Performanztheoretische Perspektiven auf japanische Kulturen des Bildes

Venus rising, Furies raging: bodies redressed in contemporary visual art

In current Western art history discourse, where problems of connoisseurship (in Western art history) are no longer at issue, scholars have argued that ”art is too important to leave to art historians.” By focusing on the ”cultural biography” of an art-object, an approach that owes much to anthropology, the concerns of the new materialist social art history shift to issues of ”reception” (or ”deconstruction”) where meaning is found in the eyes of the beholder rather than in objects at the point of their creation. Suffice to say that new, post-Modem art-historians are relativists, and ”post-historical.” In modem study of ancient Chinese paintings, where a history based on reliable historical data remains to be assembled, our search for a history of styles based on paintings as objects resembles that of an archaeologist's fitting together a vast puzzle of material remains. (Remember the problems we experienced recently with the dating of the Riverbank attributed to Tung Yuan?) In this paper, I hope to demonstrate Admonitions scroll attributed to Ku K'ai-chih at the British Museum can be, and must be, dated precisely as a historical monument: first, through an understanding of a history of figural representation in Chinese art, and second, by reviewing the ”cultural biography” of the Admonitions scroll as an object in Chinese art history.

Recent critical interest in the life and works of Robert Louis Stevenson has led to closer analyses of Stevenson's literary debts to his country-man and forbear, Sir Walter Scott. The two writers are inevitably connected as Scotland's iconic writers of Scottish romance stories: ”Waverley”, ”Rob Roy”, ”The Heart of Midlothian and Redgauntlet” by Scott; ”Kidnapped”, ”David Balfour” and ”The Master of Ballantrae” by Stevenson. Comparisons between the two are further encouraged by Stevenson himself, who constantly referes to Scott in correspondence to friends and family, and famously in his essays ”A Gossip on Romance” and ”My First Book: Treasure Island”. However, closer analyses of their respective works by Barry Menikoff, Jenni Calder and Alison Lumsden in recent years have established that although Stevenson certainly owes debts to Scott in terms of style and subject matter, he was also at pains to differentiate his style and purposes from ''the king of the romantics. '' This paper will contribute to one aspect of this debate, the prevalence of strong imagery within their romance writing. It will attempt to draw parallels between the ways in which both authors absorbed various aspects of c culture popular visual culture within their work, and how each author subsequently became illustrated. Stevenson identifies the strength of the visual impressions that Scott leaves his readers, and this is a talent he shared. Both authors were heavily influenced by contemporary modes of popular visualization, such as painting, book-illustration, theatre, panoramas (in Scott's case) and photography (in Stevenson's). However, both channelled these influences to different effect, and for different purposes. This paper will examine how Scott and Stevenson both utilized and subsequently influenced popular visual culture through the writing process.

This research contributes to discourse on abstract art in relation to a contemporary context of image sharing and exchange. Many contemporary artists working with abstraction use visual elements from art history, popular culture, product design, the computer desktop and architecture in their work. The once unrecognisable non- figurative forms of Modernist abstraction have now become recognisable objects and forms in contemporary abstraction. Artists such as Charline von Heyl, Christine Streuli, Natalya Hughes, Peter Atkins, and Ryan Gander make visual reference to pre- existing forms in their work, shifting our understanding of abstraction as being based only in formal qualities. Translation as process and concept is a useful model to interrogate how particular abstract forms are re-employed in contemporary abstraction, how they are recognised, why they are familiar, and why this is important to understanding contemporary abstraction. I argue that both a history of Modernist abstraction and a developing visual culture brought about by commercial printing techniques have popularised abstract forms, and that both favour techniques of visual communication that are expedient, direct, easily disseminated, and easily recognised. I consider what an analysis of translation in language is able to bring to the analysis of contemporary abstract painting. Translating an original text for dissemination to a wider audience is similar to the way in which contemporary artists use existing abstract forms to make new works. I compare theories of visual representation from W. J. T. Mitchell, Hubert Damisch and Arthur C. Danto to consider how particular abstract forms are reused in contemporary environments and how they are able to continue to evoke feelings of familiarity in different contexts while remaining abstract.

I present a number of core concepts from data science that are relevant to digital art history and the use of quantitative methods to study any cultural artifacts or processes in general. These concepts are objects, features, data, feature space, and dimension reduction. These concepts enable computational exploration of both large and small visual cultural data. We can analyze relations between works on a single artist, many artists, all digitized production from a whole historical period, holdings in museum collections, collection metadata, or writings about art. The same concepts allow us to study contemporary vernacular visual media using massive social media content. (In our lab, we analyzed works by van Gogh, Mondrian, and Rothko, 6000 paintings by French Impressionists, 20,000 photographs from MoMA photo­graphy collection, one million manga pages from manga books, one million artworks of contemporary non-professional artists, and over 13 million Instagram images from 16 global cities.) While data science techniques do not replace other art historical methods, they allow us to see familiar art historical material in new ways, and also to study contemporary digital visual culture.

Conflicten over Haagse Stadsbeelden : Van Willemspark tot Spuiforum

Conflicten over Haagse stadsbeelden

This article proposes autos sacramentales as a means of reflecting on images and their presence in the context of religion. Exploring the context of a presence culture in Catholic Spain and of sacramental representation as a wider European issue of pluri-confessionality, the auto sacramental emerges as an image-sensitive subject. Revisiting 17th century art debates, two figurations, the “parable of the seaside shadows” and the “copia divina”, are used to illustrate the plays’ ‘dramaturgy of doubling’ from the perspective of iconology. The early modern visual and material culture finds its way into the sacramental plays through a ‘poetics of transubstantiation’. Thus, in El verdadero Dios Pan (1670), Calderon uses ‘image transfiguration’ in the moment of change of substance, transforming a painting into a sculpture of a saint. Likewise, in El divino Narciso (1689) Sor Juana employs an elaborate image performativity, re-enacting for example the desire for images in the absence of the (sacred) body. These poetic modes sacralize the stage and mediate the presence of what they represent.

In the history of art, the standard narrative about the invention of photography in 1839 and the advent of cinema in 1895 is that painting turned to abstraction, while photography and cinema took on the legacy of figuration and realism.1 This split becomes much more nuanced as soon as we examine two thematically interrelated works: the first is Cezanne’s one and only genre painting, and the second is a short film by Louis Lumiere. By setting up a dialogue between these two works, I will focus on how Cezanne’s The Card Players (1890–96) (Figure 3.1) comments on the crisis of painting2 and on how the Lumieres’ Partie d’Ecarte (1896) (Figure 3.2) calls attention to the economic and artistic uncertainties surrounding the new-born cinema.3 My overall argument will be that this enigmatic painting is about the turning of bodies into shadows. By the end, I will show how the invention of the cinema, regardless of the painter’s intentions, occupies, in visual culture, a position adjacent enough to painting, so that it can function as an appropriate term of reference for Cezanne’s work.4

Much of the published writing about my practice, has focused specifically on the technical approach I employ when constructing the visual image, with very little detailed analysis of the underlying influences, visual language references and historical and contemporary methodologies embedded in the work. This exegesis titled “Abstraction, Space and Photography” identifies some of the fundamental aspects of the abstract visual language I create as a regional artist situated in far north Queensland and attempting to capture its ethos as location and conceptual construct. Consequently, at the outset I provide some context towards the development of the photographic process that I employ. Although I avoid singular focus on the technical aspects of my image making I am aware that both the technical and conceptual aspects of photography merge in an elemental, and even indexical way, when the artistic intent involves constructing abstract images. Concept and process are intrinsically linked and cannot be separated, as one informs the other. Anne Marsh describes this relationship: Unlike conventional photographs Fitzgerald’s large landscapes are constructed without referent in the outside world. Fitzgerald recreates his experience of actual landscapes in these unique works by shining light directly into the camera’s aperture – literally painting with light onto the sensitive surface. The result sits between landscape and abstraction, and challenges assumptions about photography’s identity as a medium. The series of works developed throughout the Masters (produced 2014-2017) demonstrate an increasing maturity and progression in my practice towards a form of visual language which I would conceive as a kind of photographic abstract expressionism. Heavily influenced by, and in many ways attracted to the more traditional arts — their freedom of expression, additive capacity and representational qualities — this body of work explores photographic images which are imbued with a sense of the painterly and gestural, establishing pluralistic aesthetic connections and strategies of abstraction which stimulate the known — through visualising forms of the unknown. In contrast to my previous works, these images are visually complex, being characterised by a sense of movement and spatial intrigue. In these works I aim to establish a resolved vernacular that moves beyond the experimental, thereby challenge preconceived notions and expectations for the photograph and going some way towards destabilising the accepted narrative of traditional photography as an indexical medium. The exegesis highlights a number of innovative elements I deploy in creating a contemporary visual language in this body of work which I contend offers unique insights into and perspectives on the environment and landscape of central and far north Queensland and northern Australia. I also present contrasting antecedent pictorial traditions and positivist attitudes which have typified the landscape genre that I evoke. The following exegesis has been separated into two distinct sections allowing an opportunity to explore my dual interest in abstraction as a device across the mediums of painting and photography and as a vehicle through which to represent spatial subjectivity. Section One: Abstracting Forms explores key texts which I have found most relevant in the development of my practice drawing parallels to the theories and precedents established by critics such as Susan Sontag, Helmut Gernsheim, Aaron Scharf, Lyle Rexer, John Berger, to name a few. Section Two: Representing Space, Time and the Landscape investigates the primary subject which underpins my work discussing the philosophical notions of spatial construction alongside the shifting ideological influences which have underpinned the representation of landscape as it applies in the Australian context. Throughout the exegesis I have integrated discussion alongside works of key contemporary and historical artists and that of my own to emphasise the resonances between contemporary practice and theory. Artists such as Paul Strand, Man Ray, James Welling, Wolfgang Tillmans, Sigmar Polke, Susan Derges, to name a few, have not only inspired and motivated form and direction within my work but also share similarities in the pursuit of exploration within the medium of photography, seeking to both challenge the preconceived notions of what a photograph is, whilst simultaneously investigating new and progressive developments in the process of image making.

From the perspectives of visual culture, the present dissertation, working side by side with the antique paintings, extensively studies a whole series of terms in paintings during Tang and the Five Dynasties by analyzing and tracing down the cultural background of their being. The terms are picturesque (Ju-Hua), screen painting (Hua-Ping), a pictorial warld (Hua-Chu), seeming going into a painting (Ju-Hua), more of a picture(Hua-bu-Ju, Hua-bu-Chen), not matching reality (Hua-Nan-Jen). This set of concepts started flourishing in mid-Tang and are related to the beginning of scholastic paintings and the revolution of water-brush. Intertwining complex fields such as aesthetics, erudition, society, power, and individuation, these concepts formed the most important aesthetic ideology after Tang and Sung Dynasties. With involvement of landscaping, gardening, painting of animals, plants, ladies, and figures, mapping, and categorizing collections, this study manifests the assistance of art, its representation, and the traces of lusts, language, and power and finally concludes with the appearance of some kind of meta-painting-painting inside a painting-directing the coming of a mimesis world. It is not only building from the reality but also deconstructing itself-providing a new way of thinking for fields in history of arts and history of cultures.

The past fifteen years have seen an unexpected resurgence of taxidermy in popular culture — from hip restaurants and bars to interior design and movies. However this phenomenon has been counterposed by the simultaneous dismantling of dioramas in natural history museums in light of a postcolonial critical reappraisal of the practice, predominantly contextualizing taxidermy as the negative by-product of Victorian-era colonization. It is clear that utopian positivistic visions of that time and the imperialist economies of power, subjugation, and wealth indeed contributed to the emergence of taxidermy. However, between this negative positioning of its historical past and the renewed ‘hype’ it has found in popular culture, lies the emergence of taxidermy in the contemporary exhibition space. This thesis focuses on the latter phenomenon, questioning the problematic and uncomfortable encounters with manipulated animal bodies that seemingly return, along with our shared histories, to haunt us. Taking Steve Baker’s landmark theorization of the postmodern animal as a starting point, and more specifically concentrating on the ‘botched taxidermy’ strand of his thought, this thesis focuses on a selection of works by contemporary artists Gerard Richter, Roni Horn, Jordan Baseman, and Steve Bishop. Situated across the disciplines of animal studies, Foucault studies, and visual cultures, this inquiry focuses on how the differential specificities of mediums such as photography, painting, and sculpture in some instances provide a productive opportunity to rethink human/animal relations through art. To support this analysis, and departing from the frame offered by Baker, this thesis also provides a new critique of Foucault’s fragmentary work on painting and photography. It thus expands his unfinished project to adapt genealogical and biopolitical frameworks to visual analysis. More broadly, this thesis grounds current posthumanist debates in the definitive movements of contemporary art.

In a visual culture where the dividing line between the theatrical and visual art forms is becoming increasingly blurred, it is important to reconsider the ways in which the spatial is conceived. Space is another non-linguistic medium of communication-it does not convey ideas through language, but through an array of visual and spatial components augmented by aural or linguistic threads. Robert Wilson, Maria Irene Fames, John Byme, David Storey and John Arden were trained as fine artists before becoming playwrights. Their works are used to describe stage space as a visible medium of expression. These playwrights make use of principles from painting, sculpture and installation to create spatio-temporal images that work with a text to form a theatrical performance. They have constructed their pieces with an implicit visual structure that is essential to their staging. Each manipulates aesthetic concepts gleaned from the fine arts as mechanisms to create three dimensional theatrical compositions, which can be categorised as 'scopic building blocks'. By analysing these mechanisms with a methodology and vocabulary drawn from the visual arts, a theatrical conception of spatial analysis will become apparent. These playwrights will be placed in the context of the theatre as a seeing place, into which artists often have crossed over and made use of as an expressive form. Then a summary of the playwrights' fine art training will introduce their aesthetic technique, thereby connecting their visual art and theatrical work. Their working methods will be examined so that their 'playwriting' or 'visual scripting' can be defined. Once the evidence is presented, there will be an exploration of the ways in which these techniques can be applied to physical theatre, theatres of images or other visually influenced texts.

This paper traces the history of an iconic Socialist Realist image — that of the worker, peasant, soldier, or leader viewed from below whilst gazing heroically into the symbolic dawn of a Socialist future — from its origins in mid-1920s Soviet Russia through its use on three banknotes in Communist China’s first renminbi series of 1949 to its effective dissolution in the iconography of Deng-era currency. It argues that this iconic type — familiar not only from Stalinist but also from Italian Fascist and German National Socialist imagery — arose initially as a consequence of the legitimation crisis provoked in the USSR by Lenin’s death in January 1924, and that it may have originated in cinema before spreading from there to photography and poster art. An examination especially of the film work of Dziga Vertov shows that the icon encodes in its visual syntax techniques of political, technological, and media pedagogy meant both to form the “new Soviet man” and to orient populations within a chain of symbolic identifications supporting the charismatic authority of their leaders. It is suggested that Mao’s documented decision to use this image on renminbi instead of his own otherwise ubiquitous portrait reflects a perception of the propagandistic value of this visual syntax, and that both Mao’s posthumous reappearance on Chinese currency and the icon’s transformation on fourth-series renminbi from class pairs gazing upward to ethnic pairs gazing laterally reflects, among other things, the Deng-era shift from a hieratic semantics of charismatic legitimation to a more sober strategy of legitimation by political and economic rationalization.

Historiography of Korean modern art history is very short with only a handful of researchers. The researches have been done on the documentation of art works and individual artists, and the problem of authenticity and attribution have always been important. However, there has been shift of direction from the late 1990s when young art historians cautiously started to apply cultural theories to their researches. This was not merely an appropriation of Western theories, but a resistance to how very confining art history had become with its linear narratives of formalism, famous artists and their masterpieces; how research based on empiricism had evolved into a struggle for who gets the hand on the sources first. Their turn to post-modernistic cultural theories was supported by the fact that modern art itself rapidly arose from a transitional sphere where tradition and modernity coexisted in confusion. Also former methods of art history were not suitable for Korean modern period when there were not many works survived from the period; instead, there was a rich resource of photographs, prints, illustrations, etc, which revealed the experience and everyday life of modernity and provided a possibility of studying visual culture. Rather than renouncing formalism, these young researchers sought to open up a more diverse discourse as well as embrace new perspectives on art. Compared to traditional art history, modern art history has a shorter history with relatively fewer scholars. Since there is no solid body of scholarship as of yet, it has also proved easier to freely engage new methodologies. Another trend is that modern art history is no longer restricted to only Korean art and has expanded to include other areas of East Asia, stimulated by increase of interest in contemporary Asian art a well as the return of students who studied not only in the United States and Europe, but also Japan and China. If one recognizes that art is not merely a reflection of beauty, but more importantly, a reflection of culture, a product imbued with the consciousness of its period, then, it is true that the new methodologies have expanded the perspective and terrain of art history. Through such diverse perspectives, I think we can get a better sense of the identity of Korean modern art. Thus, Korean art history must pursue two paths at the same time: formal analysis of works of art with the excavation of primary sources ”and” the incorporation of multiple perspectives for the task of interpretation. In this paper, I will briefly address the state of research in Korean modern art history, as well as the search for new methodologies in contemporary scholarship.