From Ancient to Digital Situating Blackness in Salambo (Domenico Gaido, 1914)

The Italian production company Pasquali e Compagnia adapts the French writer Gustave Flaubert’s 1862 novel Salammbô into a ‘$100,000 Spectacle’. Despite the grandiose production values, a leading character named Spendius is not identified in the film’s credits. The record of Spendius on film, literally ‘pellicola’ or ‘with a skin’, continues to dissolve as compressed portions of the film reappear as pixels on YouTube. This paper analyses Spendius’ transnational character by situating him in an absent, yet present spectrum of media.

Uno scandalo nello scandalo L’Apocalisse come eccezione nel canone neotestamentario

The textual canon of the New Testament established by the Church is usually regarded as the model par excellence of a canon’s strict coherency and normativity. Nonetheless, what is explored here is that this archetypal model of a canon carries in itself an almost irresolvable problem of incoherency, constituted by the Book of Revelation. Thus, the aim of this contribution is firstly to show why this book represents a remarkable exception in the New Testament canon for its genre, content and tone (§§ 1, 2); and secondly to show how it could have been possible that such an eccentric element compared to the canon’s usual criteria has been accepted in the New Testament, and what the implications and consequences have been (§ 3).

The ‘Unknown Arts’ of Ancient America: Challenging Classical Art Canons in 19th-Century France The Reception of Pre-Columbian Art before the Primitivist and Surrealist Avant-gardes

Pre-Columbian artefacts have been collected and exhibited in Europe since the 16th century. For a long time, they were considered exotic curiosities, ‘grotesque’ attempts at art by inferior peoples. This was a judgement stemming from a Eurocentric definition of art and, during the 19th century, indissociable from colonial and imperialist ideology. We present some views held in scholarly circles about pre-Columbian art in nineteenth-century France and focus on two artists, Jean Frédéric de Waldeck (1766-1875) and Emile Soldi (1846-1906), who drew from contemporary ethnographic and archaeological research, and pre-Columbian history to challenge the limits of academicism and the Beaux-Arts system.

Peltae subacquee e specchiature marmoree La forma dell’acqua tra storia dell’arte e filosofia

This paper focuses on two canonical representations of water in 12th-century Venetian churches: (i) the so-called ‘peltae pattern’, usually defined as ‘geometric decoration’ and recognized as the symbol of water; and (ii) the ‘marble slab’, usually included among non-iconic decorations and recognized as il mare. Why did the medieval masters represent the same natural element in the same type of location in these two different ways? Our hypothesis is that (i) represented the turbulent water of terrestrial life, while (ii) represented heavenly water. We argue that support for both claims can be found by retracing the sources of the two decorative models and looking at them from an art historical point of view, and by analyzing them from a philosophical and perceptological standpoint in order to retrieve universal perceptual patterns that can sustain the iconological reading.

Timur Novikov. L’attualità del passato

This contribution focuses on the activity of Timur Novikov (1958-2002) and his dynamic approach to Western or national patterns, to classicism or avant-gardism. His artistic activity stands as the perfect case study when discussing appropriations and negations in the development of an artistic canon. The focal point for interpreting Novikov’s dynamical activity is his trademark parodic approach to his work, through the use of the so-called stiob, and in the text this aspect will be analysed on the basis of Linda Hutcheon’s theory of parody ([1985] 2000). Examining Novikov’s career, taking and denying different aesthetic canons, is essential to understand the development of Russian contemporary art.

Итальянская живопись ‘до Рафаэля’ в творчестве Николая Рериха

At the turn of the 20th century, interest in Italy and the artistic heritage of the Old Italian Masters, especially the Proto-Renaissance and Early Renaissance was a noticeable phenomenon in Russian culture. Painting ‘before Raphael’ became one of the most important sources that influenced the style and imagery of many Russian artists, including Nicholas Roerich. This article examines the factors that determined Roerich’s interest in early Italian art and analyzes the direct experience of the artist studying ancient painting in Italy, which was reflected in his artistic practice of the 1900s-1910s.

Medieval Islamic Stucco Décor vs. Soviet Architecture of Uzbekistan

This is a review of what is termed ‘twentieth-century Central Asian national style’. It aims to answer the question of how the twentieth century treated the heritage of early Islamic ornamental art. My research uses the example of carved stucco architectural décor in Uzbekistan. This technique was traditional in both the early Islamic period and the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Uzbekistan was chosen because it possesses the most representative examples of architecture, illustrating common processes for all of Central Asia. I raise the questions of adoptions and rejections in stylisation, review the stages of reinterpretation and reconsideration, and finally propose my own periodisation.

The Example of Vincent van Gogh Denying Forms, Systems and Academicism in Art and Religion

The Dutch post-impressionist artist Vincent Willem van Gogh (1853-90) affected the art movements and artists of the 20th century. His artistic thought, symbolic language and perspective on reality was far from that of the painters of his time and so they could not understand him or appreciate his work. Van Gogh did not consider himself to be an academic artist, or his work to be of academic standard. He knew that they were not technically perfect. In van Gogh’s works, art is governed by spirituality. Van Gogh rejected academicism in both art and religion.

Станковизм как канон и его преодоление в живописи Общества станковистов

This article aims to outline the range of ideas the OST members had about canonical easel painting and to show how the artists creatively interacted with these ideas in their practice. The paper is based on a selection of paradigmatic as well as little-known OST artworks and archival materials. Using formal analysis on one hand and historical analysis on the other hand, it is possible to demonstrate that the OST artists based their work on a combination of opposite technical approaches. The purpose of this research is to clarify the nature of OST art for which there was much hope in the1920s and that subsequently became the foundation for the work of the post-war artists.

Tra il foglio vuoto e lo schermo Type e token alla prova dell’arte post-mediale

What kind of entities are works of art from an ontological point of view? This question has become canonical in the framework of analytic philosophy. One way of answering the puzzle seemed to be conclusive. It is the hypothesis that all, or the majority of artworks can be identified with types embedded into tokens. To begin with, I will survey how the type-token distinction transitioned from semiotics to ontology. Secondly, I will consider how some contemporary art forms contributed to questioning this approach to the ontology of artworks. Lastly, I will suggest how the nature of types and tokens should be reassessed in order to properly describe artworks in their historical and socially construed nature.