«Io giungo all’essere e a me stesso». le prime opere di francesco Lo Savio, 1957-1959

The main aim of the article is to explain the beginning of the Roman painter Francesco Lo Savio’s career from 1957 to 1959. This part of his production has long been unknown because it was considered too distant from the mature works. During those years Lo Savio is still tied to his training in Informal Art. Moreover, the work of this period also show influences coming from American art, in particular, from the pictorial research of Mark Rothko. This essay illustrates why these works should be considered an important step, although germinal, in Lo Savio’s painting career. Just by analyzing the origins of his painting, it is possible to understand the next steps of his work. The works at the end of 1958 and early 1959 are, in fact, the start of his artistic path that will result in Space-Light paintings a few months later.

The Interpretation Of Chinese Empress Dowager Cixi's Image In The Portraits Of American Artists

The Chinese themes in Early American art have long been obscured under the veil of Japonisme, Aesthetic movement, boundary-pushing modernism and more significantly because of the political circumstances - decline of China as an empire and complicated Chinese-American interconnections. One of the favoured theme of American academism at the period of the late 19th- early 20th centuries were genre scenes, street scenes, portrait d’intérieur , portraits, still life works related to China and Chinatowns. Nonetheless, the American press through the imagery created by illustrators and caricaturists was largely involved in interpretations of Western encounters with Chinese culture from the highlighted negative light, either being deeply affected by anti-Chinese flows or fuelling those xenophobic moods. Consequently, a few American artists featured Chinese people and Chinese settings from the perspective of admiration of their “otherness”. Only two American artists- Katherine A. Carl and Hubert Vos, succeeded to pave their career path to the Chinese court, enriching American arts of the early 1900s with the unprecedented depictions of high rank Chinese and the scandalously renowned empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908) in the positive light of fascination. A number of publications have viewed and examined those portraits from the angle of "political self-fashioning”, but our research is another academic attempt to place those oil paintings in the context of China-related subject matter and its extension in the rising American art of the previous century, stressing their artistic value, function and their relations to the intended audiences.

Images of Machines and Technology. Author’s Interpretations

The problem of interaction between machines and humans has been relevant at all times of human civilization’s development. This subject arose most acutely in the era of scientific and technical progress, giving rise to a wide problem field, many aspects of which still require scientific understanding. In this discussion, the researchers tried to analyze the situation of the widespread implantation of new technologies and machines into the art field. The integration of technology generates the necessity of the author’s interpretations about the relationship between the technological and the humanistic. The authors turned to the problem of identification and draw the boundaries of the human “I” in the era of computerization of many spheres of life, to the topic of technology’s images in cinema (Polish, American, documentary), to the image of industrialization in American art of the first half of the 20th century, to modern installations by A. Reichstein, to the screen media in the stage space, in the city, and even in the virtual environment (for example on incredibly popular TikTok platform). The authors conclude that machine civilization is closely intertwined with humans. The images of technology are overgrown with countless interpretations: they can act as a theme, device, context, decoration, character, conflict with humanity, fight for its prosperity, try to identify itself in the human world.

Using Georges Bataille in Art History: Informe, Figuration and Politics

<p>The theories of the French intellectual Georges Bataille have had a significant influence on much recent arts practice and criticism. Bataille’s later work (c.1937–1962), however, is often overlooked in cultural practice and theory. In this later period his thought becomes richer; no less transgressive, no less excessive, and indubitably more philosophical. This thesis will argue the importance of using the chronological range of Bataille’s writing. In particular, it will redress the critical neglect in art history of his later work. The selective use of Bataille’s early work, especially the informe, in the American art history of Rosalind Krauss will be critiqued. The thesis will deploy concepts developed extensively in two late works, Inner Experience and The Accursed Share, to discuss the practice of two visual artists that do not figure in the type of methodology that Krauss adopts; the Anglo-Irish painter Francis Bacon and the Swiss installation artist Thomas Hirschhorn. Inner Experience, a work revolving around the theme of ‘limit-experience’, will be the catalyst in an analysis of the works of Francis Bacon. This thesis will demonstrate that although Bacon was an avowed atheist, he ventures to capture a sacred and impossible moment in his painting that parallels the “movement of contestation” in “inner experience.” The conception of economy developed in The Accursed Share derives from the germ of Bataille’s economic theory, first outlined in the 1933 essay “The Notion of Expenditure.” Thomas Hirschhorn’s practice and his desire to “work politically” will be examined from the perspective of Bataillean expenditure and the notion of general economy.</p>

Using Georges Bataille in Art History: Informe, Figuration and Politics

<p>The theories of the French intellectual Georges Bataille have had a significant influence on much recent arts practice and criticism. Bataille’s later work (c.1937–1962), however, is often overlooked in cultural practice and theory. In this later period his thought becomes richer; no less transgressive, no less excessive, and indubitably more philosophical. This thesis will argue the importance of using the chronological range of Bataille’s writing. In particular, it will redress the critical neglect in art history of his later work. The selective use of Bataille’s early work, especially the informe, in the American art history of Rosalind Krauss will be critiqued. The thesis will deploy concepts developed extensively in two late works, Inner Experience and The Accursed Share, to discuss the practice of two visual artists that do not figure in the type of methodology that Krauss adopts; the Anglo-Irish painter Francis Bacon and the Swiss installation artist Thomas Hirschhorn. Inner Experience, a work revolving around the theme of ‘limit-experience’, will be the catalyst in an analysis of the works of Francis Bacon. This thesis will demonstrate that although Bacon was an avowed atheist, he ventures to capture a sacred and impossible moment in his painting that parallels the “movement of contestation” in “inner experience.” The conception of economy developed in The Accursed Share derives from the germ of Bataille’s economic theory, first outlined in the 1933 essay “The Notion of Expenditure.” Thomas Hirschhorn’s practice and his desire to “work politically” will be examined from the perspective of Bataillean expenditure and the notion of general economy.</p>

Latin American Art, Visual and Material Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century: An Introduction

The temporal frame of this Special Issue of Arts—the long eighteenth century—comprises a complex period of development in the Spanish colonies of Latin America that reverberates throughout the region’s visual culture [...]