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Squares of Colour: Abstraction in the Work of Saloua Raouda Choucair and Etel Adnan

Isabelle De Le Court

in Under the Skin: Feminist Art and Art Histories from the Middle East and North Africa Today

This chapter explores the cultural position of two women artists, Saloua Raouda Choucair (1916–2017) and Etel Adnan (b.1925) in the second half of the 20th century in Lebanon. The strong presence of ... More

This chapter explores the cultural position of two women artists, Saloua Raouda Choucair (1916–2017) and Etel Adnan (b.1925) in the second half of the 20th century in Lebanon. The strong presence of abstraction in their work calls for a reflection on materiality and abstraction, and on form and anti–form. Choucair and Adnan pioneered new ways of seeing, of thinking about art and its physical relationship to it through abstract aesthetics. Born in Lebanon, they have become significant artists who trained and lived abroad, while always keeping strong links to Lebanon. Their oeuvres present a reflection on the conflicted Western and Islamic heritage in Lebanon and in the Middle East at large. Although abstraction is no clear representation of female subjectivity, the use of abstraction as lived experience in Choucair’s and Adnan’s works serve to explore gender in Lebanon as a subjective and social context.Less

Continuum 1952–1961

in Art and Pluralism: Lawrence Alloway's Cultural Criticism

Lawrence Alloway's scope as an art critic became international in 1950, but his criticism only changed significantly the following year after a review of a Roberto Matta exhibition at the Institute ... More

Lawrence Alloway's scope as an art critic became international in 1950, but his criticism only changed significantly the following year after a review of a Roberto Matta exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA). This review marked Alloway's transition from connoisseurship and simple evaluation to a far more dense and demanding art criticism. This section focuses on Alloway's life as an art critic in the period 1952–1961. It provides an overview of ICA in the early 1950s and its Independent Group, Alloway's attitudes toward abstraction and figurative art, his cultural continuum model, his views on graphics and advertising, art autre, Alloway's first trip to the United States, and the emergence of Pop art.Less

Joe Overstreet: Light in Darkness

Graham Lock

in The Hearing Eye: Jazz & Blues Influences in African American Visual Art

Joe Overstreet was born in Conehatta, Mississippi, in 1933. He spent his teenage years in California, where he studied art at various institutions, worked as a merchant seaman, and became an early ... More

Joe Overstreet was born in Conehatta, Mississippi, in 1933. He spent his teenage years in California, where he studied art at various institutions, worked as a merchant seaman, and became an early beatnik. As a veteran abstract expressionist, he says the music has helped to keep him alive and its influence has, at times, drawn him back toward a more figurative art, notably with outstanding canvases such as Strange Fruit and his Storyville Series. The author interviewed Joe Overstreet on two occasions. The first was in October 2003 in his studio at Kenkeleba House, on New York's Lower East Side. The second interview was in April 2004.Less

Art and Design

John Parrington

in Mind Shift: How culture transformed the human brain

This chapter focuses on how the birth of figurative art marked a significant shift in our species’ ability to represent the world around us, and presumably, a step forward in our capacity for ... More

This chapter focuses on how the birth of figurative art marked a significant shift in our species’ ability to represent the world around us, and presumably, a step forward in our capacity for conscious awareness. The ability to draw a familiar object such as a cat or dog develops so naturally in children that it is easy to forget what a remarkable human capacity this is. For unlike tool use, spoken language, or perhaps even the capacity to make music, which may all have evolutionary precedents in the actions or sounds made by other species, the ability to draw appears to have no relationship to anything found in the rest of the animal kingdom. And certainly for the view presented in this book of the uniqueness of human conscious awareness, the ability of humans to both produce and appreciate visual art is something that deserves a wider discussion. In particular, abstract symbols, mathematical systems, planning diagrams, and other forms that constitute visual art, can all be viewed as further examples of the 'cultural tools' that shape our minds besides language.Less