Since pre-history, humankind has relied on archetypes and myths to describe the ineffable and has made use of fictional and mythological narratives to understand the meaning of life and death. Dying ...and death are topics reluctantly discussed in open society. Yet, the global COVID-19 pandemic has drawn attention to the process of dying and death, and hence the survival of humankind. By embracing their finitude, humans attempt to create meaningful experiences in life and, therefore, attain “freedom towards death” (Heidegger, 1962: 311).
This paper investigates how South African artist Diane Victor uses universally known myths and symbols of Christian iconography within a South African context to create meaning, as well as how she uses medium and exhibition sites to evoke intense emotions within viewers urging them to consider their finitude. By recognising how fragile and vulnerable life is, the artist captures the ephemeral in a poignant way. In this paper, I argue that Victor embraces the challenge of consecrating the forgotten or lost. Through incorporating religious icons, signs, and symbols in her work, Victor ‘catches ghosts’ of the ‘seen’ and ‘unseen’ in, about, of and from South Africa. Her works are understood through a contemporary reading of religious (Christian) iconography and interpreted in the symbolic and fragile mediums of smoke, stain, ash, charcoal, light and shadow, emphasising the ephemerality and impermanence of the human condition.
Two manuscripts produced in early fourteenth-century German lands reflect similar iconography of the fighting with Sword and Buckler; one is the well-known fencing manual, Leeds, Royal Armouries, MS ...I. 33, produced ca. 1320, and the other is a Hebrew manuscript of the Bible, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France héb. 9, made in 1304, that will be the focus of this article. This preliminary research intends to demonstrate how Hebrew illuminated manuscripts can shed more light on the study of fight books iconography.
El fotógrafo rural Wifredo López Vecino se ha convertido en el testigo gráfico por excelencia de la transformación geomorfológica del Vado de Alconétar, en el río Tajo a su paso por la provincia de ...Cáceres, en la década de los años 60. Más allá del documento gráfico que ofrecen sus imágenes, fue capaz de recrear de manera autodidacta una poética de la composición muy personal, que aplicó a sus retratos y a los paisajes. Entre estos últimos, una de sus fotografías más emblemáticas es la del "El joven saltador ante los puentes", de la que en el presente estudio se ofrece un detallado análisis iconográfico en consonancia con otras fotografías características de su producción y con otras obras de la tradición artística occidental y de la fotografía contemporáneas que constituyen referentes que permiten comprender el tratamiento de personas, paisajes y símbolos presentes en la imagen examinada.
The Bayeux tapestry is a masterpiece of the eleventh century and one of the most important
medieval documents in history. Through its embroidered images and texts in Latin, it narrates the
conquest ...of England by William the Conqueror in 1066. The main scene is framed by two panels, a lower
and an upper one, in which animals, plants, fables and different scenes are represented. Although, at first
glance, they seemed to be a purely ornamental element, their study reveals that they contain a large
number of symbolic elements that complete and add different nuances to the understanding of history.
They are a stage for the geniality of the artist, who uses them to show the originality of the design and the
technique used, so that each of the images represented is unique and different on their virtues and their defects, including as well as a subtle critique. Among the animals that populate these panels, the birds are
the ones that provide more expressiveness and complexity of meanings.
El tapiz de Bayeux es una obra maestra del siglo XI y uno de los documentos medievales más importantes de la Historia. Mediante imágenes bordadas y textos en latín, narra la conquista de Inglaterra por Guillermo El Conquistador en 1066. La escena principal está enmarcada por dos franjas, una superior y otra inferior, en la que aparecen representados animales, plantas, fábulas y escenas diversas. Aunque, en principio, parecían ser un elemento puramente ornamental, su estudio revela que contiene gran cantidad de elementos simbólicos que completan y añaden diversos matices a la comprensión de la historia. Son un escenario para el ingenio del artista, que las utiliza para mostrar la originalidad del diseño y de la técnica empleada, de forma que cada una de las imágenes representadas es única y diferente. Las criaturas aluden a la situación de los protagonistas de la historia principal, mostrando una reflexión sobre sus virtudes y sus defectos, así como una crítica sutil. Entre los animales que pueblan estas franjas son los pájaros los que aportan mayor expresividad y complejidad de significados.
A Program of Complete Disorder Athanasopoulos, Charles
Lateral (Island Lake),
06/2021, Letnik:
10, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This essay examines the scholarship of revolutionary theorist Frantz Fanon and the debate surrounding his conception of decolonization and “new humanism.” Across a multitude of fields, Black and ...cultural studies among them, Fanon has been heralded as an iconic thinker who offers us a path toward an alternative humanity. Working against the grain of this popular form of Fanonism, I suggest that there is a Black iconoclasm—a deep desire to unsettle the very rendering of a systematic path toward decolonization—that pervades Fanonian thought. Accordingly, the essay examines and unsettles various forms of Fanonism by suggesting that their teleological narratives of redemption ultimately end up serving anti-Fanonian pursuits. Through an extended meditation on Fanon’s claim that decolonization is “a program of complete disorder,” I explore what it might mean to embrace a Black iconoclastic approach to Fanon and the pursuit of Black liberation.
We undertake a study about the beginning of Protestantism in the Northeast of Brazil through the biography of George William Butler, doctor and protestant missionary. From the point of view of a ...micro-analytical narrative, we aim to understand how he gives meaning to his social relations and to world around him - the Northeast at the dawn of the twentieth century - as well as the society welcomed an individual with a new religiosity. Realizing the limitations of written sources (mission reports) for such research purposes, we seek an iconographic analysis of the photos published by the missionary, and his wife, through their institution Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS). We think these images as a means of access to social representations concerning the relationship between a Protestant, who comes from southern United States, with the local culture, through the investigation of the production, circulation and reception of these images. The photographs, collated with other written sources, enabled us to rebuild the ideological dimension of images and the effort to maintain powers, amid the ebb and flow of secularizing transition and anglo-saxon capitalism, uniting both Protestant and landowners of Pernambuco's territory.
This article analyses the physical representation's forms of the Siren in medieval bestiaries. Depending on the manuscript, the creature could appear in three hybrid forms: bird-woman, fish-woman and ...fish-bird-woman. The difference draws attention, considering that the text is the same in each manuscript and specifies the Siren's physical as being that of a bird-woman. Starting from a reconstruction of the Siren myth, since its origin to the Middle Ages, we see how the beast was transformed from a bird-woman into a fish-woman and how this very transformation was received in the bestiaries. Considering the particular relation between image and text in bestiaries and conceiving them as independent traditions, we realize that, contrary to previous studies, the distinct representations were not the result of confusion among different creatures. It is the illuminator who associates the textual description (that determined the Siren asa bird-woman) with his contemporary imagery (that consolidated the Siren as a fish-woman).
This paper takes a practice-based approach to the study of cultural identity, focusing on how raw material and technical choices involved in the production of quotidian tools served to both ...reproduce, and reflect a social group’s very way of being. We then consider the (dis)continuity of obsidian blade-making traditions from Middle–Late Bronze Age Malia (north-central Crete), i.e., before and after a period of island-wide destructions, and appearance of foreign elements believed to reflect the arrival of a population from the Greek mainland (Mycenaeans). Methodologically this involves an integrated, ‘thick description’ obsidian characterisation study to detail long-term cultural traditions, including the use of Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) to source the raw materials of 36 artifacts. The results show a significant degree of continuity in the community’s lithic traditions, suggesting that many of the innovative features at Malia can be interpreted in terms of local factions appropriating new and foreign means of social distinction, rather than wholescale changes in community composition.
Over the pre-Columbian sequence, Andean warfare ranged greatly in intensity. This review combines published information on cranial trauma and settlement patterns, which often align and clarify each ...other, to make an initial assessment of how severely Andean populations were affected by war over time and space. The data speak to a number of major topics in the archaeology of warfare, such as the origin of war, contrasts in state militarism, and changes in the practice of war related to social organization. Although there is considerable regional variation, two large-scale "waves" of escalated conflict that are clearly supported by the cranial trauma and settlement pattern data occurred in the Final Formative (late Early Horizon, 400 BC-AD 100) and the Late Intermediate period (AD 1000-1400).
The field study that was organized by the committee of Premodern Java Summer Programme in 2016 targeted several museums in East Java, especially in Mojokerto-Penataran area. That field study was ...intended to provide an understanding about the development of cultural arts during the end of Hindu-Buddhist period of Majapahit Kingdom. This paper is discussing about one of the objects that was being observed during that Summer Programme. The object of discussion is the lion-headed figure, stored in Museum Penataran. During the Summer Programme, some participants have predicted that the statue is Lord Vishnu in his Narasimha form. That prediction was mainly based on the statue's head which resemble a lion's head. Through several studies, such as the description of the statue, the literature study of iconography, and analysis about the special iconographic character, this paper concluded that this figure is a manifestation of Ganesha, named Simha-Ganapati. The worship of Simha-Ganapati has a purpose not only to bring strength and courage, but also to provide confidence in facing problems by destroying all forms of negative thoughts.
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