Writing from the other side: Critical reflections on the calligraphy of Zhang Qiang

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 131-148
Author(s):  
Feng Jie
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
The Other ◽  
The West ◽  
Chinese Calligraphy ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Chinese Contemporary Art ◽  
Tate Modern ◽  
Specific Project ◽  
Critical Reflections

This article presents the specific case of a contemporary practitioner of Chinese calligraphy, Zhang Qiang, who is a notable figure within the current Avant-Garde movement. After outlining aspects of his practice, which has been controversial along gender grounds, the article turns to his specific project of ‘bi-directional’ calligraphy. It is argued this work opens up a more rewarding way into his work as an enquiry into writing, which bears connections with Derrida’s deconstructionist account of writing and trace. However, in a brief exchange at Tate Modern, Zhang offers a form of ‘writing lesson’, which both helps takes us towards the decontructionist account of general writing, yet equally reveals a reliance upon the cultural category of ‘Chinese calligraphy’, which takes us away again – arguably symptomatic of a wider struggle for Chinese contemporary art to gain recognition in the West.

The reciprocity between art and architecture

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 112-116
Author(s):  
Hakan Saglam
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Key Words ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Modern Architecture ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Arts And Crafts ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Art And Architecture

The concept of ‘Art’ in the modern meaning, evaluates within the Enlightenment’s seminal World of philosophy. Before the Enlightenment architecture and craft were instinctively united fields of creating, almost impossible to detach one from the other. From the beginning of twentieth century the avant-garde of modern architecture were aware of the growing schism between art and architecture and vice versa. The pioneers were writing manifestos, stating that art and architecture should form a new unity, a holistic entity, which would include all types of creativity and put an end to the severance between “arts and crafts”, “art and architecture”.  Approaching the end, of the first decade of the twenty first century, as communicative interests in all fields are becoming very important, we should once more discuss the relation/ interaction / cross over of art and architecture; where the boundaries of the two fields become blurred since both sides, art and architecture, are intervening the gap between. The aim of this paper is to discuss the examples of both contemporary art and architecture, which challenge this “in between gap.” Key words: Architecture, art, interaction, in between.

Interviews and documentary sources in Chinese contemporary art research: Towards the critical use of polylogues

2014 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 20-26
Author(s):  
Paul Gladston
Keyword(s):  
Research Methods ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Chinese Contemporary Art ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
Art Research

This article gives an account of the research methods and editing procedures used to inform the production of two recent books, Contemporary Art in Shanghai: Conversations with Seven Chinese Artists and ‘Avant-garde’ Art Groups in China, 1979-1989, focusing on issues related to the use of interviews and documentary sources in Chinese contemporary art research. As well as drawing attention to a range of contingent factors impinging on the reliability of interviews and documentary sources within the particular discursive contexts of China and to ways of mitigating their effects, it argues for the productive possibilities of the serial use of interviews in combination with other texts as critical polylogues.

scholarly journals Bordeaux vs. Paris: An Alternative Market for Local and Independent Artists?

Arts ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 114
Author(s):  
Léa Saint-Raymond
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
The Other ◽  
Local Market ◽  
Artistic Identity ◽  
Local Initiative ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Symbolic Domination ◽  
Potential Success ◽  
The One ◽  
Art Critics

In 1928, some young artists living in Bordeaux decided to create a local market for contemporary art, as an alternative to the Salon des Amis des Arts of their own city, on the one hand, which they considered retrograde and conservative, and to the centralized and centripetal Parisian world on the other. They joined forces to create the group of the “Artistes indépendants bordelais” (AIB) and they organized an annual exhibition in which they could sell their works, in Bordeaux. This article aims to understand the functioning of this so-called “provincial” alternative to Paris and to measure its potential success, both as a market and as an arbiter of taste. The analysis proves that the AIB exhibitions happened to be a semi-failure, since this local initiative could not detach itself from Paris. In order to gain legitimacy, the AIB invited avant-garde painters and sculptors and they left the door open to Parisian dealers and art critics but all these actors, in turn, overshadowed the artists from Bordeaux. This economic and symbolic domination stemmed from the lack of a strong artistic identity for this group, the absence of domestic galleries specializing in contemporary art and the low demographics of Bordeaux collectors.

Macaronics as What Eludes Translation

Paragraph ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 214-230
Author(s):  
Haun Saussy
Keyword(s):  
Print Culture ◽  
The Other ◽  
Digital Code ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Moment

‘Translation’ is one of our all-purpose metaphors for almost any kind of mediation or connection: we ask of a principle how it ‘translates’ into practice, we announce initiatives to ‘translate’ the genome into predictions, and so forth. But the metaphor of translation — of the discovery of equivalents and their mutual substitution — so attracts our attention that we forget the other kinds of inter-linguistic contact, such as transcription, mimicry, borrowing or calque. In a curious echo of the macaronic writings of the era of the dawn of print, the twentieth century's avant-garde, already foreseeing the end of print culture, experimented with hybrid languages. Their untranslatability under the usual definitions of ‘translation’ suggests a revival of this avant-garde practice, as the mainstream aesthetic of the moment invests in ‘convergence’ and the subsumption of all media into digital code.

Comparative Analysis of Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar’s Travels to European Countries

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 78
Author(s):  
Aysel KAMAL ◽  
Sinem ATIS
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Young Lady ◽  
The Other ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
The West ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Turkish Literature ◽  
Art And Architecture

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar (1901-1962) is one of the most controversial authors in the 20th century Turkish literature. Literature critics find it difficult to place him in a school of literature and thought. There are many reasons that they have caused Tanpinar to give the impression of ambiguity in his thoughts through his literary works. One of them is that he is always open to (even admires) the "other" thought to a certain age, and he considers synthesis thinking at later ages. Tanpinar states in the letter that he wrote to a young lady from Antalya that he composed the foundations of his first period aesthetics due to the contributions from western (French) writers. The influence of the western writers on him has also inspired his interest in the materialist culture of the West. In 1953 and 1959 he organized two tours to Europe in order to see places where Western thought and culture were produced. He shared his impressions that he gained in European countries in his literary works. In the literary works of Tanpinar, Europe comes out as an aesthetic object. The most dominant facts of this aesthetic are music, painting, etc. In this work, in the writings of Tanpinar about the countries that he travelled in Europe, some factors were detected like European culture, lifestyle, socio-cultural relations, art and architecture, political and social history and so on. And the effects of European countries were compared with Tanpinar’s thought and aesthetics. Keywords: Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, Europe, poetry, music, painting, culture, life

The Proximity of Other Skins

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Celine Parreñas Shimizu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Korea ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
The Other ◽  
The West ◽  
Pain And Suffering ◽  
The Spectator ◽  
Existing Frames ◽  
The Voice

Transnational films representing intimacy and inequality disrupt and disgust Western spectators. When wounded bodies within poverty entangle with healthy wealthy bodies in sex, romance and care, fear and hatred combine with desire and fetishism. Works from the Philippines, South Korea, and independents from the United States and France may not be made for the West and may not make use of Hollywood traditions. Rather, they demand recognition for the knowledge they produce beyond our existing frames. They challenge us to go beyond passive consumption, or introspection of ourselves as spectators, for they represent new ways of world-making we cannot unsee, unhear, or unfeel. The spectator is redirected to go beyond the rapture of consuming the other to the rupture that arises from witnessing pain and suffering. Self-displacement is what proximity to intimate inequality in cinema ultimately compels and demands so as to establish an ethical way of relating to others. In undoing the spectator, the voice of the transnational filmmaker emerges. Not only do we need to listen to filmmakers from outside Hollywood who unflinchingly engage the inexpressibility of difference, we need to make room for critics and theorists who prioritize the subjectivities of others. When the demographics of filmmakers and film scholars are not as diverse as its spectators, films narrow our worldviews. To recognize our culpability in the denigration of others unleashes the power of cinema. The unbearability of stories we don’t want to watch and don’t want to feel must be borne.

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.

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