Art Theory

Truest Art of Them All: Paleolithic Cave Paintings of ChauvetTruest Art of Them All: Paleolithic Cave Paintings of Chauvet

by kali manitu

The wall paintings of Chauvet are instinctive and emotional; they reveal a choiceless impulsiveness, unpolluted by the... more The wall paintings of Chauvet are instinctive and emotional; they reveal a choiceless impulsiveness, unpolluted by the intellect. Paradoxically, an insightful investigation also divulges intellect as the root of freedom inherent in true art. Language, conscious communication, technology, and even self-consciousness reflect the emergence of human intellect in Chauvet cave art. In its naturalness, Chauvet cave art displays instinctive impulsiveness of creativity and freedom of communication rooted in intellect that is recognizable as the substratum in all artistic endeavors.

Ways of Reading. Visual Music Course Development at OCADU

by Robert Appleton

Ways of Reading. A course at OCAD University conceived and taught by Robert Appleton using sound, text and image.

MUSEUMISATION OF THE PRESENT

by Suresh Pillai

"Medium, Immediacy, Intermediality": a call for contributions to a proposed special issue of POSTMODERN CULTURE

by Matt Tierney

Co-edited with Mathias Nilges.

We invite submissions for a proposed special issue of Postmodern Culture entitled “Medium, Immediacy, Intermediality.”... more We invite submissions for a proposed special issue of Postmodern Culture entitled “Medium, Immediacy, Intermediality.” The issue aims to gather ways of seeing the term “medium” beyond current disciplinary frames. Rather than take the routes of literary or film studies, art history or communication theory—and rather than see media as discrete, pre-constituted categories of aesthetics or mechanics—we seek to put the category of medium into question, and in doing so, to facilitate approaches to the various mutually dependent media whose boundaries and frames might now seem less conclusive.

Sa podignutim rukama (With Raised Hands, 1985) - Reprezentacija kao polje nemoći (i) konstrukcije sećanja

by Dragana Stojanovic

Published in Naša mesta, specijalni tematski dodatak uz 16. broj časopisa Nova misao, IU „Misao“, Novi Sad, 2012, 60-63. Published in Naša mesta, specijalni tematski dodatak uz 16. broj časopisa Nova misao, IU „Misao“, Novi Sad, 2012, 60-63.

Žensko telo kao (tekstualni) ulog: Istraživanje granica falogocentričnog u području snimanja/filma

by Dragana Stojanovic

Published in Nova misao - časopis za savremenu kulturu Vojvodine br. 16, IU „Misao“, Novi Sad, 2012.

BOOK REVIEW - The Art of Life By Sabin Howard and Traci L. Slatton

by Darrelyn Gunzburg

This book is novelist Traci L. Slatton’s eulogy to the work of her figurative sculptor husband Sabin Howard, his... more This book is novelist Traci L. Slatton’s eulogy to the work of her figurative sculptor husband Sabin Howard, his journey towards becoming a figurative sculptor and the process he has come to use in the last 29 years.

Book Review - A Laboratory for Art by By Francesca G. Bewer

by Darrelyn Gunzburg

This engaging and absorbing book, written by Francesca G. Bewer, research curator at the Harvard Art Museum’s Straus... more This engaging and absorbing book, written by Francesca G. Bewer, research curator at the Harvard Art Museum’s Straus Centre for Conservation and Technical Studies, describes the emergence of conservation practices and the application of the scientific method in America through the initiative of Edward Waldo Forbes, the director of Harvard University’s Fogg Museum. His work led to the education and training of museum professionals through the best practices of mentoring and apprenticeship.

HYPERICONICS: Hypertext and the social construction of information about the history of artistic notions

by Gerhard Jan Nauta

Almost There: A Portrait of Peter Anton, Cultural reproduction, attitudes, and meaning in the category of outsider art

by Andrea Fritsch

Field Notes: A Journal of Collegiate Anthropology 4(1): 87-105. (May 2012)
Copyright ©2012 by Field Notes: A Journal of Collegiate Anthropology

An analysis of the debate surrounding the art exhibit Almost There: A Portrait of Peter Anton at Intuit: The Center... more An analysis of the debate surrounding the art exhibit Almost There: A Portrait of Peter Anton at Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art in 2010 reveals sets of actors with competing interests and claims on the term outsider art. I explore the public fascination with madness and outsider art, suggesting actors engage outsider art in three attitudes—aesthetic, instrumental and investigative. Aesthetic attitudes operate within an expanded definition of official ‘Art’ that allows outsider artwork, but not the outsider artist, to participate in the reproduction of fine art conventions. Instrumental attitudes engage outsider artwork and perceptions of madness as forms of cultural and social capital in the Bourdieuian sense. The curators of Almost There operated with an investigative attitude, seeking to understand the social conditions influencing the artist as well as the artist’s sociality and intent. Investigative fields such as documentary production and psychiatry situate outsider art historically, as art practice, and subjective expression. I argue each attitude strategically engages the label of outsider art to both negotiate and question hierarchical relationships. The imperfect fit of the Almost There exhibit in the category of outsider art demonstrates the limitations of current conceptions of artistic merit and mental health.

Comments on Graham Harman's response to my article, 'The Future of Speculation?'

by Wesley Phillips

On 6th May, Graham Harman responded on his blog to a passage from my article, ‘The Future of Speculation?’, which... more On 6th May, Graham Harman responded on his blog to a passage from my article, ‘The Future of Speculation?’, which appeared a couple of days earlier in Cosmos and History. As Harman points out, I gave a version of this paper at SEP in York last year, but we didn’t meet on that occasion (I did however ask him about the place of ‘value’ in his system, which he rightly took to be a question about ‘politics’). I shall briefly respond to his remarks, which are reproduced further below. My numbers roughly correspond to those of Harman. Unfortunately, it was not possible to comment on the blog itself because it does not permit comment.

The Material-Cultural Turn: event and effect.

by Dan Hicks

Cite this paper as: Hicks, Dan 2010. The Material-Cultural Turn: Event and Effect. In Dan Hicks and Mary C. Beaudry (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies. Oxford: OUP, pp. 25- 98.

The full references are provided in the bibliography for the published volume.

Visuality in a Minor Key: The Photographic Work of Anna Sherbany (2006)

by Janice Cheddie

Catalogue Essay for the photographic Exhibition Beyond Spoken Word. Solo Exhibition by Artist Anna Sherbany. Robert Phillips Gallery, Kingston University, UK, 2006. Artist Website: www.annasherbany.com

The essay discusses the work of the British photographer Anna Sherbany through the work of the French philosophers... more The essay discusses the work of the British photographer Anna Sherbany through the work of the French philosophers Deleuze and Felix Guattari using their text ‘Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature’ (1986), to discuss the concepts of 'deterrotialisation'. Sherbany is located at the margins of many discourses, as an Iraqi Jew living in a Britain within a European Jewish diaspora, a minority within contemporary Britain. These varying displacements and multiple diasporic experiences have formed part of the raw materials of her practice and have been transformed into visual acts of deterritorialisation of dominant languages. Her work references and challenges these multiple perspectives and like Deleuze and Guattari's notion of a minor literature, this deterroritalisation of dominant modes of visuality is not a mode of practice concerned with personal quest for cultural or political identity. Rather Sherbany articulates the interconnections between the social, aesthetic and the discursive.
Key Words: Anna Sherbany; Philosophy, Vision and Visuality Research; Iraqi-Jewish Diaspora; Art Theory; Photography; British Photographers, Diaspora

Sarah Kofman's Art of Affirmation, or the Non-illusory Life of an Illusion”

by Pleshette DeArmitt

Madero, Marta (2010), Tabula Picta: Painting and Writing in Medieval Law (Material texts; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press) xi, 141 p. (Review)

by Aden Kumler

On the Problem of Describing and Interpreting Works of the Visual Arts

by Katharina Lorenz

ELSNER, J. and LORENZ, K.G., 2012. Translation Critical Inquiry. 38(3), 467-482

The Genesis of Iconology

by Katharina Lorenz

ELSNER, J. and LORENZ, K.G., 2012. Critical Inquiry. 38(3), 483-512

Restoration of Artworks in Dalmatia under the Supervision of Ljubo Karaman

by Ivana Nina Unkovic

published in "Radovi Instituta za povijest umjetnosti" 35 (2011), publication of Institute of Art History

In 1918, after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy,
Regional Conservation Department for Dalmatia lost... more In 1918, after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy,
Regional Conservation Department for Dalmatia lost con-
tact with the technical and auxiliary personnel from the
former central Commission for Monuments in Vienna. In
those circumstances, the Department needed permanently
employed architects and personnel for restoring artworks
such as paintings, wooden statues, church furnishing, and
so on. Ljubo Karaman, recently employed as assistant con-
servator, took up this task with great responsibility, offering
concrete solutions and dealing with the problem of finding
well-trained personnel with the finances that were at his
disposal. In 1920, together with Bulić, he initiated the crea-
tion of inventories of artworks for which the Department
was responsible all over Dalmatia, with the aim of gathering
data about their quantity and quality. He travelled relent-
lessly through the region, often consulting with his colleague
France Stele, who informed him about the state of conser-
vation works in Slovenia. Keeping in mind that care for
monuments and preservation of ancient artworks required
the knowledge of modern conservation principles, Karaman
was becoming increasingly aware of the need of finding an
educated restorer, refusing to engage craftsmen and artists
for restoring capital works of art. It took him six years, until
1925, to start cooperating with Ferdo Goglia, who worked
as a restorer at the Archaeological and Historical Museum
in Zagreb and a professional counsellor for Strossmayer
Gallery. In 1932, Goglia cancelled this sporadic cooperation
and took up employment at a secondary school in Zagreb.
Owing to his active correspondence with Stele, Karaman
became acquainted with the Slovenian painter and restorer
Matej Sternen, with whom the Department soon signed a
contract. Stele also recommended three sculptors trained
in restoring wooden artworks, among whom Karaman
selected Ivan Grošelj to assist Sternen. Sternen’s seriousness
and devotedness to the task resulted in fertile cooperation
in the period from 1925 until 1932. During that time, Kara-
man and Sternen visited numerous ecclesiastical and private
collections, determining priorities in restoration of artworks,
whereby they focused on those by the local masters from
the area of Šibenik, Trogir, Split, Hvar, Korčula, Ston, and
Dubrovnik. Karaman’s engagement was exceptionally pro-
fessional in terms of organization and supervision, whereby
he never missed a chance to learn about modern restoration
procedures and often wrote about it to France Stele. Sternen
restored not only paintings, but also frescoes (in Ston and
Trogir). Most artworks were sent to Slovenia, while those
which were less damaged were restored on the spot, which
may be considered the beginning of “ambulant” restoration,
today termed in situ. An example of restoration work from
those times is the painted crucifix made by the Master of
Orlandini Chapel from Seget, which is comparable to the
present-day restoration principles.
This article follows the development of Karaman’s knowledge
about the restoration of artworks, offering examples from his
counselling regarding the restoration procedures applied on
the altar painting by Palma the Younger from the church of
Our Lady of Health in Jelsa (1934) and the wooden ceiling in
the New Church of Šibenik (1937). It also includes the first
publication of the list of artworks restored by Matej Sternen
from 1925 to 1932 in chronological order, as well as the list
of other artists (painters, sculptors, and woodcarvers) and
craftsmen who restored paintings throughout Dalmatia at
the time when Karaman managed the Department.

Edward Said's cultural influences on and of his "ORIENTALISM"-Paper presentation

by Susanna Iacona Salafia

This presentation wants to overview the cultural influences "on“ and “of” Edward Said‘s work "Orientalism“... more This presentation wants to overview the cultural influences "on“ and “of” Edward Said‘s work "Orientalism“ “by” and “on” other academicians and scholars till our days. The work, published in 1978, is considered “the Bible” of the post-colonial theories . Said has been influenced by some scholars but has, on his turn, influenced a new generation of thinkers in their approach to the “East” world-
The Michel Foucault’s poststructuralism, the J.P Sartre “non-essentialist theory” and the S. De Beauvoir “contructionist” view are the philosophical theories recognizable in or behind the “Orientalism” critics of the stereotypes and clichés bulit up by Western scholars on Oriental world and people. But should Said be criticized through the same theorethical categories he adopted in criticizing the western Orientalism?

To me Chardin means the colour red

by Sebastian Rozenberg