scholarly journals Religious Motifs in Polish Contemporary Art Using the Crucifixion: An Outline of the Problem

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-166
Author(s):  
Beata Bigaj-Zwonek
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Artistic Expression ◽  
The Political ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
The World ◽  
Post War

Sacred motifs have a long tradition in art and ample figurative representation. They have been present in the visual arts for numerous reasons, from the need to identify faith to artistic expression based on commonly-known truths and stories saturated with meaning. In the art of the twentieth century, Christian motifs were often an excuse to speak about the world, its threats and fears, and the human condition. Polish artists frequently availed themselves of religious symbols and systems in the post-war era, and during the political transforma­tion of the 1980s, they became a way to articulate uncertainty, expectation, and hope for change. Today, the religious trope is a pretext for artistic commentary on religion, social problems, and internal issues of the creators themselves. The article explores the causes and the nature of artistic practice rooted in Christian iconography in Polish contemporary art, with a particular emphasis on the motif of the crucifixion.

On Metaphysics and the Political: A Polemics of Reading Baudelaire in the 1930s

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
The World ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.

Towards the Final Legitimation of the Party

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piero Ignazi
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Sole Source ◽  
The Political ◽  
Party Formation ◽  
Post War ◽  
Dominant Influence

Chapter 3 investigates the process of party formation in France, Germany, Great Britain, and Italy, and demonstrates the important role of cultural and societal premises for the development of political parties in the nineteenth century. Particular attention is paid in this context to the conditions in which the two mass parties, socialists and Christian democrats, were established. A larger set of Western European countries included in this analysis is thoroughly scrutinized. Despite discontent among traditional liberal-conservative elites, full endorsement of the political party was achieved at the beginning of the twentieth century. Particular attention is paid to the emergence of the interwar totalitarian party, especially under the guise of Italian and German fascism, when ‘the party’ attained its most dominant influence as the sole source and locus of power. The chapter concludes by suggesting hidden and unaccounted heritages of that experience in post-war politics.

Unpacking the self

Forum+ ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 29-37
Author(s):  
Manju Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Personal Narrative ◽  
The Self ◽  
Cross Linking ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Personal Stories ◽  
The World ◽  
Visual Artist ◽  
Sensitive Issues

Abstract In this essay, visual artist and writer Manju Sharma reflects on the use of autobiography as a methodology for storytelling in the visual arts. She focuses on the methods that she uses to explore the self and its relatedness to the world that she wishes to grasp. She also sheds light on how autobiography fits into her artistic practice as a means of finding hidden narratives and to keep the personal narrative related to the world. The essay touches upon the use of personal stories, cross-linking and note-taking to unpack everyday sensitive issues that can allow people to find their voice and to speak out.

The avant-garde’s visual arts in the context of Santayana’s idea of vital liberty

Human Affairs ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Skowroński
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Universe

AbstractIn the present paper, the author looks at the political dimension of some trends in the visual arts within twentieth-century avant-garde groups (cubism, expressionism, fauvism, Dada, abstractionism, surrealism) through George Santayana’s idea of vital liberty. Santayana accused the avant-gardists of social and political escapism, and of becoming unintentionally involved in secondary issues. In his view, the emphasis they placed on the medium (or diverse media) and on treating it as an aim in itself, not, as it should be, as a transmitter through which a stimulating relationship with the environment can be had, was accompanied by a focus on fragments of life and on parts of existence, and, on the other hand, by a de facto rejection of ontology and cosmology as being crucial to understanding life and the place of human beings in the universe. The avant-gardists became involved in political life by responding excessively to the events of the time, instead of to the everlasting problems that are the human lot.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
William Ghosh
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Caribbean Region ◽  
The Political ◽  
The World ◽  
Colonial Experience ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
Historical Past

V.S. Naipaul is one of the most internationally acclaimed twentieth-century writers from the Caribbean region. Yet it is usually assumed that he was neither much influenced by the Caribbean literary and intellectual tradition, nor very influential upon it. This chapter argues that these assumptions are wrong. It situates Naipaul’s life and work within the political, social, and intellectual history of the twentieth-century Caribbean. Naipaul’s work formed part of a larger historical debate about the sociology of slavery in the Caribbean, the specificity of Caribbean colonial experience, and the influence of that historical past on Caribbean life, culture, and politics after independence. The chapter closes with a reading of Naipaul’s late, retrospective book about Trinidad, A Way in the World.

Continuity and Change in the Belfast Press, 1900–1994

2020 ◽  
pp. 377-395
Author(s):  
Nora Moroney ◽  
Stephen O’Neill
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
National Library ◽  
News Letter ◽  
Irish History ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation

This chapter examines the political and textual transformations of the Belfast Telegraph, the Irish News, and the Belfast News Letter in the twentieth century. It discusses the creation and expression of separate forms of national and editorial identities in regard to the northern Unionist-leaning Telegraph and News Letter, and the nationalist Irish News. All three would eventually be transformed by their reportage of the World War, and the later Troubles. Describing the enduring popularity of all three papers as platforms for political expressions across the spectrum of twentieth century Irish history and politics, it argues that their longevity speaks to the success of their readjustments during these tumultuous years. Drawing on archives in the National Library of Ireland and the Belfast Central Library, the chapter includes case studies focusing on how each paper reported the failure of the Boundary Commission in 1925, the Belfast Blitz in 1941, and the IRA Ceasefire in 1994.

scholarly journals The avant-garde in the architecture and visual arts of Post-Revolutionary Mexico

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando N. Winfield
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Architectural Design ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Modern Architecture ◽  
The Political ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Mexican Architecture ◽  
Direct Reflection

Commenting on an exhibition of contemporary Mexican architecture in Rome in 1957, the polemic and highly influential Italian architectural critic and historian, Bruno Zevi, ridiculed Mexican modernism for combining Pre-Columbian motifs with modern architecture. He referred to it as ‘Mexican Grotesque’. Inherent in Zevi’s comments were an attitude towards modern architecture that defined it in primarily material terms; its principle role being one of “spatial and programmatic function”. Despite the weight of this Modernist tendency in the architectural circles of Post-Revolutionary Mexico, we suggest in this paper that Mexican modernism cannot be reduced to such “material” definitions. In the highly charged political context of Mexico in the first half of the 20th Century, modern architecture was perhaps above all else, a tool for propaganda. In this political atmosphere it was undesirable, indeed it was seen as impossible, to separate art, architecture and politics in a way that would be a direct reflection of Modern architecture’s European manifestations. Form was to follow function, but that function was to be communicative as well as spatial and programmatic. One consequence of this “political communicative function” in Mexico was the combination of the “mural tradition” with contemporary architectural design; what Zevi defined as “Mexican Grotesque”. In this paper, we will examine the political context of Post-Revolutionary Mexico and discuss what may be defined as its most iconic building; the Central Library at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico . In direct counterpoint to Zevi, we will suggest that it was far from grotesque, but rather was one of the most committed political statements made by the Modern Movement throughout the Twentieth Century. It was propaganda, it was political. It was utopian.

Households and ‘Home Cultures’

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Buchli
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Gradual Change ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Human Condition

The domestic sphere or ‘home cultures’ as the term is used here is the location of many disciplinary investigations into the home. It is in the domestic sphere that one investigates the key elements of the human condition. This article's essence happens to be households and home cultures. It is where family, gender, and the nature of the individual are understood. It is also where the basic elements of cosmology and religious life and the elemental context for the understanding of political and economic life are lived and perceived. Here public and private realms are forged; nature/culture boundaries are created and negotiated. The home is typically how we know the world and know about people who inhabit the world. It is the key point of orientation for members of a given society as it is to its visitors and outsiders. A study of the gradual change in the domestic realm in the twentieth century concludes this article.

scholarly journals “No one may starve in the British Empire”: Kwashiorkor, Protein and the Politics of Nutrition Between Britain and Africa

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Nott
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
The Political ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Economic Underdevelopment ◽  
Natural Result ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
Political Value

Summary Throughout the twentieth century it was widely assumed that African diets were grossly deficient in protein, that childhood protein deficiency was a natural result of this generalised diet and that a relative lack of meat and milk went some way to explaining African economic underdevelopment. This article explores why these conclusions took hold; the European deification of animal protein in previous centuries; structural changes to African diets and food economies under colonial government; and the political value of such a consensus. Unlike elsewhere in the world, where deficiency was removed from the exceptionalism of tropical medicine, protein malnutrition was constructed as a particularly African concern. Focusing this discussion on the history of the severe childhood deficiency, kwashiorkor, this article explores how the politically informed othering of African nutrition came to direct, or misdirect, the medicine of malnutrition in twentieth-century Africa.

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