scholarly journals Exhibition Review of The Story of Light and Shadow: 20th Century Chinese Photography from Huang Jianpeng's Collection

Waxing Moon ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuyuan (Victoria) Liu
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Art Museum ◽  
Han Chinese ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Contextual Influence ◽  
Professional Responsibilities ◽  
Light And Shadow

The following article reviews a collection of photography on view at an exhibition named The Story of Light and Shadow: 20th Century Chinese Photography from Huang Jianpeng's Collection at the National Art Museum of China. Though an exhibition on Chinese photography, it included a sizable collection of Tibet-related photographs taken by early Han Chinese photographers during the early 20th century. Through a brief review of existing scholarship on photography of Tibet and a close reading of the works of Zhuang Xueben, one of the earliest Han Chinese photographers who took photos in Tibetan regions, we see how images produced during the early 20th century in Tibet are coded with layered agencies and complex motivations. Preliminarily contextualizing Zhuang Xueben’s photo-taking aspirations, I argue that early photographers of Tibet are embodiments of complex, overlapping and if not yet incongruous motivations – a complication of their own independent perspectives and professional responsibilities under the larger contextual influence from the society and its aspirations.

Casting Off Egyptian Ḥanafism: Sharīʿa, Divorce, and Legal Reform in 20th-Century Egypt

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-35
Author(s):  
Samy Ayoub
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Legal Reform ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Divorce Law ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Judicial Reasoning ◽  
The Government

AbstractThis article explores an important debate on divorce law in early 20th-century Egypt between the sharīʿa judge Aḥmad Muḥammad Shākir (d. 1958) and the adjunct to the last Shaykh al-Islām of the Ottoman Empire, Muḥammad Zāhid al-Kawtharī (d. 1952). The debate is centred on Shākir’s argument that triple divorce (three pronouncements of the divorce oath in one utterance, deemed irrevocable according to the Ḥanafī school) should be treated as a single revocable divorce, a position that the Ḥanafī school rejects. The Egyptian divorce law was changed on 10 March 1929 to embrace the revised position, supported by the government, that a triple divorce counts as a single divorce, thereby making it revocable. Shākir argued that the official adherence of the sharīʿa courts to the preponderant opinions (al-rājiḥ) of the Ḥanafī school was one of the key obstacles to meaningful legal reform in this case. Despite his declared following of the Ḥanafī school, Shākir dismissed Ḥanafī legal norms and authorities, and advocated an urgent break with the control of the Ḥanafī legal school on the process of judicial reasoning in the Egyptian sharīʿa courts. To further demonstrate this dynamic, I take up a close reading of a court decision on whether custody payments (ujrat al-ḥaḍāna) include housing support (sakan), or if the latter is a separate calculated expense. Shākir not only ruled in opposition to the Ḥanafī preponderant position but also rejected the late Ḥanafī authority Muḥammad Amīn ʿĀbidīn’s (Ibn ʿĀbidīn, d. 1836) effort to harmonize the school’s position on this matter. I propose that Shākir was an iconoclastic Ḥanafī.

scholarly journals New about the little-known and missing works of Oleksandr Murashko: the attribution of portraits of the German consul Erich Hering’s wife, artist A. Babenko, Tetiana Yashvil, Lidia Murashko, paintings "Evening"

2020 ◽  
pp. 69-81
Author(s):  
Daria Dobriian
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Art Museum ◽  
Field Of View ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Artistic Works

The author attempts to attribute the lesser-known artistic works by Oleksandr Murashko (1875–1919). Some of them were considered lost, e.g. the images of Tetiana Jashvil or Lidia Murashko. Others, including a portrait of the German consul Erich Hering’s wife, as well as a portrait of the artist A. Babenko (Murashko’s pupil) and the painting "Evening", can still appear in the field of view of researchers. The author describes primary sources that allowed her to carry out the attribution, and details that suggested the correct way for the scientific search. A number of iconic paintings by Oleksandr Murashko are known only from some black-and-white or colour reproductions. First and foremost, we are talking about such works of the artist as "Merry-go-round", "Sunday" (1909), "On terrace", "Over the old pond", which trails were lost in the early 20th century. The author already touched upon the question of these paintings’ fate (except for "Merry-go-round"). Nevertheless for a deeper understanding of the artist's work, it is necessary to explore the lesser-known, even lost pieces. The primary source for studying the heritage of the artist are listings of his works, that were compiled around 1919 by Marharyta Murashko. Despite the fact that they contain many inaccuracies and errors, the value of these listings cannot be overemphasized. Inter alia, there are works, which locations are unknown by far. But the idea of some of them can be formed from photos from the documentary and archival trust of the National Art Museum of Ukraine. Some researchers have managed to establish the names of many persons portrayed by Murashko, but there is a need to make further researches in this field. The attribution of each painting proves that even a limited amount of sources can give us an idea of the appearance of lost works, regardless the fact that not all of them were reproduced on the pages of printed publications or as photographs. At the same time, the assessment of various sources allows us to attribute the little-known portraits, because the names of many depicted persons remain unknown. But with each passing year it becomes more complex to set them.

scholarly journals ALEXANDER STREKAVIN’S (1889–1971) DRAWINGS OF MITAU – EVIDENCE FOR THE 19TH– EARLY 20TH-CENTURY INVENTIONS

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 653-679
Author(s):  
Silvija Ozola
Keyword(s):  
Research Methods ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Art History ◽  
Research Problem ◽  
Art Museum ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Research Goal ◽  
Technical Innovations ◽  
The 19Th Century

Mitau, the former capital of the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia, became the Courland Governorate centre with the Governor’s residence in a palace on an island formed by the Driksa, the branch of the Lielupe River, and great changes have taken place in this city. Artist Alexander Aleksandrovich Strekavin, who born in Mitau on 17 September 1889, studied art history, read books, investigated documents in the museum, listened to people’s stories and completed materials about events and the development of his native city. His drawings introduce with the new iron bridge for traffic and technical innovations – bicycles, the first car in the Baltics and the first phonograph in Mitau, clothes of citizens during the 19th century and at the beginning 20th century. Since the 1950s, six notebooks in Latvian with memoirs recalling by Aleksander Strekavin and an illustrative appendix – a collection of his drawings “The Atlas of Notes on Ancient Mitau” are in the funds of Jelgava History and Art Museum of Ģederts Eliass. Research object: drawings of artist Alexander Strekavin. Research goal: analysis of changes in Mitau during the 19th century and at the beginning 20th century. Research problem: Strekavin’s drawings stored in the funds of Jelgava History and Art Museum have not been studied. Research novelty: analysis of information on technical innovations included in “The Atlas of Notes on Ancient Mitau”. Research methods: studies of published literature, cartographic materials and archive documents.

CINEMATIC GOVERNMENTALITY: CINEMA AND EDUCATION IN MODERN IRAN, 1900S–1930S

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-269
Author(s):  
Golbarg Rekabtalaei
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
The State ◽  
The Self ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Global Trends ◽  
Civic Society ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
History Of ◽  
Newspaper Articles

AbstractMuch of the scholarship on the history of Iranian cinema considers film spectatorship in the first three decades of the 20th century as a leisure practice with origins in royalist and elitist entertainment forms. However, a close reading of archival material from this era reveals that cinema's significance extended well beyond its role as a pastime, as it became engaged in the governance of the self and disciplinary strategies of the state in Iran's experience of modernity in the early 20th century. In this article, I reperiodize the history of cinema in Iran by demonstrating the entanglement of cinema in popular nationalist discourses on education prior to cinema's institutionalization in the 1930s. Drawing on newspaper articles, film announcements, official documents, and poems, I show how, despite the absence of a centralized cinema institution in the 1910s and early 1920s, cosmopolitan citizens in dialogue with global trends promoted cinema as a means for the governance of selfhood and moral edification in the service of national progress. With the appropriation of cinema by the Pahlavi state in the 1930s, cinema was used as a technique of governmentality that aimed to conduct the conduct of individuals and shape an Iranian civic society.

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