Between Critical Displacements and Spiritual Affirmations

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Mystical Experience ◽  
Critical Comment ◽  
Critical Mode ◽  
Religious Images ◽  
Art Objects ◽  
The Status ◽  
Religious Nature

This chapter provides an overview of the transformation of the status of religious motifs in the visual art from Surrealism to the late 1990s. When detached from their initial contexts religious motifs cease to signify religious ideas or content, and acquire new meaning. The critical mode of reference to religion, especially in the second half of the twentieth century, articulates a self-reflexive moment that problematises the status of images and the mechanisms of their circulation and display. In the second half of the century, religious motifs embedded in artworks lost their more direct iconoclastic resonances, and were used increasingly as a critical tool directed towards the institution of art itself. An object as the ready-made situated between being an artwork and an object, brought to visibility the “religious” nature of the conditions of the display of art-objects. The medium of video enabled a re-mediation of older art – both film and culturally loaded iconic religious images. This aspect of the medium was by artists to invoke or create a quasi-mystical experience, or to re-frame existing images and film footage in order to make a critical comment on the tradition.

Neo-Primitivism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Parton
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Target Groups ◽  
Russian Art ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Peter The Great ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Status

Neo-Primitivism is a style-label employed by the Muscovite avant-garde in the early twentieth century to describe forms of visual art and poetry that were tendentiously crude in style and socially and politically contentious in terms of subject matter. In the field of painting, the style was chiefly developed by Mikhail Larionov (1881–1964) and Natalia Goncharova (1881–1962) as well as by members of the Donkey’s Tail and Target groups, of which they were the respective leaders. In poetry, Neo-Primitivism was most consistently explored by Velimir Khlebnikov (1885–1922) and Alexei Kruchenykh (1886–1968), with whom the painters frequently collaborated. Neo-Primitivism was not only oppositional to the polite and refined culture of the status-quo, but it was also intensely nationalistic, seeing itself as the inheritor of indigenous artistic practices that had been erased under the Westernizing reforms of Peter the Great. Whilst initially inspired by Western avant-garde Modernism, the neo-primitives quickly disassociated themselves from Western practices to find inspiration in the soil of Russia. Their aim was to reinvigorate Russian art by reference to the expressive qualities of icon painitng, the lubok (Russian woodcut print), peasant embroidery, the painted tray and signboard, and the ancient Russian fertility statues found in the steppe landscape.

Shattering the Status Quo: Reading Modernism in the Early Twentieth Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-52
Author(s):  
Arthur M. Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Literary Modernism ◽  
Modernist Literature ◽  
Art Objects ◽  
Social Ideology ◽  
Tanizaki Jun'ichiro ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Way

This introductory chapter provides an overview of how literary modernism operated in Japan, looking at the works of Tanizaki Jun'ichirō, Yokomitsu Riichi, Kawabata Yasunari, and Hirabayashi Taiko. Contrary to prevalent conceptions of high modernism as art-objects sequestered from the utilitarian language of capitalist society, modernist literature was highly enmeshed in the language of the mass print media, one of the major sources of social ideology since the beginning of the twentieth century. The works of the four Japanese authors disrupt the ideologies that made daily living appear seamless and comfortable. They did so to expose the way such norms were bolstered by narrow, constrictive, and essentialist notions of gender, ethnicity, society, and nation; to reveal the way such norms were employed to discipline the minds and behaviors of Japanese citizens; and finally to provoke cognitive and sensational liberation from the supremacy of these norms. The chapter then considers the emergence and establishment of the I-novel genre in Japanese literary history, as well as the phenomenon of modanizumu.

A New Denominational Historiography?

1995 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-263
Author(s):  
John F. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Recent Analysis ◽  
General Factor ◽  
Religious Organization ◽  
Religious Institution ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Status ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
American Society ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Over the last decade, a noteworthy number of published studies have, in one fashion or another, been defined with reference to religious denominations. This is an arresting fact, for, coincidentally, the status of religious denominations in the society has been called into question. Some formerly powerful bodies have lost membership (at least relatively speaking) and now experience reduced influence, while newer forms of religious organization(s)—e.g., parachurch groups and loosely structured movements—have flourished. The most compelling recent analysis of religion in modern American society gives relatively little attention to them. Why, then, have publications in large numbers appeared, in scale almost seeming to be correlated inversely to this trend?No single answer to this question is adequate. Surely one general factor is that historians often “work out of phase” with contemporary social change. If denominations have been displaced as a form of religious institution in society in the late twentieth century, then their prominence in earlier eras is all the more intriguing.

Poetic Trespass

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lital Levy
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Prose Poetry ◽  
Old World ◽  
History And Literature ◽  
Political Boundaries ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
Emile Habiby ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

A Palestinian-Israeli poet declares a new state whose language, “Homelandic,” is a combination of Arabic and Hebrew. A Jewish-Israeli author imagines a “language plague” that infects young Hebrew speakers with old world accents, and sends the narrator in search of his Arabic heritage. This book brings together such startling visions to offer the first in-depth study of the relationship between Hebrew and Arabic in the literature and culture of Israel/Palestine. More than that, the book presents a captivating portrait of the literary imagination's power to transgress political boundaries and transform ideas about language and belonging. Blending history and literature, the book traces the interwoven life of Arabic and Hebrew in Israel/Palestine from the turn of the twentieth century to the present, exposing the two languages' intimate entanglements in contemporary works of prose, poetry, film, and visual art by both Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel. In a context where intense political and social pressures work to identify Jews with Hebrew and Palestinians with Arabic, the book finds writers who have boldly crossed over this divide to create literature in the language of their “other,” as well as writers who bring the two languages into dialogue to rewrite them from within. Exploring such acts of poetic trespass, the book introduces new readings of canonical and lesser-known authors, including Emile Habiby, Hayyim Nahman Bialik, Anton Shammas, Saul Tchernichowsky, Samir Naqqash, Ronit Matalon, Salman Masalha, A. B. Yehoshua, and Almog Behar. By revealing uncommon visions of what it means to write in Arabic and Hebrew, the book will change the way we understand literature and culture in the shadow of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Punarvivaham vs. Pativratyam: Pulugurta Lakshmi Narasamamba and the Widow Remarriage Question in Colonial Andhra

2021 ◽  
pp. 025764302110017
Author(s):  
Shaik Mahaboob Basha
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Child Marriage ◽  
Important Place ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Women's Journals

The question of widow remarriage, which occupied an important place in the social reform movement, was hotly debated in colonial Andhra. Women joined the debate in the early twentieth century. There was a conservative section of women, which bitterly opposed the widow remarriage movement and attacked the social reformers, both women and men. Pulugruta Lakshmi Narasamamba led this group of women. Lakshmi Narasamamba treated widow remarriage (punarvivaham) with contempt and termed it as an affront to the fidelity (pativratyam) of Hindu women. According to her, widow remarriage was equal to ‘prostitution’, and the widows who married again could not be granted the status of kulanganas (respectable or chaste women). Lakshmi Narasamamba’s stand on the question of widow remarriage led to the emergence of a fiery and protracted controversy among women which eventually led to the division of the most famous women’s organization, the Shri Vidyarthini Samajamu. She opposed not only widow remarriage but also post-puberty marriage and campaigned in favour of child marriage. This article describes the whole debate on the widow remarriage question that took place among women. It is based on the primary sources, especially the woefully neglected women’s journals in the Telugu language.

scholarly journals The Discarded Image and the Debunked Tao: Objective Value in C.S. Lewis’ Medieval Model and His Critique of Modernity †

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 597
Author(s):  
Yuxiao Su
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Moral Relativism ◽  
First Century ◽  
Parallel Study ◽  
The Status ◽  
Implicit Belief ◽  
Objective Value ◽  
Medieval Model ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Spiritual Resource

This paper considers C.S. Lewis’ “doctrine of objective value” in two of his major works, The Abolition of Man and The Discarded Image. Lewis uses the Chinese name Tao, albeit with an incomplete understanding of its origins, for the objective worldview. The paper argues that Tao, as an explicit theme of The Abolition of Man, is also a determining undercurrent in The Discarded Image. In the former work, Tao is what Lewis wants to defend and restore against twentieth-century secular ideologies, which Lewis condemns as infected with “the poison of subjectivism”. In the latter work, where Lewis presents one of the best accounts of the European medieval model of the Universe, objective value (the Tao in Lewis’ argument) underlies both how the model has been shaped, and how Lewis, as a medievalist, accounts for and draws upon it as an intellectual and spiritual resource. The purpose of this parallel study is to show that Lewis’ explication of the Tao in The Abolition of Man, which is a “built-in”, implicit belief in The Discarded Image, provides a critique of tendencies towards the subjectivism prevalent in Lewis’ lifetime. These tendencies can be traced into the moral relativism, pluralism and reductionism of the twenty-first century, giving Lewis’ work the status of twentieth-century prophecy.

‘A Heap of Broken Images’? Reviving Austro-German Debates over Musical Meaning, 1900–36

2013 ◽  
Vol 138 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Pritchard
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Educational Theory ◽  
First Century ◽  
Critical Hermeneutics ◽  
Musical Meaning ◽  
Force And Motion ◽  
The Status ◽  
Musical Interpretation ◽  
Twenty First Century

AbstractThis article examines a range of writings on the status of musical interpretation in Austria and Germany during the early decades of the twentieth century, and argues their relevance to current debates. While the division outlined by recent research between popular-critical hermeneutics and analytical ‘energetics’ at this time remains important, hitherto neglected contemporary reflections by Paul Bekker and Kurt Westphal demonstrate that the success of energetics was not due to any straightforward intellectual victory. Rather, the images of force and motion promoted by 1920s analysis were carried by historical currents in the philosophy, educational theory and arts of the time, revealing a culturally situated source for twenty-first-century analysis's preoccupations with motion and embodiment. The cultural relativization of such images may serve as a retrospective counteraction to the analytical rationalizing processes that culminated specifically in Heinrich Schenker's later work, and more generally in the privileging of graphic and notational imagery over poetic paraphrase.

Moving Pictures and Renaissance Art History

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Emison
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Art History ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Renaissance Art ◽  
Word And Image ◽  
Visual Composition ◽  
Moving Pictures ◽  
And Gender

Film, like the printed imagery inaugurated during the Renaissance, spread ideas---not least the idea of the power of visual art---across not only geographical and political divides but also strata of class and gender. Moving Pictures and Renaissance Art History examines the early flourishing of film, 1920s-mid-60s, as partly reprising the introduction of mass media in the Renaissance, allowing for innovation that reflected an art free of the control of a patron though required to attract a broad public. Rivalry between word and image, narrative and visual composition shifted in both cases toward acknowledging the compelling nature of the visual. The twentieth century also saw the development of the discipline of art history; transfusions between cinematic practice and art historical postulates and preoccupations are part of the story told here.

The Labour of Laziness in Twentieth-Century American Literature

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zuzanna Ladyga
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Ernest Hemingway ◽  
Gertrude Stein ◽  
Value System ◽  
John Barth ◽  
The Status ◽  
Twentieth Century American Literature ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Historical Moment

The Labour of Laziness in Twentieth-Century American Literature focuses on the issue of productivity, using the figure of laziness to negotiate the relation between the ethical and the aesthetic. This book argues that major twentieth-century American writers such as Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, John Barth, Donald Barthelme and David Foster Wallace provocatively challenge the ethos of productivity by filtering their ethical interventions through culturally stigmatised imagery of laziness. Ladyga argues that when the motif of laziness appears, it invariably reveals the underpinnings of an emerging value system at a given historical moment, while at the same time offering a glimpse into the strategies of rebelling against the status quo

Murder and Maugham: A Neglected Subversive?

2002 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
pp. 330-339
Author(s):  
Keith Soothill
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Labour Government ◽  
Serious Crime ◽  
The Status

Somerset Maugham's writings had huge audiences in the first half of the twentieth century. In much of his work the focus is on people behaving badly. What effect did his work have on his readers? This article examines his short stories, of which approximately one-fifth of the major ones have murder as their theme. Focusing on the murders that Maugham ‘creates’, the claim is that Maugham is subversive, challenging some readily made assumptions. In Maugham's scheme of things, the criminal justice system is usually inappropriate, irrelevant or produces injustice, with ‘rough justice’ usually the best that is on offer. The resourceful can get away with murder. Murder is not the most serious crime for many. Instinct rather than rationality is the best judge. Maugham also emphasises the importance of fate, thus implying we are not in control of our destinies. The article argues that popular authors, such as Maugham, may have contributed much more than is generally recognised to the developing unease about the ‘status quo’ that ultimately led to the landslide victory of the Labour government in 1945.

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