scholarly journals Constituting the 'Woman Artist': A Feminist Genealogy of Aotearoa New Zealand's Art History 1928 - 1989

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Kirsty Baker
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Women Artists ◽  
Art History ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Discursive Analysis ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Cultural Power ◽  
Representations Of Women

<p>This thesis considers the ways in which the figure of the ‘woman artist’ has been constituted in published sources in Aotearoa New Zealand’s art history, between 1928 and 1989. Most of the texts dedicated specifically to women artists in this country were written in the latter half of the twentieth century, and were produced with the intention of writing women artists back in to the histories from which they had been excluded. This thesis operates from a different perspective. Rather than assuming a starting point of women’s absence from a national art history, it traces instead those written representations of the ‘woman artist’ as they exist in the published literature. Through the construction of a genealogy of such representation, this thesis examines the ideologies which are both embedded in, and perpetuated by them. In doing so it makes evident and interrogates the gendered power dynamics which have shaped the writing of Aotearoa New Zealand’s art history.   This thesis is structured chronologically, charting the formation and expansion of a coherent national arts discourse against shifting notions of national and cultural identity. The trajectory of this discourse was shaped by a canonical impulse, constructing an unfolding narrative which centres upon a succession of key artistic figures. This thesis argues that the structuring of this – largely male, Pākehā – narrative, acted to subsume gendered difference, rendering women increasingly peripheral within its pages. The model of subsumed difference is also apparent in feminist critiques of this dominant art history, which are critically interrogated in the latter half of this thesis. As women sought to challenge the relative exclusion of women artists from this dominant narrative, they also perpetuated their own exclusions, often in terms of culture or sexuality.   Through discursive analysis of both ‘mainstream’ art history, and the feminist writings which addressed it, this thesis presents two significant arguments. First, that stereotypical representations of women artists play a structural role – to marginalise women – within Aotearoa New Zealand’s art history. Secondly, that feminist interrogations of such histories failed to account for the multiplicity of women’s subjectivity. I conclude by instantiating and calling for an alternative approach that challenges the subsuming of such difference within a single, homogenous narrative. Such an approach will produce histories that interrogate, rather than perpetuate, the gendered and cultural power dynamics embedded within society.</p>

scholarly journals Constituting the 'Woman Artist': A Feminist Genealogy of Aotearoa New Zealand's Art History 1928 - 1989

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Kirsty Baker
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Women Artists ◽  
Art History ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Discursive Analysis ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Cultural Power ◽  
Representations Of Women

<p>This thesis considers the ways in which the figure of the ‘woman artist’ has been constituted in published sources in Aotearoa New Zealand’s art history, between 1928 and 1989. Most of the texts dedicated specifically to women artists in this country were written in the latter half of the twentieth century, and were produced with the intention of writing women artists back in to the histories from which they had been excluded. This thesis operates from a different perspective. Rather than assuming a starting point of women’s absence from a national art history, it traces instead those written representations of the ‘woman artist’ as they exist in the published literature. Through the construction of a genealogy of such representation, this thesis examines the ideologies which are both embedded in, and perpetuated by them. In doing so it makes evident and interrogates the gendered power dynamics which have shaped the writing of Aotearoa New Zealand’s art history.   This thesis is structured chronologically, charting the formation and expansion of a coherent national arts discourse against shifting notions of national and cultural identity. The trajectory of this discourse was shaped by a canonical impulse, constructing an unfolding narrative which centres upon a succession of key artistic figures. This thesis argues that the structuring of this – largely male, Pākehā – narrative, acted to subsume gendered difference, rendering women increasingly peripheral within its pages. The model of subsumed difference is also apparent in feminist critiques of this dominant art history, which are critically interrogated in the latter half of this thesis. As women sought to challenge the relative exclusion of women artists from this dominant narrative, they also perpetuated their own exclusions, often in terms of culture or sexuality.   Through discursive analysis of both ‘mainstream’ art history, and the feminist writings which addressed it, this thesis presents two significant arguments. First, that stereotypical representations of women artists play a structural role – to marginalise women – within Aotearoa New Zealand’s art history. Secondly, that feminist interrogations of such histories failed to account for the multiplicity of women’s subjectivity. I conclude by instantiating and calling for an alternative approach that challenges the subsuming of such difference within a single, homogenous narrative. Such an approach will produce histories that interrogate, rather than perpetuate, the gendered and cultural power dynamics embedded within society.</p>

Art history or literature? Documenting Icelandic artists’ books

2000 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-14
Author(s):  
Arndís S. Árnadóttir
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Annual Meeting ◽  
Art History ◽  
Starting Point

The project of creating a catalogue of Nordic collections holding artists’ books, initiated at ARLIS/Norden’s annual meeting in Helsinki in May 1996, was the starting point for a survey of the material held in Icelandic art libraries. This focused on the type and size of the collections of artists’ books in four art institutions covering twentieth century art in Iceland, and examined the current documentation standards applied to artists’ books in Icelandic collections and the extent of national bibliographic control.

BaasorKlaas? Afrikaner Working-Class Responses to Transformation in South Africa, ca. 1977–2002

2014 ◽  
Vol 86 ◽  
pp. 142-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danelle van Zyl-Hermann
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Class Politics ◽  
Racial Identities ◽  
Discursive Analysis ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
White Workers ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

AbstractWhite workers and white working-class politics have been neglected in the historiography of South Africa during the second half of the twentieth century. This article seeks to extricate white workers from this historiographical neglect and fracture homogenizing representations of white, specifically Afrikaner, experiences of democratization. It does so by reintroducing class to a debate dominated by race. Employing a discursive analysis sensitive to issues of class, it shows that white workers were confronted with democratizing change and disempowerment more than a decade before the end of apartheid and suggests that class politics continue to inform white responses in post-apartheid South Africa. In this way, it argues for a historical, discursive approach to uncovering the power dynamics of class and the complex intersection of working-class and racial identities in the late twentieth century.

Revaluations through Dance: Friedrich Nietzsche's Thought in Isadora Duncan's Speech The Dance of the Future

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-219
Author(s):  
Meindert E. Peters
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Eternal Recurrence ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Mind

Friedrich Nietzsche's influence on Isadora Duncan's work, in particular his idea of the Dionysian, has been widely discussed, especially in regard to her later work. What has been left underdeveloped in critical examinations of her work, however, is his influence on her earlier choreographic work, which she defended in a famous speech held in 1903 called The Dance of the Future. While commentators often describe this speech as ‘Nietzschean’, Duncan's autobiography suggests that she only studied Nietzsche's work after this speech. I take this incongruity as a starting point to explore the connections between her speech and Nietzsche's work, in particular his Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I argue that in subject and language Duncan's speech resembles Nietzsche's in important ways. This article will draw attention to the ways in which Duncan takes her cues from Nietzsche in bringing together seemingly conflicting ideas of religion and an overturning of morality; Nietzsche's notion of eternal recurrence and the teleology present in his idea of the Übermensch; and a renegotiation of the body's relation to the mind. In doing so, this article contributes not only to scholarship on Duncan's early work but also to discussions of Nietzsche's reception in the early twentieth century. Moreover, the importance Duncan ascribes to the body in dance and expression also asks for a new understanding of Nietzsche's own way of expressing his philosophy.

scholarly journals Edgar Wind on Experiment and Metaphysics

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Brigitte Falkenburg
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Art History ◽  
Philosophy Of Physics ◽  
Metaphysical Realism ◽  
American Pragmatism ◽  
Theory Formation ◽  
Internal Realism ◽  
Detailed Interpretation ◽  
Holistic Theory ◽  
Central Claim

Abstract The paper presents a detailed interpretation of Edgar Wind’s Experiment and Metaphysics (1934), a unique work on the philosophy of physics which broke with the Neo-Kantian tradition under the influence of American pragmatism. Taking up Cassirer’s interpretation of physics, Wind develops a holistic theory of the experiment and a constructivist account of empirical facts. Based on the concept of embodiment which plays a key role in Wind’s later writings on art history, he argues, however, that the outcomes of measurements are contingent. He then proposes an anti-Kantian conception of a metaphysics of nature. For him, nature is an unknown totality which manifests itself in discrepancies between theories and experiment, and hence the theory formation of physics can increasingly approximate the structure of nature. It is shown that this view is ambiguous between a transcendental, metaphysical realism in Kant’s sense and an internal realism in Putnam’s sense. Wind’s central claim is that twentieth century physics offers new options for resolving Kant’s cosmological antinomies. In particular, he connected quantum indeterminism with the possibility of human freedom, a connection that Cassirer sharply opposed.

scholarly journals Human Rights and Cultural Identity

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 112-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon John-Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Culturally Sensitive ◽  
Cultural Identities ◽  
Ethical Relativism ◽  
Small Core ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Universal Human Rights

Abstract Universal human rights and particular cultural identities, which are relativistic by nature, seem to stand in conflict with each other. It is commonly suggested that the relativistic natures of cultural identities undermine universal human rights and that human rights might compromise particular cultural identities in a globalised world. This article examines this supposed clash and suggests that it is possible to frame a human rights approach in such a way that it becomes the starting point and constraining framework for all non-deficient cultural identities. In other words, it is possible to depict human rights in a culturally sensitive way so that universal human rights can meet the demands of a moderate version of meta-ethical relativism which acknowledges a small universal core of objectively true or false moral statements and avers that, beyond that small core, all other moral statements are neither objectively true nor false.

Moving Pictures and Renaissance Art History

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Emison
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Art History ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Renaissance Art ◽  
Word And Image ◽  
Visual Composition ◽  
Moving Pictures ◽  
And Gender

Film, like the printed imagery inaugurated during the Renaissance, spread ideas---not least the idea of the power of visual art---across not only geographical and political divides but also strata of class and gender. Moving Pictures and Renaissance Art History examines the early flourishing of film, 1920s-mid-60s, as partly reprising the introduction of mass media in the Renaissance, allowing for innovation that reflected an art free of the control of a patron though required to attract a broad public. Rivalry between word and image, narrative and visual composition shifted in both cases toward acknowledging the compelling nature of the visual. The twentieth century also saw the development of the discipline of art history; transfusions between cinematic practice and art historical postulates and preoccupations are part of the story told here.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document