Art and Leisure: Amateur Artists, Rembrandt, and Landscape Representation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Zell
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Leisure Activity ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Landscape Art ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
The Status

This chapter identifies a correspondence between Dutch amateur art and the place of landscape in Rembrandt’s artistic production, and in doing so illuminates the link between gift culture and the withholding of certain types of artworks from the domain of the marketplace. Dutch amateurs favored landscapes drawn from nature as a pastime, thus enacting interrelated ideals of art and leisure that also governed the status of landscape in contemporary art theory. This aestheticized social construct of sketching nature as a leisure activity also shaped the landscape art of prominent history painters, including Rembrandt, whose landscape drawings share close affinities with amateur landscapes. Rembrandt’s sketching excursions in Amsterdam’s suburban countryside, like those of Dutch amateurs, were not purely a commercial undertaking.

Contemporary Art and the Problem of Music: Towards a Musical Contemporary Art

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
G. DOUGLAS BARRETT
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
Conceptual Art ◽  
Social Process ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
Sound Art ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Absolute Music ◽  
Art Form

Abstract This article elaborates the art-theoretical concept of ‘the contemporary’ along with formal differences between contemporary music and contemporary art. Contemporary art emerges from the radical transformations of the historical avant-garde and neo-avant-garde that have led to post-conceptual art – a generic art beyond specific mediums that prioritizes discursive meaning and social process – while contemporary music struggles with its status as a non-conceptual art form that inherits its concept from aesthetic modernism and absolute music. The article also considers the category of sound art and discusses some of the ways it, too, is at odds with contemporary art's generic and post-conceptual condition. I argue that, despite their respective claims to contemporaneity, neither sound art nor contemporary music is contemporary in the historical sense of the term articulated in art theory. As an alternative to these categories, I propose ‘musical contemporary art’ to describe practices that depart in consequential ways from new/contemporary music and sound art.

Veronicas and Artists

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Religious Images ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way ◽  
Contemporary Artists

Chapter One deals with several central issues with regard to understanding the role of religious motifs in contemporary art. Besides being a repetition of imagery from the past, religious motifs embedded in contemporary artworks become a means to problematise not only the way different periods in the history of art are delimited, but larger and seemingly more rigid distinctions as those between art and non-art images. Early religious images differ significantly from art images. The two types are regulated according to different sets of rules related to the conditions of their production, display, appreciation and the way images are invested with the status of being true or authentic instances of art or sacred images. Chapter One provides a discussion of the important motif of the image not made by an artist’s hand, or acheiropoietos, and its survival and transformation, including its traces in contemporary image-making practices. All images are the result of human making; they are fictions. The way the conditions of these fictions are negotiated, or the way the role of the maker is brought to visibility, or concealed, is a defining feature of the specific regime of representation. While the cult image concealed its maker in order to maintain its public significance, and the later art image celebrated the artist as a re-inventor of the old image, contemporary artists cite religious images in order to reflect on the very procedures that produce the public significance and status of images.

scholarly journals Condition Verified: On Photography, Trans Visibility, and Legacies of the Clinic

Arts ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chase Joynt ◽  
Emmett Harsin Drager
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Diagnostic Tools ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Biometric Data ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Trans People ◽  
And Gender

We approach this paper with a shared investment in historical and contemporary representations of trans and gender non-conforming people, and our individual research in the archives of early US Gender Clinics. Together, we consider what is at stake—or what might be possible—when we connect legacies of photography used as diagnostic tools in gender clinics with snapshots of early, community-based gatherings, and the presence of trans people in contemporary art. From the archives of Robert J. Stoller and photos of Casa Susanna, to the collaborative photography of Zackary Drucker and Amos Mac, and the biometric data art-theory experiments of Zach Blas, we engage a series of image-based projects, which animate underlying questions and socio-political debates about the politics of visuality, and visibility’s impact on trans and gender non-conforming people. Moreover, we argue that rhetorical strategies of proof—from conditions verified in clinics to shared existence through photography—are tethered to, and thus trapped by, the logics and discipline of legibility and re-institutionalization.

Grotesque Possible Worlds

Tekstualia ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 325-339
Author(s):  
Bartłomiej Starnawski
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Thomas Mann ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Community Relations ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Grotesque

The author of the articles shows that the grotesque is one of the most interesting ways of diagnosing changes and crisis in the anthroposphere (as a continuation of thinking about the subject from the middle of the seventeenth century through to postmodernity). According to Thomas Mann, the grotesque is one the most active notions in contemporary art. Its productivity results from the subject’s tendency to self-fulfilment, self-cognition, and self-definition; it is an independent vision and position in the “me – the world”, “me – community” relations. The grotesque is a strongly philosophical proposition, which bases its discourse on a conscious protest against present values and on transgressing all limiting and oppressive conventions. Therefore, the grotesque enhances the status of the subject, but it neither defends nor affi rms the subject in a direct manner. Apart from the social dimension, the grotesque also has numerous metaphysical references, the expression of which can be found in Kierkegaardian understanding of the metaphysical crisis as despair. Facing piercing emptiness, the human being tries to find some support and resorts to anything only to make a leap into the future. Laughter is only a manifestation of horror vacui, a specific dialectic moment devoid of any prospect of purification or comfort. What dominates a grotesque work is its open structure. The motifs which shape the spatiotemporal order do not always form a cause-and-effect system. Deliberately incoherent themes (logical coherence is not an aim) seem to be rather “deconstructors”, not constructors of the plot; they are intermittent, provoke the impression of a secret, a gleam, the absurd.

scholarly journals Libros de artista en la colección de la Universitat Politècnica de València / Art books in the collection of the Universitat Politècnica de València

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Alcaraz Mira
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
State University ◽  
Important Work ◽  
Exhibition Hall ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
Arte Contemporáneo

Los principales museos y centros de arte contemporáneo han completado sus colecciones de arte con documentación y publicaciones de artista, no sólo debido a la relevancia que este material posee de cara a ofrecer una lectura completa del arte contemporáneo, sino también porque se trata de obras muy importantes en el conjunto de la producción artística de autores internacionalmente reconocidos, como Ruscha, Dieter Roth, Boltanski, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Joan Brossa, Antoni Muntadas, Isidoro Valcárcel Medina o Francesc Torres.El Ensayo pretende ofrecer información sobre los contenidos de la colección singular, incluida en el Fondo de Arte de una Universidad pública, utilizando como referencias las diferentes secciones de la exposición que se realizó en 2016 en la sala de exposiciones del edificio de Rectorado UPV, bajo el título Salt de PàginaArt books in the collection of the Universitat Politècnica de València. The main museums and contemporary art centers have completed their collections of art with documentation and artist publications, not only because of the relevance that this material possesses in order to offer a complete reading of contemporary art, but also because we are talking about very Important work in the artistic production of internationally recognized authors, such as Ruscha, Dieter Roth, Boltanski, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Joan Brossa, Antoni Muntadas, Isidoro Valcárcel Medina and Francesc Torres.The Essay aims to provide information on the contents of the singular collection, included in the Art Fund of a state University, using as reference the different sections of the exhibition that was held in 2016 in the exhibition hall of the Rectorado UPV building, under The title Salt de Pàgina.

Sculpting Image and Sound

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cornelia Lund
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
Sound Art ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
Visual Elements ◽  
Visual Music ◽  
Use Of Technology ◽  
The Status ◽  
Media Formats

Digital technology increasingly has offered new possibilities of combining audio and visual elements, be it in live performances, installations, or videos. The Canadian artist and musician Herman Kolgen plays the different genres like a virtuoso, exploring overarching themes in audiovisual performances as well as audiovisual installations. This chapter offers a case study that takes Kolgen’s work as an example of artistic production that pushes its investigation of audiovisual combinations in different directions by its flexible use of analog and digital media formats. The chapter first discusses the status of Kolgen’s work in terms of categories of audiovisual production such asvisual music, live cinema, andsound art. It then focuses on an analysis of his work under three aspects: exploration of media formats, use of technology, and relation to performance and performativity. At the same time, the chapter situates Kolgen’s work in the wider context of audiovisual art.

Artistic Creativity and Human Evolution – Art Theory and the Work of André Leroi-Gourhan

2013 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-121
Author(s):  
Konstantinos Vassiliou
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Art History ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Artistic Creativity ◽  
The Third ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Fourth Part ◽  
Artistic Theory ◽  
Analytical Tools

Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht das Werk André Leroi-Gourhans und insbesondere seine zweibändige Monographie Le geste et la parole auf ihre kunsttheoretische Relevanz; so werden zentrale Debatten über künstlerische Kreativität behandelt und untersucht, inwiefern Leroi-Gourhan zu ihnen beitragen kann. Nach einer einführenden Darstellung einiger allgemeiner Prämissen von Leroi-Gourhan (I) wird in einem zweiten Teil (II) gezeigt, dass seine Theorie der »Rhythmen« wertvolle Einsichten in die Debatte um »Kunstwollen« und Materialismus bereithält. Der dritte Abschnitt (III) diskutiert Leroi-Gourhans Werk im Kontext der Debatte um Industrialisierung und audiovisuelle Kultur in ihrem Gegensatz zu handwerklicher Kreativität. Schließlich (IV) werden Leroi-Gourhans Schlussfolgerungen bezüglich Wahrnehung und Digitalität mit einigen Aspekten zeitgenössischer Kunsttheorie verbunden. Im Ganzen soll gezeigt werden, dass Leroi-Gourhans Werk ein flexibles analytisches Instrumentarium bereithält, um menschliche Evolution und Kunstgeschichte zusammenzudenken und Kreativität im Kontext der allgemeinen kulturellen und technologischen Verschiebungen nach der Moderne zu untersuchen.<br><br>This article relates the work of André Leroi-Gourhan and mostly his two-volume ok Le geste et la parole to art theory. More specifically, it is concerned with central debates on artistic creativity and examines how Leroi-Gourhan can contribute to them. After presenting some general premises of Leroi-Gourhan’s work (I), its second part (II) argues that his theory on ›rhythms‹ supplies valuable insights to the debate of Kunstwollen and materialism. The third part (III) discusses his work within the debate of industrialization and audiovisual culture as opposed to manual and artisanal creativity. The fourth part (IV) links Leroi-Gourhan’s conclusions on perception and digitality with some aspects of contemporary art theory. On the whole, this article argues that Leroi-Gourhans’s work provides flexible analytical tools in order to think art history and human evolution in conjunction, as well as a specifi c framework for examining creativity within the general cultural and technological shifts after the modern age. The conclusions of this essay shed some light on Leroi-Gourhan’s theories on art and offer some methodological perspectives to contemporary artistic theory.

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