This richly textured cultural history of Italian fascism traces the narrative path that accompanied the making of the regime and the construction of Mussolini's power. Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi reads ...fascist myths, rituals, images, and speeches as texts that tell the story of fascism. Linking Mussolini's elaboration of a new ruling style to the shaping of the regime's identity, she finds that in searching for symbolic means and forms that would represent its political novelty, fascism in fact brought itself into being, creating its own power and history.
Falasca-Zamponi argues that an aesthetically founded notion of politics guided fascist power's historical unfolding and determined the fascist regime's violent understanding of social relations, its desensitized and dehumanized claims to creation, its privileging of form over ethical norms, and ultimately its truly totalitarian nature.
The influence of pareidolia has often been anecdotally observed in examples of Upper Palaeolithic cave art, where topographic features of cave walls were incorporated into images. As part of a wider ...investigation into the visual psychology of the earliest known art, we explored three hypotheses relating to pareidolia in cases of Late Upper Palaeolithic art in Las Monedas and La Pasiega Caves (Cantabria, Spain). Deploying current research methods from visual psychology, our results support the notion that topography of cave walls played a strong role in the placement of figurative images—indicative of pareidolia influencing art making—although played a lesser role in determining whether the resulting images were relatively simple or complex. Our results also suggested that lighting conditions played little or no role in determining the form or placement of images, contrary to what has been previously assumed. We hypothesize that three ways of artist–cave interaction (‘conversations’) were at work in our sample caves and suggest a developmental scheme for these. We propose that these ‘conversations’ with caves and their surfaces may have broader implications for how we conceive of the emergence and development of art in the Palaeolithic.
With the progress of The Times, visual culture has a profound impact on people’s lives. Therefore, improving the aesthetic characteristics of visual culture is conducive to promoting the development ...of the aesthetic era. In this paper, first of all, the overview and development of visual culture and the existing shortcomings to explain, at the same time, based on the computer new media technology of visual culture aesthetic characteristics of analysis and research, for the reference of readers.
The volume comprises a selection of papers presented at the 5th Postgraduate International Conference organized by the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of Ca’ Foscari University of ...Venice (Venice, 4-6 October 2023): A Driving Force. On the Rhetoric of Images and Power. In the introduction to his well-known The Power of Images (1989), David Freedberg claims not only that images hold power over us, but they are also, inevitably, related to ‘power’ itself. Art is therefore a powerful and non-neutral tool. Its forms and expressions influence and manipulate the realm of the real. Throughout human history, the artist’s creative power gave form, substance, and meaning to otherwise inert matter. This process turned the artist into a demiurge. Furthermore, once images are given their final form, they circulate and live a life of their own. The 5th Postgraduate International Conference was aimed at investigating the rhetorical nature of the intersection between image and power. In 1979 Yuri Lotman claimed that “rhetoric” is the displacement of the structural principles of a given semiotic sphere into another semiotic sphere. The Tartu semiologist’s approach implies that the “correlation with different semiotic systems gives rise to a rhetorical situation in which a powerful source of elaboration of new meanings is contained”. In exploring these meanings from a multidisciplinary perspective, this volume investigates two main themes: the power of the image, as an autonomous device, endowed with a pervasive and persuasive character; the image as a form for representing power which addresses questions concerning the sense of authority, and its negation, namely a sense of dissidence and counter-narrations.
Abstract
With the progress of The Times, visual culture has a profound impact on people’s lives. Therefore, improving the aesthetic characteristics of visual culture is conducive to promoting the ...development of the aesthetic era. In this paper, first of all, the overview and development of visual culture and the existing shortcomings to explain, at the same time, based on the computer new media technology of visual culture aesthetic characteristics of analysis and research, for the reference of readers.
This essay explores circular compositions in medieval and early modern art. Delving into the intersection of religious, philosophical, and scientific ideas, the text examines the prevalence of ...circular depictions in medieval and early modern aesthetics. Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach, the author draws from primary Hermetic and Neoplatonic sources, providing four reasons for this preference. Firstly, this essay explores the scientific understanding of the shape of the universe, planets, and stars. The second reason delves into the psychological, symbolic, and geometric aspects associated with circular compositions, connecting them to Christian cosmological diagrams and symbolism in the visual arts. Furthermore, the essay investigates the conceptualisation of the universe as a mirror reflecting the divine, emphasising the role of beauty in religious art. The essay concludes by examining the visual culture of medieval and early modern periods, tracing the evolution of circular representations from Roman coins and shields to illuminated manuscripts and paintings. The article sheds light on a hitherto underexplored aspect of medieval and early modern cultures, despite its significance in shaping symbolism and organizing iconographic programs within these periods.
Esta investigación se centra en la relación entre las fórmulas híbridas y las nuevas tecnologías y el teatro de texto, con el objetivo de conocer su nivel de implantación y las posibilidades que ...ofrecen a nivel comunicativo. Emplea un panel de expertos, cuestionarios a profesionales y un estudio de caso múltiple. Los resultados indican que son estrategias en expansión que permiten establecer nuevas relaciones con el público y ofrecen una multiplicidad de fórmulas creativas para las marcas en la era digital. Se trata de una expresión artística que puede ofrecer eventos experienciales muy exclusivos en la era post-pandémica.
Photography and fascism in interwar Europe developed into a highly toxic and combustible formula. Particularly in concert with aggressive display techniques, the European fascists were utterly ...convinced of their ability to use the medium of photography to manufacture consent among their publics. Unfortunately, as we know in hindsight, they succeeded. Other dictatorial regimes in the 1930s harnessed this powerful combination of photography and exhibitions for their own odious purposes. But this book, for the first time, focuses on the particularly consequential dialectic between Germany and Italy in the early-to-mid 1930s, and within each of those countries vis-à-vis display culture.
The 1930s provides a potent case study for every generation, and it is as urgent as ever in our global political environment to deeply understand the central role of visual imagery in what transpired. Photofascism demonstrates precisely how dictatorial regimes use photographic mass media, methodically and in combination with display, to persuade the public with often times highly destructive—even catastrophic—results.
New book “Trajectories of Memory and Glance: a Reflection on Visual Culture” is an important contribution to the field of memory studies, which opens up a discussion about memory and visuality as two ...significant trajectories within the present world that have caused a culture change. This book aims to show how visual plane of memory actually covers a wide field and why memory and visuality are two “signatures” of our epoch, transforming the collective mindset. The structure of Trajectories of Memory and Glance is not linear: it works through the personal and collective categories of memory, nostalgia, art, culture and media, focusing on different groups and societies. The book consists of nine chapters that include such issues as interplay between memory and image, longing and communication, nostalgia and global consumer culture, topography of culture and memory, place and non-place, memory of Holocaust, paradigms of visibility and visuality, and others.
Selfie-taking as touristic looking Dinhopl, Anja; Gretzel, Ulrike
Annals of tourism research,
March 2016, 2016-03-00, Volume:
57
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Display omitted
•Provides theoretical basis for self as object of a tourist gaze shaped by Web 2.0.•Uses networked travel to explain shifting functions of tourist photography.•Conceptualizes impact ...of ‘selfie’ culture on tourist experiences.•Theorizes othering, stylized performing and producing/consuming the self.•Shows how tourists themselves take on attributes ascribed to tourist sights.
This paper reconceptualises the tourist gaze as facilitated by smart phones and social media, with a focus on selfies. It presents selfie-taking as a new way of touristic looking in which tourists become the objects of the self-directed tourist gaze. The paper suggests that the practice of selfie-taking in tourism is constituted by othering, stylized performing and producing/consuming visual culture of the self. Through these processes, tourists are able to ascribe the characteristics they otherwise associate with tourist sights onto themselves. Rather than fetishizing the extraordinary at the tourist destination, tourists seek to capture the extraordinary within themselves. Traditional tourist sights and attractions take on different relative importance.
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