scholarly journals Picturing the Immaterial

Tahiti ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna-Maria Von Bonsdorff

The article explores a significant trait in Ellen Thesleff’s art. Her artistic practices were deeply embedded in the development of European artistic circles at the end of the nineteenth century with a shift towards colour and meaning – when ‘material’ colour became part of the content – which was one of the main manifestations of Early Modernism in Finnish art. Her paintings from the 1890s reflect the ideals of correspondence, musicality and atmospheric tonality, a technique which she used in many of her early works. However, I will also propose that Thesleff’s take on the strict achromatic colour scheme, as well as the specific ascetic and tonalist technique which she used during the 1890s until the early-1900s, gave her subdued paintings and drawings new meaning and possibilities beyond the symbolist credo. The article discusses the interconnectedness between music and art using the nineteenth-century concepts of musicality and indistinctness. The difficult goal of using tangible form to reference intangible ideas was accomplished through careful manipulation of both style and subject. Such heavy manipulation, characterises the symbolist artist’s work, a form of non-compliance with traditional rules of representational art. By introducing extreme manipulation of form, colour, and technique, Thesleff announces to the viewer that her art is not an illusion of reality but rather a jumping-off image into the realm of ideas. However, these highly valued aspects of symbolist painting continued to be explored by artists also during the twentieth century. The method of tonality – one unifying colour to tone the whole painting – is something to which Thesleff surprisingly returns in the 1920s and 1930s.

2019 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-54
Author(s):  
Shelagh Noden

Following the Scottish Catholic Relief Act of 1793, Scottish Catholics were at last free to break the silence imposed by the harsh penal laws, and attempt to reintroduce singing into their worship. At first opposed by Bishop George Hay, the enthusiasm for liturgical music took hold in the early years of the nineteenth century, but the fledgling choirs were hampered both by a lack of any tradition upon which to draw, and by the absence of suitable resources. To the rescue came the priest-musician, George Gordon, a graduate of the Royal Scots College in Valladolid. After his ordination and return to Scotland he worked tirelessly in forming choirs, training organists and advising on all aspects of church music. His crowning achievement was the production, at his own expense, of a two-volume collection of church music for the use of small choirs, which remained in use well into the twentieth century.


2007 ◽  
Vol 86 (2) ◽  
pp. 278-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Constable

This article examines the Scottish missionary contribution to a Scottish sense of empire in India in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Initially, the article reviews general historiographical interpretations which have in recent years been developed to explain the Scottish relationship with British imperial development in India. Subsequently the article analyses in detail the religious contributions of Scottish Presbyterian missionaries of the Church of Scotland and the Free Church Missions to a Scottish sense of empire with a focus on their interaction with Hindu socioreligious thought in nineteenth-century western India. Previous missionary historiography has tended to focus substantially on the emergence of Scottish evangelical missionary activity in India in the early nineteenth century and most notably on Alexander Duff (1806–78). Relatively little has been written on Scottish Presbyterian missions in India in the later nineteenth century, and even less on the significance of their missionary thought to a Scottish sense of Indian empire. Through an analysis of Scottish Presbyterian missionary critiques in both vernacular Marathi and English, this article outlines the orientalist engagement of Scottish Presbyterian missionary thought with late nineteenth-century popular Hinduism. In conclusion this article demonstrates how this intellectual engagement contributed to and helped define a Scottish missionary sense of empire in India.


Transfers ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan E. Bell ◽  
Kathy Davis

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.


Author(s):  
Adam J. Silverstein

This book examines the ways in which the biblical book of Esther was read, understood, and used in Muslim lands, from ancient to modern times. It zeroes-in on a selection of case studies, covering works from various periods and regions of the Muslim world, including the Qur’an, premodern historical chronicles and literary works, the writings of a nineteenth-century Shia feminist, a twentieth-century Iranian dictionary, and others. These case studies demonstrate that Muslim sources contain valuable materials on Esther, which shed light both on the Esther story itself and on the Muslim peoples and cultures that received it. The book argues that Muslim sources preserve important, pre-Islamic materials on Esther that have not survived elsewhere, some of which offer answers to ancient questions about Esther, such as the meaning of Haman’s epithet in the Greek versions of the story, the reason why Mordecai refused to prostrate himself before Haman, and the literary context of the “plot of the eunuchs” to kill the Persian king. Furthermore, throughout the book we will see how each author’s cultural and religious background influenced his or her understanding and retelling of the Esther story: In particular, it will be shown that Persian Muslims (and Jews) were often forced to reconcile or choose between the conflicting historical narratives provided by their religious and cultural heritages respectively.


Author(s):  
Julian Wright

This chapter asks wider questions about the flow of time as it was explored in this historical writing. It focuses on Jaurès’ philosophy of history, initially through a brief discussion of his doctoral thesis and the essay entitled ‘Le bilan social du XIXème siècle’ that he provided at the end of the Histoire socialiste, then through the work of three of his collaborators, Gabriel Deville, Eugène Fournière, and Georges Renard. One of the most important challenges for socialists in the early twentieth century was to understand the damage and division caused by revolution, while not losing the transformative mission of their socialism. With these elements established, the chapter returns to Jaurès, and in particular the long study of nineteenth-century society in chapter 10 of L’Armée nouvelle. Jaurès advanced an original vision of the nineteenth century and its meaning for the socialist present.


Author(s):  
Eileen J. Herrmann

Realism in American drama has proved its resiliency from its inception at the end of the nineteenth century to its transformation into modern theater in the twentieth century. This chapter delineates the evolution of American realistic drama from the influence of European theater and its adaptation by American artists such as James A. Herne and Rachel Crothers. Flexible enough to admit the expressionistic techniques crafted by Susan Glaspell and Eugene O’Neill and leading to the “subjective realism” of Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, realism has provided a wide foundation for subsequent playwrights such as David Mamet, August Wilson, and Sam Shepard to experiment with its form and language.


2021 ◽  
pp. 0957154X2110353
Author(s):  
Birk Engmann

In the mid-twentieth century in the Soviet Union, latent schizophrenia became an important concept and a matter of research and also of punitive psychiatry. This article investigates precursor concepts in early Russian psychiatry of the nineteenth century, and examines whether – as claimed in recent literature – Russian and Soviet research on latent schizophrenia was mainly influenced by the work of Eugen Bleuler.


Author(s):  
Alvin Ping Leong

AbstractDiachronic studies on scientific writing have indicated an increase in the use of passives from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. With the current shift in focus towards making scientific writing more accessible, there is less certainty on the extent of passive use in the modern era. Although the use of the active voice is presently encouraged, the findings from available studies are mixed. There are also few diachronic studies involving recent articles. This present study investigated the trend in passive use from the nineteenth century to the present day using 80 articles from a multidisciplinary science journal covering four time periods (1880, 1930, 1980, and 2017). The study found that the extent of passive use was stable from 1880 to 1980 (occurring in about 29–36% of all clauses) but declined in 2017 (averaging below 25%). The study also found a decline in the use of finite passives to describe methodological actions and a corresponding increase in the use of first-person pronouns in the 2017 articles. Further work involving a larger corpus and an understanding of writer decisions in the composing process is needed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald G. Knapp

AbstractAmerica’s first documented wooden covered bridge was erected at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1805. Hundreds were constructed within two decades and at least 10,000 by the later 1800s. As settlers moved West, broad rivers were crossed with inventive structures incorporating timber trusses ingeniously developed by carpenters. Called covered bridges because of the roof and siding needed to protect the timber trusses, they became ubiquitous features on the American landscape. Over the past two centuries, most covered bridges were lost to flood, ice, arson, lightening, decay, as well as “progress,” replaced by “modern” iron, concrete, and steel spans. Of some 700 covered bridges remaining, many are mere replicas of their original forms no longer supported by timber trusses. Genuine historic bridges remain largely from the last half of the 1800s while civic boosterism has led to claims of earlier dates with often questionable authenticity. This essay presents three wooden covered bridges constructed in the 1820s along a 10-mile stretch of the Wallkill River in New Paltz, New York. Of the three, only Perrine’s Bridge, constructed first in 1821 and covered in 1822, is still standing with intact Burr timber trusses. Perrine’s is an iconic structure with exceptional heritage value because of authentic re-building and restoration in 1834, 1846, 1917, and 1968. Using documentary records, this essay establishes an accurate intertwined chronology for the three bridges, detailing nineteenth century building practices and contentious mid-twentieth century struggles pitting preservationists wanting authentic restoration against those wanting removal.


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