On the “Odoresque” and “Aero-Perfumes”: Smell Related Neologisms in Avant-garde and Contemporary Art and Scholarship

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2021-2) ◽  
pp. 120-133
Author(s):  
Caro Verbeek

For her doctoral dissertation “In Search of Lost Scents,” art and scent historian Caro Verbeek (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Kunstmuseum, The Hague) collected olfactory neologisms or newly invented smell related words from (art) historical sources ranging from 1855 to 1975, which she categorised according to the themes poetry, mind, concepts, material and synaesthesia. Three never-before-published artistic illustrations by the author help establish a more embodied cognition of the meaning of some of these concepts, as including “smell images” is impossible. In addition, she has created a “synaesthetic odour wheel” based on literary sources (2021).

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
G. DOUGLAS BARRETT

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.


ARTMargins ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 42-71
Author(s):  
Hiroko Ikegami

This essay makes the first sustained study of the Okinawan artist Makishi Tsutomu (1941–2015) who used American Pop Art vocabularies to describe the complex realities of US-occupied Okinawa. Focusing on his 1972 installation Commemorating the Reversion to the Great Empire of Japan, the essay examines the critical ambivalence of Makishi's Political Pop as a translation strategy. Despite his critique of both American and Japanese imperialism, Makishi was aware that Okinawa was inseparably entangled in it, especially in the context of the Vietnam War, which brought violence, but also economic benefits, to Okinawa. Despite his use of the American Pop idiom as a new lingua franca for contemporary art, Makishi's work did not reach either mainland or international audiences as the artist exhibited almost exclusively in Okinawa. By comparing Makishi's artistic strategies with those of a representative Okinawan novelist, Ōshiro Tatsuhiro, especially as articulated in his 1967 novella The Cocktail Party, the essay situates the significance of Makishi's project within the emerging discourse on the global neo-avant-garde.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (15) ◽  
pp. 67-107
Author(s):  
Ines R. Artola

The aim of the present article is the analysis of Concerto for harpsichord and five instruments by Manuel de Falla – a piece which was dedicated by the composer to Wanda Landowska, an outstanding Polish harpsichord player. The piece was meant to commemorate the friendship these two artists shared as well as their collaboration. Written in the period of 1923-1926, the Concerto was the first composition in the history of 20th century music where harpsichord was the soloist instrument. The first element of the article is the context in which the piece was written. We shall look into the musical influences that shaped its form. On the one hand, it was the music of the past: from Cancionero Felipe Pedrell through mainly Bach’s polyphony to works by Scarlatti which preceded the Classicism (this influence is particularly noticeable in the third movement of the Concerto). On the other hand, it was music from the time of de Falla: first of all – Neo-Classicism and works by Stravinsky. The author refers to historical sources – critics’ reviews, testimonies of de Falla’s contemporaries and, obviously, his own remarks as to the interpretation of the piece. Next, Inés R. Artola analyses the score in the strict sense of the word “analysis”. In this part of the article, she quotes specific fragments of the composition, which reflect both traditional musical means (counterpoint, canon, Scarlatti-style sonata form, influence of old popular music) and the avant-garde ones (polytonality, orchestration, elements of neo-classical harmony).


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 120-129
Author(s):  
Naka K. Nikšić ◽  

The difficult position of Bosniaks Sandžak at the beginning of the 20th century has caused the uprising of individuals from the authorities and their association with comites (rebels). According to historical sources, the most famous Sandzak rebel was Jusuf Mehonjić, a native of Šahović (village Grančarevo), which Zaimović, in one of his work, called the Bosniak's Wilhelm Tell. He is mentioned in numerous epic poems called the so-called rebel opus that we find in the collections of oral literature of Bosniaks Sandžak, and from them the knowledge of his intellectual and physical potential, as well as the character of the protector of the disadvantaged and endangered Bosniaks. However, when it comes to ethnomusicological collections, we find that there is not a single song about this historical personality in them. The aim of this work is to preserve the musical tradition of Sandzak Bosniaks by finding and ethnomusicologic recording of lyrical poems about Jusuf Mehonjic, as well as pointing to the possibility of their nurturing through the education system in teaching in the Bosnian language in Serbia. The work and the work of Jusuf Mehonjić were examined in the paper by theoretical analysis of historical and literary sources. At the same time, the Finnish method recorded the only lyrical song about him, which we found by exploring the live musical tradition of the Sandzak Bosniaks. This is the song of Moj sokole pogledaj niz polje. This work should contribute to preserving the musical tradition of the Sandzak Bosniaks and getting to know Jusuf Mehonjic - a significant figure in the history of Sandzak.


Author(s):  
Elena Y. Baboshko ◽  
◽  
Dmitriy V. Galkin ◽  

The authors refer the issue of definition of contemporaneity as cultural and historical totality basing on the research results of a well-known theorist Boris Groys. Analyzing the progress of his ideas, the authors conclude, that the philosopher’s considerable contribution to the science is composed of the next phase of the development of the thesis about the art language as the base of contemporaneity construction and of the “natural selection” of contemporary art structures. The latter is not simply reduced to the postmodern “polylogue” variant, but implies a kind of contemporaneity patterns niche and “stabilization”. The patterns naturally tend to become complementary due to simple juxtaposition/ overlay in general time context. According to the authors, this circumstance does not prevent them from being turned by different political forces into locally dominating contemporaneity patterns (as in the case of Gesamkunstwerk Stalin). Contemporary art provides simple experience, that helps to retain the illusion of single and seemingly total contemporaneity. B. Groys leads us to the thought that art provides conditions for generating a significant reflective distance in relation to different social and historical situations. The distance gives an artist the opportunity to consider the reality comprehensively, given the autonomy, through the art language. However, we believe, that the most important philosopher’s achievement is not only drawing parallels between cultural and social and historical processes, based on the concept of art strategies influencing the social dynamics. He also managed to approach one of the most significant issues in culture theory and history – the opportunity to define contemporaneity as cultural and historical totality. According to his modernity theory, the origin of contemporaneity is hidden in the avant-garde art manifestation. He interprets the utopic by its nature modernist discourse, applied in art practice, through Nietzscheian will to power as redefining the new age philosophy. This article aims to analyze the progress of the issue of contemporaneity in the works of B. Groys and to explicate the complexity of considering contemporaneity as cultural and historical totality. The authors believe that the thorough study of the phenomenon of total artwork (Gesamtkunstwerk) as a soviet Stalin project and critics’ opinion analysis helps to create arguments limiting the opportunity of considering contemporaneity as totality.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Rachel Zuckert

Abstract This article reconstructs Jean-François Lyotard’s theory of the sublime in contemporary art, focusing on his claim that such art ‘presents’ the unpresentable, and tracing its origins in Kant’s account of the sublime. I propose that Lyotard identifies a difficulty concerning Kant’s account: to understand why the disparate elements in the experience of the sublime (idea of reason, sensible representation) should be synthesized to form that experience. Lyotard recasts this difficulty as a pragmatic problem for artistic practice – how to ‘testify’ to the absolute in a non-absolute, sensibly perceivable object (the artwork) – that can be understood to drive avant-garde artistic experimentation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 175-184
Author(s):  
Carmen Belean

"Reflections on the concept of objective art in the context of contemporary art. Objective art communicates about the human being and his/her place in the universe, about the cosmic laws and the role they play in human life and provide clues as to how man can relate to them. From literary sources attesting to the idea that art in its origin had the role of transmitting knowledge to future generations, we deduce that in ancient times all art forms could be read like a book, and those who knew how to read, fully understood the meaning of the knowledge that was incorporated in these art forms. Nevertheless, there are two forms of art, one very different from the other: objective art and subjective art. Everything that we call art today is subjective art. Objective art is the authentic work resulted from the deliberate, premeditated efforts of a conscious artist. In the act of his creation, the artist avoids or eliminates any subjective or arbitrary element and the impression that such a work evokes in others is always defined. Keywords: objective art, the art of antiquity, contemporary art "


Author(s):  
Richard Haese

The group of avant-garde Australian artists and their supporters, now identified as the Heide Circle, evolved over three decades, from the pioneering modernism of the early 1930s through the post-war era of the mid-1960s. These Melbourne-based artists constituted the essential core of radical Australian modernism; the early phase including, most notably, Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Arthur Boyd, John Perceval, and the Russian-born émigré Danila Vassilieff. The work of these pioneering artists demonstrated a highly original antipodean response to European expressionist, cubist, and surrealist movements, together with a new fascination with untutored and naïve art. The group shared personal and institutional support from the art collectors and patrons John and Sunday Reed, whose semi-rural home called ‘‘Heide‘‘ on the outskirts of Melbourne became the focus of the movement. In 1938, the Reeds spearheaded the establishment of the Contemporary Art Society (CAS) in order to promote the modernist movement in Australian art. Along with the young poet Max Harris, the Reeds also began publishing the key cultural journal Angry Penguins, which was dedicated to championing radical art and literature. These initiatives eventually collapsed in 1947. However, the revival of the CAS in 1953 initiated a second phase of the Heide circle, together with a new generation of artists.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document