scholarly journals Mundane beauty in art and architecture

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 196-201
Author(s):  
Angela Juarranz

In the twentieth century a specific kind of beauty emerged from art: the increased value of the mundane. Contemporary art shows that common situations have an aesthetic significance. But architecture does not pay any attention to this scope. What is more, it tries to deny it. Nor the design process nor the architectural photography show the presence of mundane things. Fortunately, we have some works to go in depth into this day-to-day issue. Let’s analyze the photograph Morning Cleaning, Mies van der Rohe Foundation, Barcelona, (Jeff Wall, 1999), the intervention Phantom, Mies as Rendered Society (Andrés Jaque, 2012) and the film Koolhaas Houselife (Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine, 2008). By considering the visual and spatial value of these cases, we reconsider them as an experimental space. What if architecture starts looking at its surroundings?

Author(s):  
Hakan Saglam

The concept of ‘Art’ in the modern meaning, evaluates within the Enlightenment’s seminal World of philosophy. Before the Enlightenment architecture and craft were instinctively united fields of creating, almost impossible to detach one from the other. From the beginning of twentieth century the avant-garde of modern architecture were aware of the growing schism between art and architecture and vice versa. The pioneers were writing manifestos, stating that art and architecture should form a new unity, a holistic entity, which would include all types of creativity and put an end to the severance between “arts and crafts”, “art and architecture”.  Approaching the end, of the first decade of the twenty first century, as communicative interests in all fields are becoming very important, we should once more discuss the relation/ interaction / cross over of art and architecture; where the boundaries of the two fields become blurred since both sides, art and architecture, are intervening the gap between. The aim of this paper is to discuss the examples of both contemporary art and architecture, which challenge this “in between gap.” Key words: Architecture, art, interaction, in between.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Parola

This essay derives from the primary need to make order between direct and indirect sources available for the reconstruction of the history of video art in Italy in the seventies. In fact, during the researches for the Ph.D. thesis it became clear that in most cases it is difficult to define, in terms of facts, which of the different historiographies should be taken into consideration to deepen the study of video art in Italy. Beyond legitimate differences of perspectives and methods, historiographical narratives all share similar issues and narrative structure. The first intention of the essay is, therefore, to compare the different historiographic narratives on Italian video art of the seventies, verifying their genealogy, the sources used and the accuracy of the narrated facts. For the selection of the corpus, it was decided to analyze in particular monographic volumes dealing with the history of the origins of video art in Italy. The aim was, in fact, to get a wide range of types of "narrations", as in the case of contemporary art and architecture magazines, which are examined in the second part of the essay. After the selection, for an analytical and comparative study of the various historiography, the essay focuses only on the Terza Biennale Internazionale della Giovane Pittura. Gennaio ’70. Comportamenti, oggetti e mediazioni (Third International Biennial of Young Painting. January '70. Behaviors, Objects and Mediations, 1970, Bologna), the exhibition which - after Lucio Fontana's pioneering experiments - is said to be the first sign of the arrival of videotape in Italy (called at the time videorecording), curated by Renato Barilli, Tommaso Trini, Andrea Emiliani and Maurizio Calvesi. The narration given so far of this exhibition appeared more mythological than historical and could be compared structurally to that of the many numerous beginnings that historiographyies on international video art identify as ‘first’ and ‘generative’. In the first part of the essay the 'facts' related to Gennaio ’70, as narrated by historiography on video art, are compared. In the second part the survey is carried out through some of the direct sources identified during the research, with the aim of answering to questions raised by the comparison between historiographies. Concluding, it is important to underline that the tapes containing the videos transmitted have not been found and seem to have disappeared since the ending of the exhibition. Nevertheless, the deepening of the works and documentation transmitted during the exhibition is possible thanks to other types of sources which give us many valuable information regarding video techniques and practices at the beginning of 1970 in Italy.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rumen Zhekov ◽  

The article aims to identify and analyze the prerequisites and causes of the emergence of art informel in European painting and to define its first official manifestations of the art scene and it the unusual development of the late 1940s to the 1980s. Are considerate and the socio-political situations and changes after the end of World War II and their reflections on European painting in the second half of the twentieth century. The author brings a parallel with processes running during this period of time in American painting and correspondence with the European one. The main groups and representatives of this movement, manifesto, concepts and ideologies are included. Significant forums were also mentioned, presenting their works, promoted and promoted in contemporary art.


2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 251-260
Author(s):  
Ransoo Kim

In a unique architectural style of the twentieth century, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969) realised a new type of modern space defined by an unobstructed clear volume enclosed by framed glass skin. This is generally referred to as Mies's universal space and this paper will attempt to interpret Miesian universal space in terms of the idea of tectonically defining space. Mies referred to the term ‘tectonic’, or ‘architectonic’, as constructive appearance exposing the skeleton structure. For Mies, the concept of tectonic was connected to a glassy materiality that permitted the unambiguously constructed appearance of a skeletal structure. He regarded the glass skin as a ‘tectonic means’ and the instrument of a new art of building.


2002 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 917-936 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT ALDRICH

This review looks at English- and French-language books on nineteenth- and twentieth-century French colonial history published since 1995. It considers issues of ideology, imperial governance, the mise en valeur (development and ‘improvement’) of colonies (for instance, in health and education policy), the representation of empire in art and architecture, and decolonization. Special attention is paid to Indochina. Recent works have stressed the evolving nature of colonial policy and its adaptability to local circumstances. The review notes a certain divide between works emphasizing the discursive aspect of empire, and more ‘materialist’ treatments, but remarks on a general renewal of interest in colonial history. Contemporary scholars have also given colonial history a more prominent position in French national history than it previously held.


2003 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-186
Author(s):  
Richard Weston

It has taken a long time to be able to assess Jørn Utzon's importance. Until the end of the twentieth century, the architect described by Sigfried Giedion as the most important of the ‘third generation’ hardly appeared in its literature. By contrast we had no such problem with Le Corbusier: there were the Oeuvres Complètes. It was easy to consult any building, indeed sketch, and along the way to be thoroughly coerced into his theoretical position. His massive and megalomaniac contribution to the last century could be studied first through L'Esprit Nouveau, the avant-garde magazine which promulgated him – ‘17.23, 2me février, 1926, Grande Pensée de L-C …’ and so forth – and later through the archives and sketchbooks. Wright suffered from too many publications. After the Wasmuth Portfolio of 1910 there was no single, accessible reference to his huge output: his theory tended to the verbose, and he was devious in concealing his own sources, most especially his debt to Japan. Mies van der Rohe wrote little and was famously gnomic; his buildings supplied his ‘text’. The so-called second generation, Aalto and Kahn, were well served in terms of publication of their work. The former's theoretical position took much posthumous teasing-out by critics to become widely understood. He could overcome people's ignorance of Finnish – for example, by his 1961 definition ‘acoustic separation is kilograms’ and by his stupefied reaction to the question of what module he used: ‘a millimetre, more or less!’ – but he wrote little.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Stawowy

The subject of illness and disability has been explored by artists for a long time. Depending on the era, it was presented in different ways. Twentieth-century social movements, interested in emancipating otherness, shed new light on the perception of the human body and its causative capabilities. Currently, the artist is more a commentator of reality than its passive observer and disability is one of the most important subjects of art. The exclusion, which used to involve disabled people, seems to be passing nowadays, however the problem of ableism still exists. Contemporary artists refer to it in their works trying to face harmful stereotypes. The purpose of this article is to look at disability through the eyes of artists, to find its representations in works of art and to trace how the perception of the disabled body has changed, based on the aesthetics and canon of a given age – from the perfect body of antique to the social involvement of contemporary art.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document