Congo Style presents a postcolonial approach to discussing the visual culture of two now-notorious regimes: King Leopold II’s Congo Colony and the state sites of Mobutu Sese Seko’s totalitarian ...Zaïre. Readers are brought into the living remains of sites once made up of ambitious modernist architecture and art in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. From the total artworks of Art Nouveau to the aggrandizing sites of post-independence Kinshasa, Congo Style investigates the experiential qualities of man-made environments intended to entertain, delight, seduce, and impress. In her study of visual culture, Ruth Sacks sets out to reinstate the compelling wonder of nationalist architecture from Kinshasa’s post-independence era, such as the Tower of the Exchange (1974), Gécamines Tower (1977), and the artworks and exhibitions that accompanied them. While exploring post-independence nation-building, this book examines how the underlying ideology of Belgian Art Nouveau, a celebrated movement in Belgium, led to the dominating early colonial settler buildings of the ABC Hotels (circa 1908–13). Congo Style combines Sacks’s practice as a visual artist and her academic scholarship to provide an original study of early colonial and independence-era modernist sites in their African context.
Antologin Teoretiska tillämpningar i konstvetenskap demonstrerar, presenterar och problematiserar tillämpningen av semiotisk teori på konstvetenskapliga studieobjekt. Den centrala ambitionen är att ...diskutera och exemplifiera de specifika frågor och problem som semiotikens möte med just konstvetenskapliga studieobjekt ger upphov till. Till dessa hör frågor om visuell kommunikation och visuella koder, materialitet och medialitet så som i andra sammanhang förbisedda aspekter av tecknet, samt tecknets och därmed tolkningens historicitet. Antologins sex kapitel inkluderar studier av samtida modefotografi och skulptur, pre- och postindustriella möbler, 1600- och 1800-talets oljemåleri och 1800-talets pressbild.
esistance features a selection of overtly non-conformist positions in the contemporary visual art scene of Albania vis-à-vis the most recent social, political, and economic turmoils in the Western ...Balkans – a region marked by the dark side of political governances that have remained “democratic" in their outward appearance (especially toward the European Union), while dramatically leaning toward autocratic regimes in the eyes of their own citizens. Regardless of their citizens’ primary interests, and despite some positive signals surfacing in the international media, almost every attempt to establish lasting conditions for democratic governance in the Western Balkans has been shrouded in the veil of profit-driven political scandals, personal greed for more and more power over the people’s rights, and the extinction of public property in pursuit of social elite’s corporate and private interests. Additionally, and more specifically related to Tirana, artists and citizens have, over the years, been involved in various types of revolt, expressing their disagreements with the ongoing destruction of public property in the name of “modernization and development": a movement led by local political powers through financially and strategically motivated processes of architectural cannibalism – not only at the expense of erasing Albanian cultural heritage or long-term residents’ habitats, but also at the expense of taking human lives under the pretext of “urbanization." The most obvious instance of this economy of destruction was the complex of buildings linked to the National Theater of Albania in downtown Tirana that has served as a symbolic and material place of citizens’ resistance: for more than two years, together with local artists, they have been opposing the government’s plans to demolish the old complex in order to build a new one – until this finally happened in Spring 2020, in the midst of the ongoing COVID19 pandemic. Rooted in the atmosphere of the National Theater Protests in Tirana, RESISTANCE was conceived in Summer 2019 by ZETA Center for Contemporary Art as the International Artists-in-Residence Program, in cooperation with three partner organizations from Kosovo, Serbia and North Macedonia (Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art in Prishtina; Ilija & Mangelos Foundation in Novi Sad; and Faculty of Things That Can’t Be Learned in Bitola) and supported by Swiss Cultural Fund in Albania, a project of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. Gradually, the project expanded into an exhibition (Heterotopias of Resistance, curated by Blerta Hoçia and featuring works by Lori Lako, Fatlum Doçi, Edona Kryeziu, Nina Galiç, Darko Vukiç, Nikola Slavevski, and Natasha Nedelkova) and a series of interviews and panel discussions (with contributions by Lindita Komani, Edmond Budina, Ervin Goci, Ergin Zaloshnja, Pleurad Xhafa, Gentian Shkurti, Stefano Romano, Luçjan Bedeni, HAVEIT, Leonard Qylafi, Jonida Gashi, and Fatmira Nikolli). The results of both have been collected and presented in the format of a publication that, besides serving as an indispensable reading material concerning visual arts and politics in contemporary Albania, especially to those abroad, functions by itself as a form of resistance against contagious cultural policies in weak post-socialist “democracies" in Southeastern Europe.
EDITORIAL Riesco, Benjamín Ballester
Boletín del Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino,
01/2023, Volume:
28, Issue:
1
Journal Article
After a long wait of more than three years as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, the change of the Chief Curator of the Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art and the renewal of the Editorial Team of ...its Bulletin, the special issue on Art and Shamanism. An ambitious project that initially contemplated 19 manuscripts and that, little by little, matured until it took its final form, made up of 12 articles that are the result of research on the relationship between shamanism and artistic manifestations throughout the American continent and the Iberian Peninsula. As a whole, the published writings express in an extraordinary way the state of the art, the current debates and the new investigations on an anthropological problem as old as it is current, since shamanism is still present, in one way or another,neo or following the ancestral traditions.
This issue of the Bulletin of the Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art includes twelve works on art and shamanism, making use of a variety of tools, methodologies, and concepts. Next, the global use ...of the word shaman, shamanic practice and its applications to archaeology are considered, and an attempt is made to clarify the relationship between art and shamanism. Then, each of the articles collected in this volume of the Bulletin is briefly commented on. Happily, after overcoming various challenges, including the pandemic and a change in the Editorial Team, this volume coincides with the Shamanism exhibition, Visions out of time, held at the Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art. The actions that fall within the shamanic sphere are diverse and variable. Each culture applies a name in the language that corresponds to it. Thus we find behique , mara'akame , machi, and many others. The term shaman offers us the opportunity to use a single word to refer to the ritual activities that lead to the ecstatic state; a category that encompasses the diversity of practitioners who share a series of characteristics, some of which will be listed below. Shamanism occurs in small-scale societies, with low hierarchical manifestations. Consequently, and from a certain point of view, it would not be correct to call complex societies with clear evidence of hierarchies such as those of Chavín, Moche, Wari or Tiwanaku shamanic. However, it might be advantageous to identify shamanic elements in the art of these cultures, in efforts to clarify certain aspects of the iconography that might otherwise remain obscure.
Art-Historical Art Today Sikander, Shahzia; Tai, Xiangzhou; Zhang, Hongtu
Ars Orientalis,
2019, Volume:
49, Issue:
20220203
Journal Article, Web Resource
Peer reviewed
Open access
The articles within this volume highlight diachronous dialogues between artists and artwork created generations earlier. This layered, multivalent practice of invocations and quotations continues in ...works by contemporary artists like Shahzia Sikander, Tai Xiangzhou, and Zhang Hongtu. These artists are not attempting to place themselves within a teleological progression, or to suggest direct relationships between themselves and historic traditions. Rather, the past provides them with a repertoire of forms, techniques, themes, and ideas for expressing present issues. Their art encourages us to deal with uncomfortable stereotypes as well as reified perceptions of cultures and previous eras. It serves as a mirror of today’s world, clothed in the garb of the past.
•There is a new database capturing information about 140,000+ paintings shown at the Paris salon.•Surprisingly, this database shows that portraits were a very commonly displayed genre—although they ...have long been ignored by scholars.•Most portraits displayed were of women.•Many portraits displayed had anonymous or pseudo-anonymous titles; this was previously unknown.
This essay describes a novel dataset that facilitates the quantitative analysis of eighteenth and nineteenth-century French painting. Based on titles listed in the Paris Salon livrets, the dataset assigns detailed keywords indicating the content for each of the more than 148,000 paintings shown at the Salon—the principal French art exhibition of the era—from the seventeenth to nineteenth century. To demonstrate the interest and utility of this dataset, we present a case study about a genre that has traditionally been neglected by both art historians and cultural economists: portraiture. Our analysis shows portraiture was ubiquitous, usually representing 27% of all paintings exhibited in a year—more than any other genre. We also trace the changing demographics of sitters. There were, for example, dramatic increases over time in how many images of women were displayed. We also chart the rise of quasi-anonymous portraiture, where names of sitters do not appear in paintings’ titles but audiences from certain social classes could identify subjects. We ultimately demonstrate how quantitative methods can be fruitfully applied to this art historical dataset, which is now available freely online, and is just one of many similar datasets that can be digitized and studied.
Editorial Schwerda, Mira Xenia
Art in translation,
09/2022, Volume:
14, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The artist Mona Hatoum aims to “expand the idea of a shaky ground to include the entire world.”1 The articles in this varia issue of Art in Translation discuss the topics of translation and ...transformation, and they underline that the global history of art and visual culture is complex, unexpected, and ever-changing—in some ways resembling Hatoum’s “shaky ground.” This issue’s articles foreground unpublished, original research on intercultural translation. While focusing on specific case studies or people, the articles address broader questions that have been at the heart of art history over recent decades: The authors lead us away from the deceptive paradigm of linear rise and decline and from the question of original and copy, which preoccupied art history for so long. They examine specific routes taken by objects and moments of cultural contact rather than searching for illusive origins, explore the development of specific phenomena, ideas, and symbols, and investigate the cultural, political, and personal context of art, artists, and art historians. Geographically this issue’s essay topics range from East Asia, to Southeast and South Asia, the Middle East and West Africa, with some references to European and North American art histories and art historiographies, thereby illuminating specific chapters in a global, interconnected history of art.
In our modern secular society, theology is capturing progressively less attention and is being granted minimal importance within the wider community. Unjustly so, as this collection of essays ...demonstrates. On the occasion of the centenary of Radboud University (1923-2023), researchers and professors from the Faculty of Theology present a series of easily comprehensible theological insights concerning both human frailties and the greatness of humanity. Using the deadly sins and a few virtues as a guiding framework, these essays explore lighthearted the boundaries, horizons, and ambiguities of human existence.This volume combines perspectives from Biblical studies, church history, systematic theology, and practical theology to address individual challenges and societal discussions. The seven deadly sins provide food for thought on what can go wrong in individual lives and in society. The classic list of pride (superbia), greed (avaritia), envy (invidia), lust (luxuria), gluttony (gula), wrath (ira), and sluggishness (acedia) still affect us. Virtues, on the other hand, are often less actively pursued, yet they inspire us to critically observe our surroundings: love (caritas), justice (iustitia), and fairness (aequitas).These insights often draw from the rich history of Nijmegen's Faculty of Theology. Not to imply that its approach is a unique breeding ground for vices, but rather to acknowledge the joyous occasion that spurred this collection. The compilation wraps up with art-historical reflections on the images that eloquently enhance the contributions.
