scholarly journals 'The Inexhaustible Surface of Things'

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-94
Author(s):  
Simone Castaldi
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Art World ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
The Aesthetic

This article explores the work of Stefano Tamburini (1955–1986) in relationship to the ‘high arts’ in the 1980s. By concentrating on Tamburini’s least known works (to this day, among his many works, only the RanXerox saga is actually available for English-speaking readers), it is possible to regard his art as a bridge tying comics with the aesthetic and theoretical preoccupations of many of the leading artists of the postmodern trans-avant-garde of the late-1970s and early-1980s in Italy. This article demonstrates how Tamburini offered a model of comics in dialogue with the rest of the contemporary art world, often taking the lead and generating fruitful exchanges both with the field of literature and the visual arts.

The branding of contemporary Chinese art and its politics

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 25-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chloe Preece
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Marketing Research ◽  
Art Market ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
Art World ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the branding of the Cynical Realist and Political Pop contemporary art movements in China. The trajectory this brand has taken over the past 25 years reveals some of the power discourses that operate within the international visual arts market and how these are constructed, distributed and consumed. Design/methodology/approach – A review of avant-garde art in China and its dissemination is undertaken through analysis of historical data and ethnographic data collected in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Findings – The analysis exposes the ideological framework within which the art market operates and how this affects the art that is produced within it. In the case of Cynical Realism and Political Pop, the art was framed and packaged by the art world to reflect Western liberal political thinking in terms of personal expression thereby implicitly justifying Western democratic, capitalist values. Research limitations/implications – As an exploratory study, findings contribute to macro-marketing research by demonstrating how certain sociopolitical ideas develop and become naturalised through branding discourses in a market system. Practical implications – A socio-cultural branding approach to the art market provides a macro-perspective in terms of the limitations and barriers for artists in taking their work to market. Originality/value – While there have been various studies of branding in the art market, this study reveals the power discourses at work in the contemporary visual arts market in terms of the work that is promoted as “hot” by the art world. Branding here is shown to reflect politics by circulating and promoting certain sociocultural and political ideas.

[no title]

1992 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-31
Author(s):  
Halina Rusak
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
York City ◽  
Art History ◽  
Art World ◽  
Full Spectrum ◽  
Insight Into

My involvement as an artist and as an art librarian allows me to see a full spectrum of art history from its inception by an artist to its assessment by an art historian. It enables me to better understand the needs of faculty and students in the field of visual arts, as well as to interface effectively with faculty and scholars in art history. My gallery membership at SOHO 20 in New York City provides me with insight into art trends in the making. It demonstrates well a woman’s place in the contemporary art world, and a role of a critic in promoting or establishing an artist. I feel that this knowledge makes me a better librarian.

Artistic forgery

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory Currie
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Art Market ◽  
Art World ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
False Claim

Forgery in art occurs when something is presented as a work of art with a history it does not actually have. Typically this involves a false claim about the producer’s identity. Forgeries are most usually works in the style of the artist whose work they falsely claim to be, while a forgery that is a copy of an existing work is a fake. Forgery is most common in the visual arts, but is also possible in other arts, such as literature and music. The main aesthetic problem that forgery poses is that typically no deception is practised concerning what we might call the appearance of the forged object (generalizing from the pictorial case). Thus the forger does not deceive us about the disposition of colours on the canvas, the sequence of musical notes in the score, or the sequence of words in the text. If we adopt the widely held view that aesthetic value is a function of appearance alone, we shall conclude that something’s being a forgery is irrelevant to its aesthetic worth; whatever false beliefs the viewer might be induced to have about the work, those beliefs could not affect an honest judgment of its aesthetic value. But in the art world it is universal practice to condemn forgery. If that practice is to be justified as anything other than artistic snobbery and the protection of prices in the art market, it must be shown that the aesthetic interest of a work is not exhausted by its appearance alone. In fact it can be shown that the aesthetic features of a work often depend on its historical features as well as on its appearance, and that these historical features are likely to be obscured by the deception that forgery involves.

scholarly journals The Confluence in the Contemporary Art World of Literature and Postmodern Visual Arts in Jeff Vande Zande’s Landscape with Fragmented Figures

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Smriti Thakur ◽  
◽  
Dinesh Babu P ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Art World ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Art Forms

The American poet, novelist and editor, Jeff Vande Zande’s Landscape with Fragmented Figures (2009) is a novel that deals with the contemporary world of art, which brings forth the intricacies of the art forms such as collage, action paintings, and drop cloths that have established a crucial distance between the present and the past world of pre-modern art. As the novel revolves around the world of postmodern visual arts and brings this subject into the literary world, it necessitates an interdisciplinary approach, which not only brings the two different academic disciplines of arts together for a critical appreciation, but also creates a new aesthetic experience in the reader, wherein visual arts is seen through the lens of literature, which helps foreground the hidden patterns and motives behind the art work, and the literary work is appreciated with a greater knowledge and understanding of the practices in and theories of the modern and postmodern art. By looking at the symbiotic relationship between visual art and literature through the novel, this study makes an attempt to contribute to the aesthetic appreciation of the engaging confluence of postmodern visual arts and literature in the contemporary world of art. By analysing the text, the study explores the phenomena that have reduced the difference between the original and copy in the contemporary art-world wherein the artist’s aesthetic sensibility seems to derive from other sources, and thus brings into critical discourse those factors that have determined the use of parody, pastiche, irony, and collage in contemporary art forms.

5. The end of the end of History

2020 ◽  
pp. 112-129
Author(s):  
Julian Stallabrass
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Street Art ◽  
Art World ◽  
Direct Response ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
End Of History ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
Art Investment ◽  
Investment Boom

‘The end to the end of history’ assesses how, since the rise of the avant-garde, only art viewed from a historical distance has appeared to have direction and coherence, while the present always seems clouded in confusion. The rise of antagonistic art and street art are both part of this, which points to a deep shift in the constitution of the contemporary art world. The shift is partly caused by the increasing use of art as pure investment. In the early 2000s, the years of the art investment boom were also those of the unfolding ‘war on terror’. One direct response in the art world was a marked revival of a great variety of documentary forms.

scholarly journals The Geological Present: A Critique of the Aesthetic Anthropocene

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lachlan Gregory Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Aesthetic Theory ◽  
Art World ◽  
Art Making ◽  
Critical Methodology ◽  
Art Works ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

<p>This thesis is a response to an emergent discourse on the relationship between the visual arts and the Anthropocene. The latter—the stratigraphic designation for a new geological epoch—has accrued a popularity within the contemporary art-world that is rarely afforded to a concept from the earth sciences. The uptake in Anthropocene-themed exhibitions, publications, and think-pieces reflects the concept’s promise of an art-making and art-critical methodology that may foster a revised relationship to nature in the age of climate change.   Despite the new-found fashionability of the term, this relationship between art and the Anthropocene has neither been comprehensively demonstrated, nor disproved. Consequently, the purpose of this thesis is to undertake this necessary interrogation.   Firstly, this is an engagement with the competing philosophies and intentions that have attached themselves to the Anthropocene label as it progressed from a straightforward geological statement, into a profound suite of assertions regarding the relationship of humanity to our planet. The influence of the posthumanist ecological philosopher, Timothy Morton, is a particular focus for understanding what the aesthetic theory of the Anthropocene consists of. Taken together, this theory is a promise of a new relationship with the natural world through the jettisoning of Romantic fantasies of nature in favour of an engagement with a sub-discursive, material world.   Secondly, this theory is read against ecologically conscious contemporary art works. The practices of Pierre Huyghe, Simon Starling, and Conor Clarke speak to the same concerns as the aesthetic Anthropocene. Reading these works through the lens offered by the stratigraphic concept investigates and tests the capability of the aesthetic Anthropocene for delivering its promises of an art without nature, and a new engagement with our environments.   Ultimately, the innovations of the aesthetic Anthropocene are novel, plentiful, but unconvincing. As a theory, it is beset by flaws and contradictions which undermine its applicability and critical potential. Consequently, ecologically conscious art does little to reflect the aims and aspirations of the aesthetic Anthropocene, rendering it an unhelpful tool for understanding the geological present.</p>

scholarly journals What happened to aesthetics and art over the last 100 years?: Contradictions and antagonisms: Theory wars!

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-246
Author(s):  
Miško Šuvaković
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Conceptual Art ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Art And Politics ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Minimal Art ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Relationship

The subject of my paper is the dynamic and transformational relations between aesthetics and art from 1919 to 2019. The first problem to be discussed will be the relationship between art and politics at the Bauhaus and art institutes of the Soviet avant-garde. Next, I will point to differences in Marxist concepts of socialist realism and critical theory on modern culture and art. I will analyse the relationship between the concept of the autonomy of art, especially painting and minimal art. A comparison will be derived between anti-art (Dada, NEO-Dada) and anti-philosophy (Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Jacques Lacan). I will highlight approaches from analytical meta-aesthetics to the interpretation of Duchamp's readymade, deriving a theory of art in conceptual art. Special attention will be paid to the "theoretical conflicts" between phenomenology and structuralism, as well as poststructuralism. I will conclude my discussion by identifying the "aesthetic condition" in relation to "contemporary art" (feminist, activist, political, ecological, participatory, and appropriative art). The aim of my discussion will be to highlight the character of modern and contemporary aesthetics in relation to art theory, by way of diagrammatic reflection on the binaries, differences, and reconstructions of dialectics.

Apollo (1909–1917)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanna Chuchvaha
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
The Third ◽  
Dance Theater ◽  
Art Works ◽  
The World ◽  
Russian Modernism ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Revolution

Apollo (Apollon, 1909–1917) was the third and last major Russian modernist art periodical before the revolution of 1917. Edited by the art critic and art historian Sergei Makovsky (1877–1962), and from 1911 by both Makovsky and Baron Nikolai Vrangel’ (1880–1915), the journal ran for 91 issues. Aiming to craft an ideal art periodical, Apollo continued the aesthetic program of its forerunners, the World of Art and The Golden Fleece. According to its title and editorial manifesto, the creation of art works was seen as an act of worshipping Apollo, while the principle of Apollonianism alluded to Friedrich Nietzsche’s dichotomy of the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Apollo was a consistent propagator of contemporary art trends and defined a new stage in the development of Russian modernism. The periodical was international in scope; it devoted articles to Russian and European artists and art shows and featured sections dedicated to visual arts, literature, dance, theater, and music.

scholarly journals Mykola Bidenko’s poetry: typology and idiography

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Roman Tkachenko
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Problem Statement ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
First Approximation ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Artistic Heritage

The relevance of the selected inquiry is in the need for urgent understanding of the ways of Ukrainian literature development, in particular, of poetry development, at the turn of the 20–21th centuries. It is no secret that art recreates the spiritual atmosphere of the time, but even more valuable is its ability to respond to subtle changes in the mood of contemporaries and form a spiritual picture of the future. In this sense, the study of contemporary art will be useful not only to literary critics. The subject of research is the typological and idiographic parameters of M. Bidenko’s poetry, its immediate artistic context, unique features of poetics, education and ideological and thematic direction. We understand the problem statement as an attempt to outline the first approximation of the role and place of M. Bidenko’s creative heritage in the context of Ukrainian literature of the late 20 — early 21th centuries. The study used mainly typological method, as well as principles of hermeneutics in the interpretation of key images. The purpose of this article is to outline the aesthetic and typological parameters of the artistic heritage of M. Bidenko, its unique features and features, consistent with the artistic context, based on the analysis of formal means and conceptual principles. As the result of the study Bidenko’s poetry is outlined mainly in the aesthetic coordinates of avant-garde and belongs to the environment of the Kyiv school of poets (verlibre, autotheliality of the word, avoidance of rhetoric, etc.), but in worldview he is more radical, skeptical and paradoxical than “kyivans.” In our view, Bidenko's dominant reception is a paradox. Pain as one of the key images of Bidenko's poetry, is metaphysical. Against such pain, the poet invented a “cure of death.” We see the novelty of this exploration in the definition of the dominant technique and our own interpretation of key images in Bidenko’s poems. Promising for future research are the nature of Bidenko’s verlibrium, features of the author's syntax or the nature of visual flavor.

scholarly journals The Geological Present: A Critique of the Aesthetic Anthropocene

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lachlan Gregory Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Aesthetic Theory ◽  
Art World ◽  
Art Making ◽  
Critical Methodology ◽  
Art Works ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

<p>This thesis is a response to an emergent discourse on the relationship between the visual arts and the Anthropocene. The latter—the stratigraphic designation for a new geological epoch—has accrued a popularity within the contemporary art-world that is rarely afforded to a concept from the earth sciences. The uptake in Anthropocene-themed exhibitions, publications, and think-pieces reflects the concept’s promise of an art-making and art-critical methodology that may foster a revised relationship to nature in the age of climate change.   Despite the new-found fashionability of the term, this relationship between art and the Anthropocene has neither been comprehensively demonstrated, nor disproved. Consequently, the purpose of this thesis is to undertake this necessary interrogation.   Firstly, this is an engagement with the competing philosophies and intentions that have attached themselves to the Anthropocene label as it progressed from a straightforward geological statement, into a profound suite of assertions regarding the relationship of humanity to our planet. The influence of the posthumanist ecological philosopher, Timothy Morton, is a particular focus for understanding what the aesthetic theory of the Anthropocene consists of. Taken together, this theory is a promise of a new relationship with the natural world through the jettisoning of Romantic fantasies of nature in favour of an engagement with a sub-discursive, material world.   Secondly, this theory is read against ecologically conscious contemporary art works. The practices of Pierre Huyghe, Simon Starling, and Conor Clarke speak to the same concerns as the aesthetic Anthropocene. Reading these works through the lens offered by the stratigraphic concept investigates and tests the capability of the aesthetic Anthropocene for delivering its promises of an art without nature, and a new engagement with our environments.   Ultimately, the innovations of the aesthetic Anthropocene are novel, plentiful, but unconvincing. As a theory, it is beset by flaws and contradictions which undermine its applicability and critical potential. Consequently, ecologically conscious art does little to reflect the aims and aspirations of the aesthetic Anthropocene, rendering it an unhelpful tool for understanding the geological present.</p>

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