The lasting influence of Cybernetics in Contemporary Art; theory into praxis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zach Pearl
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Lasting Influence

Contemporary Art and the Problem of Music: Towards a Musical Contemporary Art

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
G. DOUGLAS BARRETT
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
Conceptual Art ◽  
Social Process ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
Sound Art ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Absolute Music ◽  
Art Form

Abstract This article elaborates the art-theoretical concept of ‘the contemporary’ along with formal differences between contemporary music and contemporary art. Contemporary art emerges from the radical transformations of the historical avant-garde and neo-avant-garde that have led to post-conceptual art – a generic art beyond specific mediums that prioritizes discursive meaning and social process – while contemporary music struggles with its status as a non-conceptual art form that inherits its concept from aesthetic modernism and absolute music. The article also considers the category of sound art and discusses some of the ways it, too, is at odds with contemporary art's generic and post-conceptual condition. I argue that, despite their respective claims to contemporaneity, neither sound art nor contemporary music is contemporary in the historical sense of the term articulated in art theory. As an alternative to these categories, I propose ‘musical contemporary art’ to describe practices that depart in consequential ways from new/contemporary music and sound art.

scholarly journals Condition Verified: On Photography, Trans Visibility, and Legacies of the Clinic

Arts ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chase Joynt ◽  
Emmett Harsin Drager
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Diagnostic Tools ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Biometric Data ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Trans People ◽  
And Gender

We approach this paper with a shared investment in historical and contemporary representations of trans and gender non-conforming people, and our individual research in the archives of early US Gender Clinics. Together, we consider what is at stake—or what might be possible—when we connect legacies of photography used as diagnostic tools in gender clinics with snapshots of early, community-based gatherings, and the presence of trans people in contemporary art. From the archives of Robert J. Stoller and photos of Casa Susanna, to the collaborative photography of Zackary Drucker and Amos Mac, and the biometric data art-theory experiments of Zach Blas, we engage a series of image-based projects, which animate underlying questions and socio-political debates about the politics of visuality, and visibility’s impact on trans and gender non-conforming people. Moreover, we argue that rhetorical strategies of proof—from conditions verified in clinics to shared existence through photography—are tethered to, and thus trapped by, the logics and discipline of legibility and re-institutionalization.

Artistic Creativity and Human Evolution – Art Theory and the Work of André Leroi-Gourhan

2013 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-121
Author(s):  
Konstantinos Vassiliou
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Art History ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Artistic Creativity ◽  
The Third ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Fourth Part ◽  
Artistic Theory ◽  
Analytical Tools

Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht das Werk André Leroi-Gourhans und insbesondere seine zweibändige Monographie Le geste et la parole auf ihre kunsttheoretische Relevanz; so werden zentrale Debatten über künstlerische Kreativität behandelt und untersucht, inwiefern Leroi-Gourhan zu ihnen beitragen kann. Nach einer einführenden Darstellung einiger allgemeiner Prämissen von Leroi-Gourhan (I) wird in einem zweiten Teil (II) gezeigt, dass seine Theorie der »Rhythmen« wertvolle Einsichten in die Debatte um »Kunstwollen« und Materialismus bereithält. Der dritte Abschnitt (III) diskutiert Leroi-Gourhans Werk im Kontext der Debatte um Industrialisierung und audiovisuelle Kultur in ihrem Gegensatz zu handwerklicher Kreativität. Schließlich (IV) werden Leroi-Gourhans Schlussfolgerungen bezüglich Wahrnehung und Digitalität mit einigen Aspekten zeitgenössischer Kunsttheorie verbunden. Im Ganzen soll gezeigt werden, dass Leroi-Gourhans Werk ein flexibles analytisches Instrumentarium bereithält, um menschliche Evolution und Kunstgeschichte zusammenzudenken und Kreativität im Kontext der allgemeinen kulturellen und technologischen Verschiebungen nach der Moderne zu untersuchen.<br><br>This article relates the work of André Leroi-Gourhan and mostly his two-volume ok Le geste et la parole to art theory. More specifically, it is concerned with central debates on artistic creativity and examines how Leroi-Gourhan can contribute to them. After presenting some general premises of Leroi-Gourhan’s work (I), its second part (II) argues that his theory on ›rhythms‹ supplies valuable insights to the debate of Kunstwollen and materialism. The third part (III) discusses his work within the debate of industrialization and audiovisual culture as opposed to manual and artisanal creativity. The fourth part (IV) links Leroi-Gourhan’s conclusions on perception and digitality with some aspects of contemporary art theory. On the whole, this article argues that Leroi-Gourhans’s work provides flexible analytical tools in order to think art history and human evolution in conjunction, as well as a specifi c framework for examining creativity within the general cultural and technological shifts after the modern age. The conclusions of this essay shed some light on Leroi-Gourhan’s theories on art and offer some methodological perspectives to contemporary artistic theory.

Art and Leisure: Amateur Artists, Rembrandt, and Landscape Representation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Zell
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Leisure Activity ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Landscape Art ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
The Status

This chapter identifies a correspondence between Dutch amateur art and the place of landscape in Rembrandt’s artistic production, and in doing so illuminates the link between gift culture and the withholding of certain types of artworks from the domain of the marketplace. Dutch amateurs favored landscapes drawn from nature as a pastime, thus enacting interrelated ideals of art and leisure that also governed the status of landscape in contemporary art theory. This aestheticized social construct of sketching nature as a leisure activity also shaped the landscape art of prominent history painters, including Rembrandt, whose landscape drawings share close affinities with amateur landscapes. Rembrandt’s sketching excursions in Amsterdam’s suburban countryside, like those of Dutch amateurs, were not purely a commercial undertaking.

scholarly journals An aesthetic of the unknown

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-32
Author(s):  
Michael Evans
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Art Criticism ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Abstract Painting ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Conscious Mind ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Numinous Experience

This paper begins to establish an ‘aesthetic of the unknown’ by drawing together theorists and approaches from mainstream art criticism to provide a starting-point for an aesthetic sympathetic with Jungian perspectives, in an attempt to bridge a gap between contemporary abstract painting, contemporary art theory, and Jungian studies. This is a framework for approaching abstract painting not as an object awaiting interpretation or ‘reading’, but rather as something that offers a numinous experience (or experience of the unknown), which can be thought about but may remain ultimately unknowable and irreducible. Such experience – involving both the unconscious and conscious mind – would provide glimpses of forms of meaning not accessible to full rational exposition. This type of unconsciously understood meaning is explored, acknowledging that there is a need to preserve this encounter with the unknown and a need for a contemporary critical, theoretical framework that recognises the importance of this within abstract painting.

Alterity in Art: Towards a Theory and Practice of Infra-thin Critique

Paragraph ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 356-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siobhán Shilton
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Aesthetics Of Resistance ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
The Relationship

This article explores distinctively visual presentations and performances of alterity from the perspective of art theory and practice. It gives particular attention to Marcel Duchamp's notion and practice of the infra-mince. The ‘infra-thin’ is not usually related to postcolonial questions. However, numerous evocations of alterity in contemporary art, this article argues, resonate with Duchamp's infra-thin — not only in their practices but also in the ways in which they present the relationship between different cultures and views of ‘difference’. Focusing on artwork responding to the ‘Arab Springs’ as a striking instance of wider aesthetics of resistance, this article shows how such art can be seen to adapt the infra-thin for the purposes of a multidirectional critique.

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