scholarly journals Material Connections

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin R. Levy

The architect Bruce Goff (1904–82) is often associated with Frank Lloyd Wright and Organic Architecture, but his concept of organicism was equally influenced by his interest in modern music, and in particular the work of Claude Debussy. Goff maintained correspondence with musicians throughout his life—including with composers Edgard Varèse and Harry Partch—and in the 1920s and 1930s, he actively composed works for piano and player piano. In Tulsa and then Chicago, Goff developed connections to other writers, artists, and musicians (notably Richard San Jule and Ernest Brooks) who cultivated modernist sensibilities across the arts. Following close consideration of his papers at the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries at the Art Institute of Chicago, I examine Goff’s approaches to music and architecture as expressed not only through his correspondence, pedagogical writings, and architectural designs, but also through the analysis of some of his musical compositions. I also discuss a piece by Burrill Phillips that was inspired by the house Goff designed for John Garvey, violist of the Walden Quartet. By investigating the manifold contexts of these artworks as revealed by archival research, we can shed light on the divergent use of the term “organicism” as it is applied across the arts.

2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (2_suppl) ◽  
pp. 415-445
Author(s):  
Bennett Zon

The transposition of the Great Man into the Fittest Survivor is at the very root of an endemic interchange between the sciences and the arts in late Victorian culture, giving rich metaphoric substance to more heavily concretised scientific terminology. Herbert Spencer's famous phrase, “survival of the fittest” is, arguably, one of the most commonly transposed and consequently influential scientific expressions of the Victorian period, and as such, one of its most malleable idioms. In Victorian musicology this influence is especially obvious in biographical works which privilege Richard Wagner as the greatest genius of musical history. Thus in Mezzotints in Modern Music (1899) James Huneker declares that “Wagner carried within his breast the precious eucharist of genius. ” It is the attitude of Huneker and like-minded musicologists, like C. Hubert H. Parry, William Wallace, Francis Hueffer and Richard Wallaschek, which forms the basis of a three-part exploration of Wagner's genius, covering (1) the role of “endurance” in Victorian definitions of genius, from Carlyle and Sully to Galton; (2) the influence of German morphology on evolutionary terminology in Britain, with particular reference to ontogeny, phylogeny and recapitulation; and (3) Spencer's adaptation of German morphology and his influence on Victorian perceptions of Wagner's genius. These collectively argue through the paradigm of Wagner that the formulation of late Victorian musical genius was incomplete without recourse to evolutionary terminology of survival. Indeed, for Victorian musicology, Wagner, the Great Man, had evolved Into Wagner, the Fittest Survivor.


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 133-139
Author(s):  
Olcay Boratav

AbstractThe concept of art has varied according to space and time perspective in each and every period and it has emerged in different forms in every culture. Artists or designers produce a wide range of forms with different materials representing the period and culture while creating their ceramics. Ceramics symbolizes a thousand-year-old endeavor as well as being considered as one of the arts. It has shed light on the history in different shapes and cultures in addition to undertaking the task of conveyance of art with original structure and formal style in the works of art. Ceramics makes identity differences thanks to background knowledge, form and decorative techniques and originality. Art is not for society’s sake; it aims to relieve the tension, to satisfy pleasure, to enable people to see and hear, to use and to evaluate. Different cultures have generated new styles in their ceramics by integrating creativity into their own traditions and techniques as well as interacting with Mayan vases and pots, Greek pottery, Anatolian ceramics and tiles. Some of these impacts have been so profound in ceramics that they have been passed on from generation to generation.This paper seeks to address to the following questions: How was ceramics used in different cultures and periods with composition features such as form, decoration, motif and figure; and how has it undertaken the task of conveyance of art by investigating what features they have. Keywords: ceramics, art, conveyance of art, form, figure.


2019 ◽  
pp. 287-336
Author(s):  
Max Saunders

This chapter investigates the two-way traffic between To-Day and To-Morrow and modern literature and the arts. The preliminary section considers three outstanding volumes: Scheherazade; or, The Future of the English Novel (1927) by ‘John Carruthers’; Geoffrey West’s Deucalion; or, The Future of Literary Criticism (1930), which contrasts John Middleton Murry with I. A. Richards; and John Rodker’s The Future of Futurism (1926), which discusses Anglo-American literature. It argues that the series’ largely undervalues modernism, and barely attends to the visual arts or to modern music. It surveys the volumes dealing with English, poetry, drama, music, and censorship. The major section is devoted to other ways in which the series is relevant to modern and modernist literature, looking at how other writers responded to it. It turns out the series was followed by a surprising number of important literary figures. The key case studies here are Robert Graves, Aldous Huxley, Joyce, Eliot, Lewis; and Waugh.


2009 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 439-445
Author(s):  
Graeme Counsel

Archival research in West Africa can present many challenges. In one of the poorest regions of the world, governments struggle to maintain funding for the most basic infrastructure; thus archives and their holdings can often reside in a neglected state. Moreover, research materials may be spread over many departments and buildings, creating a labyrinthine network of officialdom, and requisite access requirements. This paper provides a brief overview of the principal archives located in Conakry, capital of Guinea. It includes current contact information and descriptions of holdings, and expands upon earlier articles by Klein (1981), Ford (1987), Conrad (1993), and Sampson (2002).On 2 October 2008 Guinea celebrated 50 years of independence. Earlier that year many new ministries were created, including the Ministère de la Culture, des Arts et Loisirs. For the first time in the nation's history, Guinea had its own dedicated ministry of the arts, thus potentially streamlining academic and archival research. The new Ministry faced many hurdles, however, for the story of Guinea's archives during the last 50 years is a tale of both marvel and neglect.During the nation's First Republic (1958-1984), Guinea's archives became established under the Presidency of Sékou Touré. The Archives Nationale, the Bibliothèque Nationale, and Radiodiffusion Télévision de Guinée were all created during his reign, and Guinea's archival resources were said to be among the best in West Africa. As Touré's grip on power strengthened, the nation's economic malaise grew, and Klein (1981:333) reported that in the early 1980s, when he conducted research in Conakry, he had been warned to expect significant damage to the archival contents.


2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 349-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyon-Sob Kim

Although the general influence of the architecture of East Asian countries on the formation and development of modern architecture has been widely recognised, detailed evidence about the extent and nature of this influence has been accruing through a growing body of research. This began with Chinoiserie, a Chinese-style fashion around the eighteenth century in Europe, which was imprinted in the Rococo interior as well as in the jardin anglo-chinois with its Chinese pavilions. Then in the late nineteenth century there was a European zeal for Japanese art, Japonisme, which appeared in the Arts and Crafts Movement and Art Nouveau. Consequently, East Asian influences came to be reflected in the concepts and designs of numerous modern architects. The representative figure is the American master Frank Lloyd Wright, who adopted the spatial concept of Laozi (or Lao-Tzu) and the organic characteristics of Japanese architecture. China and Japan had also appeared in various publications and architecture played a typical role in the interchange. Also, some notable Westerners had visited China and Japan.


2014 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-151
Author(s):  
Amnon Jacob Suissa

Apart from the Inuits, who, until the arrival of the ‘white man’, were unable to cultivate plants because of the climate, it can be said that all cultures and human societies used psychotropic substances, and their usage can be considered universal. Although the use of certain psychotropic substances is associated with deviancy, multiple reasons can shed light on the drug phenomenon as a multifactorial reality. Among these reasons we can mention: medical use for health reasons, pleasure and sensorial experience; knowledge and exploration of the self; psychotherapy with LSD 25; war; support for religious practices; creation and artistic inspiration, etc. Through a literature review, this article explores the sociological and anthropological perspective in the field of psychotropic substances and their ties with the process of creativity and artistic inspiration (music, poetry, the arts, etc.). With a constructivist approach, a psychosocial perspective will be enabled to take a hold on certain social and cultural challenges in the context of psychotropic substance use and artistic creation.


Over 950 entriesFrom the Arts and Crafts Movement to Postmodernism, Apple to Frank Lloyd Wright, this fascinating dictionary covers the past 160 years of international design, with accessible entries on branding, graphics, industrial design, functionalism, and fashion. New entries on digital design and sustainable design bring the coverage up to date. The dictionary’s international focus takes in major movements, key concepts, design terminology, and important design institutions, museums, and heritage sites.The new edition reflects the growing global importance of design, with coverage of India, China, and the countries of the Pacific Rim, Eastern Europe, and East Asia, and demonstrates how developments in the design of technology influence everyday life, with new entries on fonts, games developers such as Gunpei Yokoi of Nintendo, Android, Samsung, and Blackberry, and a fully revised entry on Apple.The A–Z entries are complemented by an extensive bibliography and a timeline.


2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-130
Author(s):  
Brenda Vale ◽  
Robert Vale

Perhaps unexpectedly, architects are seldom talked about in terms of the building toys they once played with or what they constructed with them. Exceptions are Witold Rybczynski and Frank Lloyd Wright. The former describes John Ruskin mastering the laws of building for load-bearing towers and arches by the time he was seven or eight (around 1825) because of playing with wooden building blocks (introduced at the end of the 1700s). However, he also describes himself playing with Bayko. This was a Bakelite building set from the 1930s [1], probably modelled on Mobaco, a cardboard and wood Dutch construction toy [2]. Both of these toys are pre-dated by an 1887 English toy for house construction, the walls of which were made from wooden blocks threaded on to vertical wires. Rybczynski also describes watching his father and uncle build a real garden shed using concrete panels slipped between reinforcing bars, like the method used by the plastic toy but life-size.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sian Smith

<p>Addressing the critical question of authorship in historical film, this thesis considers Ramai Te Miha Hayward’s works dealing with Māori and Pākehā intercultural representations. During a time when Māori in film were severely underrepresented, Te Miha Hayward prioritised Māori perspectives in The Arts of Maori Children (1962) and Eel History was a Mystery (1968), subversively critiquing the continuation of assimilationist integration policy. These contributions, and Te Miha Hayward’s extensive interviews and unpublished manuscripts, shed light on the change in intercultural representations between Rewi’s Last Stand (1940) and To Love a Maori (1972), feature films that entail romance narratives. Te Miha Hayward’s positionality is key to each chapter’s methodology, locating her voice in extensive primary and secondary materials.   This work challenges the debate around film’s value as a source of history, engaging at an intersection of disciplines. The analysis of Rewi’s Last Stand interprets its narrative text and Te Miha Hayward’s paratextual discussion through mana wāhine and kaupapa Māori theories. Such interpretation looks beyond the finished text, to Te Miha Hayward’s affirmation of its historical relevance. Connecting her work with the social realism genre, To Love a Maori’s dual narrative speaks to Māori and Pākehā audiences in different ways, further criticizing assimilation and Pākehā discrimination towards Māori. Navigating the issues of authorial ambiguity is central to locating Te Miha Hayward’s voice, thereby illuminating her authorship. Hence, I argue her contribution to Māori representation in film demonstrates her self-determination as a filmmaker.</p>


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