Trends in the development of fine arts during the independence of Ukraine

The purpose of the article is to highlight the search for new trends in the development of fine arts during Ukraine's independence, which acquired individual self-expression and became a subcategory of media culture, offering the audience a complex and technically high-quality visual product focused on understanding the relationship Soviet times and aimed at world universal values. The methodological basis was the methods of critical analysis of art, historical, literary sources, and specific historical analysis in studying the development of new trends in fine arts during Ukraine's independence, which allowed to explore the creative components of artists, as Ukrainian art was and is an integral part of the world art process while leaving their own national creative individuality. The scientific novelty lies in the conceptualization of modern trends in the development of fine arts, the formation of artistic styles as a factor in reflecting historical and artistic processes in the system of interaction between Ukrainian art and society. Conclusions. The study found that each generation studies, reviews and proves its vision of the history of its people. The twentieth century has come to an end, and the development of new trends in fine arts during Ukraine's independence encourages scholars to the analytical rethinking of his achievements from the standpoint of the new Ukrainian artistic life and its entry into the world art space. The global integration processes of the modern world are an objective trend in the development of fine arts, which should be considered in the context of trends in world art, including European. Global transformation processes have affected all spheres of public life, becoming determinants of shaping the way and quality of life of contemporary Ukrainian artists, found their concretization in the process of forming a single artistic space, and returned the right of Ukrainian art to its place in the world art space. Fine art during the independence of Ukraine reflects the laws, realities of life, processes, and phenomena that take place in it, has acquired tendencies of individual self-expression of the artist, and supports the free development of all styles and genres at the state level. Key words: fine arts, Ukraine, trends, artist, creative personality of the artist.

Un homme est mort. Escritura fílmica de la Historia a través del cine de intervención social

El fascinante legado del cineasta René Vautier (1928-2015) choca con la escasez de referencias académicas a su obra, a pesar de su inmenso valor histórico. Vautier es un exponente clave para ilustrar las fisuras del paradigma historiográfico actual, que excluye voces y opiniones cuyo rol es instrumental para reescribir la Historia. Llevó siempre al límite su pasión por la realidad y la verdad histórica, lo que derivó en una interminable lista de problemas institucionales. A través del caso de estudio del impacto social y artístico de su documental Un homme est mort, esta investigación indaga en las razones por las que hay artistas que han sido irrelevantes para la academia francesa, al mismo tiempo que los poderes establecidos perseguían su obra, a través de peligrosas medidas que atacaban directamente a la libertad de expresión, como restricciones legales, censura o recortes económicos. Estas políticas restrictivas derivaron en un empeoramiento sustancial de las condiciones de rodaje, en la autocensura y, al quedar fuera del circuito de exhibición oficial, redujeron el impacto potencial en las audiencias. Además, al no haber existido oficialmente, estas películas no optan de manera automática a los programas de conservación pública. En definitiva, se produjo una alteración del marco conceptual que debería haberse generado a largo plazo en las relaciones entre arte y sociedad, entregándonos un imaginario cultural construido de espaldas a una parte esencial de la Historia (del arte). The captivating artistic legacy of René Vautier (1928-2015) clashes with the lack of research on the impact of his extraordinary career, given the notable value of his work. Vautier is a key example that illustrates the cracks in the schemas of traditional historiography, unable to recognise the plurality of voices and opinions that should be taken into account to rewrite History. The taste for reality and historical truth so taken to the extreme in his films resulted in a large list of institutional problems. Through the analysis of the social and artistic impact of one of his very first films, Un homme est mort, we will understand why some artists were considered secondary or irrelevant by the French academia. They were also pursued by the Establishment with extremely dangerous measures in regard to freedom of expression such as legal constraints, censorship or financial cuts. These restrictive policies first led to lower quality filming material, smaller crews, fewer projects or self-censorship; but it also implied an alternative exhibition circuit which diminished the scope of audiences. As they never existed officially, these films do not benefit from public conservation programs automatically. In addition, it altered the conceptual leap with long-term implications for art and society since our common cultural imaginary has been built without a significant piece of art history.

Thomas Percy

Thomas Percy (b. 1729–d. 1811) is primarily remembered for his seminal collection of ballads, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. However, the 1765 publication of this text was only the midpoint of an extraordinarily prolific decade. After publishing some original poems and a translation of Ovid’s elegy for Tibullus in the 1750s, the 1760s also saw Percy produce the first Chinese novel translated into English, Hau Kiou Choaan (1761); Miscellaneous Pieces Relating to the Chinese (1762); The Matrons (1762); Five Pieces of Runic Poetry (1763); a new translation of The Song of Solomon (1764); A Key to the New Testament (1766); and his influential study of “Gothic” art and society, Northern Antiquities (1770). He also worked on his long poem, The Hermit of Warkworth (1771), and edited the Northumberland Houshold [sic] Book (1770). This only covers his published works: during the same period, he worked on several other editing and translating projects—preparing an edition of The Spectator and other journals by Addison and Steele, for example—which never reached print. As Percy rose through the ranks of the Anglican clergy—becoming one of the king’s chaplains by 1770, Dean of Carlisle in 1778, and finally Bishop of Dromore in 1782—he stopped publishing new works, perhaps because he thought it detracted from the dignity of his ecclesiastical office. Nevertheless, his translations of Spanish ballads—Ancient Songs, Chiefly on Moorish Subjects—were ready for press in 1775 (though they were only published in 1932). His extensive correspondence also reveals his continuing interest in literary matters, and he was certainly ready to lend a hand to other scholars, providing they were sufficiently polite. In antiquarian circles, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry attracted considerable attention: his theory of minstrels’ high status was disputed, and his editorial practice was (and remains) controversial. The literary reception was more positive. Although Percy’s own ballad, The Hermit of Warkworth, was mercilessly parodied by Samuel Johnson, the medieval ballads he anthologized were profoundly important to Romanticism, both British and German. As critics increasingly attend to Percy’s work beyond Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, other aspects of his influence—including troubling legacies—have come to light. His work on Spanish and Chinese material has been taken as foundational for “world literature,” and scholars have debated whether Percy’s treatment of China is orientalist, or whether there are ethnonationalist and racialist elements to Percy’s Gothic interests.

Editorial

Our new issue of Inmaterial, design, art, and society, proposes a territory open to contemporary forms and practices carried out in the context academic institutions, giving space to address the methodological, formal, and technical aspects involved in design and art research. We see this formal and pragmatical format as a line of flight. We see this issue as an open arena, including a multiplicity of exploratory territories based on practices, on experiences, on livings. In this issue you will find a series of articles that explore different aspects of design thinking and practice in the present. This is our attempt. These contributions invite us to a slow reading, a reading that should move us “beyond calculation to thought” (Boulous, 2017: 16). We hope that our intentions will be sustained by this new line of thought, and we invite you to “wait for the dust of reading to settle” (Woolf: 1925, 266).

Continuity in Discontinuity: The Recurrent Motif of Cultural Autonomy in the Development of Czech Sociology of Culture

This article analyses the development of the sociology of culture in Czechia. Its focus is on the sociology of the arts and cultural sociology, which, it is argued, are connected through the notion of the relative autonomy of cultural structures. While the Czech sociology of culture may have been rendered less dynamic by the lack of a critical mass of sociologists specialising in this area and by the country’s frequent political upheavals and its isolation from the international circulation of ideas, it has experienced moments of considerable vitality. Three periods in the development of the field are identified here, each of them marked by a movement toward a stronger and more sociologically adequate conceptualisation of cultural autonomy: (1) from the diffuse culturalism of the field’s founding figures to the functionalist theory of the interwar sociologist Inocenc Arnošt Bláha, whose view of the relationship between art and society was influenced by the work of the Prague School of Structuralism; (2) from the cultural reductionism of Marxist-Leninist theory after 1948 to the eclectic sociology of culture and the arts of the late socialist period; (3) from the demise of this transitional form of a sociology of culture in the 1990s to the increasingly internationalised but also heterogeneous landscape of the 2010s, which is constituted by a semi-institutionalised centre of cultural sociology at Brno and small groups or individuals in Prague and other academic locales. The thread of continuity in an otherwise discontinuous historical development is found in the recurrent motif of the relative autonomy of culture which the Czech sociology of culture absorbed through its exposure to art and literary theory.

The rise of authoritarianism in a democratic regime in Aristophanes’ Assemblywomen

The plot of Assemblywomen tells the story of a coup organized by a group of women to conquer power and administrate the city of Athens. By examining the historical and dramatic elements in this comedy, we seek to comprehend the use of the notions of liberty and democracy, taking into consideration that through the drama we glimpse on what can happen when democracy is undermined. Aristophanes made use of artistic liberty to redefine the parameters of his art, showing a new form of comedy and how liberty can contribute to the development of art and society.

Research on Protection and Utilization Strategies of cultural Resources in Traditional Villages of Tourism Development

Pailou Village which is the hometown of Song Yingxing, who is the author of Tien-kung K’ai-wu, is taken as the research object in this paper. From the perspective of tourism development of traditional villages, the types of cultural resources in Pailou Village are summarized through combing the content of existing cultural resources. Then the value of its cultural resources is analyzed from three aspects: history and culture, art and society, tourism and economy. Therefore, the development path of the integration of culture and tourism is proposed, from five aspects of project positioning, industrial format, tourism planning, supporting facilities and smart tourism, the strategy of improving the tourism competitiveness of Pailou Village are summarized in this paper, which provides a theoretical reference for the sustainable development of traditional village tourism.

Watch Out! Theatre Is Anywhere – Redistributing the Ethics of Arts Education and Applied Theatre

The intention with this study is to examine and develop the discourse of arts in education and applied drama/theatre in relation to democracy, in particular the concept of “post-democracy” (Crouch, 2004, 2016; Mouffe, 2009; Rancière, 1999; Swyngedouw, 2011). Post-democracy is a concept that holds a critical view on current societies, describing conditions of economic, ecological and social crisis including boredom, frustration, oppression, apathy, disillusion and violence. We have identified a few key characteristics and challenges within a post-democratic society, such as “consensus”, “fictionalization” and “paradoxicality”. In this chapter, we are interested to see how such characteristics may influence individual democratic life, and how drama/theatre in education can respond to those key characteristics and influences. We argue that such responses concern the working procedures and production formats, as well as the recognition of the social and political role of arts education. This relation of art and society asks for aesthetic platforms that allow young people to explore felt issues of (post-)democracy on the individual and/or the collective level. It furthermore asks for a social responsibility and an ethics which are autonomous to the critical, artistic participant, ethics perhaps different from the ethical expectations distributed by neoliberal society. This is shown by two cases of performance that also solve the potential relation and political role by blurring art and social activism.