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Arts, Volume 12, Issue 1 (February 2023) – 39 articles

Cover Story (view full-size image): Fabricated worlds in tombs and cave temples of the Hexi Corridor show that animals were integral to concepts of earthly and heavenly realms in China’s early medieval period. Domestic animals in third-century tomb paintings establish microcosms, while images dated a century later fuse celestial and terrestrial worlds. In cave temples of the sixth century, proliferating buddhas and bodhisattvas crowd out animals and assert an anthropocentric view of life and paradise. These changes in animal imagery connect to the region’s social, cultural, and demographic transformations, including an initial embrace of pastoralism that was replaced by cosmopolitanism. (Image credit: Heavenly horse, Dingjiazha M5. Reprinted with permission, ©Wenwu Press.)  View this paper
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22 pages, 503 KiB  
Article
Getting Noticed by Many: On the Transformations of the Popular
by Niels Werber, Daniel Stein, Jörg Döring, Veronika Albrecht-Birkner, Carolin Gerlitz, Thomas Hecken, Johannes Paßmann, Jörgen Schäfer, Cornelius Schubert and Jochen Venus
Arts 2023, 12(1), 39; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010039 - 17 Feb 2023
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1826
Abstract
This article argues that the transformations of the popular, which began in Europe around 1800 and introduced the powerful distinction between low culture and high culture, have established a competitive distinction between the popular and the non-popular that has become dominant over the [...] Read more.
This article argues that the transformations of the popular, which began in Europe around 1800 and introduced the powerful distinction between low culture and high culture, have established a competitive distinction between the popular and the non-popular that has become dominant over the course of the 20th century. As a result, the popular is no longer either the culture of the ‘lower classes’ or the inclusion of the ‘people’ in the service of higher goals. The popular today is hardly the object of desired transgressions (Leslie Fiedler’s “cross the border, close the gap”) or an expression of felt or feared “massification” or “flattening”. Rather, being popular now means getting noticed by many. Popularity is measured as well as staged, as rankings and charts provide information on what is popular while vying for popularity themselves. These quantifying formats do not speak to the quality or originality of the popular, only to its evident success across different scales of evaluation. People do not buy good products, they buy popular ones; they do not listen to the best music, but to popular music; they do not share, like, or retweet important, but popular news. Even the ‘unpopular’ can be popular: a despised politician, a hated jingle, an unpopular measure. The popular modifies whatever it affords with attention. Its quantitatively and hierarchically comparative terms (‘bestseller,’ ‘outperformer,’ ‘high score,’ ‘viral’) generate valences that do not inhere in the objects themselves. Conversely, the non-popular, which does not find any measurable resonance in these terms, risks being dismissed as irrelevant or worthless simply because it does not appear in any rankings or ratings. This can be observed particularly with artefacts whose relevance as part of high culture may be taken for granted even when they do not achieve mass resonance. The purpose of this article is to outline a theory of the popular that does justice to these developments by identifying two decisive transformations: 1. the popularization of quantifying methods to measure attention in popular culture around 1950; 2. the popularization of the internet around 2000, whereby the question of what can and cannot become popular is partially removed from the gatekeepers of the established mass media, educational institutions, and cultural elites and is increasingly decided via social media. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Perspectives on Pop Culture)
15 pages, 289 KiB  
Article
Metal Ballads as Low Pop? An Approach to Sentimentality and Gendered Performances in Popular Hard Rock and Metal Songs
by Theresa Nink and Florian Heesch
Arts 2023, 12(1), 38; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010038 - 17 Feb 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1622
Abstract
Ballads are often among the bestselling songs of heavy metal and hard rock bands. Within these genres, ballads represent a way to address emotions such as love that are not part of the primary self-understanding of those genres. Still, “genre ideals and style” [...] Read more.
Ballads are often among the bestselling songs of heavy metal and hard rock bands. Within these genres, ballads represent a way to address emotions such as love that are not part of the primary self-understanding of those genres. Still, “genre ideals and style” often seem to be at odds with the sentimental aesthetics of the ballad and its emotional expression and experience. In this article, we take a close look at the sonic, textual, performative, visual, and emotional-somatic articulation of love and the generation of sentimentality in three selected metal ballads. Even if the term “power ballad,” which is often used in reference to hard rock and metal ballads, refers to the simultaneity of “heaviness” in the sound and the thematization of love in the lyrics, sentimental ballads in the stereotypically more masculine-connotated genres nevertheless create friction and skepticism in their discursive evaluation, as they generate aesthetic discrepancies between concrete songs and genre conventions. Their quantitative popularity contrasts with their qualitative evaluation. Therefore, in a second step, we analyze the reception of the selected ballads, in particular their discursive evaluations in music reviews, in order to point out the ways of argumentation through which frictions are established. As a result, we show that evaluations are related to how love is addressed in the songs and to the extent of proximity of the ballads to genre rules. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Perspectives on Pop Culture)
30 pages, 20943 KiB  
Article
Gothic Drawing and Drawings in the Gothic Tradition in the Iberian Peninsula (13th–18th Centuries)
by Javier Ibáñez Fernández
Arts 2023, 12(1), 37; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010037 - 15 Feb 2023
Viewed by 1372
Abstract
The inventory and cataloguing of the architectural drawings in the Gothic tradition made In the Iberian Peninsula has brought together exceptional sources that were previously scattered, usually little-known and valued, and, in many cases, unpublished. These materials can now be analyzed from multiple [...] Read more.
The inventory and cataloguing of the architectural drawings in the Gothic tradition made In the Iberian Peninsula has brought together exceptional sources that were previously scattered, usually little-known and valued, and, in many cases, unpublished. These materials can now be analyzed from multiple points of view, notably as tools for planning and surveying; as invaluable documents for the study of the enterprises they represent or helped to develop; as sources for the study of master builders; and as data sets for the analysis of the typological models, vaulting solutions, and rib-vault designs used in Gothic architecture—and in architecture of Gothic tradition—built in the Iberian Peninsula throughout the Middle Ages and Early Modern period. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Paper-Thin: Imagining, Building and Critiquing Medieval Architecture)
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32 pages, 12058 KiB  
Article
Grounding the Landscape: Epistemic Aspects of Materiality in Late-Nineteenth-Century American Open-Air Painting
by Noam Gonnen
Arts 2023, 12(1), 36; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010036 - 14 Feb 2023
Viewed by 2141
Abstract
This article examines how notions of “material” and “materiality” were infused, both technically and discursively, into American landscape painting in the late nineteenth century. Focusing particularly on the praxis of open-air painting as consolidating a new mode in landscape painting as well as [...] Read more.
This article examines how notions of “material” and “materiality” were infused, both technically and discursively, into American landscape painting in the late nineteenth century. Focusing particularly on the praxis of open-air painting as consolidating a new mode in landscape painting as well as a new artistic identity, this article argues that painting outdoors was perceived by artists in terms of agency, uniting painter, painting, and landscape; but unlike earlier romantic or Transcendentalist approaches, this idea was not conceived of as a solely spiritual union but, rather, as a mode that is embedded in the mundane, in the existence of objects, of embodied engagement and material means. The overt affinity between the basic idea of the praxis—painting outdoors in ‘real’ nature—and material aspects of art-making, is discussed as the underpinning of a new emerging episteme of American landscape painting, while considering the environment wherein this phenomenon was cultivated within a specific moment in American culture. Paintings and texts, generated by American painters and critics between the late 1870s and the 1890s, are read in this article through the lens of recent theoretical phenomenological approaches to landscape, illuminating the unique role that materiality played in these representations. Moreover, tying the findings to the changing conceptions of both landscape and art in the Gilded Age, the article concludes that landscape painters of the ‘new generation’ sought to evade commodifying tendencies of image-making by deliberately engaging with materiality, devising a mode of landscape representation that would not succumb to the flattening steamroller of capitalist consumer culture. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rethinking Materiality in Modern and Contemporary Art)
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12 pages, 1976 KiB  
Article
Not Only a Matter of Electricity–Rethinking Materiality with Victor Grippo’s Energía de una papa (1972)
by Fabiana Senkpiel
Arts 2023, 12(1), 35; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010035 - 14 Feb 2023
Viewed by 1239
Abstract
In order to consider the materiality of Victor Grippo’s artwork Energía de una papa (1972) more comprehensively than has thus far been the case, the specific characteristics of this case study are initially discussed against the background of the relationship between materiality and [...] Read more.
In order to consider the materiality of Victor Grippo’s artwork Energía de una papa (1972) more comprehensively than has thus far been the case, the specific characteristics of this case study are initially discussed against the background of the relationship between materiality and conceptual art. In a further step, the artwork’s agency is questioned, and it is regarded in the context of positions within new materialism. This is done by utilizing certain aspects of Karen Barad’s concept of “agential realism” in an examination of Grippo’s artwork. Our thesis is that while the Baradian approach is able to explain materiality within the functioning of the case study, the complex embedding of materiality and symbolic factors for the context of the art require an even broader perspective. Finally, the different layers of materiality—the material presence and the immaterial, less tangible aspects—are considered together in order to show their indispensable entanglement in generating the artwork’s meaning. It is not just the potato as food-as-art-material or the voltameter as a ready-made that must be our focus, but all the organic, non-human materials and the non-tangible elements involved in the artistic work, as well as the human being who sets the process in motion. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rethinking Materiality in Modern and Contemporary Art)
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15 pages, 4247 KiB  
Article
Inspirations and Traces in the Works of Pál Frenák
by Nóra Horváth
Arts 2023, 12(1), 34; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010034 - 14 Feb 2023
Viewed by 1019
Abstract
I have known Frenák’s choreographies for almost twenty years, and since 2017, I have been regularly presenting discussions at domestic and international conferences regarding studies of the aesthetic and philosophical aspects of Frenák’s work. We started to work together some years ago. I [...] Read more.
I have known Frenák’s choreographies for almost twenty years, and since 2017, I have been regularly presenting discussions at domestic and international conferences regarding studies of the aesthetic and philosophical aspects of Frenák’s work. We started to work together some years ago. I assisted in the creation of the productions Cage (2019), Spid_er (2020), Fig_Ht (2021) and Secret Off_Man (2022) as a philosophical consultant. When researching and collecting the inspirational material, I experienced impressions that affected my other works as well. My work as a philosopher with dance and the conversations with Frenák opened new pathways to self-knowledge. When it seems that everything points in the same direction and everything is about the same topic, it is time to create a trace. This was my feeling when I wrote and published my book on Frenák in 2022, entitled L’abécédaire of Pál Frenák—Transverses Between Philosophy and the Organic Movement Language of FrenÁk (Published in Hungarian and in English in one book: Frenák Pál Abécédaire-je—Átjárások a filozófia és FrenÁk organikus mozgásnyelve között, Kortárs Táncért és Jelelő Színházért Alapítvány, Budapest, 2022). In this paper, I am going to display some essential inspirations of the fantastically creative art world of Frenák. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The History of Hungarian Ballet)
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21 pages, 6144 KiB  
Article
Cowboys: Abstract Expressionism, Hollywood Westerns, and American Progress
by Justin Kedl
Arts 2023, 12(1), 33; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010033 - 14 Feb 2023
Viewed by 1820
Abstract
Abstract Expressionism has been influenced heavily by the popular theory of America’s undying, progressive spirit, originally conceived by Frederick Jackson Turner and given its most potent form in Western films. Turner’s “Frontier Thesis” was embodied in stories of John Wayne and other cowboy [...] Read more.
Abstract Expressionism has been influenced heavily by the popular theory of America’s undying, progressive spirit, originally conceived by Frederick Jackson Turner and given its most potent form in Western films. Turner’s “Frontier Thesis” was embodied in stories of John Wayne and other cowboy heroes taming the supposed edges of civilization. The mythic West as constructed by Turner and these films cemented American identity as one of exploration and innovation, with the notable condition of Indigenous Americans ceding their sovereignty. While Abstract Expressionism was commonly connected to the mythic West through the origin stories of Jackson Pollock and Clyfford Still, the critical understanding of this movement as the height of painterly achievement built on Native American precedents evinces a deeper connection to Turner’s popular Frontier theory. As critics like Clement Greenberg cast flatness as the last frontier of painting, and as artists like Pollock and Barnett Newman claimed Native American ritual practices as a part of their aesthetic lineage, Abstract Expressionism proved as effective as Hollywood Westerns in corroborating and perpetuating the idea of America’s frontier spirit. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Intersection of Abstract Expressionist and Mass Visual Culture)
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10 pages, 213 KiB  
Article
Ari Folman’s Made in Israel (2001): Traces of Trauma in the Israeli Cinema Landscape
by Yael Munk
Arts 2023, 12(1), 32; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010032 - 14 Feb 2023
Viewed by 1030
Abstract
In the Israeli collective memory, the Yom Kippur’s battles in the Golan Heights have become synonymous with a long lasting national scar that fails to disappear. Interestingly, until the release of Yaron Zilberman’s recent television series Valley of Tears (She’at Ne’Ila, 2020), this [...] Read more.
In the Israeli collective memory, the Yom Kippur’s battles in the Golan Heights have become synonymous with a long lasting national scar that fails to disappear. Interestingly, until the release of Yaron Zilberman’s recent television series Valley of Tears (She’at Ne’Ila, 2020), this war, which was traditionally associated with the pictured northern landscape, had appeared in few documentaries, but was almost absent from Israeli feature films. This article analyzes one of the very few attempts to deal with this memory, Ari Folman’s feature film Made in Israel (2001). Using a science fiction narrative structure, Folman adopts historian Anita Shapira’s contention about the link between this war and the Holocaust, because both confronted the Jewish people with its fear of extermination. His narrative invites the viewer to participate imaginatively in a road movie set against the snow-covered landscapes of the Golan Heights, where a number of hitmen attempt to catch the last surviving Nazi and bring him to trial in Jerusalem. Interestingly, what begins as a Zionist mission in the hegemonic spaces of the State of Israel gradually transforms into various European landscapes as the snow piles up and the Nazi feels increasingly at home. Full article
32 pages, 16665 KiB  
Article
The Semiotics of Willem de Kooning’s Easter Monday
by Claude Cernuschi
Arts 2023, 12(1), 31; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010031 - 13 Feb 2023
Viewed by 1893
Abstract
Critics have frequently employed strict binary schemes to explain Abstract Expressionism’s singular contributions to art history: the victory of abstraction over figuration, avant-garde over kitsch, pure art over anecdotal illustration, action over premeditation, or escapist detachment over direct political engagement. Taking Willem de [...] Read more.
Critics have frequently employed strict binary schemes to explain Abstract Expressionism’s singular contributions to art history: the victory of abstraction over figuration, avant-garde over kitsch, pure art over anecdotal illustration, action over premeditation, or escapist detachment over direct political engagement. Taking Willem de Kooning’s Easter Monday as a case study, this paper will question the efficacy of such dyadic explanations to encapsulate the diversity of New York School practice. Easter Monday includes both figural and abstract elements, some that parade the work’s impulsive and spontaneous character and others that were created by a photo-mechanical process. Some celebrate the artist’s personal and idiosyncratic touch, others the impersonality of popular forms of advertising. In contradistinction, the semiotic terminology of C.S. Pierce reveals not only multiple points of intersection with de Kooning’s work; it also effectively identifies and differentiates the plurality of elements the artist conjoined in a single visual field, some of which qualify as iconic, indexical, symbolic, or even as hybrid combinations of the above. These more elastic descriptors, it will be argued, are well-suited to address de Kooning’s variegated surfaces: they can address his accommodation of diverse techniques, as well as the multiple ways the artist constructed meaning and responded to popular culture. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Intersection of Abstract Expressionist and Mass Visual Culture)
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16 pages, 5451 KiB  
Essay
Artistic Responses to Crossing the Kālā Pānī
by Grace Aneiza Ali
Arts 2023, 12(1), 30; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010030 - 13 Feb 2023
Viewed by 1477
Abstract
Between 1838 and 1917, a British system of indentured servitude replaced the enslavement of African peoples with Indian labor in the Americas and the Caribbean. Almost a quarter of a million indentured Indian laborers came to British Guiana and would form the foundation [...] Read more.
Between 1838 and 1917, a British system of indentured servitude replaced the enslavement of African peoples with Indian labor in the Americas and the Caribbean. Almost a quarter of a million indentured Indian laborers came to British Guiana and would form the foundation of the majority of the Indian population in present-day Guyana. These men and women would spend nearly eight decades toiling on sugar plantations and rice fields before the brutal system of labor was abolished. This curatorial essay explores the work of three key contemporary artists of Guyanese heritage—Maya Mackrandilal, Michael Lam, and Suchitra Mattai—who underscore St. Vincent-born poet Derek Walcott’s seminal words “the sea is history” with an exploration of the sea as a weapon of rupture. Collectively, their artworks return us to a British past to offer a visceral reminder of the perilous kālā pānī crossing [Hindi for “black waters”], marking the sea the place where ancestral histories, trauma, and survival all share space. Grounding us in the present and pointing us to a future, I illustrate how these artworks also function as contemporary tools of remembrance and repair. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rethinking Contemporary Latin American Art)
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21 pages, 5838 KiB  
Article
Deer or Horses with Antlers? Wooden Figures Adorning Herders in the Altai
by Karen S. Rubinson and Katheryn M. Linduff
Arts 2023, 12(1), 29; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010029 - 06 Feb 2023
Viewed by 2021
Abstract
Among the burials of horse herders who lived in the 4th–3rd centuries BCE Altai Mountains of South Siberia were some that contained small wooden figures of four-legged hoofed animals that represent horses, deer, or hybrid creatures. They decorated headgear buried with select commoners [...] Read more.
Among the burials of horse herders who lived in the 4th–3rd centuries BCE Altai Mountains of South Siberia were some that contained small wooden figures of four-legged hoofed animals that represent horses, deer, or hybrid creatures. They decorated headgear buried with select commoners of the Pazyryk Culture. Although the people, material possessions, and horses of the elites were frequently ornamented with imagery often associated with the so-called Scytho-Siberian animal style, these figurines are generally more realistic and less stylized representations of natural creatures, either cervids or horses. There is, however, ambiguity in these representations; in some cases, figures that are horses have inset recesses on the tops of their heads, in addition to holes for ear inserts. This recalls the elaborate headdresses on some horses outfitted with large displays of antlers or horns made of wood, leather, and felt buried with the Pazyryk leaders. The implication of this ambiguity is explored here. Horses were “cultural capital and tokens of clout” (see Andreeva Introduction, this volume) in the Pazyryk Culture, as well as the base of the economy. Deer were foundational to older belief systems in Siberia. The commingling of horse, mountain goat/ibex, and deer features in Pazyryk Culture imagery has inspired this study. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Zoomorphic Arts of Ancient Central Eurasia)
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19 pages, 17030 KiB  
Article
“Animal-Style Art,” and Special Finds at Iron Age Settlements in Southeastern Kazakhstan: Chronology, Trade, and Networks during the Iron Age
by Claudia Chang, Sergei Sergievich Ivanov and Perry Alan Tourtellotte
Arts 2023, 12(1), 28; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010028 - 06 Feb 2023
Viewed by 1882
Abstract
Two Iron Age settlements, Tuzusai and Taldy Bulak 2 (ca. 500 BC to 1 CE), located in southeastern Kazakhstan on the Talgar alluvial fan north of the Tian Shan range, have yielded a small collection of bone, antler/horn, bronze, and stone artifacts with [...] Read more.
Two Iron Age settlements, Tuzusai and Taldy Bulak 2 (ca. 500 BC to 1 CE), located in southeastern Kazakhstan on the Talgar alluvial fan north of the Tian Shan range, have yielded a small collection of bone, antler/horn, bronze, and stone artifacts with an affinity to the nomadic art of the first millennium BC. Both settlements date within the period of late Saka culture. Two pieces have decorative ornamentations with zoomorphic imagery: a small carved fragment with carved images of a wing and an ear and a perforated bone disk with the carving of three birds’ heads. The other artifacts include objects associated with Saka weaponry or nomadic economy, such as two horn psalias (cheek pieces) and a bronze amulet. A carnelian bead will also be described as an imported object. These special finds were found on the occupation floors of mud brick houses and in the pit houses of settlements, not in grave or burial contexts. The objects were placed in a stratigraphic sequence in the settlement sites. The method for placing these objects within the chronological framework of “animal-style art” is through comparisons with similar objects found throughout Eurasia—a method used in Soviet and post-Soviet archaeology. The results show that the functional and stylistic elements of the six objects indicate that the Talgar settlements were part of a larger world-system of trade and communication along the early Silk Route(s). Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Zoomorphic Arts of Ancient Central Eurasia)
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37 pages, 9859 KiB  
Article
What Is It Like for You? Rethinking Voice Appropriation in Parafictional Identities in Israeli Art
by Keren Goldberg
Arts 2023, 12(1), 27; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010027 - 03 Feb 2023
Viewed by 1946
Abstract
The article focuses on two parafictional figures created by Israeli artists at about the same time in the early 2000s: Oreet Ashery’s Marcus Fisher and Roee Rosen’s Justine Frank. Through a close reading of these case studies, I examine the phenomenon of parafictional [...] Read more.
The article focuses on two parafictional figures created by Israeli artists at about the same time in the early 2000s: Oreet Ashery’s Marcus Fisher and Roee Rosen’s Justine Frank. Through a close reading of these case studies, I examine the phenomenon of parafictional characters as extreme cases of voice appropriation. Against the background of rising international concern with cultural appropriation, and of the Israeli sociopolitical context characterized by a multiplicity of often conflicting identities, I argue that such appropriation is, in fact, a basic aesthetic procedure. Using Hannah Arendt’s reading of Immanuel Kant’s aesthetic judgment as political judgment, and her articulation of an “enlarged mentality” as necessary for both aesthetic and political thinking, the article demonstrates how the ability to imagine a position different from your own is inherent for aesthetic representation as well as reception. Full article
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13 pages, 9903 KiB  
Article
Animal Imagery in Eastern Han Tomb Reliefs from Shanbei 陝北
by Leslie V. Wallace
Arts 2023, 12(1), 26; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010026 - 30 Jan 2023
Viewed by 1661
Abstract
Wild and fantastical animals climb, fly, scamper, and prance across pictorial stone carvings decorating Eastern Han tomb doors in northern Shaanxi. Alongside dragons and other mythical animals, bears felicitously dance, tigers grin opening their mouths to roar, and other wild animals frolic in [...] Read more.
Wild and fantastical animals climb, fly, scamper, and prance across pictorial stone carvings decorating Eastern Han tomb doors in northern Shaanxi. Alongside dragons and other mythical animals, bears felicitously dance, tigers grin opening their mouths to roar, and other wild animals frolic in swirling cloudscapes. While the same animals can be found in Eastern Han tomb reliefs and mortuary art in other regions, their frequency, emphasis on plasticity and movement, and combination with the yunqi 雲氣 motif are unique to the region. Originating in a hybrid style of art that was created during the Mid-Western Han Dynasty (206 BCE–9 CE), their significance was dependent not so much on any individual creature but on their display as an assemblage of shared forms, behaviors, and habitats. This paper explores how Eastern Han patrons and artists in Shanbei reinvigorated such imagery. It argues that on tomb doors through the region, these same wild and fantastical animals have become a key element of compositions meant to pacify the potentially dangerous realms that awaited the deceased in their postmortem ascension to Heaven (tian 天). Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Zoomorphic Arts of Ancient Central Eurasia)
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17 pages, 360 KiB  
Commentary
Questioning the NFT “Revolution” within the Art Ecosystem
by Anne-Sophie V. Radermecker and Victor Ginsburgh
Arts 2023, 12(1), 25; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010025 - 30 Jan 2023
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 4905
Abstract
Three years after the sensational debut of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the art scene, it seems timely to reflect on their presumed revolutionary attributes. The speculative fascination at the beginning has gradually given way to mixed outcomes, with hardly predictable future directions. However, [...] Read more.
Three years after the sensational debut of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the art scene, it seems timely to reflect on their presumed revolutionary attributes. The speculative fascination at the beginning has gradually given way to mixed outcomes, with hardly predictable future directions. However, once recontextualized in the art ecosystem and its value chain, one may question the ability of NFT technology to lead to radical changes. Our main argument is that although they offer perspectives that are worth considering regarding contracts, authors’ rights management, and provenance, blockchain-based technologies do not substantially modify the typical characteristics of the art world. Based on recent press articles and academic publications, we comment on the effects of this technology on producers (artists’ creative process and career development), intermediaries (art market gatekeepers), and consumers (quest for authenticity, collecting habits, and museum intervention in the art market). Our main conclusions suggest that NFTs perpetuate oversupply and job precarity in cyberenvironments and reinforce existing purchasing behaviors driven by the quest for authenticity and conspicuous consumption. Our goal is to mitigate some statements found in the literature and the press, especially regarding the democratization of the art market, and to help art market stakeholders approach this technology most objectively. Full article
12 pages, 1691 KiB  
Article
Intimacy and Darkness: Feminist Sensibility in (Post)socialist Art
by Jana Kukaine
Arts 2023, 12(1), 24; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010024 - 29 Jan 2023
Viewed by 1959
Abstract
This article assembles feminist articulations scattered across art histories and theories of Eastern and Central Europe, in order to reveal their potential, not only for foregrounding postsocialist feminist perspectives, but also for enriching the vocabulary and expanding temporal geographies of transnational feminist debates. [...] Read more.
This article assembles feminist articulations scattered across art histories and theories of Eastern and Central Europe, in order to reveal their potential, not only for foregrounding postsocialist feminist perspectives, but also for enriching the vocabulary and expanding temporal geographies of transnational feminist debates. By attending to intuitive, latent, reluctant, proto-, para-, unofficial and soft feminisms, this article establishes a peculiar feminist sensibility that is attuned to Central and Eastern European women artists’ approaches to everyday, embodied and affective experiences via the critical endorsement of intimacy and darkness. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Around/Beyond Feminist Aesthetics)
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25 pages, 14888 KiB  
Article
The Saka ‘Animal Style’ in Context: Material, Technology, Form and Use
by Saltanat Amir and Rebecca C. Roberts
Arts 2023, 12(1), 23; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010023 - 28 Jan 2023
Viewed by 2803
Abstract
The Iron Age Saka population of the eastern Eurasian Steppe is considered one of the earliest of the Scythian groups to emerge at the beginning of the 1st millennium BCE, consequently producing some of the earliest expressions of ‘animal style’ art. Recent excavations [...] Read more.
The Iron Age Saka population of the eastern Eurasian Steppe is considered one of the earliest of the Scythian groups to emerge at the beginning of the 1st millennium BCE, consequently producing some of the earliest expressions of ‘animal style’ art. Recent excavations of burial mounds (kurgans) in the East Kazakhstan region have provided invaluable data on the depositional contexts of such objects. This paper combines contextual archaeological data and visual analysis with data on the chemical composition and technological production (through X-ray fluorescence and optical microscopy) of some of the gold artefacts from the Eleke Sazy funerary complex in East Kazakhstan. It is demonstrated that the positioning of wearable ornaments within undisturbed archaeological contexts can give vital information about their form and function, while evidence of production techniques and use-wear indicate the time investment and status the objects may have held. It is concluded that the Saka engaged in a complex process of design and execution of their art, depicting many different elements of the natural world. Further research is needed into understanding Saka lifeways and belief systems in relation to large-scale processes of climate change, land use, time, and society from securely dated and well-documented funerary and domestic archaeological contexts. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Zoomorphic Arts of Ancient Central Eurasia)
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13 pages, 275 KiB  
Article
Representations of Hulk Hogan in the 1980s: Christianity, Masculinity, Xenophobia
by Conor Heffernan
Arts 2023, 12(1), 22; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010022 - 23 Jan 2023
Viewed by 1518
Abstract
In 1984, professional wrestler Hulk Hogan defeated the Iron Sheik to win the WWF Heavyweight Title. Thus marked the birth of ‘Hulkamania’, a near-decade-long period when Hulk Hogan (real name Terry Bollea) crossed over into American popular culture. In the following years, Hogan [...] Read more.
In 1984, professional wrestler Hulk Hogan defeated the Iron Sheik to win the WWF Heavyweight Title. Thus marked the birth of ‘Hulkamania’, a near-decade-long period when Hulk Hogan (real name Terry Bollea) crossed over into American popular culture. In the following years, Hogan battled a series of proxies for America’s enemies, from the Soviet rival in Nikolai Volkoff, Iranian sympathizer Sergeant Slaughter, and the Japanese sumo wrestler Yokozuna, among other opponents. More importantly, Hogan appeared on American talk shows, the front of magazines, had his own children’s cartoons, and marketed workout devices, toys, food, and a host of other ephemera. Existing in a liminal space between sport and entertainment, professional wrestling allows athletes/performers far more opportunities to cultivate messages and meanings through their bodies. Using film, wrestling magazines, and wrestling broadcasts, this article argues that Hogan’s body and his use of his body were paramount to his success. More than that, the use of his body embodied ideals about American masculinity. It embodied all-American strength, an ability to succeed no matter the odds, and a fierce Christian patriotism. Hogan was one of the biggest stars of the 1980s, inside and outside of sport. His body and its representation are thus worthy of study. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sport and Modern/Contemporary Visual Culture)
14 pages, 278 KiB  
Article
Crime as Pop: Gangsta Rap as Popular Staging of Norm Violations
by Bernd Dollinger and Julia Rieger
Arts 2023, 12(1), 21; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010021 - 20 Jan 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2711
Abstract
Crime is quantified extensively, mostly in order to prevent it, therefore assuming it as something purely negative. With the concept “Crime as Pop” we argue that such a view is one-sided, since crime is often staged as something that can be attractive and [...] Read more.
Crime is quantified extensively, mostly in order to prevent it, therefore assuming it as something purely negative. With the concept “Crime as Pop” we argue that such a view is one-sided, since crime is often staged as something that can be attractive and that can be used constructively for different purposes. We investigate this perspective by studying gangsta rap, which we consider a pop-cultural phenomenon that young people relate to in the context of interactive practices of identity construction. The stories told in gangsta rap are used by the youth recipients in a situation- and location-specific manner to present themselves in a certain way. Young people reproduce motifs of success that often characterize gangsta rap. They portray themselves as agentive and stage forms of resistance against people and institutions to which they might otherwise appear passive and powerless. Young people’s engagement with gangsta rap thus shows how the pop-cultural phenomena can be appropriated in many different ways. “Crime as Pop” illustrates the contingent connections of cultural phenomena and their appropriation that require detailed empirical reconstruction. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Perspectives on Pop Culture)
16 pages, 333 KiB  
Article
Olga Albizu’s Lyrical Abstraction and the Borders of the Canvas
by Raquel Flecha Vega
Arts 2023, 12(1), 20; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010020 - 20 Jan 2023
Viewed by 2071
Abstract
The abstractionist paintings of Puerto Rican artist Olga Albizu (1924–2005) gained prominence in the late 1950s when her work debuted in galleries across the Americas and entered the commercial music industry with RCA and Verve records. However, existing scholarship has failed to capture [...] Read more.
The abstractionist paintings of Puerto Rican artist Olga Albizu (1924–2005) gained prominence in the late 1950s when her work debuted in galleries across the Americas and entered the commercial music industry with RCA and Verve records. However, existing scholarship has failed to capture the complex relationship between Albizu’s anti-commercial abstractionist aesthetic and its mass reproduction as cover art for vinyl records during the Cold War era. Returning to the canvas to explore the iconographic, formal, and aesthetic qualities of Albizu’s work within its sociohistorical post-World War II context, this study reveals Albizu’s devotion to formal borders, vivid color juxtapositions, and compositional tensions. I argue that Albizu’s practice constitutes an ongoing concern with a Modernist dialectic and ideals about subjective transformation in a postmodern world of mass culture, a message she conveyed through the material and experiential borders of the canvas. As an avowed formalist and Modernist existing between the postcolonial and postmodern worlds of San Juan and New York City, her work merits formal scrutiny. This paper will add to the diverse histories of Abstract Expressionism and mid-century Modernisms across the Americas while shedding light on an important post-war historical moment and artistic impulse that held on to anti-commercial values in an all-encompassing consumerist world. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Intersection of Abstract Expressionist and Mass Visual Culture)
13 pages, 15399 KiB  
Article
Siberian Animal Style: Stylistic Features as Generic Indication
by Elena Fiodorovna Korolkova
Arts 2023, 12(1), 19; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010019 - 18 Jan 2023
Viewed by 1707
Abstract
This paper is devoted to the problems of differentiation of stylistic variants in the common phenomenon of the so-called Scythian and Siberian animal styles, which is one of the main distinctive features of Eurasian nomadic art. The animal style is a concept of [...] Read more.
This paper is devoted to the problems of differentiation of stylistic variants in the common phenomenon of the so-called Scythian and Siberian animal styles, which is one of the main distinctive features of Eurasian nomadic art. The animal style is a concept of more scale than an artistic style proper which distinguishes with some formal characteristics and depends directly on generic traditions and ethnic and cultural roots of art. Together with the technical-technological methods these formal features could be evidential indications of the origin of works of art. The Siberian collection of Peter the Great includes some different groups of golden ornaments decorated in animal styles of different origins. The paper focuses on a compact group of items originating from various mostly unknown sites from different territories in Asia including the Oxus treasure, several items from the Siberian collection of Peter the Great from Southern Siberia, a few jewelry pieces from other collections of the world museums as well as items made of leather and felt coming from the First and the Second Pazyryk kurgans. A distinctive feature of this group of zoomorphic images are colored inlays that accentuate a hind-leg or a shoulder of the animal; such inlays have the form of an intricate figure made up of a circle and a curvilinear triangle abutting to it or elongated round brackets. Genetically, such an ornamental motif, which is not generally typical for Persian art, may be linked to a periphery area of the Iranian world and nomadic culture, while the group of sites can be dated back to the 4th–3rd centuries BC. The paper considers a bracelet from the Siberian collection of Peter the Great which is the only item in this category of jewelry type of bracelets. It represents a rare type of ornament with a multi-component structure. It consists of three open-work strips with zoomorphic compositions in an animal style similar to the above-mentioned stylistic group. All three parts of the bracelet are created in a unified style, but obviously in different individual manners. There is no doubt, that the zoomorphic images show three different authors’ hands, and were made by different artisans. So, there is evidence of collective work on the object when each artisan makes his own operation to create a unique jewel at a workshop. Some parts of the composition on the bracelet are similar in style to zoomorphic images from kurgan Issyk in Kazakhstan which perhaps were made in the same workshop. This fact confirms the assumption of the origin of some of Siberian jewelry. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Zoomorphic Arts of Ancient Central Eurasia)
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27 pages, 15564 KiB  
Article
The Construction and Functional Technology of Scythian Greaves: A Recent Find from the Elite Kurgan 6 near the Village Vodoslavka, Southern Ukraine
by Sergei Polin and Marina Daragan
Arts 2023, 12(1), 18; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010018 - 18 Jan 2023
Viewed by 2072
Abstract
In the North Pontic region, bronze greaves appeared among the Scythians and noble members of the tribal world of the eastern European steppe in the middle of the fifth century BC and were used until the end of the fourth. Both the “classic” [...] Read more.
In the North Pontic region, bronze greaves appeared among the Scythians and noble members of the tribal world of the eastern European steppe in the middle of the fifth century BC and were used until the end of the fourth. Both the “classic” full-length Greek greaves and greaves without knee pads were in use. Surviving greaves and fragments thereof from different Scythian burials allow for analysis of the peculiarities of their construction. A distinct feature of the greaves from the burial in Barrow 6 near the village Vodoslavka, Ukraine, is a series of large openings made on the inner side of both greaves, in the area where the muscles of the calves protrude most prominently. These holes are covered (both from the inside and from the outside) with sewn-on pads made of thick leather. Similar holes can also be seen on the greaves from Kerch in eastern Crimea and were likely cut to make these greaves more suited for horse riding. The greaves from Soboleva Mogyla were additionally modified for horse riding in that the parts that covered the knees were shortened and the side parts had deep cuts (more than a half-height) on the inside of the calf muscles. Thanks to this cut, the rider’s leg (around the medial gastrocnemius in particular) fitted snugly to the horse’s side. Full article
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16 pages, 312 KiB  
Article
This Country Ain’t Low—The Country Music of Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash as a Form of Redistributive Politics
by Ilias Ben Mna
Arts 2023, 12(1), 17; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010017 - 18 Jan 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2587
Abstract
This article examines how the country music styles of Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash serve as a form of redistributive politics in which ideological struggles are engaged in ways that dissolve low/high culture distinctions and instead offer a mass-accessible avenue through which cultural [...] Read more.
This article examines how the country music styles of Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash serve as a form of redistributive politics in which ideological struggles are engaged in ways that dissolve low/high culture distinctions and instead offer a mass-accessible avenue through which cultural recognition is conferred to marginalized identities. This ranges from class-based social critique in Dolly Parton’s song “9 to 5” to the condemnations of the carceral state in Johnny Cash’s work. Engaging country music as an arsenal for social progressivism is not only an underexplored topic in pop cultural studies, but it also provides fertile ground for illuminating how perceptions of the genre are impacted by stereotypical images drawn from the “culture wars” and how these images interrelate with implicit low/high distinctions. For instance, what does the commercial success of Parton’s and Cash’s works say about the low/high distinction? In what ways do their songs, lyrics, aesthetics, and public personae offer a distinctive space for a type of discourse that affords recognition to oppressed communities? Through addressing these questions, I seek to illustrate how prominent segments of country music are resistant to the mere reproduction of cultural hegemony. In doing so, they actively disrupt widespread conceptions of low culture as reactionary. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Perspectives on Pop Culture)
13 pages, 308 KiB  
Article
A Lived Experience—Immersive Multi-Sensorial Art Exhibitions as a New Kind of (Not That) ‘Cheap Images’
by Mirja Beck
Arts 2023, 12(1), 16; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010016 - 17 Jan 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3370
Abstract
This article analyzes the phenomenon of multi-sensorial, digital, and immersive art exhibitions of popular artists, which has been widely neglected in academic research, from a historical perspective. Reflecting the significance of lived experience in art consumption, this 21st-century phenomenon can be confronted productively [...] Read more.
This article analyzes the phenomenon of multi-sensorial, digital, and immersive art exhibitions of popular artists, which has been widely neglected in academic research, from a historical perspective. Reflecting the significance of lived experience in art consumption, this 21st-century phenomenon can be confronted productively with early-20th-century art reproductions. The article focuses on the characteristics of both popular phenomena and on their advertisement, as well as on the discourse around them, documenting reactions from resistance to persistence and accommodation. The analysis shows noticeable similarities between the two types of popularization of high art, positioning the new immersive exhibitions in a traditional line of technical innovative art popularization. Whereas photomechanical art reproduction had an immense influence on the popular art canon, being also dependent on ‘photogenic’ conditions of artworks and thus focusing predominantly on painting, the contemporary canon is predisposed by the immersible characteristics of artists’ oeuvres. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Perspectives on Pop Culture)
20 pages, 4152 KiB  
Article
How to Enhance Perception of Reassembled but Incomplete Works of Ancient Art? Eye-Tracking Study of Virtual Anastylosis
by Marta Rusnak, Aleksandra Brzozowska-Jawornicka and Zofia Koszewicz
Arts 2023, 12(1), 15; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010015 - 16 Jan 2023
Viewed by 1418
Abstract
In 1964 the Venice Charter described anastylosis as the only acceptable method of reassembly of architectural remains. Although the scientific community has agreed with the Charter’s decision, many questions pertaining to the technical and aesthetic aspects of anastylosis remain unanswered. Virtual anastylosis seems [...] Read more.
In 1964 the Venice Charter described anastylosis as the only acceptable method of reassembly of architectural remains. Although the scientific community has agreed with the Charter’s decision, many questions pertaining to the technical and aesthetic aspects of anastylosis remain unanswered. Virtual anastylosis seems one of the most promising digital solutions to finding at least some answers, as it permits testing various solutions before carrying out the actual physical re-erection of a damaged monument. Studying such variants with eye-trackers allows the participation of non-professional viewers at the very beginning of the process, that is at the design stage. By understanding how ordinary people look at different reconstructions, professionals and scholars can determine which elements would assist and which would hinder the instinctive assessment of the object’s value and history. This study compares perceptions of three variants of the same column. A total of 232 people were divided into three groups and asked to examine different types of anastyloses: with an empty cavity, with a cavity filled with a brighter stone, and with a cavity filled with a stone of the same color and texture as the rest of the column. Their perception of the columns was then analyzed using several parameters, including the number of fixations, the time spent looking at individual elements, and the chronological order in which the parts of the stimuli was taken in. This paper explores the benefits and the potential of this new research tool as well as offers a more detailed look at what a viewer-friendly model of anastylosis may be like. Full article
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22 pages, 30260 KiB  
Article
Earthly Beasts and Heavenly Creatures: Animal Realms in Early Medieval Chinese Tombs and Cave Temples
by Heather Clydesdale
Arts 2023, 12(1), 14; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010014 - 16 Jan 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2270
Abstract
This analysis of the fabricated worlds in tombs and cave temples of China’s Hexi Corridor shows that animals are integral to concepts of earthly and heavenly realms. Changes in animal imagery from the third through sixth centuries connect to the region’s social, cultural, [...] Read more.
This analysis of the fabricated worlds in tombs and cave temples of China’s Hexi Corridor shows that animals are integral to concepts of earthly and heavenly realms. Changes in animal imagery from the third through sixth centuries connect to the region’s social, cultural, and demographic transformations, including an embrace of pastoralism followed by increasing cosmopolitanism with the spread of Buddhism. A profusion of domestic animals in Wei-Jin tombs establish microcosms, while otherworldly creatures on entrances and coffins play supernatural roles. Western Jin tombs emphasize fantastic beasts over familiar ones and fuel the mysticism of this era. A Sixteen Kingdoms tomb represents the synthesis of the celestial and terrestrial, setting the stage for Buddhist cave temples. In these, real-world animals are all but expunged while imaginary beasts adapt easily to the new habitat. The proliferation of human figures in the form of buddhas and bodhisattvas not only crowd out animals but indicates that the introduction of Buddhism ushers in an anthropocentric view of earthly life and paradise. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Zoomorphic Arts of Ancient Central Eurasia)
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4 pages, 157 KiB  
Editorial
Acknowledgment to the Reviewers of Arts in 2022
by Arts Editorial Office
Arts 2023, 12(1), 13; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010013 - 16 Jan 2023
Viewed by 770
Abstract
High-quality academic publishing is built on rigorous peer review [...] Full article
19 pages, 8909 KiB  
Article
From Ornament to Building Material: Revisiting the Aesthetics and Function of Green Architecture
by Laura Daglio and Stamatina Kousidi
Arts 2023, 12(1), 12; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010012 - 11 Jan 2023
Viewed by 2459
Abstract
Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, we have been witnessing a persistent presence of greenery in architecture, in its most extensive application, with diverse ranges of technological sophistication, fruition, maintenance, form, and expression. The article focuses on the current use of vegetation [...] Read more.
Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, we have been witnessing a persistent presence of greenery in architecture, in its most extensive application, with diverse ranges of technological sophistication, fruition, maintenance, form, and expression. The article focuses on the current use of vegetation in architecture, examining its expressive, artistic, and spatial qualities beyond environmental performances. Accordingly, the innovative interpretation of greenery is addressed within the current resurfacing debate over ornament, its aesthetic and semantic outcome, and its interaction with the inhabitants. Attention is directed at identifying recent design approaches towards nature and artifice, from the building interior to its adjacent urban space, with the aim of highlighting novel paths towards the articulation of spatial and technological systems, opening up multidisciplinary research towards new concepts of symbiosis between the natural and the artificial. Full article
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8 pages, 240 KiB  
Editorial
Introduction for Special Issue ‘Autotheory in Contemporary Visual Arts Practice’
by Katherine Baxter and Cat Auburn
Arts 2023, 12(1), 11; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010011 - 10 Jan 2023
Viewed by 1796
Abstract
This Special Issue concerns the artistic practice of autotheory and its associated af-fordances and risks as undertaken by artists, art writers, and those interested in the stakes of the practice of autotheory [...] Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Autotheory in Contemporary Visual Arts Practice)
27 pages, 10066 KiB  
Article
Avant-Garde versus Tradition, a Case Study—Archaic Ritual Imagery in Malevich: The Icons, the Radical Abstraction, and Byzantine Hesychasm
by Dennis Ioffe
Arts 2023, 12(1), 10; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010010 - 09 Jan 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2635
Abstract
Serving as a conceptual introduction to the ARTS special issue, the article discusses the importance of archaic imagery and poetics of a major avant-garde actor who often symbolizes the main axis of Slavic radical modernism in its Avant-garde phase. Kazimir Malevich has widely [...] Read more.
Serving as a conceptual introduction to the ARTS special issue, the article discusses the importance of archaic imagery and poetics of a major avant-garde actor who often symbolizes the main axis of Slavic radical modernism in its Avant-garde phase. Kazimir Malevich has widely explored religious archaic imagery in his oeuvre, engaging in a dialog with a historical tradition of representation. The article discusses Malevich’s iconic legacy, zooming in on the philosophy of Malevich’s suprematist imagery of peasants, Orthodox icons, and the ways of visualizing of an inner Hesychast prayer. In this context, the paper also analyzes Russian philosophy of language, imiaslavie and Hesychasm as it stemmed out from the creative perception of Byzantine philosophical lore developed by Gregory Palamas and several other thinkers. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Slavic and Eastern-European Visuality: Modernity and Tradition)
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