieval period. Through the study of metal plaques [...] Read more.
This paper adopts an ecological perspective to investigate the visual and material remains associated with the Xianbei people, a nomadic group active in Northeast Asia from the turn of the common era to the early medieval period. Through the study of metal plaques bearing animal motifs and the environmental contexts of these artworks, I articulate the entangled relationship between humans, animals, and nature. More specifically, this research highlights three groups of zoomorphic designs, including the deer, the horse, and the human–animal juxtaposition. By investigating the stylistic changes and geographical distributions of these three types of zoomorphic metal plaques, I analyze the various roles that animals played in the Xianbei society and the different ways in which the Xianbei people engaged with animals. The shifting relationship between humans and animals as reflected in the zoomorphic metal plaques, I argue, likely resulted from the changing environment of the Xianbei people as they migrated from the Greater Khingan Range to the southern Mongolian Steppe and, finally, to North China. At various stages of their migration, the Xianbei people conducted different modes of living, ranging from hunting, pastoral nomadism, to a sedentary lifestyle, which significantly shaped the design of their zoomorphic metal plaques. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Zoomorphic Arts of Ancient Central Eurasia)
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26 pages, 7449 KiB  
Article
Art-Heritage-Environment: Common Views Art Collective Engagement with Bedouin Minority in Israeli Desert Region (2019–2021)
by Irit Carmon Popper
Arts 2022, 11(6), 128; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11060128 - 19 Dec 2022
Viewed by 1849
Abstract
The Bedouin and Jewish inhabitants of the southern Israeli desert region share a common desert vista. However, they are diverse, multicultural communities who suffer inequity in access to valuable resources such as water. Between 2019 and 2021, Common Views art collective initiated a [...] Read more.
The Bedouin and Jewish inhabitants of the southern Israeli desert region share a common desert vista. However, they are diverse, multicultural communities who suffer inequity in access to valuable resources such as water. Between 2019 and 2021, Common Views art collective initiated a socially engaged durational art project with Bedouin and Jewish inhabitants entitled Common Views. The art collective seeks to enact sustainable practices of water preservation as a mutually fertile ground for collaboration between the conflicted communities, by reawakening and revitalizing rainwater harvesting, as part of traditional local desert life. Their interventions promote new concepts of Environmental Reconciliation, aiming to confront social-ecological issues, the commons, and resource equity, grounded in interpersonal collaborative relationships with stratified local communities. Their site-specific art actions seek to drive a public discourse on environmental and sustainable resources, while reflecting on the distribution of social and spatial imbalance. They take part in contemporary art discourse relative to socially engaged practices, yet their uniqueness lies in conflictual sites such as the discord arising from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and their proposed model for resolution linking politics with environment. It utilizes renegotiation with histories and heritage, as a vehicle to evoke enhanced awareness of mutual environmental concerns in an attempt at reconciliation on political grounds. Full article
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18 pages, 301 KiB  
Article
Performing Venice’s Stones: Vedute Manoeuvre Redux
by Heather H. Yeung
Arts 2022, 11(6), 127; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11060127 - 15 Dec 2022
Viewed by 1067
Abstract
‘Venice excels in blackness and whiteness; water makes commerce between them’. So writes Adrian Stokes, in his 1947 study of the city, its architectures, and its art. This very sentence performs a problem of Venice that has vexed those who have made art, [...] Read more.
‘Venice excels in blackness and whiteness; water makes commerce between them’. So writes Adrian Stokes, in his 1947 study of the city, its architectures, and its art. This very sentence performs a problem of Venice that has vexed those who have made art, literature, and other writing of the city, in the city, from the city: Venice asks us to take its measure, its shadows and light, its water and stones—but this is even more complex than a chiaroscuro, ‘commerce’, aesthetic and economic, plays with what is clear and what is not, tipping us between registers we fail to fully comprehend. And thus we are brought too often to perform and replicate such confusion and inability to ‘account for’ the polytropic, polymaterial, and polytemporal registers the city simultaneously operates upon, or ‘makes commerce between’. And yet there is an artistic method that can account for the strange and often highly problematic spoliate economies of Venice, a method which also bridges walking practice as political performance art, and situated performance as art historical practice. This is a poetic-performance method that is provided by the artist Tim Brennan’s Vedute Manoeuvre, first performed in the Venice Biennale 2011, and re-performed as part of the research work documented here. Vedute Manoeuvre, I claim, is a method whose polyvocalic polyvisual modes, whose art-act as common experience and experience of the complexity of the artistic and architectural commons and commerce of Venice, is perhaps the only way of ‘giving voice to’ the polytropic, polymaterial, and polytemporal problems we encounter when we encounter Venice, its water, and its stones. We thus re-orientate the multiple other ways that spoliate, colonial, archipelagic Venice has been found difficult in previous attempts to perform an accounting of (and, indeed, of artistic commerce with) this vexed and vexing city, with Vedute Manoeuvre as invitation toward a performance ‘redux’, as crux and as solution. The work presented here—an essay in the truest sense—is also a mode of performance which demonstrates in its own attitudes to the question of the manoeuvre the act and art of manoeuvre itself. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Art and Performance)
61 pages, 27945 KiB  
Article
“More than Just a Poet”: Konstantin Batiushkov as an Art Critic, Art Manager, and Art Brut Painter
by Igor Pilshchikov
Arts 2022, 11(6), 126; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11060126 - 14 Dec 2022
Viewed by 2108
Abstract
This paper focuses on the Russian Golden Age author Konstantin Batiushkov’s involvement with fine arts. He is recognized as an exquisite elegist, an immediate predecessor of Alexander Pushkin in poetry, and “a pioneer of Russian Italomania.” Much less known is that Batiushkov was [...] Read more.
This paper focuses on the Russian Golden Age author Konstantin Batiushkov’s involvement with fine arts. He is recognized as an exquisite elegist, an immediate predecessor of Alexander Pushkin in poetry, and “a pioneer of Russian Italomania.” Much less known is that Batiushkov was always deeply involved with painting, drawing, and sculpture—not only as a poet but as Russia’s first art critic, an ad-lib art manager, who worked on behalf of the President of the Russian Academy of Arts Aleksei Olenin, and an amateur artist. The paper offers addenda to the commentary on his essay devoted to the 1814 academic exhibition, commonly referred to as the earliest significant example of Russian art criticism. Many of Batiushkov’s extant paintings and drawings belong to the time when he was mentally insane. Since he was a self-taught artist, his visual works of this period can be categorized as early examples of art brut. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Slavic and Eastern-European Visuality: Modernity and Tradition)
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25 pages, 6812 KiB  
Article
The “Geometry” of Matyushin’s Color Triads: Mapping Color Combinations from the Reference Book of Color in CIELAB
by Yulia A. Griber
Arts 2022, 11(6), 125; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11060125 - 12 Dec 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1572
Abstract
This study analyzes the color combinations composed by the Russian avant-garde artist Mikhail Matyushin and his disciples for the Reference Book of Color (1932), summarizing their experimental research on the psychophysiology of color perception. Having extracted 90 colors from the 34 hand-painted charts [...] Read more.
This study analyzes the color combinations composed by the Russian avant-garde artist Mikhail Matyushin and his disciples for the Reference Book of Color (1932), summarizing their experimental research on the psychophysiology of color perception. Having extracted 90 colors from the 34 hand-painted charts of the book’s first edition, we mapped these colors into CIELAB and CIELCh color space to identify their chromatic characteristics (hue, lightness, and chroma) and their combination criteria. We demonstrate graphically that each of Matyushin’s color triads has a similar “geometry” in CIELAB color space and on the color circle, with the “intermediary” color much closer to the environment background color than to the main color. We conclude that the revealed patterns of these relationships are identical in all four sections of the Reference Book and reflect underlying principles of Mathyshin’s theory of color as well as fundamental aspects of human perception. The analysis presented in this paper will facilitate opportunities for artists, architects, designers, and other color professionals to use Matyushin’s original color charts and incorporate Matyushin’s style in creating their own triads. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Visual Arts)
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13 pages, 2553 KiB  
Article
Musing with Petric Bodies, Hanging on to Dear Life
by Julieanna Preston
Arts 2022, 11(6), 124; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11060124 - 12 Dec 2022
Viewed by 1199
Abstract
Musing with Petric Bodies, Hanging on to Dear Life is an essay that critically reflects on the live performance work “Becoming Boulder”, which occurred on 31 January 2015 as part of the Science Communication Art New Zealand Intercreate Symposium at New Plymouth, New [...] Read more.
Musing with Petric Bodies, Hanging on to Dear Life is an essay that critically reflects on the live performance work “Becoming Boulder”, which occurred on 31 January 2015 as part of the Science Communication Art New Zealand Intercreate Symposium at New Plymouth, New Zealand. I performed a contact improvisation with a large andesite boulder, in a king tide, on a stormy day, at a culturally significant place for an extended period of time. Written using the present tense and as a dialogical text, the essay employs ekphrasis and practices geo-poetry to colour the scene and critically contextualise the potentials and limits of empathetic engagement with another form of organic assemblage. Complexities that come with being a foreigner or immigrant, well-versed in contemporary New Materialist discourse, and dwelling in a land rich with indigenous knowledge are voiced amongst gestures to get close to, identify with, and perform as an ancient, far from dead weight, body. While musing and critically contextualising on the potentials and limits of empathetic engagements, the essay seeks to exemplify the value of material situated learning that occurs in the space of making or doing of durational, experimental, site-responsive performance works. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Art and Performance)
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13 pages, 1505 KiB  
Article
Andrei Sen-Senkov and the Visual Poetics of the Global Commonplace
by Evgeny Pavlov
Arts 2022, 11(6), 123; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11060123 - 07 Dec 2022
Viewed by 1203
Abstract
This article considers the visual poetics of the prominent contemporary Russian poet and poetry translator Andrei Sen-Senkov whose work is examined through the Deleuzian lens as a prime example of rhizomatic poetry. Senkov’s poetics is that of the commonplace: working with cultural cliches, [...] Read more.
This article considers the visual poetics of the prominent contemporary Russian poet and poetry translator Andrei Sen-Senkov whose work is examined through the Deleuzian lens as a prime example of rhizomatic poetry. Senkov’s poetics is that of the commonplace: working with cultural cliches, and primarily visual material, it embeds very private concerns within a global matrix, with astounding and often theoretically challenging results. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Slavic and Eastern-European Visuality: Modernity and Tradition)
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17 pages, 1953 KiB  
Article
Cinema Divina and Autotheory: An Interview with Marilyn Freeman
by Marilyn Freeman and Cat Auburn
Arts 2022, 11(6), 122; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11060122 - 30 Nov 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1537
Abstract
This is an interview with moving image artist, writer, and contemplative practitioner, Marilyn (M) Freeman by artist, Cat Auburn. They explore Freeman’s contemplative filmmaking practice, ‘Cinema Divina’ and the relationship of Freeman’s life, artistic practice and research interests to autotheory. Autotheory is widely [...] Read more.
This is an interview with moving image artist, writer, and contemplative practitioner, Marilyn (M) Freeman by artist, Cat Auburn. They explore Freeman’s contemplative filmmaking practice, ‘Cinema Divina’ and the relationship of Freeman’s life, artistic practice and research interests to autotheory. Autotheory is widely held to be the coalescence of autobiography with theory (or philosophy) within a work of art or literature, often with an aim towards offering social or cultural narration and service. The impulse to collaborate on this interview came from Auburn’s encounter with Cinema Divina during an online group contemplative session facilitated by Freeman in February 2022. This interview covers Freeman’s development of Cinema Divina, such topics as Freeman’s theory of Vertical Dissonance, the risks of working autotheoretically, mysticism, interior life, the hierarchies of knowledge production and the potential for what Freeman calls ‘the illuminated space’ to create radical opportunities for personal transformation. Ultimately, this interview establishes that Cinema Divina can be seen as an autotheoretical practice that uses contemplative practices rooted in lectio divina, a meditative prayer ritual of early Benedictine monastics, to theorize through Freeman’s embodied, lived experiences and artistic outcomes. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Autotheory in Contemporary Visual Arts Practice)
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27 pages, 5761 KiB  
Article
A Holy Land within The Holy Land: Duc in Altum as a Case in Point
by Assaf Pinkus, Neta Bodner and Einat Segal
Arts 2022, 11(6), 121; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11060121 - 28 Nov 2022
Viewed by 2573
Abstract
During the last five decades, the entire Christian religious landscape of the Sea of Galilee has undergone a gradual and steady reshaping, with devotional centers renovated, rebuilt, and even re-invented. Together they frame the area around the Sea of Galilee as A Holy [...] Read more.
During the last five decades, the entire Christian religious landscape of the Sea of Galilee has undergone a gradual and steady reshaping, with devotional centers renovated, rebuilt, and even re-invented. Together they frame the area around the Sea of Galilee as A Holy Land in itself, an enclave not only with unique characteristics distinguishing it from The Holy Land as a whole, but also in competition with it. Among the many establishments, one site does this explicitly in both word and image: the Duc in Altum center of worship built on the presumed location of the ancient city of Magdala. In this article, we explore the visual strategies and mechanisms that enable the site to assert its alleged authenticity and legitimacy; lay the foundations for a theoretical framework for understanding the ideological processes of the current Christian art around the Sea of Galilee; and suggest that these strategies are paradigmatic to the redefining of the religious and political identity of the entire region of the Sea of Galilee in order to establish it as A Holy Land of its own. Full article
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39 pages, 8999 KiB  
Article
Predators and Prey: Cosmological Perspectivism in Scythian Animal Style Art
by Benjamin Sharkey
Arts 2022, 11(6), 120; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11060120 - 28 Nov 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 5543
Abstract
The Scythians, nomads who roamed between the Pontic steppe and the Altai mountains throughout the 7th to 3rd centuries BC, are well known for their iconic animal style art. Composed of vivid stylised representations of animals, but depicting few humans, this art poses [...] Read more.
The Scythians, nomads who roamed between the Pontic steppe and the Altai mountains throughout the 7th to 3rd centuries BC, are well known for their iconic animal style art. Composed of vivid stylised representations of animals, but depicting few humans, this art poses a challenge to interpretation. The Scythians left no written sources to give insight on their beliefs, and scholars have often had to make recourse to non-nomadic Greek and Persian sources, but these sources are not without their issues. In this paper I will propose the anthropological concept of cosmological perspectivism, first developed by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, as a new way through which to think about and develop a better understanding of what Scythians thought and believed about the animal subjects of their art. I will explore the importance of predators, prey, and the contest between them in both perspectivism and Scythian art, and demonstrate how perspectivism might help us approach these works. Turning to a number of objects that combine Hellenistic and Scythian styles, I will examine how they support a perspectivist reading and explore what they can tell us about how the Scythians thought about animals and how they used them to represent human stories. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Animals in Ancient Material Cultures (vol. 3))
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13 pages, 4874 KiB  
Article
The Politics of Seeing Double: Klaus Michael Grüber’s Die Bakchen and the Visual Arts
by Irene Gerogianni
Arts 2022, 11(6), 119; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11060119 - 24 Nov 2022
Viewed by 1604
Abstract
Euripides’ The Bacchae is a Greek tragedy that relies on its capacity to give double vision, by confusing and dismembering the senses. This idea of doubling is taken to the extreme in the Berlin Schaubühne production Die Bakchen, directed by Klaus Michael [...] Read more.
Euripides’ The Bacchae is a Greek tragedy that relies on its capacity to give double vision, by confusing and dismembering the senses. This idea of doubling is taken to the extreme in the Berlin Schaubühne production Die Bakchen, directed by Klaus Michael Grüber in 1974, which formed part of the Antikenprojekt, realized along with Peter Stein. For theatre historians, Grüber’s Die Bakchen delivered a completely new concept of theatre—a theatre of images—capable to bewitch and fascinate the spectators, but distant from a hermeneutic approach with reference to the dramatic text. What is often missed here, however, is the specificity of the visual aspect of the production, which features references to historical works of classical and Renaissance art, as well as to modern sculpture, Arte Povera and conceptual, as well as performance, art pieces. In fact, the idea of doubling seems to be translated by Grüber into an intertextual, intermedial play between the text, the performance on stage, and the visual arts. As a result, the different aspects of the production look familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, not merely by the uneasy separation of theatre and text, but also by the double’s interplay between vision and knowledge. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Art and Performance)
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13 pages, 285 KiB  
Article
The Clinch and the Crack: Rupture and Resolution in Third Theatre’s Laboratory Practices
by Patrick Campbell and Jane Turner
Arts 2022, 11(6), 118; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11060118 - 16 Nov 2022
Viewed by 1499
Abstract
This article maps out our critical engagement with the Third Theatre community pre- and post-COVID-19, with a focus on both performer training and the concrete material ways in which group theatres connected to this small tradition have responded to the challenges of the [...] Read more.
This article maps out our critical engagement with the Third Theatre community pre- and post-COVID-19, with a focus on both performer training and the concrete material ways in which group theatres connected to this small tradition have responded to the challenges of the global pandemic. To illustrate our arguments, we draw on the Japanese craft of kintsugi—the transformative repair of ceramics—as a dispositif, employed to investigate the ways in which theatrical practice can comprise ‘an art of precious scars’, to paraphrase Stephano Carnazzi. This model allows for breaking with form and, importantly, re-modelling energy, which conversely becomes the most important aspect of the theatre laboratory, encompassing the relationships between body and form, individual and group, and artist and the wider society, importantly allowing for the creation of something that is more unique and authentic. Theatrical practice can thus be a clinch (bound like in a mother’s embrace) or jolted through disruption (like the cracks of kintsugi). Importantly, this disruption and its resolution takes place on both a level of form (as in the theatrical exercise) and on a broader, socio-political and economic plain. The article importantly focuses on both phenomena, and in so doing reflects on both the legacy and futurity of the transnational Third Theatre community. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Art and Performance)
12 pages, 4944 KiB  
Article
Rings with Heraldic Motives from the Wiener Neustadt Treasure: Imitations of Medieval Signet Rings?
by Nikolaus Hofer
Arts 2022, 11(6), 117; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11060117 - 14 Nov 2022
Viewed by 1823
Abstract
In 2007, a late medieval hoard was found in Wiener Neustadt (Lower Austria), which is extraordinary in many respects: the circumstances of its discovery were curious, its composition extremely inhomogeneous in terms of date and quality, and last but not least, the reconstructable [...] Read more.
In 2007, a late medieval hoard was found in Wiener Neustadt (Lower Austria), which is extraordinary in many respects: the circumstances of its discovery were curious, its composition extremely inhomogeneous in terms of date and quality, and last but not least, the reconstructable circumstances of its concealment seem to have sprung almost from a Hollywood screenplay. It is due to a memorable coincidence that this treasure could be processed quickly within the framework of a scientific research project. The results were already presented in 2014 in a comprehensive monograph. One aspect among the numerous oddities of this hoard is the high number of finger rings it contains, which in turn form a very inhomogeneous category of finds. A group of rings with heraldic motifs on the ring plate is particularly striking and are the focus of this article. Full article
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12 pages, 7620 KiB  
Essay
All the Missiles Are One Missile Revisited: Dazzle in the Work of Zofia Kulik
by Sarah Wilson
Arts 2022, 11(6), 116; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11060116 - 11 Nov 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1373
Abstract
This essay revisits one of Polish artist Zofia Kulik’s most important ‘photocarpets’, produced in a moment of hope, retrospection yet continuing war in 1993; seen by an international public in 1997. Visually, its composition is dominated by late Soviet sculptures symbolising Mother Russia [...] Read more.
This essay revisits one of Polish artist Zofia Kulik’s most important ‘photocarpets’, produced in a moment of hope, retrospection yet continuing war in 1993; seen by an international public in 1997. Visually, its composition is dominated by late Soviet sculptures symbolising Mother Russia and military aggression, yet the composition, ‘kilim-like’, with an additional reference to Polish Catholicism, involves bilateral and rotational symmetries which undermine significations of power and might with various other symbols: bodies, naked or draped, and Polish TV screenshots from both the military and entertainment worlds. ‘Dazzle’, the camouflage-related military term is also related to tears and (repressed) mourning. The female artist’s attitude to gender is crucial. The piece is both a ‘revisualisation’ and ‘rewriting’, relating both to the author’s previous texts on the artist from 1999 and 2001, and Kulik’s own rediscovery of her Ukrainian heritage, which reframes her own vision and understanding of the piece in 2022. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Slavic and Eastern-European Visuality: Modernity and Tradition)
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14 pages, 2255 KiB  
Article
Rethinking the Spirit of “Self” and “Theory”: The Practice of “Autotheory” in Contemporary Chinese Art
by Wenwen Gu and Ke Su
Arts 2022, 11(6), 115; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11060115 - 04 Nov 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2131
Abstract
From genre to interdisciplinary and trans-medial artistic practice, “autotheory” has attracted great attention for formally distilling a troublesome contradiction of dualistic opposition between theory and practice in arts and attempting to solve it. In this paper, autotheory is understood as the joining of [...] Read more.
From genre to interdisciplinary and trans-medial artistic practice, “autotheory” has attracted great attention for formally distilling a troublesome contradiction of dualistic opposition between theory and practice in arts and attempting to solve it. In this paper, autotheory is understood as the joining of reflective thinking through the “collective self” and the reflective thinking of “theory”. Based on Lauren Fournier’s research, this paper investigates two kinds of art practices in contemporary Chinese art. The first developed from the art movements of the late 1970s to the late 1980s, when there was a rethinking of collective selfhood in Chinese art circles. This “collective self” in Chinese culture expands the parameters of autotheory’s individualized, autobiographical “self”, as described by Fournier. The second example of autotheory discussed in this paper explores contemporary Chinese feminist art. Due to its cultural background and historical trajectory, different dimensions of individualized autotheoretical practices have developed in feminist contemporary art in China in the new era. The case studies presented in this paper show the flexibility of autotheory as a methodology, the complex conditions it applies to, and the potential to generate theory from expanded notions of “self” in art practice. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Autotheory in Contemporary Visual Arts Practice)
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11 pages, 595 KiB  
Article
Unclogging the Ears: Nonstop Languaging as Autotheory in Art and Academia
by Antrianna Moutoula
Arts 2022, 11(6), 114; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11060114 - 03 Nov 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1438
Abstract
This text emerges from the autotheoretical performance practice of nonstop languaging, developed during my Master Studies at HOME OF PERFORMANCE PRACTICES, ArtEZ University of the Arts. My ongoing artistic research is enacted through this practice and proposes a writing of the self that [...] Read more.
This text emerges from the autotheoretical performance practice of nonstop languaging, developed during my Master Studies at HOME OF PERFORMANCE PRACTICES, ArtEZ University of the Arts. My ongoing artistic research is enacted through this practice and proposes a writing of the self that is not focused on recalling facts or narrating stories, but rather on tracing my thoughts in real time through language (languaging) and witnessing them simultaneously with another person. I perform autotheory by merging methods of articulating autobiography (carrying the self in language) with methods of forming and digesting theory. For this Special Issue, I created a new work in which nonstop languaging enters the framework of an academic paper. The autotheoretical work was developed through a series of radio performances at radio WORM, followed by a period of artistic research on transcription and citational practices. The result is an overload of words, thoughts, citations, experiences, theories, and memories that seek their own linearity. The practice of nonstop languaging contributes to the current artistic and academic discourse on autotheoretical modes of working with language, particularly within contemporary art, and further afield. This article invites readers to engage with an expanded view of autotheory in practice, and suggests that, by encouraging the shaping of an audience of engaged readers/listeners, autotheory can offer a space in which the confinements of knowledge production and dissemination within artistic academic discourse can be renegotiated. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Autotheory in Contemporary Visual Arts Practice)
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24 pages, 18845 KiB  
Article
The Polychrome in Expression of Baroque Façade Architecture
by Bogna Ludwig
Arts 2022, 11(6), 113; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11060113 - 03 Nov 2022
Viewed by 2776
Abstract
The article is dedicated to the role of polychrome solutions of the architectonic order in shaping the mode of expression of Baroque façades. The ancient principles of designing architectural structures, inherited from the Renaissance, were subjected to reinterpretations in order to impart different [...] Read more.
The article is dedicated to the role of polychrome solutions of the architectonic order in shaping the mode of expression of Baroque façades. The ancient principles of designing architectural structures, inherited from the Renaissance, were subjected to reinterpretations in order to impart different expressive values. Vertical layouts began to dominate in the Baroque. Appropriately selected polychrome of the elements of the order could emphasize the compositional expression. The relationship between the layout of the polychrome in a given architectural order and the expression of a work of art has been established for some time. However, the generally available data on color schemes of architectural structures in Baroque buildings are still not fully organized. The paper analyzes examples of Baroque façades preserved in their original state and revalorized in recent years after thorough research by conservators in the field of architecture and color. The examples are mainly designed in the so-called great order, i.e., pertaining largely to church façades. The decisive field of change became the shaping of the coloristic decoration of the entablature. Full article
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17 pages, 10645 KiB  
Article
The French Telematic Magazine Art Accès (1984–1987)
by Marie Vicet
Arts 2022, 11(6), 112; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11060112 - 31 Oct 2022
Viewed by 1360
Abstract
Created in 1984 by the French artists ORLAN, Frédéric Develay and Frédéric Martin and shown for the first time at the Centre Pompidou during the exhibition Les Immatériaux (28 March to 15 July 1985), the telematic magazine Art Accès has marked the history [...] Read more.
Created in 1984 by the French artists ORLAN, Frédéric Develay and Frédéric Martin and shown for the first time at the Centre Pompidou during the exhibition Les Immatériaux (28 March to 15 July 1985), the telematic magazine Art Accès has marked the history of the art on Minitel, the French Videotex system in use between 1980 and 2012. For ORLAN and Frédéric Develay, Art Accès was a way both to propose an artistic and cultural alternative to a purely utilitarian and mercantile content, but also to explore the possibilities of a ‘poor’ medium. Working within the framework of the magazine, ORLAN and Frédéric Develay invited visual artists, but also poets and musicians to use videotex, to transgress it in all possible ways and thus to make an original work that is made by this medium and for this medium. Although the French Minitel network ended in 2012 and the magazine has long since disappeared, there are still traces, fragments or documents that allow us to reconstruct its history. This essay proposes an initial study of this telematic experience and of some of its most emblematic creations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Collection Review of Machine Art)
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11 pages, 3235 KiB  
Article
We Continue Each Other
by Sofie Gielis, Eleanor Duffin and Ingel Vaikla
Arts 2022, 11(6), 111; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11060111 - 31 Oct 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1205
Abstract
Three female voices with different cultural backgrounds and practices explore the concept and possibilities of the we-narrative. Starting from a position of critical reflection, we dive into the question of how to speak as a female WE. WE is used to differentiate the [...] Read more.
Three female voices with different cultural backgrounds and practices explore the concept and possibilities of the we-narrative. Starting from a position of critical reflection, we dive into the question of how to speak as a female WE. WE is used to differentiate the particular collective dynamic that operates throughout this text from a more general use of the word ‘we’. Our framework is to work with the personal and vulnerable, but at the same time remain open to a dialogue that invites the other, through the concept of empathy. Our overarching aim is to look at what it means when we speak together collectively: whether it brings strength or dilution, and how speaking poly-vocally from a position of lived first person collective experience impacts current ideas around authorship. Is it possible to speak as a WE and write subjectively in a way that does not become a generalisation or a compromise? Guided by Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, our text uses the format of autotheoretical writing, drawing on our creative–critical writing practices in the context of visual art. We seek to encompass our female ancestors in visual art. The text generates a dialogue that creates room for the articulation of one’s own voice and hand, whilst intending to leave space or gaps for the other to insert themselves. Appearing in seemingly disparate fragments, the text weaves together to form a tapestry, sometimes performative, sometimes narrative, incorporating both visual and language-based elements. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Autotheory in Contemporary Visual Arts Practice)
17 pages, 5692 KiB  
Article
From Folk Art to Abstraction: Ukrainian Embroidery as a Medium of Avant-Garde Experimentation
by Katia Denysova
Arts 2022, 11(6), 110; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11060110 - 24 Oct 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2483 | Correction
Abstract
The article examines the correlation between the stylistic iconography of traditional Ukrainian embroideries and the experiments in modernist painting that led to the emergence of abstraction, Suprematism in particular. The focus is made on the artistic output of the embroidery workshops in the [...] Read more.
The article examines the correlation between the stylistic iconography of traditional Ukrainian embroideries and the experiments in modernist painting that led to the emergence of abstraction, Suprematism in particular. The focus is made on the artistic output of the embroidery workshops in the villages of Verbivka and Skoptsi, both located on the territory of present-day Ukraine, in the early 1910s. These studios, led by Natalia Davydova and Alexandra Exter, and Yevheniia Prybylska, respectively, engaged ‘leftist’ artists and local artisans to produce a new type of embroidery, relinquishing the mere stylization characteristic of other kustar studios in the Russian Empire. While scholars in Ukraine have undertaken extensive research to highlight the centrality of the Ukrainian context in progressive artists’ engagement with folk embroidery on the territory of the Russian Empire, internationally this phenomenon is still largely viewed under the generalized imperialist term of the ‘Russian avant-garde’. Using existing scholarship as the foundation, the present article seeks to redress this misconception. It also recognizes the long overdue need to situate the handicrafts revival movement in Ukraine within the broader framework of the engagement with vernacular culture by the nationally minded intelligentsia in East-Central Europe, while contrasting it with similar undertakings in Russia proper. Full article
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29 pages, 22808 KiB  
Article
“You Can Do This”: Working with the Artistic Legacy of El Lissitzky
by Willem Jan Renders
Arts 2022, 11(6), 109; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts11060109 - 23 Oct 2022
Viewed by 2892
Abstract
The collection of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven comprises works by some 800 modern and contemporary artists, and El Lissitzky is one of the most important among them. This special position for Lissitzky is not due simply to the number of his works [...] Read more.
The collection of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven comprises works by some 800 modern and contemporary artists, and El Lissitzky is one of the most important among them. This special position for Lissitzky is not due simply to the number of his works in the collection. In addition, his oeuvre, ideas and artistic objectives correspond closely with the museum’s engagement with experimentation, radical creativity and public participation. As one of the most dynamic artists of his time, over the years Lissitzky has become more and more important to the museum. He was anything but a creator of static, self-contained works. His creativity was powerful and open to many, a mass of plans and projects bristling with life. Inspired by Lissitzky, the Van Abbemuseum was keen to make that verve and vitality tangible for today’s public. The primary way to do that was to research, show and discuss his original works, but in many cases it was possible to go one step further and reconstruct what was lost or finish what the artist had started. Also, Lissitzky’s works were a source of inspiration for a number of contemporary artists. In this article I will discuss how these works came to Eindhoven and give examples of how the Van Abbemuseum treated this artistic legacy in exhibitions, reconstructions, constructions and new artworks. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Slavic and Eastern-European Visuality: Modernity and Tradition)
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