L’arte contemporanea e il “civic engagement”

This essay explores the value of the artist’s action and the power that his work exercises in the socio-political history of his country. It talks about Picasso and his Guernica, offering a reading of the work following the thread of Antonio Banfi’s aesthetics through the critical look of Dino Formaggio. The scene opens with the parisian Expo of 1937. The article is then integrated with aesthetic, moral and civil contents that guide the reader to understand the concept of morality, crisis and life of the art for Banfi and the connection with Picasso's cultural work, starting from his writings against Franco’s atrocities up to Guernica. An authentic reading of the work is inserted that wants to support the moral shock determined by Guernica: a real denunciation of the misery and corruption of the government, inciting the people to fight. Finally, in order to show how current the artists’ interest in social, political and international problems is, the essay ends by presenting the work of two particularly committed contemporary artists: the Italian Paola Ravasio and the Syrian Tammam Azzam.

Living Simulacrum

The Neoplastic Room at the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź was originally designed in 1948 by the avant-garde artist Władysław Strzemiński. Destroyed in 1950 and reconstructed in 1960, it became the focal point of the museum, with the ‘International Collection of Modern Art’ by the a.r. group being exhibited there. At the same time, it became a point of reference for contemporary artists and a strategy for building a permanent collection for the museum, as well as a reflection on how the past can give a vision of the future. This essay focuses on the gesture of ‘re-curating’ the Neoplastic Room in relation to the performative practice of the artists involved (e.g., Daniel Buren, Elżbieta Jabłońska).

Visual Autofiction: A Strategy for Cultural Inclusion

Visual autofiction can be seen as a storytelling method used by contemporary visual artists to initiate cultural inclusion within a field that has historically favored Western narratives and excluded many others. This chapter, which builds on theoretical reflections on autofiction, contends that contemporary artists endeavor to be culturally included in broad, decolonized visual narratives, through the use of innovative visual autofictional methods to represent their experiences. In the case of South African visual artist Bontle Tau, autofiction is used as a strategy to construct a multiform and multifaceted photographic narrative that foregrounds the diversity of selves and stories, further supporting the overall aim of cultural inclusion within representations in the field.

Identités fictives de Cindy Sherman et de Sophie Calle

Fictional identities of Cindy Sherman and Sophie Calle In this paper we confront the issue of masquerade in chosen works of contemporary artists Cindy Sherman and Sophie Calle. Referring to Joan Riviere's (1929) statement that femininity is a masquerade, we examine the fictional embodiments of the mentioned artists in which the mask not only conceals but also reveals reality. The artistic and literary corpus is composed as follows: Cindy Sherman (Untilted Film Stills 1977, Society portraits (2008) and Flappers (2016-18)); Sophie Calle (La filature (1981), Les histoires vraies (2002) and Prenez soin de vous (2007)). Following the analysis of the artists' projects and their autobiographical or semiautobiographical approaches, we come to reveal the reversal of the techniques used by the artists. It means that Sherman, like the film stills, captures a moment and immobilizes it; Calle, for her part, gives life to the events that she provokes. However, in both cases the masks they wear, the fictitious identities that the artists embody, contribute to revisit the codes of the time we live in.

Nervous Systems

The contributors to Nervous Systems reassess contemporary artists' and critics' engagement with social, political, biological, and other systems as a set of complex and relational parts: an approach commonly known as systems thinking. Demonstrating the continuing relevance of systems aesthetics within contemporary art, the contributors highlight the ways that artists adopt systems thinking to address political, social, and ecological anxieties. They cover a wide range of artists and topics, from the performances of the Argentinian collective the Rosario Group and the grid drawings of Charles Gaines to the video art of Singaporean artist Charles Lim and the mapping of global logistics infrastructures by contemporary artists like Hito Steyerl and Christoph Büchel. Together, the essays offer an expanded understanding of systems aesthetics in ways that affirm its importance beyond technological applications detached from cultural contexts. Contributors. Cristina Albu, Amanda Boetzkes, Brianne Cohen, Kris Cohen, Jaimey Hamilton Faris, Christine Filippone, Johanna Gosse, Francis Halsall, Judith Rodenbeck, Dawna Schuld, Luke Skrebowski, Timothy Stott, John Tyson

The Factors of Market Success and Failure of Contemporary Artists from ASEAN countries | ปัจจัยทางการตลาด ที่ทำาให้ศิลปินร่วมสมัยจากประเทศอาเซียนประสบ ความสำาเร็จ หรือ ล้มเหลว

The market of contemporary art from Southeast Asia hasn’t been explored in-depth, despite its rise in sales and notoriety over the last two decades at national and international levels. Our aim is to identify the factors of success and failure of contemporary artists from ASEAN countries in the global art market. To do so, we map the trajectories of those artists and evaluate the role of the other stakeholders of the art world. Our methodology relies on a multidisciplinary approach, balancing quantitative and qualitative data. The period of study focuses on the art market data since 2000.

Colonial Legacies

In Colonial Legacies, Gabriella Nugent examines a generation of contemporary artists born or based in the Congo whose lens-based art attends to the afterlives and mutations of Belgian colonialism in postcolonial Congo. Focusing on three artists and one artist collective, Nugent analyses artworks produced by Sammy Baloji, Michèle Magema, Georges Senga and Kongo Astronauts, each of whom offers a different perspective onto this history gleaned from their own experiences. In their photography and video art, these artists rework existent images and redress archival absences, making visible people and events occluded from dominant narratives. Their artworks are shown to offer a re-reading of the colonial and immediate post-independence past, blurring the lines of historical and speculative knowledge, documentary and fiction. Nugent demonstrates how their practices create a new type of visual record for the future, one that attests to the ramifications of colonialism across time.

Algorithmic Apophenia and Aestheticization of Data

The article suggests taking a look at the artistic development of “artificial intelligence” not in the aspect of its humanization and challenge to humanism, but as a tool for processing data, the number of which and the features technically exceed the capabilities of human understanding. The influence of dataism on culture is considered. The article analyzes the works of contemporary artists (Mario Klingemann, Zach Blas, etc.) working with the phenomenon of “algorithmic apophenia”. The thesis is considered that the transformation of data into information in computer neural networks is methodologically comparable to the creative approaches of modernist artists, which allows us to reach a new level of artis-r tic reflection in the culture that conditioned by machine civilization. Critical and reflexive models of apophenia in contemporary art are collided.

One cannot know anatomy too well: Jēkabs Prīmanis and anatomy for artists

In recent years the scholars have stressed the role of anatomical collections and their histories as crucial to new interdisciplinary studies that investigate the interaction between arts and sciences. This could be attributed as well to the new exposition of Anatomy museum of Rīga Stradiņš University, that was opened to visitors in 2021. Museum galleries reveal the interplay between anatomists, artists and museum specialists, both in historical and contemporary contexts. Between the specimen jars and human bones, the anatomical drawings of both medical and art students are displayed. Sculpture-like life casts of congenital deformities made by anatomists contrast the ideal but skinless muscle man L’Ecorche Combattant. Historical artefacts interact with modern anatomical 3D illustration and multimedial solutions created by contemporary artists. No doubt, artists were and are important for visualising, explaining and displaying anatomy. But what about the role of anatomists in arts? This article aims to investigate an episode in the biography of long-time museum director anatomist and anthropologist professor Jēkabs Prīmanis (1892–1971) and his role in teaching the so-called plastic anatomy to the students of the Art Academy of Latvia.