Canon Of Art Research Articles

Documenta 14 and the question of colonialism: defending an impossible position between Athens and Kassel

ABSTRACT Documenta 14 was a unique curatorial experiment on de-centring contemporary art and rethinking its historical development. The relocation of the first half of the show from the geographical and political centre of Europe to the crisis-ridden Southern European capital of Athens implies a decolonial attitude along with the decision to involve a different material context for exhibiting. Questioning the location of Documenta that is synonymous with the city of Kassel is symptomatic with the attempt of the curatorial team to distance the exhibition from the Western European/North American cultural axis. Actually, what documenta 14 attempted and partly succeeded to present was an alternative historical narrative about the art avant-gardes in the twentieth century and how these contributed to the constitution of the contemporary art canons. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the show and to discuss its efforts in challenging Occidentalism against the background of its own institutional history, European cultural politics, the emergence of right-wing populism and the critiques of the left.

Between the Art Canon and the Margins: Historicizing Technology-Reliant Art via Curatorial Practice

This article explores curatorial practice that has technology-reliant works at its epicentre, arguing that for an efficient methodology to historicize the latter there needs to be a reconfiguration of the curatorial scope and a holistic approach to viewing and documenting exhibitions. Based on theoretical research and install decisions of recent years, the ways in which curatorial practice can be reconfigured within the art canon to inform art history, as well as to accommodate developments in exhibition practices are examined.

“Have You Ever Seen the Crowd Goin’ Apeshit?”: Disrupting Representations of Animalistic Black Femininity in the French Imaginary

16 June 2018. London Stadium. Beyoncé and Jay–Z revealed the premiere of the music video Apeshit. Filmed inside the Louvre Museum in Paris, Beyoncé’s sexual desirability powerfully dialogues with Western canons of high art that have dehumanized or erased the black female body. Dominant tropes have historically associated the black female body with the realm of nature saddled with an animalistic hypersexuality. With this timely release, Apeshit engages with the growing current debate about the ethic of representation of the black subject in European museums. Here, I argue that Beyoncé transcends the tension between nature and culture into a syncretic language to subvert a dominant imperialistic gaze. Drawing on black feminist theories and art history, a formal analysis traces the genealogy and stylistic expression of this vocabulary to understand its political implications. Findings pinpoint how Beyoncé laces past and present, the regal nakedness of her African heritage and Western conventions of the nude to convey the complexity, sensuality, and humanity of black women—thus drawing a critical reimagining of museal practices and enriching the collective imaginary at large.

From nabeeld to kopie: the after-image and the copy in Early Modern Netherlandish art

This article examines the emergence and transformation of the ‘copy’ as a category of image in sixteenth-century Netherlandish art and art-writing. It attends to a vocabulary that existed before, and then coexisted alongside, the arrival of the word kopie (from the French copie) in an incipient vernacular discourse on Netherlandish art. When the painter and poet Lucas d’Heere introduced the term kopie into Dutch in relation to Michiel Coxcie’s copy of the Van Eyck brothers’ Ghent Altarpiece in a poem of c.1559, he highlighted the novelty of this self-conscious replica. For d’Heere, Coxcie’s copy aligned closely with his own project to evaluate the history of Netherlandish art from its perceived origins in the work of the Van Eycks to its modern development in print publishing houses and large studios such as that of his master, the painter Frans Floris. By considering the roles that copies played in cultures of artistic creation and collecting, this article draws attention to the institutionalization of the copy and the formation of artistic canons. It addresses the secularization of images as well as the advent of new artistic categories in response to the rise of printed multiples and the art market.

Women’s bodies as dominated territories: Intersectionality and performance in contemporary art from Mexico, Central America and the Hispanic Caribbean

Since the 1970s, artists from Central America, Mexico and the Hispanic Caribbean have explored the connection between imperialism and gender violence through innovative artistic proposals. Their research has led them to use the female body as a metaphor for both the invaded geographical territory and the patriarchal incursion into women’s lives. This trend has received little to no attention and it behooves us to understand why it has happened and, more importantly, how the artists are proposing we examine this double violence endured by the women who live or used to live in countries with a colonial present or past. The resulting images are powerful, interesting, and a great contribution to Latin America’s artistic heritage. This study proposes that research yet to be done in other Global areas where colonies has been established, since it is possible that this trend can be understood, not only as an element of the Latin American artistic canon, but also integral to all of non-Western art.

Images of Medieval Art in the French Surrealist Periodicals <i>Documents</i> (1929–31) and <i>Minotaure</i> (1933–39)

The avant-garde movement Surrealism claimed historical figures as supposed ancesters, as is well known, but also interacted with the past, and especially art of the past, in other ways. This article explores the reception of the European Middle Ages in French Surrealism, in particular medieval art, by means of a case study: illustrations of medieval and early-modern Western art in the surrealist periodicals Documents (1929-1931) and Minotaure (1933-1939). The cerebral and contrary Documents challenged the canon of art by actively looking at the margins of European art, reproducing medieval art from a wide variety of periods and geographic locations, and in very differing media, including jewelry and vessels, murals, bronze church doors, and manuscript illuminations. The glossy art review Minotaure, which came with coloured inserts, was more conventional in its selection, reproducing primarily late-medieval and renaissance art works, mainly (panel) paintings. However, the intention is just as contrary, as late-medieval and renaissance art in Minotaure is framed in terms of surrealist aesthetics in a manner undermining the conventional canon. In Documents medieval art primarily serves to makes points about style and iconography, which is often posited as primitive or exotic. In Minotaure, medieval art serves to make points about Surrealism, about the oneiric qualities of form or iconography. Both periodicals offered an interesting array of medieval and renaissance art and introduced this art into the surrealist discours.

How brand visual aesthetics foster a transnational imagined community

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate how visual aesthetic referents used in branding can help foster a transnational imagined community (TIC). The authors use brands embedded with Middle Eastern visual aesthetics as a research context. As such, the study aims to examine how Middle Eastern non-figurative art is used by non-Middle Eastern brands to foster an imagined Middle Easternness.Design/methodology/approachThrough a critical visual analysis, the authors apply a visual social semiotic approach to Middle Eastern art canons to better understand the dimensions of transnational imagined communities.FindingsThe study finds and discusses six sub-dimensions of Middle Easternness, which compose two overarching dimensions of TIC, namely, temporal and spatial. These sub-dimensions provide brand managers and designers with six different ways to foster transnational imagined communities through the use of visual aesthetic referents in branding.Research limitations/implicationsThis research identifies the specific visual sub-dimensions of brands that enable transnational communities to be imagined.Practical implicationsUnderstanding the visual aesthetic sub-dimensions in this study provides brand managers with practical tools that can help develop referents that foster transnational imagined communities in brand building to achieve competitive advantage and reach a transnational segment.Originality/valuePrior studies have primarily focussed on how visual aesthetics help in understanding issues related to national identity. In contrast, this paper examines the use of visual aesthetics in branding from a transnational perspective.

Picturing the Barrio: Ten Chicano Photographers by David William Foster

Reviewed by: Picturing the Barrio: Ten Chicano Photographers by David William Foster Ileana L. Selejan Photography, Documentary, Chicano, Latinx, Civil Rights David William Foster. Picturing the Barrio: Ten Chicano Photographers, U of Pittsburgh P, 2017, 240 pp. "Art history is a funny thing. It will focus on some stories (relentlessly), while often completely ignoring others," Los Angeles Times critic Carolina A. Miranda commented, in response to a 2014 Ricardo Valverde retrospective exhibition.1 Indeed opportunities to learn and think about art, and in particular photography made by US-Americans of Mexican descent, seem to be few and far between. At a national level, this occurs in a context of increased institutional attention to Latin American artists (i.e., from Central and South America) on the one hand, and of heightened xenophobia and racism, on the other. Representation matters, given that the Latino population constitutes the largest ethnic minority group in the country. David William Foster's book Picturing the Barrio: Ten Chicano Photographers provides a valuable contribution in this respect. The volume begins with a caveat: instead of a "comprehensive history of Chicano photography of the sort that might provide a unified chronology and yield [End Page 232] a unified 'vision' of the Chicano experience through the medium of photography" (10), the author proposes a series of ten essays about the work of "photographers who self-identify as Chicano or Mexican American" (7), work that "focuses on what has come to be defined as the Chicano experience" (5). Should one be interested in a broader assessment of the issues touched upon here, he notes, "it might be more appropriate in historical terms to look at Hispanic or Latino artists as a whole and not just those who are Chicano-identified" (10). This consequential historiographic question has become central to US cultural politics, as the field of art has made important strides toward incorporating Latin American and Latinx cultural practices into the curriculum, if not the canon. Many instances from this ongoing discussion may be listed; for instance, one might revisit debates spurred by the exhibition Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art (Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2014). Nonetheless, the present volume strikes another chord. At the peak of the Chicano civil rights movement (1965–1975), demands for social justice contributed to making a discriminated, marginalized population visible. The works presented in this volume originate, for the most part, in its aftermath. And, perhaps most importantly, it has become known due to exhibitions and publications that are even more recent. So, how should one position this work? Within a geo-political canon of US-American art in general? Following the Latinx/Latin American paradigm, in relation to the various regional and national contexts in the Americas? Or somewhere in between? The answer, I would suggest, lies within the individual trajectory of each practitioner. Amongst the precursors for his book, Foster notes scholarly contributions such as Chon A. Noriega's From the West (1995), and exhibitions such as picARTE! Photography Beyond Representation (Heard Museum, 2004), Cotidiano: Latino/US (2014) and Phantom Sightings: Art after the Chicano Movement (LACMA, 2008). In contrast to such overviews, which are inevitably partial, the present study argues for a more direct engagement with individual bodies of work, located within the immediacy of their context. In establishing his corpus, Foster notes that his study focuses exclusively on work that "must have been published in book form" (4). Nonetheless, this is not a study of photobooks per se, making the definition of what is exactly meant by "book form" somewhat confusing (6). This selective approach leaves out significant developments from the practitioners' oeuvre, which may have ultimately served to deepen readers' awareness of the political, social, and aesthetic implications of the projects at hand. Even with a limited corpus, and despite the ephemerality of photography and the unavailability of some of this work (153), archival research or interviews with the photographers would have further enriched the present study. That said, perhaps Foster's approach is most effective—and affective—in smaller measures, in how it summons critical subjectivity, turning one's attention toward these stunning bodies of work. Undeniably, the historic marginalization of Chicanos has affected and continues...

Issues and development trends of modern Icon painting

The article is concerned with topical issues and problem points of modern icon painting: understanding meanings and the mission of the icon in society, position of the Church, issue of the canon in icon painting, commercialization of the icon painter’s work, etc. The main tasks of modern icon painting have been determined. For example, ability to find a harmony of artistic creation and icon painting canon; mastering the icon painting language and icon painting thinking; development of new iconography. Today, development trends of icon painting are seen in the return and preservation of the icon painting canon culture and in the interaction of the state and the Church in terms of the spiritual and professional education of modern icon painters. Today, an example of such an interaction is the joint icon painting department of the Rostov Art College named after M.B. Grekov and the Don Theological Seminary.

Beyond the Borders: The Significance of Frontiers between Central Balkans’ Roman Provinces in the Context of Roman Art

Roman conquest in the 1st century, upon which tribal communities were organized into administrative units. The fact that the boundaries of pre-Romantribal territories didn’t correspond in total with the areas of the newly formed Roman provinces, led to frequent influences from neighbouring provinces and the blending of Roman art with local traits in the artistic sphere. Although in the 1st century different types of sculpture (cult, monumental and honorary) were present, throughout the whole period of the Roman reign cult sculptures and statues were the most numerous. Tracing the development of the art in the territory of Central Balkans’ Roman provinces, it is clear that the northern parts were more under the Roman influence as the consequence of indigenous population more readily adapting to the process of Romanisation, while the southern parts of the Central Balkans area were more influenced by the Greek culture with which they were in contact from as early as the middle of the 7th century B.C. Sculptures, statues and reliefs were modelled upon Roman art canons, copying classical Greek and Hellenistic art, in bigger centres like Ratiaria, Singidunum, Viminacium, Naissus, Scupi etc. and localities along the Danube limes. At the same time, in the interior of the Central Balkans’ provinces, works of art were manufactured upon Roman canons but with local traits. These were mainly recognized in the simplicity, frontality and linearity of the art works. This is particularly visible in the western and south-western parts of the aforementioned territory, as in some of the localities in eastern parts of the area. During the 2nd and the 3rd centuries, beside skilful artisans from Greece, Asia Minor and the Mediterranean, who came and worked in bigger centres, local workshops also produced different kinds of artworks, copying Roman types in a more or less successful way. During the 3rd century particularly, different cultural and artistic influences met and blended, often transcending the administrative borders of the provinces, thus the forthcoming iconographic syncretism was present in the 4th century as well. From the end of the 3rd and during the 4th century, rich aristocrats,local elite and emperors ordered high quality works for decorating their estates and villas, following aesthetic criteria established in other eastern and western provinces. In the art works from that period, beside certain schematism and linearity in the modelling, a blending of similar iconographic details is emphasizedas the presence of local artistic traits. Therefore, the continuance of manufacturing of the sculpture by copying classical Greek works of art and of the locally produced works of art with traits of indigenous material cultures is present until the end of the Roman reign.

“Self-Expanding Information” as an Intrinsic Property of Musical and Artistic Work

«Вестник Санкт-Петербургского университета. Искусствоведение» — научно-теоретический рецензируемый журнал, обобщающий результаты исследований ученых всего мира в различных областях искусства, включая музыковедение, культурологию и художественное образование.

Something About Mary

Something About Mary Melissa Hyde (bio) I was writing an MA thesis on Fragonard when I first became aware of Mary Sheriff's work. This was around 1988, a couple of years before her Fragonard book came out, but she had burst onto the scene earlier with a trio of articles relating to it. In the present context, it is appropriate to note that the first of these, and only the second piece she had ever published, appeared in the spring 1986 issue of Eighteenth-Century Studies.1 The articles were revelatory—here was a Fragonard, and a take on the Rococo, that challenged all of the received wisdom about both. Reading them now, from a distance of thirty years, I see that although not framed in terms of the feminist concerns that would be at heart of nearly all of Mary's subsequent work, these articles (and the subsequent Fragonard book itself), are nonetheless typically "Sheriffian" in their approach and sensibility. They are grounded in her unstinting commitment to theoretically and historically informed (re)interpretation of individual works of art as a means of opening up a range of broader questions about art, culture, and history. They exemplify her virtuoso talent for close, nuanced readings of the works themselves, as well as her deep appreciation for the formal, material, and semiotic aspects of painting. And they already have that authorial voice which was so distinctively her own. The work on Fragonard grew out of Mary's dissertation, completed in 1981, and was, in terms of both subject matter and approach, a precocious act of resistance. It was her first salvo in what she later called "talking back" to canonical art history and its myths. Reading against the grain was a key aspect of Mary's interpretive strategies and practice throughout her career, and something she talked about in a number of important essays on gender and art historical methodology.2 [End Page 179] An early example of Mary's "talking back" was her critical review of the 1988 Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Grand Palais Fragonard exhibition, in which she sassily challenged the curator's business-as-usual insistence on le bon Frago as "light, frivolous and hopelessly Rococo."3 Her review also included a bracing defense of a junior scholar whose recent article on Fragonard had been called out in the exhibition catalog as "overly interpretive" and "beside the point." It was thrilling to read Mary's takedown of a retardataire and patronizing attempt to discipline a graduate student who was engaging in the theoretically informed, interpretive art history that was beginning to broaden the prospects of eighteenth-century French art at that time.4 After the publication of Fragonard: Art and Eroticism (1990), Mary herself would be subject to conservative backlash in a book review or two. How deliciously ironic and gratifying that twenty-five years later, the organizers of the 2015 RMN/Grand Palais exhibition Fragonard Amoureux commissioned her to write a feature essay for its catalogue! My first direct communications with Mary came in 1991, when I decided it would be a good idea to write to her out of the blue, asking for her thoughts on a document I was then passing off as a dissertation prospectus. Fortunately for me, that turned out be an outstanding idea: I got back a single-spaced three-page letter teeming with suggestions. I have kept it all these years, printed in dot-matrix, the paper yellowed and dog-eared, covered with my notes and underlining. When I look back on that first epistolary exchange (such an appropriately eighteenth-century mode of communication!), I am still amazed at Mary's readiness to respond so thoughtfully to some random grad student she had never met. Even more amazing is that she extended the same seemingly boundless generosity to so many other comers. In her letter Mary talked about her own work, which was at a turning point. She explained that while writing Fragonard she became "very involved" with women's studies and feminist theory. But as the course of that book had long been set, she did not have time to reconceive the project in a responsible way...

The Intertextuality and Translations of Fine Art and Class in Hip-Hop Culture

Hip-hop culture is structured around key representational elements, each of which is underpinned by the holistic element of knowledge. Hip-hop emerged as a cultural counter position to the socio-politics of the urban condition in 1970s New York City, fuelled by destitution, contextual displacement, and the cultural values of non-white diaspora. Graffiti—as the primary form of hip-hop expression—began as a political act before morphing into an artform which visually supported the music and dance elements of hip-hop. The emerging synergies graffiti shared with the practices of DJing, rap, and B-boying (breakdancing) forged a new form of art which challenged the cultural capital of music and visual and sonic arts. This article explores moments of intertextuality between visual and sonic metaphors in hip-hop culture and the canon of fine art. The tropes of Michelangelo, Warhol, Monet, and O’Keefe are interrogated through the lyrics of Melle Mel, LL Cool J, Rakim, Felt, Action Bronson, Homeboy Sandman and Aesop Rock to reveal hip-hop’s multifarious intertextuality. In conclusion, the article contests the fallacy of hip-hop as mainstream and lowbrow culture and affirms that the use of fine art tropes in hip-hop narratives builds a critical relationship between the previously disparate cultural values of hip-hop and fine art, and challenges conventions of the class system.

Remembering “Planet Auschwitz” During the Cold War

During one of the most famous moments of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, author and Holocaust survivor Yehiel Dinur took the witness stand in the summer of 1961 to deliver a brief and enigmatic testimony about what he termed “the Auschwitz planet.” Over the next two decades, as international Holocaust consciousness re-emerged in the shadow of the Cold War, writers, thinkers, and filmmakers would elaborate on the topography of “Planet Auschwitz,” figuring the Holocaust as an alien world at the limits of modernity. Drawing on a number of sources not always included in canons of art and theory of Holocaust memory, this article shows how the genocide of Europe’s Jews, ongoing global racial conflicts, and the penetration of the “final frontier” became overlapping sites of philosophical speculation during the 1960s and 1970s about the nature of modernity and what it means to be a human being.

The Influence of Western European Pictorial Traditions in Arsen Kurbanov's Paintings

This article is devoted to the study of the picturesque heritage of the Dagestan artist Arsen Kurbanov (1990s). The choice of these chronological frames is conditioned by the desire to study the initial period of the artist's creative work, which determined his further creative path of development, his aesthetic preferences and style affiliation. Arsen Kurbanov's creative method was significantly developed from the traditions of Western European academic painting. The revival of the Italian Quattrocento era, the peculiarities of the artistic vision of the Northern Renaissance masters, the creativity of Vermeer Delft, served as the basics by which the Dagestani artist was inspired. Creating his compositions, allowing to recall the works of Giotto di Bondone, and the masters of the early Renaissance, as well as P. Brueghel and Vermeer, Arsen Kurbanov does not resort to blind copying of their manners and methods of painting, but reinterprets creatively the heritage of great masters. By introducing the elements of identity into his works that go back to the cultural peculiarities of his people - the Dagestani reality, and also developing in the bosom of the Petersburg Academy of Arts, he contributes to the development of his original style, unlike all previous achievements of classical art. Thus, the ancient mythology, and the biblical subjects of his paintings, receive new specific forms of expression in the pluralistic environment of contemporary artistic trends. They acquire the features of relevance and vitality in the system of academic art canons. The appeal to historical reminiscences and taking over the best achievements from the pictorial heritage of the masters of the past allowed Arsen Kurbanov to find his place in the newest art of Russia, and to remain a unique, interesting and contemporary artist at the same time. The studying of classical painting tradition role in the development of Arsen Kurbanov's artistic language is the main goal of the proposed article. A wide spectrum of various means of picturesque expressiveness and artistic techniques is analyzed, which served as a fundamental factor in his aesthetic preferences and recognizable handwriting.

Reading Phoebe Gloeckner's A Child's Life and Other Stories at the Time of #MeToo

ABSTRACTIn this essay, I analyze the autobiographical subject's sexual suffering in Phoebe Gloeckner's graphic memoir, A Child's Life and Other Stories (2000), through an investigation of the cartoonist's reference to Marcel Duchamp's installation, Étant Donnés: 1° la Chute d'Eau, 2° le Gaz d'Eclairage (1944–66), and the tradition in which it is situated, which spans back to Gustave Gourbet's infamous painting, L’Origine du Monde (1866). I propose that to complicate the representation of Minnie's sexual objectification, Gloeckner fuses traces related to the negotiation of the female nude body in Duchamp's and Courbet's patriarchal, canonical art, and in Carolee Schneeman's and Judy Chicago's second-wave feminist art. I argue that the graphic memoir introduces Gloeckner as an active consumer of past artworks by performing her feminist reading and reinterpretation of them, and thus it proposes ways of critically consuming gender formations that reach us via art, literature and social media. My aim is to stress the value of A Child's Life, particularly at the time of #MeToo, a period when we are surrounded by testimonies of sexual abuse told by girls and women, while simultaneously being bombarded with their sexualising images reaching us through the media.

Primordial Poetry: Herder’s Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache and the Poetics of Lying

Johann Gottfried Herder’s Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache (1772) connects the idea of genesis with the myth of the poetic origin of language. Scholars have reflected extensively upon Herder’s introduction of anthropological and multi-causal perspectives on language, but largely dismissed the many literary allusions as indicators of its ethical preconditions. Herder substitutes the concept of “origin” with literary aesthetics by using the ancient canon of literature and art. The affective relationship between screaming and speaking is exemplified with the help of Sophocles’ Philoctetes, Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound, and Lessing’s Laokoon oder über die Grenzen der Mahlerey und Poesie (1766). Through the lens of these texts Herder shows the dichotomy of truth and lie, but inherently challenges his own thoughts on authenticity, purity, and sincerity as foundations of moral progress.

Deconstructing the Topos of Poland as a Jewish Necropolis in Texts by Israeli Authors of the Third PostHolocaust Generation

The paper aims at recognizing and describing the ways of deconstructing the topos of Poland as a Jewish necropolis, a process that in the last decade appears more and more often in the works of Israeli authors of the third generation after the Shoah. The generation concept – as I argue – can serve here as a useful tool for understanding the shift which occurred in the specific national context of Israeli Holocaust discourse and strongly influenced the image of Poland in Israeli literature and culture. Poland depicted as a Jewish necropolis has become one of the central motifs present in Israeli literary as well as the artistic canon of Shoah representations. As the central space where the Shoah occurred, Poland was obviously perceived as a land marked by death and formed exclusively by the experience of the Holocaust. However, in the aftermath of two major shifts that have occurred in the last decades: a meaningful change in the Israeli Holocaust discourse and the new reality of Poland after 1989, and also as a consequence of the growing time distance separating yet another generation from the events themselves, numerous authors born in Israel mostly in the 1970s and in the 1980s began approaching the above-mentioned motif critically. This tendency, one of the few typical for the third generation, is demonstrated either through the motif ’s deconstruction and subversive usage or, more radically, by employing the genre of alternate history and changing the place’s identity (e.g. Tel Aviv by Yair Chasdiel). The topos of Poland as a necropolis has therefore been turned into a part – or even a starting point – of the reflection on collective memory patterns (e.g. Kompot. The Polish-Israeli Comic Book), stereotypes (e.g. Bat Yam by Yael Ronen), and on the authors’ own roots and identity (e.g. The Property by Rutu Modan). By analyzing the abovementioned texts, I will explore the process of constant interaction occurring between collective and the individual memory, between the Israeli national perspective and Polish landscapes, between an author and space and, finally – between the category of the third generation and its representatives themselves.

THE CORRELATION OF INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL CANON OF ART (based on Vyacheslav Ivanov’s philosophical and aesthetic heritage)

The article focuses on the essence of internal and external canon of art in connection with the clearing of fundamental categories of theurgy and conciliarism. A creative personality must comply with two canons – internal («a realibus ad realiora») and external («ad realia per realiora»). The external canon is a set of artistic and aesthetic skills and rules. The internal canon consists in the acceptance of the hierarchical order of true values. The basis of the internal canon is faith. It is a way of overcoming personal principles with overpersonal principles, organization of the personality according to the ecumenical norms. The artist can be called theurgist only in case of compliance with the internal canon. Without compliance with the internal canon, the artist will be an illusionist, and art – an illusory reality, «a copy of the copy». Theurgy in art is related to the concept of conciliarism. Conciliarism, as the unity of all that exists, is based not only on mutual relations with the living, but also on mutual relations with the departed, on a living bond with the fathers. For the conciliar consciousness, there is neither the other world, nor this world, but there is some kind of wholeness, a simultaneous presence of everyone in Thou art (Ty esi). The author comes to the conclusion that theurgical art reserves for itself the ontological status and is a form of manifestation of the true reality.

Canon Fire

Research Article| May 01 2018 Canon Fire: Russia’s Culture War Marina Davydova Marina Davydova Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Theater (2018) 48 (2): 33–37. https://doi.org/10.1215/01610775-4352689 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter Email Permissions Search Site Citation Marina Davydova; Canon Fire: Russia’s Culture War. Theater 1 May 2018; 48 (2): 33–37. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/01610775-4352689 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsTheater Search Advanced Search Marina Davydova impugns what she calls a “total conservative revolution” in Russian culture. Self-censorship has rendered censorship superfluous, she argues, as reverence for fossilized classics forbids their transformation or modernization. Her polemic traces the cult of the past back to Stalin, who “turned classics (from Pushkin to Tchaikovsky) into icons,” replacing religion with a sacred artistic canon. “Aesthetics,” Davydova contends, “is more important than politics. I’m sure that fascist ideology grows out of fascist aesthetics.” censorship, Russia, Fascism, canon, classics, aesthetics, politics The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2018 Yale School of Drama/Yale Repertory Theatre2018 You do not currently have access to this content.