Artists’ Front of Thailand, The

Author(s):  
Thanom Chapakdee

The Artists’ Front of Thailand (AFT) formed in 1974, immediately following the violent political events of October 1973. The group came together for the purpose of mapping contemporary art and its manifestations, and to shed light on the cultural value of the term ‘Art for Life, Art for People’ (Silapa phua Chiwit, Silapa phua Prachachon). In the 1970s, many cultural and artists groups rose up to take part in the democratic sphere, and this quickly evolved into a form of Socialist Realism which was integrated with Marxist and Maoist ideology. At that time, the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) movement was expanding in both urban and rural areas in Thailand. Faced with new freedoms and sharing a hunger for change, the Artists’ Front of Thailand successfully created art to fit this purpose, dealing with subjects such as poverty, nationalism, racism, anti-capitalism, and imperialism, while exhibiting a cynical attitude towards modernity. This was balanced by the figurative nature of their works, a style long ignored during the heyday of abstract art. While the Artists’ Front of Thailand movement lasted only two years, it left a significant legacy of ‘Art for Life’ and its aesthetics.

Author(s):  
Toms Skadins

Over the course of several previous decades the post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe have experienced notable population disposition and composition changes in the vicinity of large cities. Despite this, age composition related studies have rarely paid attention to changes within these city regions. Thus, the aim of this paper is to shed light on age composition changes of Riga agglomeration ring. For this study official statistical data, along with population ageing index is utilized. Changes are studied for the entire ring and its structures of urban and rural areas for the years 2000, 2011 and 2020. Results indicated that, despite a decrease, the 25-44 year old age group remained the most populous. 15-24 year old group had the largest decrease. Pre-working age and the two oldest groups were the ones which had tended to increase the most in comparison to situation in 2000. However, ring and urban areas first saw a decrease of pre-working age population leading up to 2011, followed by a more notable growth. Population ageing index values showed that for all territory types population ageing had slowed after 2011. Also, urban areas of Riga agglomeration have been ageing more rapidly than rural ones. This study was supported by National Research Program Project grant number VPP-IZM-2018/1-0015. 


2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 382-395
Author(s):  
Colette Leinman

In 1955 a polychrome and affordable collection of writers' biographies was created, allowing a large and young audience to easily access contemporary art, especially abstract art. This is hardly a given in the context of post-war, where the return to classical French aesthetics clashes with Socialist Realism. This study of ‘The Pocket Museum’ (1955–1965), shows how the collection fits into art writing, between art criticism and poetic writing, and how it enables the reader to discover abstract works. An ideal place for mediation and transmission, the collection, as an editorial strategy, helps to transform these new aesthetic creations into a national cultural heritage. Through a discursive analysis of ten books from the collection, three processes that have contributed to the promotion of abstract art are highlighted: the legitimacy of the author's discourse, whether he is an art critic, a poet, writer or journalist; the representation of the artist in question, whose difficult path is both stereotyped and singular, but always valorized; and finally, a series of analogies between abstract art and nature or comparisons with music, or else metaphorical expressions manifesting the ‘collapse of time’ where the universality of abstract art is part of the past, the present and the future.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 1293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yahya Sheikhnejad ◽  
Tan Yigitcanlar

Urban and rural areas are the cradles of human development and civilization as all practical progress and feasible products have emerged from these places. Having a clear understanding of the sustainability of these areas, especially the progress of research in this field, is highly important. This study undertakes a comprehensive scientometric analysis to visualize and quantitatively measure the outcome of the scientific enterprise to construct sustainable urban and rural areas. The scientific productivity of recorded publications, their impacts, and their importance were systematically measured in diverse aspects by virtue of ten distinctive techniques. A critical assessment of the respected criteria for sustainable urban and rural areas is presented in order to further clarify its boundaries with other related topics, as well as providing a clear benchmark for future studies. After screening the search results between 1900 and 2018 on the Web of Science database, 7397 publications explicitly related to sustainable urban and rural areas were extracted and analyzed by the CiteSpace software via the relevant bibliometric indicators. The results of this study shed light on the trends and patterns, consisting of kernel research areas, countries, journals, institutions, and how these entities have been concatenated, inside the bibliographic records around sustainable urban and rural areas. The findings facilitate in identifying the barriers and weakness in the current sustainable urban and rural areas research, and consequently help in identifying auspicious directions for prospective investigations.


2007 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. SEITZ

Modernization of agriculture, economic development and population increase after the end of the Thirty Years' War caused authorities in many parts of Germany to decree the eradication of so-called pest animals, including the House Sparrow. Farmers were given targets, and had to deliver the heads of sparrows in proportion to the size of their farms or pay fines. At the end of the eighteenth century German ornithologists argued against the eradication of the sparrows. During the mid-nineteenth century, C. L. Gloger, the pioneer of bird protection in Germany, emphasized the value of the House Sparrow in controlling insect plagues. Many decrees were abolished because either they had not been obeyed, or had resulted in people protecting sparrows so that they always had enough for their “deliveries”. Surprisingly, various ornithologists, including Ernst Hartert and the most famous German bird conservationist Freiherr Berlepsch, joined in the war against sparrows at the beginning of the twentieth century, because sparrows were regarded as competitors of more useful bird species. After the Second World War, sparrows were poisoned in large numbers. Persecution of sparrows ended in Germany in the 1970s. The long period of persecution had a significant but not long-lasting impact on House Sparrow populations, and therefore cannot be regarded as a factor in the recent decline of this species in urban and rural areas of western and central Europe.


JMS SKIMS ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 90-95
Author(s):  
Noorul Amin

Background: The present age is the age of stress. Everybody is disturbed due to one or the other reason irrespective of their age. However, adolescents are more prone to psychological and sociological disturbances.Objectives:To assess the psychosocial problems in adolescents.Methods: The study was conducted in selected schools of urban and rural areas taking 100 participants each for boys and girls using convenient sampling method. The tool used was youth self report. The data collected was analyzed using appropriate statistical methods.Results: The study revealed that 48.5% adolescents were well adjusted; 47% were having mild psychosocial problems; 4% had moderate psychosocial problems and 0.5% had severe psychosocial problems.Conclusion: Adolescents irrespective of their living places had varying degrees of psychosocial problems. JMS 2017; 20 (2):90-95


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