Russia's Itinerant Painters

2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-427 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Pipes
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Abstract Art ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Pictorial Representation ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Capital Cities ◽  
Western Influence

AbstractVisual arts in Russia languished through most of her history, partly because the Orthodox Church frowned on pictorial representation, partly because there was virtually no middle class to purchase paintings. In the mid-eighteenth century Russia acquired an Academy of Arts which produced works largely in classical style and content. This changed in the 1870's when, under western influence, a group of Russian artists formed a society of "Itinerants" committed to painting in the realistic mode and to exhibit their works in various cities of the Empire rather than solely in the capital cities of St. Petersburg and Moscow, as had been the custom until then. Their canvasses depicted everyday life in Russia as well as historical scenes; they also painted portraits of contemporaries. This special issue deals with the lives and work of nine leading Itinerant painters. The movement gradually lost popularity toward the beginning of the twentieth century as Impressionism and Abstract art replaced it, but it revived in the Soviet period. Today it is greatly favored by the Russian public which swarms the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the largest collection of Itinerant art.

The Bride Stripped Bare

2020 ◽  
pp. 197-210
Author(s):  
Nicholas Mee
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Conceptual Art ◽  
Higher Dimensions ◽  
Abstract Art ◽  
Marcel Duchamp ◽  
Higher Dimensional ◽  
Future Direction ◽  
Spiritual Movement ◽  
Modern Artists

Hinton’s writing on higher dimensions influenced artists as well as writers. Chapter 19 looks at how higher-dimensional geometry influenced the development of the visual arts in the twentieth century. Hinton’s influence was both direct through his own books and through the spiritual movement known as the Theosophists who latched onto his more mystical ideas. The cubists were the first modern artists to abandon the use of traditional perspective, and they were rapidly followed by other art movements. A number of the pioneers of abstract art were influenced by the Theosophists, including Kandinsky, Mondrian, and Malevich. Marcel Duchamp played a key role in determining the future direction of the visual arts, and some of his major works were developed around ideas of higher dimensions. These include Nude Descending a Staircase and Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even. Duchamp also led the way toward today’s conceptual art.

Gerusalemme liberata and the visual arts in England

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Lawrence
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Pictorial Representation ◽  
Keen Interest ◽  
Charles I ◽  
The Third ◽  
Literary Source ◽  
Detailed Evaluation ◽  
Nicolas Poussin ◽  
The Impact

The third chapter investigates the impact in England of visual depictions of scenes from Tasso’s romantic episodes, featuring both Rinaldo and Armida and the Tancredi and Erminia. Although no native English tradition of pictorial representation of Tasso’s poem ever developed, there is still evidence of a keen interest in such pictures: in the late 1620s Anthony Van Dyck received a commission for Charles I to produce a depiction of the Rinaldo and Armida episode, focused on a less familiar moment from canto 14, which he executed so successfully that it was instrumental in bringing the painter into the service of the king for the final decade of his career. The early eighteenth century witnessed the arrival in England of the first work by the French painter Nicolas Poussin, who repeatedly depicted scenes from a number of Tasso episodes during the 1620s and 1630s: his second version of the Tancredi and Erminia episode in canto 19 was brought to England by the collector Sir James Thornhill, and it soon inspired a detailed evaluation in relation to its literary source by the artist-critic Jonathan Richardson, which is also examined closely.

The Sounding Cosmos Revisited

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 29-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimo Introvigne
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Abstract Art ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Wassily Kandinsky ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
Academic Events

Starting with the 2013 conference Enchanted Modernities in Amsterdam, a number of academic events, exhibitions, and publications (including a 2016 special issue of Nova Religio) documented the growing interest of both art historians and scholars of new religious movements in the influence of the Theosophical Society and other esoteric groups on the birth and development of modern art. At the center of this renewed interest is the controversial work of Finnish art historian Sixten Ringbom (1935–1992), who in the late 1960s “discovered” the Theosophical connections of Russian pioneer of abstract art Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), discussed in his book The Sounding Cosmos. In this paper, I discuss Ringbom’s background, his almost coincidental discovery of Theosophy, the ostracism his work received from those who did not want modern art to be associated with irrationalist and disreputable “cults,” and his posthumous influence on the birth of a new subfield within the study of new religious movements, devoted to their relationships with the visual arts.

scholarly journals Introduction to the Special Issue ‘Enlightenment and Modernity’

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 235-245
Author(s):  
Devin J. Vartija
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Abstract These introductory remarks present a brief overview of the question of the Enlightenment’s relationship to modernity. It charts the emergence of a novel sense of historicity connected to eighteenth-century usage of the term ‘enlightened’ and the belated, late twentieth-century attempts to connect this usage to modernity. The three contributions to this special issue are then introduced and the commonalities and divergences between them are highlighted.

scholarly journals TOWARDS A HISTORY OF GLOBAL HUMANITARIANISM

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (5) ◽  
pp. 1378-1389
Author(s):  
AOIFE O'LEARY MCNEICE
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
British Empire ◽  
First Century ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Aid Workers ◽  
Western Influence ◽  
History Of ◽  
Object Of Study

We are currently witnessing the emergence of global humanitarianism as a fully fledged historical field. Eighteenth-century transatlantic abolitionists, nineteenth-century imperial missionaries, twentieth-century aid workers, and twenty-first-century activists inhabit the pages of more and more published books and articles. Global humanitarianism denotes a sphere of action as well as an object of study. Questions as to where or what the global is persist. The books under review all operate within the sphere of Western influence: North America, the British empire, or former colonies. They also have similar protagonists. They are largely populated with practitioners of humanitarianism, rather than the objects of their beneficence. This raises some questions. Where does global humanitarianism take place and who does it encompass? Is global humanitarianism inherently enmeshed with Western expansionism and unequal power dynamics?

Reframing the Sciences of the Long Eighteenth Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 58-66
Author(s):  
Giuliano Pancaldi
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Science Policy ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Past Half

Here I survey a sample of the essays and reviews on the sciences of the long eighteenth century published in this journal since it was founded in 1969. The connecting thread is some historiographic reflections on the role that disciplines—in both the sciences we study and the fields we practice—have played in the development of the history of science over the past half century. I argue that, as far as disciplines are concerned, we now find ourselves a bit closer to a situation described in our studies of the long eighteenth century than we were fifty years ago. This should both favor our understanding of that period and, hopefully, make the historical studies that explore it more relevant to present-day developments and science policy. This essay is part of a special issue entitled “Looking Backward, Looking Forward: HSNS at 50,” edited by Erika Lorraine Milam.

The Gallic Singularity and the Royal Mistress

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-66
Author(s):  
Christine Adams
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Political Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
Marie Antoinette ◽  
Louis Xvi ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Political Realm

The relationship of the French king and royal mistress, complementary but unequal, embodied the Gallic singularity; the royal mistress exercised a civilizing manner and the soft power of women on the king’s behalf. However, both her contemporaries and nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historians were uncomfortable with the mistress’s political power. Furthermore, paradoxical attitudes about French womanhood have led to analyses of her role that are often contradictory. Royal mistresses have simultaneously been celebrated for their civilizing effect in the realm of culture, chided for their frivolous expenditures on clothing and jewelry, and excoriated for their dangerous meddling in politics. Their increasing visibility in the political realm by the eighteenth century led many to blame Louis XV’s mistresses—along with Queen Marie-Antoinette, who exercised a similar influence over her husband, Louis XVI—for the degradation and eventual fall of the monarchy. This article reexamines the historiography of the royal mistress.

Historical Fragments’ Mobile Echo

Transfers ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan E. Bell ◽  
Kathy Davis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Ming Dynasty ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
The Third ◽  
Opium War ◽  
The Subject

Translocation – Transformation is an ambitious contribution to the subject of mobility. Materially, it interlinks seemingly disparate objects into a surprisingly unified exhibition on mobile histories and heritages: twelve bronze zodiac heads, silk and bamboo creatures, worn life vests, pressed Pu-erh tea, thousands of broken antique teapot spouts, and an ancestral wooden temple from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) used by a tea-trading family. Historically and politically, the exhibition engages Chinese stories from the third century BCE, empires in eighteenth-century Austria and China, the Second Opium War in the nineteenth century, the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the mid-twentieth century, and today’s global refugee crisis.

Orphans of the Empire: Lhasa’s Chinese Community from the Qing Era to the Early Twentieth Century

Modern China ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 009770042096992
Author(s):  
Huasha Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Influence ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Chinese Population ◽  
Chinese Community ◽  
Academic Assessment ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Traits ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century

This article analyzes the transformation of Lhasa’s Chinese community from the embodiment of an expansionist power in the early eighteenth century to the orphan of a fallen regime after the Qing Empire’s demise in 1911. Throughout the imperial era, this remote Chinese enclave represented Qing authority in Tibet and remained under the metropole’s strong political and social influence. Its members intermarried with the locals and adopted many Tibetan cultural traits. During the years surrounding the 1911 Xinhai Revolution, this community played a significant role in a series of interconnected political and ethnic confrontations that gave birth to the two antagonistic national bodies of Tibet and China. The community’s history and experiences challenge not only the academic assessment that Tibet’s Chinese population had fully assimilated into Tibetan society by the twentieth century but also the widespread image of pre-1951 Lhasa as a harmonious town of peaceful ethnic coexistence.

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