Renaissance Dreams

1987 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 682-706 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rona Goffen

Family, marriage, and sex—although it seems to me that the sequence is uncertain—are naturally interrelated in life but not always so in art or, for that matter, in art history. While family and marriage have been much discussed in recent years by historians, they have received very little attention indeed from art historians. Sex, on the other hand, we have always had with us. And while all of one's work is self-referential to some extent, whether one is an artist or an historian of art, it may be that this psychological truth carries a particular danger when one is dealing with matters that are so intimate as family, marriage, and sex. Moreover, there is another issue involved when one is concerned with works of art, at least in the Renaissance or in any period when art was made for patrons, and that is precisely the presence of another psyche in the mixture, in addition to that of the artist himself and that of the historian-observer.

Author(s):  
Stephanie Marchal

Für den Kunstkritiker Julius Meier-Graefe (1867-1935) haben Bilder eine ganz eigene Logik, die sich nicht in Sprache übersetzen lässt. Ausgehend von dieser Prämisse denkt Meier-Graefe die Kunstgeschichte als interpiktoriales, sich selbst regulierendes Geflecht und bedient sich zur Vermittlung von Bildern selbst auf gleich zweifache Weise einer bemerkenswerten Bildlichkeit – sei es qua Plädoyer für oder Einsatz von Reproduktionen, sei es qua einer der ikonischen entsprechen- den somatischen Deixis: Indem er sich selbst in seiner physischen Reaktion auf ein Werk(erlebnis) Tableauartig in Szene setzt, kehrt er die Wirksamkeit von Bildgefügen hervor, macht sie visuell nachvollziehbar und aktualisiert deren Potential. Diesen Vorstellungen und Vorgehensweisen liegt, so die These des Beitrags, die Erfahrung musealer Präsentation und Rezeption zugrunde. Entwickelt wird eine »praktische Ästhetik«, die auch für aktuelle Interpiktorialitätsdebatten diskussionswürdige Ansätze bereithält. <br><br>In the opinion of the art critic Julius Meier-Graefe (1867-1935), pictures have a specific logic which is impossible to translate into spoken language. Given this premise, Meier-Graefe develops a specific theory of how art history constructs itself as an interpictorial, self-regulated reference system. Furthermore, in order to convey works of art, he operates with pictures and images in a remarkable way: on the one hand, he makes specific use of reproductions, on the other hand, he communicates via body language that parallels the iconic deixis: By describing and presenting himself in his texts in the physical act of perception and/or reception, he turns himself into a tableau and makes the effect as well as the potential of the artwork visible. The basis of these ideas and methods seems to be the modern experience of museum presentation and reception. Meier-Graefe develops a kind of “practical aesthetic” which can enrich the current debates on interpictoriality.


2009 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 24-28
Author(s):  
Martien Versteeg

In 1987 Chris Smeenk wrote in this journal about the libraries of the Dutch art historical institutes. In the 22 years that have since passed many changes have occurred, perhaps most notably the merging of the many autonomous institute libraries into larger ones. Has this led to a more professional approach or was it caused by a search for more efficiency? Does this really matter? The fact is that Smeenk, or any other library user familiar with Dutch art history libraries, would hardly recognise the situation at the end of the first decade of the 21st century. Maybe he would complain about the disappearance of the traditional academic institute librarian, but on the other hand he might be cheered by many other developments, such as the more central role of services for the public. Let’s take a look....


1983 ◽  
Vol 97 (4) ◽  
pp. 266-283
Author(s):  
Lyckle De Vries

AbstractIn 1750 and 1751 Jan van Gool published two volumes of artists' biographies entitled De Nieuwe Schouburg (Note 2). This sequel to Houbraken's Groote Schouburgh (.Note I) is an important source for Dutch art history of the period around 1700. The author's opinions are not strictly governed by the rules of art theory, nor is he a convinced Classicist. His main aim is to give complete and reliable information on the lives and works of artists. In so doing he cannot refrain from giving personal opinions. These characterize him as a competent art critic, who seems to have had an eye for style and quality. He despises work by contemporaries who still adhere to the Leiden tradition of fijnschilderen (small-scale, highly-finished painting). In his view the composition of a painting is of prime importance in assessing its quality, for it is mostly there that an artist's inventiveness, or lack of it, is revealed. Another aspect of great importance is the expression of emotions in painted figures through their glances, gestures and attitudes. Van Gool praises not only history painters who prove to have abilities in this field, but also painters of genre scenes and portraits. He pays far more attention to a painter's brushwork than his style of drawing, his predilection being for masters with a 'courageous' brush. Relatively little attention is given to colour and light and to the plasticity of painted figures. Van Gool's ideals seem to be summed up in the word natural. The essential qualities of the subjects painted must be made visible in the work of art. A painstaking realism in the Leiden tradition would endanger this ideal as much as a severe Classicism. The observation of reality should not be carried so far that details become more important than totalities, but on the other hand the overall form should not be idealized to such an extent that reality is forgotten.


2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-133
Author(s):  
Nataša Lah

Throughout the entire literary oeuvre of Miroslav Krleža we are faced with a great number of credible descriptions, describing real historic events, or real artists and artworks belonging to the rich resources of European art history. By applying a cryptographic method of incorporating descriptions into his texts, Krleža on the one hand hid his sources, while on the other also revealed them. He hid them in the tissue of fictional texts, and unmasked them using a key work only those familiar with the source could identify. We term this method the use of “belletristic cryptograms”, and can further categorise it into thematic subgroups of concealed artwork descriptions, naming this whole method the use of hidden ekphrasis. The choice of artworks Krleža describes in his work is comprehensive, diverse and each described differently. Since we are dealing with literary texts, descriptions are often used in the function of a wide array of interpretative strategies of depiction; in some aspects, they are used as a mere glimpse into a piece of art with the goal of visually associating, evoking or minutely symbolizing the incorporeal frame of an artist’s mind or of the wider social context. In other aspects, the artworks are richly and meticulously presented with regard to their importance and credibility as they, according to Krleža, possess an “ethical intelligence” and “ethical conscience”. Only Krleža’s prose is researched here, and this is done on two levels. We take a look at examples where real art is incorporated into fictional texts in order to determine the significance and meaning of a certain dialogue, mise-en-scène or situation. This is most commonly found in the author’s plays, novels and novellas. On the other hand, we can trace a completely opposite method by which artworks enter these texts, where, due to their historic determination and already established worth/status, they thus re-enter reality, as seen from the perspective of Krleža’s life and work, so as to yet again test art history’s credibility through the matrix of contemporaneity. This approach is most often found in Krleža’s essays, critiques and diary entries.


2021 ◽  
pp. 233-252
Author(s):  
Jagor Bučan

The creative derivatives phrase has in itself two terms: creativity (lat. creatus - having been created) and derivation (lat. derivatio - derivation, departure). Creativity presupposes the realisation of the new, the non-existent. Derivation, on the other hand, means transition, formation or arrangement. A derivative is what is derived or comes from something else (like gasoline which is a petroleum derivative). Creative derivations would therefore be processes in which a new is derived from the existing; procedures of rearranging the existing, conversion (transitioning) from one system to another. There are two basic requirements that are necessary for the realisation of these and such actions: an adequate poetic means and a common denominator of two or more phenomena, i.e. two or more systems that are brought into contact. We define the poetic means here in Jakobson's terms as the axis of combination (syntagm) and the axis of selection (paradigm). The paper systematises the poetic possibilities of artistic modeling, which is based on the template of already existing works of art. Different versions of the approach to modern and postmodern practice of taking over the already existing form and content aspects of a work of art are briefly explained and described. When choosing examples, the author adheres to the principle of representativeness instead of compendial comprehensiveness. The outcome of the paper should be twofold. On the one hand, the aim is to get to know and understand the poetics of taking over, which is one of the preconditions for aesthetic pleasure and cognitive insight when encountering works of art of that provenance. On the other hand, the work should be useful to students in their own creative work. The poetic means exhibited in it should facilitate a creative approach to the inexhaustible source of tradition.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 234-234
Author(s):  

. . . Revolutions born in the laboratory are to be sharply distinguished from revolutions born in society. Social revolutions are usually born in the minds of millions, and are led up to by what the Declaration of Independence calls "a long train of abuses," visible to all; indeed, they usually cannot occur unless they are widely understood by and supported by the public. By contrast, scientific revolutions usually take shape quietly in the minds of a few men, under cover of the impenetrability to most laymen of scientific theory, and thus catch the world by surprise. . . . But more important by far than the world's unpreparedness for scientific revolutions are their universality and their permanence once they have occurred. Social revolutions are restricted to a particular time and place; they arise out of particular circumstances, last for a while, and then pass into history. Scientific revolutions, on the other hand, belong to all places and all times. . . . Works of thought and many works of art have a . . . chance of surviving, since new copies of a book or a symphony can be transcribed from old ones, and so can be preserved indefinitely; yet these works, too, can and do go out of existence, for if every copy is lost, then the work is also lost. The subject matter of these works is man, and they seem to be touched with his mortality. The results of scientific work, on the other hand, are largely immune to decay and disappearance.


2002 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Tapati Guha–Thakurta

The essay narrates the biography of a single art object—acclaimed in recent history as a “masterpiece” of ancient Indian sculpture—to invoke the larger spectrum of practices and discourses that came to constitute the field of art history in modern India. It explores the shifting locations and aesthetic trajectories that marked the transformation of this artifact from a curious archaeological “antiquity” into a national “art-treasure” and icon of Indian femininity, and later even into “a travelling emissary of ancient Indian art and culture.” On the one hand, the spectrum of travels of this object provides an ideal instance for mapping over the twentieth century the changing colonial, national and international stature of Indian art. On the other hand, its career also pointedly reveals the clash of contending claims and the politics of “return” and “restitution” that have attended the nationalization and artistic consecration of many such objects.


Translationes ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-107
Author(s):  
Alina Pelea

Abstract It may be too much to say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but no one can deny the informative potential of visual representations. Considering that the history of translation would also benefit from their use, we propose an intervention that will try to look at these resources in order to shed additional light on the status of the interpreter and its evolution. We analyze visual resources dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries (works of art) and others from 2018 (potentially more objective) to see how they reflect, on the one hand, the status of the dragomans of the Sublime Porte and, on the other hand, that of today’s interpreters. In conducting this research, we also look at how new technologies can contribute to the study of different media.


2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-133
Author(s):  
Nataša Lah

Throughout the entire literary oeuvre of Miroslav Krleža we are faced with a great number of credible descriptions, describing real historic events, or real artists and artworks belonging to the rich resources of European art history. By applying a cryptographic method of incorporating descriptions into his texts, Krleža on the one hand hid his sources, while on the other also revealed them. He hid them in the tissue of fictional texts, and unmasked them using a key work only those familiar with the source could identify. We term this method the use of “belletristic cryptograms”, and can further categorise it into thematic subgroups of concealed artwork descriptions, naming this whole method the use of hidden ekphrasis. The choice of artworks Krleža describes in his work is comprehensive, diverse and each described differently. Since we are dealing with literary texts, descriptions are often used in the function of a wide array of interpretative strategies of depiction; in some aspects, they are used as a mere glimpse into a piece of art with the goal of visually associating, evoking or minutely symbolizing the incorporeal frame of an artist’s mind or of the wider social context. In other aspects, the artworks are richly and meticulously presented with regard to their importance and credibility as they, according to Krleža, possess an “ethical intelligence” and “ethical conscience”. Only Krleža’s prose is researched here, and this is done on two levels. We take a look at examples where real art is incorporated into fictional texts in order to determine the significance and meaning of a certain dialogue, mise-en-scène or situation. This is most commonly found in the author’s plays, novels and novellas. On the other hand, we can trace a completely opposite method by which artworks enter these texts, where, due to their historic determination and already established worth/status, they thus re-enter reality, as seen from the perspective of Krleža’s life and work, so as to yet again test art history’s credibility through the matrix of contemporaneity. This approach is most often found in Krleža’s essays, critiques and diary entries.


2019 ◽  
Vol Atelier Digit_Hum (Digital libraries and virtual...) ◽  
Author(s):  
Félicie Faizand de Maupeou ◽  
Ségolène Le Men

The creation of the Artist Libraries Project was sparked by the observation that artist libraries are still not well known, yet many art historians are interested in this archive for the value it adds to understanding the person behind the artist and his or her creative process. The problem is that these libraries are rarely physically preserved. To remedy this dispersion, we built an online database and a website www.lesbibliothequesdartistes.org that house this valuable source in the form of lists of books and their electronic versions. First data on Monet's library have been made available, and several additional artist libraries from the 19 th and 20 th centuries are on the way for 2019. By gathering all these bibliographical data in a central database, it's possible to explore one library and to compare several. This article explains how we built the database and the website and how the implementation of those IT tools has raised questions about the use of this resource as an archive on the one hand, as well as its value for art history on the other.


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