John Elderfield
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197263129
- eISBN:
- 9780191734861
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197263129.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This chapter presents the text of a lecture on the role of visual medium in art-historical study. It addresses the relationship of art history to the existential acts of painting and looking at ...
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This chapter presents the text of a lecture on the role of visual medium in art-historical study. It addresses the relationship of art history to the existential acts of painting and looking at painting and describes how the so-called story of modern art has been narrated in the history literature. It also considers how modern histories can accommodate the unfamiliar that is normally part of the story.Less
This chapter presents the text of a lecture on the role of visual medium in art-historical study. It addresses the relationship of art history to the existential acts of painting and looking at painting and describes how the so-called story of modern art has been narrated in the history literature. It also considers how modern histories can accommodate the unfamiliar that is normally part of the story.
Michael North
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195173567
- eISBN:
- 9780199787906
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195173567.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter is concerned with the role of Alfred Stieglitz and his magazine Camera Work in forging a connection between modern art, modern literature, and photography. It argues that Camera Work ...
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This chapter is concerned with the role of Alfred Stieglitz and his magazine Camera Work in forging a connection between modern art, modern literature, and photography. It argues that Camera Work incorporated influences from snapshots, film, and advertising photography that were unknown to and antipathetic to Stieglitz himself, insofar as these influences informed the modern painting featured in the magazine.Less
This chapter is concerned with the role of Alfred Stieglitz and his magazine Camera Work in forging a connection between modern art, modern literature, and photography. It argues that Camera Work incorporated influences from snapshots, film, and advertising photography that were unknown to and antipathetic to Stieglitz himself, insofar as these influences informed the modern painting featured in the magazine.
CYRIL BARRETT and JEANNE SHEEHY
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199583744
- eISBN:
- 9780191702365
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199583744.003.0016
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This chapter examines the developments in visual arts and society in Ireland during the period from 1900 to 1921. This period saw a simultaneous increase and falling off of interest in the visual ...
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This chapter examines the developments in visual arts and society in Ireland during the period from 1900 to 1921. This period saw a simultaneous increase and falling off of interest in the visual arts. The three key developments during this period include Hugh Lane's founding of a gallery of modern art, the revival of Irish artistic crafts, and attempts to reform art schools including the R.H.A. and the Metropolitan School of Art.Less
This chapter examines the developments in visual arts and society in Ireland during the period from 1900 to 1921. This period saw a simultaneous increase and falling off of interest in the visual arts. The three key developments during this period include Hugh Lane's founding of a gallery of modern art, the revival of Irish artistic crafts, and attempts to reform art schools including the R.H.A. and the Metropolitan School of Art.
David Clarke
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9789888083060
- eISBN:
- 9789882209794
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888083060.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
Linear stories of modern art's development have characteristically been formalistic ones, and although such narratives have not always treated abstraction as essential to artistic progress, they have ...
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Linear stories of modern art's development have characteristically been formalistic ones, and although such narratives have not always treated abstraction as essential to artistic progress, they have generally given art that is abstract a central role to play. In particular, abstract art proved crucial to narratives that construct postwar American modernism as the inheritor of earlier twentieth-century European modernism, and which serve to ratify American artistic hegemony. This chapter proposes to take one small step towards widening the focus by examining abstraction from the perspective of Chinese art. To take such a deliberately oblique perspective on abstract art's history, it hopes to lay bare some of the cultural closures that are often found in discussions of artistic modernity, and offers a more globalized perspective than is frequently the case.Less
Linear stories of modern art's development have characteristically been formalistic ones, and although such narratives have not always treated abstraction as essential to artistic progress, they have generally given art that is abstract a central role to play. In particular, abstract art proved crucial to narratives that construct postwar American modernism as the inheritor of earlier twentieth-century European modernism, and which serve to ratify American artistic hegemony. This chapter proposes to take one small step towards widening the focus by examining abstraction from the perspective of Chinese art. To take such a deliberately oblique perspective on abstract art's history, it hopes to lay bare some of the cultural closures that are often found in discussions of artistic modernity, and offers a more globalized perspective than is frequently the case.
Kaira M. Cabañas
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226556284
- eISBN:
- 9780226556314
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226556314.003.0003
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
The understanding of a shared source of creativity among the sane and insane came to the fore with the exhibition and collection of patients’ work in both France and Brazil in the 1940s. The visual ...
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The understanding of a shared source of creativity among the sane and insane came to the fore with the exhibition and collection of patients’ work in both France and Brazil in the 1940s. The visual evidence of a common creativity was often underwritten by discussions of artistic quality and how the patients’ work looked “futurist” or “surrealist.” This chapter turns to 9 Artistas de Engenho de Dentro do Rio de Janeiro, an exhibition of the creative work of nine of Dr. Nise da Silveira’s patients. The exhibition opened at the Museum of Modern Art São Paulo in 1949, one year after the museum’s founding. The chapter examines how the patients’ work became key to the discourse of modernist abstraction and its institutionalization in Brazil, just as it was regularly exhibited in the very spaces of Brazil’s first modern museums. Such circumstances differ notably from French artist Jean Dubuffet’s contemporaneous theorization of art brut, which is also addressed in this chapter.Less
The understanding of a shared source of creativity among the sane and insane came to the fore with the exhibition and collection of patients’ work in both France and Brazil in the 1940s. The visual evidence of a common creativity was often underwritten by discussions of artistic quality and how the patients’ work looked “futurist” or “surrealist.” This chapter turns to 9 Artistas de Engenho de Dentro do Rio de Janeiro, an exhibition of the creative work of nine of Dr. Nise da Silveira’s patients. The exhibition opened at the Museum of Modern Art São Paulo in 1949, one year after the museum’s founding. The chapter examines how the patients’ work became key to the discourse of modernist abstraction and its institutionalization in Brazil, just as it was regularly exhibited in the very spaces of Brazil’s first modern museums. Such circumstances differ notably from French artist Jean Dubuffet’s contemporaneous theorization of art brut, which is also addressed in this chapter.
Jenny Lin
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526132604
- eISBN:
- 9781526139047
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526132604.003.0002
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
Chapter One examines pastiche in the shopping mall and cultural heritage site Xintiandi, before discussing the site’s buried modern art histories marred by cross-cultural conflicts. Xintiandi ...
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Chapter One examines pastiche in the shopping mall and cultural heritage site Xintiandi, before discussing the site’s buried modern art histories marred by cross-cultural conflicts. Xintiandi physically surrounds China’s first communist meeting site of 1921, today memorialized as a museum. The complex was designed with reference to the vernacular homes of its formerly foreign occupied French Concession setting, and is officially celebrated for its “East-meets-West” and “Old-meets-New” architecture, even while the construction demolished most of the site’s existing homes and dislocated thousands of working class residents. This chapter analyzes how Xintiandi’s seemingly benign East-meets-West façades mask collusions between the Chinese Communist Party’s autocratic state power and capitalist development, while romanticizing Shanghai’s modern cosmopolitan legacy. The chapter analyzes examples of Xintiandi’s repressed cultural histories, including the revolutionary art and design experiments of Pang Xunqin, founder of the 1930s avant-garde collective, The Storm Society, leftist writings and art promoted by Lu Xun, and the major Cultural Revolution Era debate sparked by Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1972 documentary, Chung Kuo Cina. The chapter argues that the official admonishment of Shanghai-based cultural projects by Pang and Antonioni speak to collisions between Shanghai’s semi-colonial past, Maoist socialism, and Cultural Revolution Era totalitarianism that still resonate in Shanghai today.Less
Chapter One examines pastiche in the shopping mall and cultural heritage site Xintiandi, before discussing the site’s buried modern art histories marred by cross-cultural conflicts. Xintiandi physically surrounds China’s first communist meeting site of 1921, today memorialized as a museum. The complex was designed with reference to the vernacular homes of its formerly foreign occupied French Concession setting, and is officially celebrated for its “East-meets-West” and “Old-meets-New” architecture, even while the construction demolished most of the site’s existing homes and dislocated thousands of working class residents. This chapter analyzes how Xintiandi’s seemingly benign East-meets-West façades mask collusions between the Chinese Communist Party’s autocratic state power and capitalist development, while romanticizing Shanghai’s modern cosmopolitan legacy. The chapter analyzes examples of Xintiandi’s repressed cultural histories, including the revolutionary art and design experiments of Pang Xunqin, founder of the 1930s avant-garde collective, The Storm Society, leftist writings and art promoted by Lu Xun, and the major Cultural Revolution Era debate sparked by Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1972 documentary, Chung Kuo Cina. The chapter argues that the official admonishment of Shanghai-based cultural projects by Pang and Antonioni speak to collisions between Shanghai’s semi-colonial past, Maoist socialism, and Cultural Revolution Era totalitarianism that still resonate in Shanghai today.
Kaira M. Cabañas
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226556284
- eISBN:
- 9780226556314
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226556314.003.0004
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
This chapter situates Mário Pedrosa’s early theses on Gestalt in relation to his reception of psychiatric patients’ work, in particular Dr. Nise da Silveira’s patients in Rio de Janeiro. As the ...
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This chapter situates Mário Pedrosa’s early theses on Gestalt in relation to his reception of psychiatric patients’ work, in particular Dr. Nise da Silveira’s patients in Rio de Janeiro. As the leading art critic, Pedrosa’s writing on formal autonomy and aesthetic response was foundational to the understanding of geometric abstraction in the 1950s. The author argues that Pedrosa’s theoretical grappling with patients’ work prompted his turn to Heinz Werner’s theorization of physiognomic expression and perception. In doing so, Pedrosa articulates an understanding of abstract geometry as expressive rather than rational or purely visual. Accordingly, this chapter’s discussion of physiognomic Gestalt displaces the well-established alignment of geometric abstraction, modern rationality, and Brazil’s expanding industrialization in the 1950s. The chapter also demonstrates how patients’ creative expression was not uniformly aligned with a surrealist or art informel aesthetic, as continued to be the case in Western Europe.Less
This chapter situates Mário Pedrosa’s early theses on Gestalt in relation to his reception of psychiatric patients’ work, in particular Dr. Nise da Silveira’s patients in Rio de Janeiro. As the leading art critic, Pedrosa’s writing on formal autonomy and aesthetic response was foundational to the understanding of geometric abstraction in the 1950s. The author argues that Pedrosa’s theoretical grappling with patients’ work prompted his turn to Heinz Werner’s theorization of physiognomic expression and perception. In doing so, Pedrosa articulates an understanding of abstract geometry as expressive rather than rational or purely visual. Accordingly, this chapter’s discussion of physiognomic Gestalt displaces the well-established alignment of geometric abstraction, modern rationality, and Brazil’s expanding industrialization in the 1950s. The chapter also demonstrates how patients’ creative expression was not uniformly aligned with a surrealist or art informel aesthetic, as continued to be the case in Western Europe.
Sebastian Zeidler
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781501702082
- eISBN:
- 9781501701900
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501702082.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
The German writer and art critic Carl Einstein (1885–1940) has long been acknowledged as an important figure in the history of modern art, and yet he is often sidelined as an enigma. This book ...
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The German writer and art critic Carl Einstein (1885–1940) has long been acknowledged as an important figure in the history of modern art, and yet he is often sidelined as an enigma. This book recovers Einstein's multifaceted career, offering the first comprehensive intellectual biography of Einstein in English. Einstein first emerged as a writer of experimental prose through his involvement with the anarchist journal Die Aktion. After a few limited forays into art criticism, he burst onto the art scene in 1915 with his book Negro Sculpture, at once a formalist intervention into the contemporary theory and practice of European sculpture and a manifesto for the sophistication of African art. Einstein would go on to publish seminal texts on the cubist paintings of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. His contributions to the surrealist magazine Documents (which Einstein cofounded with Georges Bataille) including writings on Picasso and Paul Klee, remain unsurpassed in their depth and complexity. In a series of close visual analyses—illustrated with major works by Braque, Picasso, and Klee—the book retrieves the theoretical resources that Einstein brought to bear on their art. It shows us that to rediscover Einstein's art criticism is to see the work of great modernist artists anew through the eyes of one of the most gifted left-wing formalists of the twentieth century.Less
The German writer and art critic Carl Einstein (1885–1940) has long been acknowledged as an important figure in the history of modern art, and yet he is often sidelined as an enigma. This book recovers Einstein's multifaceted career, offering the first comprehensive intellectual biography of Einstein in English. Einstein first emerged as a writer of experimental prose through his involvement with the anarchist journal Die Aktion. After a few limited forays into art criticism, he burst onto the art scene in 1915 with his book Negro Sculpture, at once a formalist intervention into the contemporary theory and practice of European sculpture and a manifesto for the sophistication of African art. Einstein would go on to publish seminal texts on the cubist paintings of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. His contributions to the surrealist magazine Documents (which Einstein cofounded with Georges Bataille) including writings on Picasso and Paul Klee, remain unsurpassed in their depth and complexity. In a series of close visual analyses—illustrated with major works by Braque, Picasso, and Klee—the book retrieves the theoretical resources that Einstein brought to bear on their art. It shows us that to rediscover Einstein's art criticism is to see the work of great modernist artists anew through the eyes of one of the most gifted left-wing formalists of the twentieth century.
Michael North
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195173567
- eISBN:
- 9780199787906
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195173567.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This book discusses the impact of mechanical recording on modern art and literature. Recording media, including photography and film, seemed to offer entirely new means of representation, neither ...
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This book discusses the impact of mechanical recording on modern art and literature. Recording media, including photography and film, seemed to offer entirely new means of representation, neither linguistic nor pictorial, with both the usefulness of writing and the immediacy of sight. In particular, this book traces some of the more utopian projects to arise from this hope, including the Readie machine of Bob Brown, which was to turn stories and poems into strips of linguistic film. The influence of photography and film on the transatlantic avant garde is traced through three stages, from the early days of Camera Work, through the enthusiasm of Eugene Jolas and the contributors to his magazine transition, to the crisis created by the introduction of sound in the late 1920s, experienced with particular bitterness by the editors of the early film magazine, Close Up. Subsequent chapters describe the entirely new kind of sensory enjoyment brought into modern American fiction by the new media. What Fitzgerald calls spectroscopic gayety — the enjoyable disorientation of the senses by machine perception — turns out to be a powerful force in much American fiction, even that commonly celebrated for its hard-nosed realism. The revolutionary possibilities of this new spectatorship and its inevitable limitations are pursued through a number of examples, including Dos Passos, James Weldon Johnson, and Hemingway.Less
This book discusses the impact of mechanical recording on modern art and literature. Recording media, including photography and film, seemed to offer entirely new means of representation, neither linguistic nor pictorial, with both the usefulness of writing and the immediacy of sight. In particular, this book traces some of the more utopian projects to arise from this hope, including the Readie machine of Bob Brown, which was to turn stories and poems into strips of linguistic film. The influence of photography and film on the transatlantic avant garde is traced through three stages, from the early days of Camera Work, through the enthusiasm of Eugene Jolas and the contributors to his magazine transition, to the crisis created by the introduction of sound in the late 1920s, experienced with particular bitterness by the editors of the early film magazine, Close Up. Subsequent chapters describe the entirely new kind of sensory enjoyment brought into modern American fiction by the new media. What Fitzgerald calls spectroscopic gayety — the enjoyable disorientation of the senses by machine perception — turns out to be a powerful force in much American fiction, even that commonly celebrated for its hard-nosed realism. The revolutionary possibilities of this new spectatorship and its inevitable limitations are pursued through a number of examples, including Dos Passos, James Weldon Johnson, and Hemingway.
Fernihough Anne
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198112358
- eISBN:
- 9780191670770
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112358.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
D. H. Lawrence and his Bloomsbury contemporaries shared many of the same concerns, and, in particular, they set out to dispel the myth of a naively mimetic art, seeing realism to be complicit with ...
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D. H. Lawrence and his Bloomsbury contemporaries shared many of the same concerns, and, in particular, they set out to dispel the myth of a naively mimetic art, seeing realism to be complicit with what would today be described as a logocentric model of language. It now seems that this idea of a naively mimetic realism was something of a shibboleth, and that Lawrence and the Bloomsbury critics deliberately presented it in crude and reductive terms. It is unlikely that unproblematic, one-to-one correspondence between elements of language and world was ever really assumed by realistic art, that art ever aspired to be the world, rendering itself curiously redundant, in the way that many modernist art theorists suggest. This is, however, what Lawrence and his Bloomsbury contemporaries tried to argue in order to further the cause of Post-Impressionism and other forms of modern art.Less
D. H. Lawrence and his Bloomsbury contemporaries shared many of the same concerns, and, in particular, they set out to dispel the myth of a naively mimetic art, seeing realism to be complicit with what would today be described as a logocentric model of language. It now seems that this idea of a naively mimetic realism was something of a shibboleth, and that Lawrence and the Bloomsbury critics deliberately presented it in crude and reductive terms. It is unlikely that unproblematic, one-to-one correspondence between elements of language and world was ever really assumed by realistic art, that art ever aspired to be the world, rendering itself curiously redundant, in the way that many modernist art theorists suggest. This is, however, what Lawrence and his Bloomsbury contemporaries tried to argue in order to further the cause of Post-Impressionism and other forms of modern art.
John J. McDermott
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823226627
- eISBN:
- 9780823235704
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823226627.003.0025
- Subject:
- Philosophy, American Philosophy
This chapter presents an essay about the radical empirical aesthetic view that to be human is to humanize. It contends that modern art creates a revolution in man's view ...
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This chapter presents an essay about the radical empirical aesthetic view that to be human is to humanize. It contends that modern art creates a revolution in man's view of himself as it broadens the ways in which he relates to the world and the ways by which he is informed, and that the most fruitful philosophical statement of the meaning of modern art is to be found in the thought of William James and John Dewey, interpreted as a radically empirical philosophy of experience. This essay attempts to show the unusual significance of radical empiricism for contemporary art.Less
This chapter presents an essay about the radical empirical aesthetic view that to be human is to humanize. It contends that modern art creates a revolution in man's view of himself as it broadens the ways in which he relates to the world and the ways by which he is informed, and that the most fruitful philosophical statement of the meaning of modern art is to be found in the thought of William James and John Dewey, interpreted as a radically empirical philosophy of experience. This essay attempts to show the unusual significance of radical empiricism for contemporary art.
R. Franki Notosudirdjo
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195385410
- eISBN:
- 9780199896974
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195385410.003.0011
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music, History, Western
This chapter explores an attempt at the creation of an Islamic “art music” for a relatively new community of Muslim intellectuals in Jakarta. It uses the compositions of Trisutji Kamal, a composition ...
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This chapter explores an attempt at the creation of an Islamic “art music” for a relatively new community of Muslim intellectuals in Jakarta. It uses the compositions of Trisutji Kamal, a composition student of the Amsterdam Conservatory and professor at IKJ, the Jakarta Arts Academy. The chapter outlines the Suharto-era rise of the modernist Indonesian Association of Muslim Intellectuals (ICTM), and a pair of arts institutions: Taman Ismail Marzuki, a performing arts complex (the Jakarta Arts Center) that showcases modern arts from around the world, and IKJ, Institut Kesenian Jakarta, or the Jakarta Arts Institute, an institute for the education and patronage of the arts. The chapter focuses largely on Kamal's composition “Persembahan” (A Worship) as an example of an artistically successful hybrid emerging from this intellectual movement that combines Islamic elements and art music and blurs the lines between art and religion. Unique parts of the piece feature a religious text in Arabic, a mixed choir, and a set of rebana frame drums, which together give the impression of qasidahan, the activity of singing Arabic songs of praise, a rural pesantren tradition formerly denigrated by urban classes, now re-dressed for the proscenium stage. It is argued that the new middle class, while accepting the idea of newly composed art music and the Islamic elements therein, is not prepared to embrace Muslim art music with the associated, respectful etiquette of the concert setting.Less
This chapter explores an attempt at the creation of an Islamic “art music” for a relatively new community of Muslim intellectuals in Jakarta. It uses the compositions of Trisutji Kamal, a composition student of the Amsterdam Conservatory and professor at IKJ, the Jakarta Arts Academy. The chapter outlines the Suharto-era rise of the modernist Indonesian Association of Muslim Intellectuals (ICTM), and a pair of arts institutions: Taman Ismail Marzuki, a performing arts complex (the Jakarta Arts Center) that showcases modern arts from around the world, and IKJ, Institut Kesenian Jakarta, or the Jakarta Arts Institute, an institute for the education and patronage of the arts. The chapter focuses largely on Kamal's composition “Persembahan” (A Worship) as an example of an artistically successful hybrid emerging from this intellectual movement that combines Islamic elements and art music and blurs the lines between art and religion. Unique parts of the piece feature a religious text in Arabic, a mixed choir, and a set of rebana frame drums, which together give the impression of qasidahan, the activity of singing Arabic songs of praise, a rural pesantren tradition formerly denigrated by urban classes, now re-dressed for the proscenium stage. It is argued that the new middle class, while accepting the idea of newly composed art music and the Islamic elements therein, is not prepared to embrace Muslim art music with the associated, respectful etiquette of the concert setting.
Robyn Ferrell
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231148801
- eISBN:
- 9780231504423
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231148801.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
As the international art market globalizes the indigenous image, it changes its identity, status, value, and purpose in local and larger contexts. Focusing on a school of Australian Aboriginal ...
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As the international art market globalizes the indigenous image, it changes its identity, status, value, and purpose in local and larger contexts. Focusing on a school of Australian Aboriginal painting that has become popular in the contemporary art world, the book traces the influence of cultural exchanges on art, the self, and attitudes toward the other. Aboriginal acrylic painting, produced by indigenous women artists of the Australian Desert, bears a superficial resemblance to abstract expressionism and is often read as such by viewers. Yet to see this art only through a Western lens is to miss its unique ontology, logics of sensation, and rich politics and religion. The book explores the culture that produces these paintings and connects their aesthetic to the brutal environmental and economic realities of the painters. From here, it travels to urban locales, observing museums and department stores as they traffic interchangeably in art and commodities. The book ties the history of these desert works to global acts of genocide and dispossession. Rethinking the value of the artistic image in the global market and different interpretations of the sacred, it considers photojournalism, ecotourism, and other sacred sites of the Western subject, investigating the intersection of modern art and postmodern culture. The book ultimately challenges the primacy of the “European gaze” and its fascination with sacred cultures, constructing a more balanced intercultural dialogue that deemphasizes the aesthetic of the real championed by Western philosophy.Less
As the international art market globalizes the indigenous image, it changes its identity, status, value, and purpose in local and larger contexts. Focusing on a school of Australian Aboriginal painting that has become popular in the contemporary art world, the book traces the influence of cultural exchanges on art, the self, and attitudes toward the other. Aboriginal acrylic painting, produced by indigenous women artists of the Australian Desert, bears a superficial resemblance to abstract expressionism and is often read as such by viewers. Yet to see this art only through a Western lens is to miss its unique ontology, logics of sensation, and rich politics and religion. The book explores the culture that produces these paintings and connects their aesthetic to the brutal environmental and economic realities of the painters. From here, it travels to urban locales, observing museums and department stores as they traffic interchangeably in art and commodities. The book ties the history of these desert works to global acts of genocide and dispossession. Rethinking the value of the artistic image in the global market and different interpretations of the sacred, it considers photojournalism, ecotourism, and other sacred sites of the Western subject, investigating the intersection of modern art and postmodern culture. The book ultimately challenges the primacy of the “European gaze” and its fascination with sacred cultures, constructing a more balanced intercultural dialogue that deemphasizes the aesthetic of the real championed by Western philosophy.
Sharon Hecker
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780520294486
- eISBN:
- 9780520967564
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520294486.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
Medardo Rosso (1858–1928) is one of the most original and influential figures in the history of modern art, and this book is the first historically substantiated critical account of his life and ...
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Medardo Rosso (1858–1928) is one of the most original and influential figures in the history of modern art, and this book is the first historically substantiated critical account of his life and work. An innovative sculptor, photographer, and draftsman, Rosso was vital in paving the way for the transition from the academic forms of sculpture that persisted in the nineteenth century to the development of new and experimental forms in the twentieth century. His antimonumental, antiheroic work reflected alienation in the modern experience yet showed deep feeling for interactions between self and other. Rosso's art was transnational: he refused allegiance to a single culture or artistic heritage and declared himself both a citizen of the world and a maker of art without national limits. This book develops a narrative that is an alternative to the dominant Franco-centered perspective on the origin of modern sculpture in which Rodin plays the role of lone heroic innovator. Offering an original way to comprehend Rosso, the book negotiates the competing cultural imperatives of nationalism and internationalism that shaped the European art world at the fin de siècle.Less
Medardo Rosso (1858–1928) is one of the most original and influential figures in the history of modern art, and this book is the first historically substantiated critical account of his life and work. An innovative sculptor, photographer, and draftsman, Rosso was vital in paving the way for the transition from the academic forms of sculpture that persisted in the nineteenth century to the development of new and experimental forms in the twentieth century. His antimonumental, antiheroic work reflected alienation in the modern experience yet showed deep feeling for interactions between self and other. Rosso's art was transnational: he refused allegiance to a single culture or artistic heritage and declared himself both a citizen of the world and a maker of art without national limits. This book develops a narrative that is an alternative to the dominant Franco-centered perspective on the origin of modern sculpture in which Rodin plays the role of lone heroic innovator. Offering an original way to comprehend Rosso, the book negotiates the competing cultural imperatives of nationalism and internationalism that shaped the European art world at the fin de siècle.
Peter Uwe Hohendahl
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801452369
- eISBN:
- 9780801469282
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801452369.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter examines the function of the ugly in Aesthetic Theory, with particular emphasis on the primitive and the archaic. It first considers the meaning of the ugly in relation to Theodor ...
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This chapter examines the function of the ugly in Aesthetic Theory, with particular emphasis on the primitive and the archaic. It first considers the meaning of the ugly in relation to Theodor Adorno's understanding of classical aesthetics and his assessment of modern art. It then discusses Adorno's argument against Igor Stravinsky in The Philosophy of Modern Music, and especially his claim that the composer has regressed to classical tonality and flirted with folk art and the primitive as a means of critiquing modern culture. It also explores Adorno's distinction between two modes of the ugly: a positive formalist version utilized by Arnold Schoenberg and a negative one in Stravinsky. It argues that Adorno was more deeply involved in the interpretation of primitive, non-European art than expected, and that he admits the archaic and ugly to the realm of art as a reminder of past and present horror.Less
This chapter examines the function of the ugly in Aesthetic Theory, with particular emphasis on the primitive and the archaic. It first considers the meaning of the ugly in relation to Theodor Adorno's understanding of classical aesthetics and his assessment of modern art. It then discusses Adorno's argument against Igor Stravinsky in The Philosophy of Modern Music, and especially his claim that the composer has regressed to classical tonality and flirted with folk art and the primitive as a means of critiquing modern culture. It also explores Adorno's distinction between two modes of the ugly: a positive formalist version utilized by Arnold Schoenberg and a negative one in Stravinsky. It argues that Adorno was more deeply involved in the interpretation of primitive, non-European art than expected, and that he admits the archaic and ugly to the realm of art as a reminder of past and present horror.
Paul Fleming
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804758901
- eISBN:
- 9780804769983
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804758901.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
Following Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's analysis of art's increasing difficulty to both engage and extricate itself from prosaic reality, this book investigates the strategies employed by German ...
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Following Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's analysis of art's increasing difficulty to both engage and extricate itself from prosaic reality, this book investigates the strategies employed by German literature from 1750 to 1850 for increasingly attuning itself to quotidian life—common heroes, everyday life, non-extraordinary events—while also avoiding all notions of mediocrity. It focuses on three sites of this tension: the average audience (Gotthold Ephraim Lessing), the average artist (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller), and the everyday, or average life (Franz Grillparzer and Adalbert Stifter). The book's title, Exemplarity and Mediocrity, describes both a disjunctive and a conjunctive relation. Read disjunctively, modern art must display the “exemplary originality” (Immanuel Kant) which only genius can provide and is thus fundamentally opposed to mediocrity as that which does not stand out or lacks distinctiveness; in the conjunctive sense, modern art turns to non-exceptional life in order to transform it—without forsaking its commonness—thereby producing exemplary forms of mediocrity that both represent the non-exceptional and, insofar as they stand outside the group they represent, are something other than mediocre.Less
Following Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's analysis of art's increasing difficulty to both engage and extricate itself from prosaic reality, this book investigates the strategies employed by German literature from 1750 to 1850 for increasingly attuning itself to quotidian life—common heroes, everyday life, non-extraordinary events—while also avoiding all notions of mediocrity. It focuses on three sites of this tension: the average audience (Gotthold Ephraim Lessing), the average artist (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller), and the everyday, or average life (Franz Grillparzer and Adalbert Stifter). The book's title, Exemplarity and Mediocrity, describes both a disjunctive and a conjunctive relation. Read disjunctively, modern art must display the “exemplary originality” (Immanuel Kant) which only genius can provide and is thus fundamentally opposed to mediocrity as that which does not stand out or lacks distinctiveness; in the conjunctive sense, modern art turns to non-exceptional life in order to transform it—without forsaking its commonness—thereby producing exemplary forms of mediocrity that both represent the non-exceptional and, insofar as they stand outside the group they represent, are something other than mediocre.
Daniel Herwitz
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231160186
- eISBN:
- 9780231530729
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231160186.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This chapter critiques the categorization of South African heritages, particularly the works of the people from Vha-Venda and Va-Tsonga, into transitional art—arts that were theorized as neither ...
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This chapter critiques the categorization of South African heritages, particularly the works of the people from Vha-Venda and Va-Tsonga, into transitional art—arts that were theorized as neither primitive nor modern but somewhere in between. The Vha-Venda and Va-Tsonga art, which are among the most prominent and longstanding traditions of black sculptural carving in the southern African region, have been placed by South African art historians and critics in the category of “transitional art.” Their goal is to dignify a wide variety of artifacts produced by then contemporary black Africans living in townships, rural communities, and urban peripheries, vesting them with this in-between theoretical space. However such a categorization had been too general—it had failed to present the distinct qualities of these artifacts.Less
This chapter critiques the categorization of South African heritages, particularly the works of the people from Vha-Venda and Va-Tsonga, into transitional art—arts that were theorized as neither primitive nor modern but somewhere in between. The Vha-Venda and Va-Tsonga art, which are among the most prominent and longstanding traditions of black sculptural carving in the southern African region, have been placed by South African art historians and critics in the category of “transitional art.” Their goal is to dignify a wide variety of artifacts produced by then contemporary black Africans living in townships, rural communities, and urban peripheries, vesting them with this in-between theoretical space. However such a categorization had been too general—it had failed to present the distinct qualities of these artifacts.
Viola Shafik
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789774160653
- eISBN:
- 9781936190096
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- American University in Cairo Press
- DOI:
- 10.5743/cairo/9789774160653.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Middle Eastern Studies
Traditional Islamic principles of representation have rarely been applied to Arab cinema. The colorful non-spatial painting of miniatures and the ornamental rhythms of the arabesque, basically ...
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Traditional Islamic principles of representation have rarely been applied to Arab cinema. The colorful non-spatial painting of miniatures and the ornamental rhythms of the arabesque, basically structured by light and shadow, almost never found their way to the screen. Nearly all Arab film makers stuck to classical rules of Western art instead. The rules of conventional Western composition were adhered to, even though the encounter with European art had started comparatively late. The twentieth century saw not only the spread of three-dimensional realist plastic art and central perspective, but also a confrontation with a new idea of art, based on the dichotomy between fine arts on the one hand and arts and crafts on the other. This conception promoted the artist as an individual genius, and further undermined the position of traditional arts and crafts genres. Increasingly, these were either cultivated on the margins or completely integrated into modern art.Less
Traditional Islamic principles of representation have rarely been applied to Arab cinema. The colorful non-spatial painting of miniatures and the ornamental rhythms of the arabesque, basically structured by light and shadow, almost never found their way to the screen. Nearly all Arab film makers stuck to classical rules of Western art instead. The rules of conventional Western composition were adhered to, even though the encounter with European art had started comparatively late. The twentieth century saw not only the spread of three-dimensional realist plastic art and central perspective, but also a confrontation with a new idea of art, based on the dichotomy between fine arts on the one hand and arts and crafts on the other. This conception promoted the artist as an individual genius, and further undermined the position of traditional arts and crafts genres. Increasingly, these were either cultivated on the margins or completely integrated into modern art.
Peter Uwe Hohendahl
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801452369
- eISBN:
- 9780801469282
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801452369.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter examines the significance of the absolute for Theodor Adorno's aesthetic theory, with particular emphasis on his interpretation of the status of art in late modernism. The point of ...
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This chapter examines the significance of the absolute for Theodor Adorno's aesthetic theory, with particular emphasis on his interpretation of the status of art in late modernism. The point of departure is a reading of Adorno that stresses the continuity from Dialectic of Enlightenment to Aesthetic Theory with respect to the centrality of the concept of reason and its defense vis-à-vis intellectual and social reification. The chapter considers Adorno's aesthetic theory as a historically inflected theory of rationality applied to art. Going against the dominant reading of Adorno's theory that sees it as a means to rescue modern art through the use of determinate negation, it highlights Adorno's abandonment of this position in some sections of Aesthetic Theory. More specifically, it discusses Adorno's claim that aesthetic experience must lead to and become philosophy, thereby shifting the truth content of artwork to philosophy but also acknowledging the fleeting character of art.Less
This chapter examines the significance of the absolute for Theodor Adorno's aesthetic theory, with particular emphasis on his interpretation of the status of art in late modernism. The point of departure is a reading of Adorno that stresses the continuity from Dialectic of Enlightenment to Aesthetic Theory with respect to the centrality of the concept of reason and its defense vis-à-vis intellectual and social reification. The chapter considers Adorno's aesthetic theory as a historically inflected theory of rationality applied to art. Going against the dominant reading of Adorno's theory that sees it as a means to rescue modern art through the use of determinate negation, it highlights Adorno's abandonment of this position in some sections of Aesthetic Theory. More specifically, it discusses Adorno's claim that aesthetic experience must lead to and become philosophy, thereby shifting the truth content of artwork to philosophy but also acknowledging the fleeting character of art.
Tom Rockmore
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226040028
- eISBN:
- 9780226040165
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226040165.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter illustrates a few of the many differences between modern art and earlier art forms. For one, modern art can be seen as the transformation of what was earlier an artistic endeavor that ...
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This chapter illustrates a few of the many differences between modern art and earlier art forms. For one, modern art can be seen as the transformation of what was earlier an artistic endeavor that appeared in many guises to one that increasingly responds to financial imperatives. Contemporary art is either in the process of becoming or has already become a form of commodification. Modern art also shows evidence of an increasing loss of the cognitive dimension so important in earlier forms of art. The Platonic attack on artistic representation has been hugely influential in Western aesthetics, and philosophers—even artists—are divided in supporting or denying the Platonic verdict. These differences in opinion illustrate that the aesthetic discussion and even the practice of Western art is a sort of reaction to the Platonic critique of art. This scenario is now changing; the reasons for this change are discussed in the succeeding chapters.Less
This chapter illustrates a few of the many differences between modern art and earlier art forms. For one, modern art can be seen as the transformation of what was earlier an artistic endeavor that appeared in many guises to one that increasingly responds to financial imperatives. Contemporary art is either in the process of becoming or has already become a form of commodification. Modern art also shows evidence of an increasing loss of the cognitive dimension so important in earlier forms of art. The Platonic attack on artistic representation has been hugely influential in Western aesthetics, and philosophers—even artists—are divided in supporting or denying the Platonic verdict. These differences in opinion illustrate that the aesthetic discussion and even the practice of Western art is a sort of reaction to the Platonic critique of art. This scenario is now changing; the reasons for this change are discussed in the succeeding chapters.
