Pop Culture/Visual Culture

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Wanzo
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Art History ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Feminist Study ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance

Feminist scholars in fields as varied as art history, film studies, cultural studies, literary studies, sociology, communications, and performance studies have made important contributions to discussions about representations of gender and sexuality in everyday life. This chapter examines themes and issues in the feminist study of popular culture and visual culture, including: the history of sexist representation; the gendered nature of the “gaze” and the instability of that concept; the question of whether or not representation has effects; the anxieties surrounding consumption of “women’s texts”; and the challenges in deciphering women’s agency and authorship given constraints produced by institutions and ideology.

scholarly journals Cultural History, Ritual and Performance: George L. Mosse in Context

2021 ◽  
pp. 002200942094003
Author(s):  
Peter Burke
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Cultural Turn

George L. Mosse took a ‘cultural turn’ in the latter part of his career, but still early enough to make a pioneering contribution to the study of political culture and in particular what he called political ‘liturgy’, including marches, processions, and practices of commemoration. He adapted to the study of nationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the approach to the history of ritual developed by historians of medieval and early modern Europe, among them his friend Ernst Kantorowicz. More recently, the concept of ritual, whether religious or secular, has been criticized by some cultural historians on the grounds that it implies a fixed ‘script’ in situations that were actually marked by fluidity and improvisation. In this respect cultural historians have been part of a wider trend that includes sociologists and anthropologists as well as theatre scholars and has been institutionalized as Performance Studies. Some recent studies of contemporary nationalism in Tanzania, Venezuela and elsewhere have adopted this perspective, emphasizing that the same performance may have different meanings for different sections of the audience. It is only to be regretted that Mosse did not live long enough to respond to these studies and that their authors seem unaware of his work.

The Fiery Pacific: Volcanic Eruptions and Settler-State Theatricality in Oceania, 1780–1900

2014 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 362-392
Author(s):  
Diana Looser
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Art History ◽  
Volcanic Eruptions ◽  
The Body ◽  
Red Color ◽  
Form Part ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Grand Opera ◽  
The City

In the closing scene of René-Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt's melodramaLa Tête de mort; ou, Les Ruines de Pompeïa(1827), audiences at Paris's Théâtre de la Gaîté were presented with the spectacular cataclysm of an erupting Mount Vesuvius that invaded the city and engulfed the hapless characters in its fiery embrace. “The theatre,” Pixérécourt writes, “is completely inundated by this sea of bitumen and lava. A shower of blazing and transparent stones and red ash falls on all sides…. The red color with which everything is struck, the terrible noise of the volcano, the screaming, the agitation and despair of the characters … all combine to form this terrible convulsion of nature, a horrible picture, and altogether worthy of being compared to Hell.” A few years later, in 1830, Daniel Auber's grand operaLa Muette de Portici(1828), which yoked a seventeenth-century eruption of Vesuvius with a popular revolt against Spanish rule in Naples, opened at the Théâtre de Monnaie in Brussels. The Belgian spectators, inspired by the opera's revolutionary sentiments, poured out into the streets and seized their country's independence from the Dutch. These two famous examples, which form part of a long genealogy of representing volcanic eruptions through various artistic means, highlight not only the compelling, immersive spectacle of nature in extremis but also the ability of stage scenery to intervene materially in the narrative action and assimilate affective and political meanings. As these two examples also indicate, however, the body of scholarship in literary studies, art history, and theatre and performance studies that attends to the mechanical strategies and symbolic purchase of volcanic representations has tended to focus mainly on Europe; more research remains to be undertaken into how volcanic spectacles have engaged with non-European topographies and sociopolitical dynamics and how this wider view might illuminate our understanding of theatre's social roles.

‘She will wear the britsch’: Masculinity and the iconography of Prince Albert

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 199-222
Author(s):  
Hannah Bradshaw
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Art History ◽  
Male Body ◽  
Masculine Ideology ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Female Rule ◽  
And Performance

This article examines the early representations of Prince Albert that either satirize or attempt to reconcile the hierarchical ambiguities and issue of threatened masculinity that resulted from unconventional male consortship and female rule. It concludes that the latter was achieved through the development of a suitable and legible iconography for a nineteenth-century male consort in adherence with British iconographic tradition and values. Drawing from methods in nineteenth-century art history as well as gender and performance studies and anthropology, it argues that images of the male body play a fundamental role in the construction and perpetuation of masculine ideology and subjectivity through the creation of the semblance of an innate and axiomatic masculine archetype. In doing so, this article problematizes and historicizes masculinity by illuminating the plurality of expressions of masculinity and rejecting the essentialist narrative of masculinity as something measurable or quantifiable, as well as ahistorical, atemporal, apolitical and heteronormative.

scholarly journals Temptation, Resistance, and Art Objects: On the Lack of Material Theory within Art History before the Material Turn

2019 ◽  
pp. 5-23
Author(s):  
Charolotta Krispinsson
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Art History ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Simple Fact ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Visual Culture Studies ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
History Of ◽  
Material Turn

Niccolò di Pietro Gerini's painting “The Temptation of Saint Anthony” (1390-1400) serves as a point of departure for this essay. It depicts Saint Anthony during a lapse of self-control as he attempts to resist an alluring mound of gold. Since the mound is in fact made of genuine gold leaves applied to the painting's surface, it works both as a representation of temptation as well as an object of desire affecting the beholder. The aim of this essay is to explore different approaches to materiality before the material turn within the art history discipline by examining two opposing directions within the writing and practice of art history:  the tradition of connoisseurship; and the critique of the fetish within the theoretical apparatus of new art history and visual culture studies of the 1980s and 90s. As an expression of positivism within art history, it is argued that connoisseurship be considered within the context of its empirical practices dealing with objects. What is commonly described as the connoisseur's “taste” or “love for art” would then be just another way to describe the intimate relationship formed between art historians and the very objects under their scrutiny. More than other humanist disciplines, art history is, with the possible exception of archaeology, an object-based discipline. It is empirically anchored in the unruly, deep sea of objects commonly known as the history of art. Still, there has been a lack of in-depth theoretical reflection on the materiality of artworks in the writings of art historians before the material turn. The question however, is not ifthis is so, but rather, why?In this essay, it is suggested that the art history discipline has been marked by a complicated love-hate relationship with the materiality of which the very objects of study, more often than not, are made of; like Saint Anthony who is both attracted to and repelled by the shapeless mass of gold that Lucifer tempts him with. While connoisseurship represents attraction, resistance to the allure of objects can be traced to the habitual critique of fetishism of the first generations of visual culture studies and new art history. It reflects a negative stance towards objects and the material aspect of artworks, which enhanced a conceived dichotomy between thinking critically and analytically in contrast to managing documents and objects in archives and museum depositories. However, juxtaposing the act of thinking with the practice of manual labour has a long tradition in Western intellectual history. Furthermore, it is argued that art history cannot easily be compared to the history of other disciplines because of the simple fact that artworks are typically quite expensive and unique commodities, and as such, they provoke not just aesthetic but also fetishist responses. Thus, this desire to separate art history as a scientific discipline from the fetishism of the art market has had the paradoxical effect of causing art historians to shy away from developing methodologies and theory about materiality as an act of resistance. 

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Schwadron
Keyword(s):  
Performance Studies ◽  
Female Identity ◽  
Jewish Studies ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Body ◽  
First Century ◽  
Gender And Sexuality Studies ◽  
And Performance ◽  
White Womanhood

This introductory chapter frames the book’s emphasis on the twenty-first-century Sexy Jewess, whose image proliferates in neoburlesque, comedy, mainstream film, and progressive pornography. A review of significant literature in Jewish studies, gender and sexuality studies, and dance and performance studies (1) introduces how performers complicate self-critical jokes of the excessive Jewish female body by playing up their differences, (2) historicizes the techniques that performers employ to mimic and master different ideas of sexiness, and (3) theorizes how performances of Jewish female identity use the body to participate in and parody notions of appropriate femininity as they relate to white womanhood.

scholarly journals Hanging Out with Cyclists

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 84-88
Author(s):  
Noam Shoked
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Art History ◽  
Architectural History ◽  
Associate Professor ◽  
Field Trips ◽  
University Of California ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Art Students ◽  
And Performance

In 2014, architecture Professor Margaret Crawford and Associate Professor of Art Practice Anne Walsh taught the first University of California, Berkeley, Global Urban Humanities Initiative research studio course, called “No Cruising: Mobility and Identity in Los Angeles.” What occurred during the course had both varied and unexpected interpretations as ten students majoring in art practice, art history, architecture, and performance studies each selected a dimension of mobility they wished to identify on field trips to LA. One goal of these field trips, or research studios, was to get students out of their comfort zones to explore new approaches and methods. We encouraged students to draw on each others’ disciplines, so art students undertook archival research while architectural history students, like Noam Shoked, used interviews and photography to investigate contemporary conditions. The stories here are from Shoked as he comes to interpret and interact with the cyclist of LA.

scholarly journals Myths of Male Same-Sex Love in the Art of the Italian Renaissance

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-95
Author(s):  
Ann Haughton ◽  
Ann Haughton
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Primary Case ◽  
Historical Discourse ◽  
Cultural Mores ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
And Gender

Visual culture has much to contribute to an understanding of the history of sexuality. Yet, to date, the depiction of pederasty in the art of the Renaissance has not been covered adequately by dominant theoretical paradigms. Moreover, the interpretive approach of traditional art historical discourse has been both limited and limiting in its timidity toward matters concerning the representation of sexual proclivity between males. This article will address the ways in which Italian Renaissance artistic depictions of some mythological narratives were enmeshed with the period’s attitudes toward sexual and social relationships between men.Particular attention is paid here to the manner in which, under the veneer of a mythological narrative, certain works of art embodied a complex set of messages that encoded issues of masculine behaviour and performance in the context of intergenerational same-sex erotic relationships.  The primary case studies under investigation for these concerns of gender and sexuality in this particular context are Benvenuto Cellini’s marble Apollo and Hyacinth (1545), and Giulio Romano’s drawing of Apollo and Cyparissus (1524). By incorporating pictorial analysis, social history, and gender and sexuality studies, new possibilities will be offered for evaluating these artworks as visual chronicles of particular sexual and cultural mores of the period. Furthermore, this article will consider how visual representation of these mythic narratives of erotic behaviour between males conformed to the culturally defined sexual and social roles relating to the articulation of power that permeated one of the greatest milestones in art history.

Fashioning Socialist Visual Culture

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wang Zheng
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Socialist Revolution ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Patriarchal Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Xia Yan

Xia Yan, the underground leader of the left-wing films in the 1930s and top official of the film industry in the PRC since 1954, embodied the cultural history of the CCP. A brief biography of this Communist feminist artist leader disrupts the reductive dichotomy of the Party vs. artists in film studies and illuminates a tension-ridden history of socialist filmmaking that constituted a highly contentious site in the socialist revolution. Situating his politically engagingartistic creativity inside ashiftingpolitical process, this chapter traces Xia Yan’s major role in transmitting the New Culture agenda of transforming a patriarchal culture in socialist cultural production and delineatesdiverse and contradictory politicalpositions and artistic preferences in artists’ innovative experimentsofcreating a socialist new culture. It also analyzes his films that continued the paradigm of revolutionary heroines.

Performing Queer Modernism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Penny Farfan
Keyword(s):  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Performance History ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
Private Lives ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Modernist Studies ◽  
Queer Performance ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study

Focusing on some of the best-known stage plays and dance performances of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this interdisciplinary study demonstrates that queer performance was integral to and productive of modernism, while also suggesting that queer modernist performance played a key role in the historical emergence of modern sexual identities and that it anticipated, and was in a sense foundational to, the insights of contemporary queer modernist studies. Chapters on Arthur Wing Pinero’s The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, Loie Fuller’s Fire Dance, Vaslav Nijinsky’s Afternoon of a Faun, Noël Coward’s Private Lives, and Djuna Barnes’s metatheatrical parodies To the Dogs and The Dove explore manifestations, facets, and dimensions of and suggest ways of reading—and of viewing earlier “readers” reading—queer modernist performance. Together, these case studies clarify aspects of both the queer and the modernist and how their coproductive intersection was articulated in and through performance. The book contributes to an expanded understanding of modernism across a range of performance genres, the central role of performance within modernism more generally, and the integral relationship between performance history and the history of sexuality. In doing so, it adds to the ongoing transformation of the field of modernist studies, in which drama and performance remain underrepresented. It also contributes to revisionist historiographies that approach modernist performance through feminist and queer critical perspectives and interdisciplinary frameworks and that consider how formally innovative and more conventional works collectively engaged with modernity, at once reflecting and contributing to historical change in the domains of gender and sexuality.

The Dancing Body on the Line

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Victoria Fortuna
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Federal Funding ◽  
The United States ◽  
Transnational History ◽  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Line P

The introduction first considers the movement for a National Dance Law (2008–), which aims to establish infrastructure and federal funding for all genres of dance in Buenos Aires and throughout the Argentine provinces. It introduces the book’s central concept of “moving otherwise,” outlining the kinds of political engagement it encompasses, as well as how it dialogues with conversations in dance and performance studies. It then explains how the category of “contemporary” dance functions in the text, and argues for an approach to contemporary dance history that decenters the United States and Europe as the original sites and ongoing loci of production. Additionally, it offers a brief overview of the transnational history of modern and contemporary dance in Buenos Aires through examination of the work of Miriam Winslow; Susana Tambutti; and Luciana Acuña and Alejo Moguillansky. Finally, it details the archival, ethnographic, and embodied research methodologies that Moving Otherwise employs.

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