Abstract
Volume two of react/review: a responsive journal for art and architecture explores the spiritual, monstrous, cosmological, and otherworldly within or as forms of political action or resistance. Considering how spiritual themes are entangled with political action or resistance invites new attention to a range of subtle distinctions between manifestations of the “spirit,” whether as methodology, content, and/or the effect of a work. Reproducibility, with its attendant notions of mimicry, copying, and dissemination, also emerges as a key analytic in the contributions to this journal. These ideas are reflected in DJ Morrow’s balloon recreation of Goya’s Saturn Devouring his Son, which appears on this volume’s cover. Like the original on which it is based, Morrow’s piece engages with the monstrous and the political in a moment of crisis. However, its playful use of an everyday medium simultaneously veils and unveils the violence of the scene, demonstrating the power of mimicry to produce new configurations of the macabre and otherworldly. Relatedly, processes of aesthetic reproduction addressed in this compilation also reveal class, race, gender, and cultural identity as factors shaping the form in which the “spirit” emerges in the shadow of political action. Contributing authors address the modern and contemporary eras, engaging with a range of topics from Black life in the Bay area and anti-racism, to monsters in Spanish art, anti-totalitarian politics, cosplay, and the aesthetics of queer Chicana zines, as well as National Socialist black metal bands. Contradictory and subversive ways of knowing and being emerge through these studies as they integrate the supernatural and immaterial into art historical discourse, allowing us to recognize the spirit in the shadow.
Highlights
In his infamous painting from 1820-1823, Francisco de Goya y Lucientes depicts an ominous scene of a bedraggled, nude man with overgrown gray hair who opens his mouth to bite voraciously into a decapitated figure
The entangled dimensions of the spiritual and the political are present in varying ways throughout the volume as the authors deploy analytics such as race, gender, and class to grapple with the forces of capitalism, and examine strategies of visibility and knowledge production as intersectional and evolving. The trajectory of this volume’s theme emerges from inquiries into the paranormal and the supernatural across art history, which was the subject of the 2021 UCSB Art History Graduate Student Association Symposium “Haunting the Canon,” organized by Elizabeth Driscoll Smith and Sara Morris
Like much of our lives, the symposium was shaped by the pandemic, forcing the event to take place on Zoom, a pivot which enriched conversations around the subject through the broad array of voices who participated from across the country
Summary
In his infamous painting from 1820-1823, Francisco de Goya y Lucientes depicts an ominous scene of a bedraggled, nude man with overgrown gray hair who opens his mouth to bite voraciously into a decapitated figure. This is the scene depicted in Saturn Devouring His Son, one of Goya’s “black paintings”—an emotive series reflecting Goya’s complex and tumultuous thoughts and emotions.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
