Aesthetic Conflict Research Articles

“Thus far and no further”: Inquiry into a dreamless society

AbstractHumans are highly social primates who naturally seek out groups in which to live. Our individual psychology is inherently intertwined with that of the group, forming an inextricable link between the two. In keeping with Bion's insights into group dynamics, we approach contemporary conflicts by examining them through both social and psychoanalytic lenses. Drawing on Foucault's and Deleuze's analyses of societies, as well as considering the impact of technology and the COVID‐19 pandemic, we illustrate how modern societies function under the influence of three behaviors observed by Bion. Activated as a result of a psychological disaster, the ruins consist of the symptomatologic triad of arrogance, stupidity, and curiosity. We have called this functioning Bion's disastrous triad. We suggest that when it is set in motion, it leads to a withdrawal from the beauty of life, as Bion well expresses with the phrase “Thus far and no further.” Using Meltzer's notion of aesthetic conflict, we suggest that while operating under the mandates of the triad, recognition of the other becomes an impossibility. A plea for relationships based on mutual recognition—namely, aesthetic relationships—is in order.

Precipitating Factors and Receptivity of Psychoanalytic Treatments among Chinese Americans

ABSTRACT Chinese Americans have been known for underutilization of mental health services and premature termination. This study explores these phenomena through Chinese cultural and psychoanalytical perspectives. Specifically, two sets of factors were identified: precipitating and receptivity factors. The precipitating factors include childrearing practices and pursuit of education by studying abroad at an early age. The receptivity factors include the lack of familiarity with psychoanalysis, the emphasis of efficiency in Chinese culture, shame and stigma associated with mental illness, and the seeming reluctance of this ethnic group to opening up to professional strangers. A brief review of studies on Asian American mental health was conducted. Early termination was further discussed through psychoanalytic concepts and theories including Bion’s maternal reverie, attacks on linking, and container and contained; Winnicott’s primary maternal preoccupation; and Meltzer’s apprehension of beauty and aesthetic conflict.

Implementation of urban climate-responsive design strategies: an international overview

ABSTRACT Urban climatic challenges can motivate urban planners and designers to implement urban climate-responsive design strategies. But does this process occur sufficiently, and if not, why? This study explores the implementation of urban climate-responsive design strategies, potential functional and aesthetic conflicts, availability of policy instruments that support implementation, strengths and weaknesses, and missed opportunities for integrating agendas. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with experts familiar with urban climate-responsive design. The results suggest that greening measures are most often implemented, strategies tend to compete with other land-uses, designers face aesthetic conflicts, and strategies are predominantly mainstreamed within existing policy instruments.

A Keatsian Anatomy of Melancholy: aesthetic conflict and the management of depression

This paper considers the changing picture of depression, or melancholy as it was called in the seventeenth century, as in Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. Freud distinguished between mourning and melancholia in the sense of healthy and pathological reactions to loss; but the concept has also evolved within psychoanalysis, as in Klein’s ‘On the sense of loneliness’. The process of working through depression with a goal of self-knowledge seems to come gradually closer to a Keatsian worldview of the quest for beauty and truth, in line with Meltzer’s ‘aesthetic conflict’. Using some of Keats’ letters and poems from the winter and spring of 1818–1819, the paper traces his analysis of his own depression, as he works out how to exorcise its persecutory qualities, and learns to ‘see great things in loneliness’. His understanding of the two types of melancholy, depressive and persecutory, culminates in his ‘Ode on Melancholy’.

Aesthetic conflict in Chinese traditional music in the aspect of the contemporary globalization processes

Statement of the problem. In the conditions of globalization, art becomes the result of the interaction of many factors, artistic cooperation and competition within the framework of the formation and functioning of artistic communities. The world of traditional Chinese music provides an excellent opportunity to study how members of the artistic community respond to the differences brought about by the processes of globalization. Therefore, consideration of the aesthetic conflict in traditional Chinese music, which arises in the context of globalizing world processes, appears as a topical issue and determines the content of this article. The theoretical basis of this article refers to works devoted to the study of the concept of globalization in art and culture. The analysis of publications on the topic show that the issue of globalization as a dynamic factor of the Chinese musical culture has not been extensively studied, while it is acknowledged that the influence of European music on Chinese one has always contributed to the formation of a certain aesthetic conflict. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. The purpose of the study is to highlight the specifics of the development of Chinese traditional musical culture in the context of the conflict of acceptance/rejection of the globalization influences of Western culture. For the first time, the concept of aesthetic conflict as a means of dynamic progressing Chinese musical art in the context of the globalization of the cultural space is considered. As research instruments, historical and comparative, hermeneutic, interpretive, and dialectical methods are used. Research results. The article highlights three forms of changes that cultural globalization can introduce to the world of art: – creation of conditions for the transnational circulation of works and forms of art for the construction of completely new artistic concepts; – the accumulation of modern trends, namely new techniques and approaches to artistic production, in the concrete artistic world; – cases of global aesthetic influences, where ideologies and values can guide the creation of an artistic object and form criterions for defining what can be considered authentic and appropriate for a certain culture. Regular influences from the West contributed to the fact that Chinese traditional music culture began to develop from the positions of either adapting to these influences or resisting new trends in the interpretation of musical culture. From this follows the conclusion that cultural globalization is not only a process brought from outside, but also a reality that is actively created by the subjects who are involved in it. Among the transformations of Chinese musical art in the process of globalization, the ways of formation of “Chinese traditional music” are considered as a response to the integration of Western influences. Conclusion. In the course of the research, it was found that the aesthetic conflict in Chinese musical culture was formed by the way of integrating cultural resources, which is due to globalization processes and leads to the state of coexistence of different types of cultures. Such coexistence indicates the acceptance of multiculturalism by musicians in the era of globalization, when the latter creates a context for the emergence of aesthetic conflict as a means of overcoming the perception of only one culture. It is emphasized that the focus on the preservation of identity of the Chinese musical culture actualizes the option of glocalization as a means of preserving one’s own in multicultural conditions.

Epistemic and Aesthetic Conflict

Abstract Do epistemic and aesthetic values ever conflict? The answer might appear to be no, given that background knowledge generally enhances aesthetic experience, and aesthetic experience in turn generates new knowledge. As Keats writes, ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’ (Keats, 1996). Contra this line of thought, I argue that epistemic and aesthetic values can conflict when we over-rely on aesthetically enhancing background beliefs. The true and the beautiful can pull in different directions, forcing us to choose between flavours of normativity.

Research on the construction of rural interface style based on aesthetic rules

Abstract The form and overall style of rural settlements are the carrier of the rural regional context and aesthetics. At present, China’s rural areas are facing a disorderly style and urbanisation. This study is based on similarity aesthetic regularity and visual aesthetic regularity; on the one hand, this work researches the method of building interface coordination from the aspects of form, material and colour, and puts forward the interface construction method of strong contrast, medium contrast and weak contrast according to the rural areas. On the other hand, this study analyses people’s perception characteristics of the style from the visual psychological level, explains the skills for the rural interface and sequence arrangement based on the relationship between visual matching and the bottom of the picture and constructs the aesthetic image under the new overall relationship of the place. Finally, this study puts forward a series of strategies for rural style construction, such as symbol concatenation, contrast reconstruction and aesthetic conflict transformation, to constructing a new aesthetic image of place so as to provide ideas and methods for the development of the rural style in the future.

The Guerrilla Gallery: A Rapid Ethnography about a Collaborative Public Art Installation in East Harlem

In the heart of East Harlem, New York City, a collective of artists called the Harlem Art Collective created the “Guerrilla Gallery”: A collaborative public art installation on a construction fence, to give residents a place to express themselves through art and messages. While East Harlem is characterized by murals depicting Puerto Rican flags and political causes, these symbols were absent in the Guerrilla Gallery, which instead exhibited predominantly Mexican cultural and political symbols. Was a territorial contestation taking place through art, a sort of identity negotiation to determine who “belongs” in the neighborhood? (Zukin, 1995) This article presents an ethnographic and photographic narrative of the Guerrilla Gallery and what it means to the people who live in the neighborhood. Using rapid ethnographic assessment procedures (Low et al., 2005), coupled with photographic cartography (Ulmer, 2017), this study presents the findings of interviews and the Guerrilla Gallery. The analysis revealed that, although there were instances of aesthetic conflict occurring in the gallery, these were not exclusively related to national cultures; gender and racial conflicts were also observed. Strong expressions of aesthetic empathy were also identified in the artwork. The Guerrilla Gallery became a meaningful space for the community in East Harlem, who not only appreciated it because of its aesthetic value and the possibility of expression it offers, but also because residents were able to connect with their roots, strengthen their local identity and pride, express empathy and solidarity with other social groups in the neighborhood or in faraway places, and resist changes or policies that affected their everyday lives.

Ballet in the Cold War: A Soviet-American Exchange

Ballet in the Cold War: A Soviet-American Exchange

When the local encounters the global: aesthetic conflicts in the Chinese traditional music world

Through a case study of the Chinese traditional music world, this study explores how artists in different specializations within an art world working on an indigenous art form make sense of divergent aesthetics. By adopting both Becker’s (Art worlds: 25th anniversary edition, updated and expanded, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2008) view of art worlds as substantially existing communities shared by artistic individuals and Bourdieu’s (Poetics 12(4–5):311–356, 1983) emphasis on artistic divergences stemming from broader social structures, I build a theoretical framework regarding how implicit aesthetic conflicts coexist with explicit collaborations in an art world. Under the impact of cultural globalization, the Chinese traditional music world’s conventions have experienced a historical revolution. Since then, music performers enact frames to defend the aesthetics that they consider “traditional” that emphasize stability in terms of the musical content but that have highly idiosyncratic styles of performance. However, other types of musicians—namely those involved in composing, conducting, theoretical research—are more likely to enact frames defending aesthetics that express a willingness to “Westernize” based on their understandings and emphasize on innovation in terms of musical content and systematic and routinized styles of performance. Their framings shape their different reactions to their art world’s conventions. By analyzing this process, I show how local–global dynamics constitute aesthetic conflicts in an art world that is often considered highly local and traditional.

Aesthetic heterogeneity on rural landscape: Pathway discrepancy between perception and cognition

The circumstances of contemporary rural tourism have complicated the orientation and interests of stakeholders and transformed people's aesthetic judgment and negotiation on landscapes. Previous studies have revealed the preference variations among stakeholders' cohort individuality; however, few have illustrated how the pathway discrepancy between perception and cognition resulted in the heterogeneity of rural landscape aesthetics. In this research, a tourist village in Southwest China was selected for a case study. A method of structured photographs scale was applied to elicit aesthetic judgment by landscape preference and indicators, as approaches via perception and cognition pathway. Comparative analysis showed that pathway discrepancy can be considered an essential part of the aesthetic heterogeneity mechanism. Based on the results, the authors provide some suggestions on rural landscape governance: (1) the procedure of public participation in landscape assessment ought to take participant's place attachment, epistemology standpoint and demographic features into account to consolidate aesthetic justice; (2) measures for rural landscape improvement should shift the focus from physical landscape to livelihood, lifestyle and other non-gaze essence of rural area; (3) in order to bring aesthetic conflicts to a common ground in tourism development, landscape management should invite different stakeholders to cognize and attach more to the land.

(Mis)counting Catastrophe in Aeschylus’ Persae

This article considers how mourning is configured as a site of political and aesthetic conflict in Aeschylus’ Persae. Aeschylus represents the Persian defeat at Salamis as a catastrophe that unsettles the Persians’ habitual modes of visualizing and quantifying the empire’s population as an ordered whole. Drawing on the work of Jacques Rancière and Alain Badiou, I show how characters in Persae construct novel representations of the war dead as social collectivities that do not fit into the hierarchical structures of dynastic rule. I focus on two passages that stage this work in granular detail: the Messenger’s list of dead commanders recited soon after he reports the defeat (302–330) and a second list of the dead sung by the Chorus in dialogue with Xerxes (955–1001). Each passage advances a polemical recount of the dead, at once reevaluating the scale of the disaster and reframing how individuals and collectivities destroyed in the war should be mourned and memorialized. The Messenger and Chorus thereby contest the efforts of the royal family to count the losses at Salamis according to the circumscribed terms of imperial administration. By tracing how the memorialization of the dead galvanizes conflicting efforts to count (or miscount) the community as a whole, Persae raises larger questions about the political affordances of aesthetic form.

Where are we now? Reflections on infant observation then and now

ABSTRACT This overview starts in the 1960s and extends to 2022. It addresses debates about the technique of the observer and the conduct of seminars and describes the many changes in practice over that period. It summarises some of the important discoveries which drew on infant observation as well as clinical experience: Bick’s ‘second skin’, Maiello’s ‘sound object’, Meltzer’s ‘aesthetic conflict’, and numerous investigations of infants with particular vulnerabilities, including Piontelli’s twin studies and more recent observations of infants in a variety of particular life circumstances such as those born via surrogacy or living in foster care. The impressive extensions of the observational method beyond infancy and the use of observation as a clinical intervention are discussed. Finally, the adaptations of the method necessitated by the global pandemic are explored, with an emphasis on the changed role of the mother in distant observation. A clinical example using many different forms of distant contact to support a highly vulnerable mother/ infant couple is presented as an encouragement to engage with new ways of working.

Positivism in the Mirror of Carnival: The Rabelaisian Chronotope in the Works of E. Zola

This paper deals with using the Rabelaisian cultural code, which the author of the article suggests to be applied to the reading and interpreting of some novels by E. Zola. From the authors point of view, such an experiment allows us to look at French naturalism from a new point of view, as a variant of a typologically recurring phenomenon in the history of literature. For the French naturalistic novel Rabelaisianism is considered as a kind of meaning-generating model, as appropriated communication or as an element of traditional literary discourse. The latter is actualized in a period when the cultural conditions and the nature of the main ideological and aesthetic conflicts became similar to the time of the French Renaissance. The author attempts to apply the theory of the carnival chronotope, which is developed by M.M. Bakhtin, to the interpretation of some of E. Zolas texts. Meanwhile, the concept of the chronotope is considered more widely than that of M.M. Bakhtin: it is proposed to understand the chronotope as a universal model of space-time relations in the novel. The author also views the poetics of the real in the naturalistic novel through the prism of the carnival (i. e. extremely detailed material world); as examples, the motives of food and wine, as well as the motive of rebellion and war as a variant of the war for food and the carnival battle of Shrovetide (pancake week) and Lent are analyzed in the article. The main material used for the analysis is taken from the novels Le Ventre de Paris , 1873 ( The Belly of Paris ), LAssommoir , 1877 ( The Trap ), and Germinal , 1885, by E. Zola.

Aesthetic Conflict and Eating Behaviour in Adolescent Girls of an Urban Slum- A Community Based Mixed Method Design

Introduction: Body image is correlated to self-esteem and eating behaviour and is often skewed in adolescence. The social pressure to be thin and the stigma of obesity lead to unhealthy eating practices. Dieting could be a corollary to body dissatisfaction reflecting skewed perception. Aim: To study the perception of body image among the adolescent girls of our study area and to explore if it affected their eating behaviour. Materials and Methods: An explanatory mixed method design (Quantitative Descriptive - Qualitative) was conducted in a sample of 250 adolescent girls after obtaining ethical clearance. The adolescents’ ‘Self perceptions of body shape’ (compared with their actual body weight, Body Mass Index (BMI), World Health Organisation (WHO) Asian standards), their ‘perceptions of a healthy body shape’ and their practices were collected quantitatively. Qualitative exploration {Focus Group Discussions (FGD)} of their beliefs and practices pertaining to their perceptions of body image were summarised and the data was analysed by Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) (version 13.0) and N Vivo 8 (Demo version). Results: The ‘self-perception of body shape’ in adolescent girls was compared with their BMI. Of those who felt that they were normal, 57.3% were underweight (BMI ≤18.5) and among those who perceived their self-image as fat, about 29.4% were normal and even about 33.3% were underweight (kappa 0.116, p<0.001). About 7% of the adolescent girls did dieting for maintaining body shape. The respondent’s various perspectives of a fatty body shape were related to dietary factors and few beliefs predominant in their community. Those who were ‘very thin’ wanted to be ‘normal’ but never ‘fat’ at any cost (Qualitative). Additionally, those who perceived themselves as ‘thin’ did not diet. For those who were on diet, being ‘thin’ was considered healthy (91%) but for none (0%), being ‘fat’ was healthy. Conclusion: Body image dissatisfaction and negative self-perception is observed in adolescent girls and impacts their eating behaviour. They should be positively counselled and their food habits must be shaped with sustained motivation as these tend to persist till adulthood.

“La Revue Blanche”: The History of Illustrating

The article reconstructs the illustrating history of “La Revue Blanche”, the leading French literary and artistic magazine of the fin de siècle epoch. Leaving out the analysis of literary content, the authors considers the petite revue through the prism of its most significant artistic achievements. In order to achieve this goal, a rather wide range of graphic artists who collaborated with “La Revue Blanche” at one time or another is outlined, and the conditional genre ranking of engravings published and distributed with the help of the journal is carried out. Based on the data obtained, a periodization of the short history of “La Revue Blanche” illustrating is proposed. The article attaches great importance to the stylistic and iconographic analysis of individual artworks. In the case of the ones by Vuillard, Roussel, and Bonnard, it is possible to put forward new semantic interpretations and emphasize the confessional nature of the prints created by the masters for the design of the journal’s frontispiece. In the article significant attention is given to the history of introducing the practice of publishing graphic literary portraits by Vallotton in “La Revue Blanche”, which at some point are forced to take on the utilitarian function of vignettes. Equally important is the review of the publication history of the independent illustrated supplement “NIB”, which, as is well known, has only had three issues. The authors see in “NIB”, at the same time, an artistic reincarnation of fumiste chatnoiresque satire, clearly close to Toulouse-Lautrec, Valloton and Bonnard, and a graphic revealing of the internal philosophical and aesthetic conflict that existed within the Nabis art group. In addition, the authors also describe the features of the Nathanson brothers’ publishing activity, emphasizing the direct dependence of the content of published products on the owners’ tastes.

ЭСТЕТИКА ГЕТЕРОГЕННОГО ОБРАЗА

Aesthetic preferences of contemporary art connoisseurs can hardly be called uniform. In view of this, today, heterogeneity, designed for a wide audience, is increasingly becoming a common technique. However, a question arises as to the reasons for the popularity of such eclecticism and ambiguity in the formation of an artistic image. The article is an attempt to scientific understanding of the formation and development of perception of images that differ in containing two or more strongly pronounced equivalent origins, which may exist with each other in contrast or be antagonistic. A specific character of understanding the meaning of heterogeneous images is rooted in the biological characteristics of human thinking and is directly dependent on the process of perception. The complexity of the polymorphic image lies in the impossibility of its unambiguous perception and identification. The aesthetic conflict is caused by the impossibility of correlating the image obtained in the process of perception with the norm, as well as the difficulty of checking the information presented in practice. This is a fair pattern: as perception influenced culture, so did culture affect perception. The nature of heterogeneity is explained by getting deep into the features of a primitive man’s worldview and is expressed in myth-making, which, by virtue of a certain instinct, creates a pure image. The images formed at the early stages develop on the border of the antagonistic categories of the sublime and the base, the beautiful and the ugly, which makes them extremely contradictory. However, they exist in consciousness as long as these discrepancies are noticed by a man, but are perceived naturally. Subsequently, heterogeneity begins to acquire a comic character, is used as an allegory, and through the use of the method of deformation becomes a powerful spokesman for the human essence. Modern perception of heterogeneity can be represented in two manifestations. On the one hand, a tendency has developed to harmoniously merge the heterogeneous into a single system. A clear definition of the boundaries of the elements made it possible later on to come to the collage art, able to synthesize even the most contradictory things. On the other hand, the fragmentation of an already holistic image was used in order to give it heterogeneity. These transformations have found the most vivid embodiment in painting, literature, cinematographic art. The creation of a heterogeneous image in contemporary art allows us to trace the change in the perception by society of the phenomenon of hybridity, its mood to accept such changes and openness to heterogeneity. Indeed, for the modern viewer, the aestheticization of heterogeneity becomes quite expected, is not filled with satire, loses ugliness. It gives hope for the attainment of happiness and power, which forms the basis for the increasing popularity of polymorphic images.

Saint-Saëns's First String Quartet, Cyclic Form and the Aesthetics of Charm

From the 1850s, Saint-Saëns regularly employed cyclic form: the practice of establishing large-scale relationships (especially in symphonies, chamber works, etc.) by reintroducing materials from earlier movements in later ones. Nonetheless, he became weary of such procedures following the Third Symphony (1886) for cultural-political reasons: Franck's most important cyclic works date from the 1880s, d'Indy declaredla forme cycliquea historically determined canon, and period writers considered cyclic form afranckistehallmark – all while Saint-Saëns's relationship with Franck's followers deteriorated.In this essay, I argue that Saint-Saëns's First String Quartet (1899) ‘misreads’ his rivals’ approaches to cyclic form as exemplified by d'Indy's Second Quartet of 1897 (in which a four-note cell suffuses most themes) and Franck's Quartet (in which themes from previous movements climactically accumulate in the final coda). Saint-Saëns's themes abound with miniscule motivic connections, which catch listeners’ ears but seem too fleeting and insubstantial to register as binding elements comparable to d'Indy's pellucid cell. Such relationships straddle the threshold of apprehensibility, and they produce a distinctive affective quality: where d'Indy fosters perceptions of genetic relationships, Saint-Saëns elicits a sensation of déjà entendu. The final coda similarly teases by reintroducing fragments from the slow introduction, encouraging anticipation of a Franck-like apotheosis. What follows is a mirage of one: timbres and textures of previous movements return, but incipient citations of themes dissolve. Where Franck delivers a full-blooded synthesis, Saint-Saëns follows through withtrompe l'oreille.Saint-Saëns's misreadings offranckistetechnique point to broader aesthetic conflicts. D'Indy enlisted cyclic form as a means to monumentality, which served the enseignement he esteemed as art's purpose. Déjà entendu andtrompe l'oreille, on the other hand, register as classicising attributes which diverge from d'Indy's didactic objectives and which Saint-Saëns grouped under the rubric of ‘charm’, a conduit to what he considered an ideologically neutral ‘aesthetic sense’.

Serhiy Yefremov and Viktor Petrov: the difference aesthetic preferences or conflict of generations?

Serhiy Yefremov and Viktor Petrov: the difference aesthetic preferences or conflict of generations?

The neural correlates of integrated aesthetics between moral and facial beauty

Facial beauty and moral beauty have been suggested to be two significant forms of social aesthetics. However, it remains unknown the extent to which there are neural underpinnings of the integration of these two forms of beauty. In the present study, participants were asked to make general aesthetic judgments of facial portraits and moral descriptions while collecting fMRI data. The facial portrait and moral description were randomly paired. Neurally, the appreciation of facial beauty and moral beauty recruited a common network involving the middle occipital gyrus (MOG) and medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC). The activities of the mOFC varied across aesthetic conditions, while the MOG was specifically activated in the most beautiful condition. In addition, there was a bilateral insular cortex response to ugliness specifically in the congruent aesthetic conditions, while SMA was selectively responsive to the most ugly condition. Activity associated with aesthetic conflict between facial and moral aesthetic information was limited to the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), with enhanced response to the incongruent condition compared to the congruent condition. These findings provide novel neural evidence for the integrated aesthetics of social beauty and suggest that integrated aesthetics is a more complex cognitive process than aesthetics restricted to a single modality.