Artistic Circles Research Articles

РОЛЬ ЗАКОРДОННИХ УКРАЇНЦІВ В УКРАЇНСЬКІЙ ПУБЛІЧНІЙ ТА КУЛЬТУРНІЙ ДИПЛОМАТІЇ: ІСТОРИЧНИЙ І СУЧАСНИЙ АСПЕКТИ

The circumstances, in which Ukraine began to encounter Russian aggression, require not only actively informing its population about the events that are taking place, but also the world community about our country. Such informing is done not only through official diplomacy but also through communication activities of the public, organizations, business, art circles, which, in the scientific space, has been titled public and cultural diplomacy.In the article, given the breadth of the proposed problem, in a historical and contemporary contexts, the author attempts to review the role and directions of activity of the Ukrainians abroad in disseminating information about Ukraine (which she proposes to take as a kind of manifestations of public and cultural diplomacy), in different periods of existence of Ukrainian statehood or its absence. The analysis of the history of the issue research as well as review of the theoretical basis allowed her to conclude that the Ukrainian researchers’ lack of attention to the problem and the peculiarities of assessing the contribution of Ukrainian expatriates to the formation and realization of the phenomenon. At the same time, the analysis of Western studies shows that considerable attention is paid to the study of the role of ethnonational Diasporas in the public and cultural diplomacy of their countries of origin. The author argues that the realization of the significance of the development of this area leads to the intensification of practical cooperation between diplomats and representatives of Ukrainian communities and organizations to inform the society of the host countries about Ukraine.The publication also contains a brief analysis of the history and the contemporary dimension of Ukrainian communities abroad, which are the subjects of public and cultural diplomacy. The author examines the essence of the waves of Ukrainian emigration, proposes her own approach to the traditional understanding of this phenomenon, analyzes the differences between generations of Ukrainians abroad, and proposes a generalization of features of the contemporary Ukrainian diaspora. The analysis of the possibilities of contemporary Ukrainians abroad in the development of Ukrainian public and cultural diplomacy, as well as a documentary basis that determines Ukraine’s willingness to cooperate with Ukrainian expatriates within the relevant state programs is logical in the context of the article.

The impact of artistic circles on the way of using and arrangement apartments in multi-family residential buildings in Poland in the 1950s and 1960s

This article (part I) presents the activities of artistic circles - architects - and their impact on the ways of using and arrangement of the living area. The way of using apartment is understood as:1) The way of arranging basic living functions by inhabitants (sleeping, resting, preparing and eating meals, receiving guests, studying, personal hygiene);2) The relationships between inhabitants and an apartment dependent on education, occupational structure, origin, life style, inherited cultural patterns, fashion as well as a group of physical characteristics and apartment attributes);3) The rights of family members to use the apartment space, including the right to intimacy and having own private space, as well as the representative needs.The aim of this article is to show the evolution of design thinking in the field of functional and spatial layouts of apartments and indicating the main trends of these changes. The selected functional layouts of apartments (including the remarks of the author of the design), representative of the given period of time, have been analyzed with respect to social and political conditions. In summary, the most important tendencies, which may be observed in respect of discussed changes, have been indicated. These include: expanding the living-room area of the apartment by designing a kitchen closer to the living-room or even combining a kitchen with a living -room; the differentiated approach to the issues of creating sleeping areas due to the understanding of children’s individual needs to have their own living space; the concern to upgrade the quality of hygiene in an apartment - by creating separate restrooms and designing bathrooms with a space for a washing machine.

The mathematician, the Surrealist, and the poet are of imagination all compact: Man Ray’s Shakespearean Equations

Man Ray’s series of paintings entitled Shakespearean Equations remains largely unknown even today, despite the artist’s fame. Perhaps that is partly because, like many Surrealist works, it so stubbornly resists interpretation; it is difficult to even grasp what one is looking at. The paintings depict mathematical models and their only Shakespearean characteristics are their titles, taken directly from Shakespeare’s canon. Nevertheless, I argue that a fruitful analysis is possible by understanding the pictures in relation to Shakespeare’s texts, the reception of Shakespeare in the twentieth century, and the reception of non-Euclidean geometry in artistic circles at the time. My study thus hinges on an assessment of the context in which Man Ray produced these works. But it also takes a closer look at two paintings in the series, uncovering the textual and pictorial sources they reference, parsing the layers of meaning which are thus built up. This paper does not set itself the impossible task of producing a definitive interpretation, which would, among other things, be contrary to the Surrealist spirit. I rather hope to explore what this particular act of appropriation uncovers about the reception of Shakespeare and mathematics.

사회문제극에서 반공선전의 무기로 - 양안의 시각에서 『만약 내가 진짜라면』읽기

China"s reformists, represented by Deng Xiaoping, took the helm at the third plenary session of the eleventh central committee held in December 1978. As a result, China faces a ‘new era’ with the socialist modernization drive as a new policy. At the 4th National Congress of Literature and Art Workers of China held in October the following year, the literary and artistic circles reaffirmed the declaration of the third plenary session, which guarantees freedom of creation and ideological emancipation. However, the scope of the permission and the specific creative policies remained unclear, which came out of the wild debate over several works. Among the works, “If I Were for Real”, which is based on the fraud of a ‘Educated youth’ in Shanghai in 1978, had a huge impact on Chinese society and was effectively banned from performing in early 1980. Interestingly, however, it was made into an anti-communist film in Taiwan in 1981 shortly after it was banned in China, and swept awards at the 8th Kummajang Film Festival, triggering a competition between China and Taiwan for cultural propaganda at the end of the Cold War. Noting this cultural phenomenon, the article analyzes the special historical contexts of China and Taiwan and the cultural manifestations of each country surrounding works during the transition period from the Cold War to the Post-Cold War.

Malczewski and Vienna: New Facts

The Polish version of the article was published in Roczniki Humanistyczne vol. 65, issue 4 (2017).
 The article presents, apart from the well-known facts concerning Malczewski’s connections with Viennese institutions and art circles, unknown archive materials, including: 1. letters exchanged between the artist and Juliusz Twardowski (a ministerial official) regarding the lease of a workshop at the Prater district of Vienna (letters were written between 1900–1913 and in 1925); 2. photographic documentation (19 items from the years 1890–1911) of the XXXIX. Ausstellung der Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs Secession in Vienna that featured 40 paintings by Malczewski and the sculpture Procession to Wawel by Wacław Szymanowski. The manuscripts indicate that Malczewski kept a secret atelier abroad and he most definitely worked there (it was either during one prolonged period, or two periods each lasting a few years). It contradicts the naïve opinions that Malczewski, being a patriot, could not stand separation from his homeland.
 Photographs with dates and signatures complete the information from the catalogue; they allow for the matching of the ambiguous titles with photographs, and consequently help to identify the paintings shown at the exhibition. Some paintings presented in the photos are not known today, therefore the photographs constitute valuable iconographic material. The documents prove, for instance, that Spring. Landscape with Tobias (1904) was presented in Vienna. It is startling that the painting’s synthetic form was not acknowledged by the critics in Vienna. Just after the World War I, Malczewski wrote a letter to the President of the Wiener Secession in which he stated that the war had not been beneficial to any of the martyred and agitated nations and he had hoped for cooperation between the artists in the time of peace that would not be shaped by national interests or politics.

„Dziwna awersja”. O wystawach Schulza

The paper sums up and corrects information on the exhibitions in which Schulz took part as well as reconstructs the circumstances under which they were organized. Today we know about ten such exhibitions ordered in series separated by several year-long breaks: 1920-1923, 1930, 1935. His participation in the last show, organized in 1940 by a Soviet institution, cannot be considered fully voluntary. Of the prewar exhibitions only those in Lvov – in 1922 and 1930 at the Society of the Friends of Fine Arts [Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Sztuk Pięknych] and in 1935 on the premises of Union of Polish Artists [Związek Zawodowy Polskich Artystów Plastyków] were noticed by the press, mainly local newspapers. Apparently Schulz, who understood the significance of exhibitions in building one’s artistic biography, did not care much about them. He needed constant support in the selection and evaluation of his works since he was not sure of their value. Probably in the beginning he could count in that respect on his close friends from Drogobych and then those from Lvov. In fact, however, he lived outside the artistic circles and sporadic contacts with other artists did not provide him with necessary inspiration or encouragement to present his works in public. The available records imply that only in 1938, perhaps reinforced by his position in the world of literature, Schulz was ready to plan exhibitions, but not in Lvov and not even in Poland. Exhibitions allowed him also to reach out to other people. They gave him a chance to find an understanding spectator, but also required disclosing oneself. Regardless of their subject matter, drawings are records of the artist’s gestures, i.e. his corporeality. Presenting them in public must have been for Schulz a temptation to tear off his disguise, but it also provoked fear to do so. It was only the graphic art that guaranteed a safe distance between the artist and spectator thanks to the technological processes that separated a single print from the artist’s body. One must remember that most Schulz’s exhibits were the cliché-verres, while practicing other kinds of graphic techniques was his unfulfilled dream. Thus, the sequences of Schulz’s presentations at exhibitions, separated by years of absence, are related to the episodes of his biography, reflecting his attitude toward self-presentation that oscillated between desire and aversion.

Erratum

Correction| October 01 2019 Erratum Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture (2019) 1 (4): 127. https://doi.org/10.1525/lavc.2019.140015 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Erratum. Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture 1 October 2019; 1 (4): 127. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/lavc.2019.140015 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentLatin American and Latinx Visual Culture Search Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture makes the following correction to Catherine S. Ramírez's, review of Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A., by C. Ondine Chavoya and David Evans Frantz, with Macarena Gómez-Barris, (Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, 2019 Vol. 1, Number 3, pp. 101–102 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/lavc.2019.130007): On p. 102 the second-to-last paragraph is corrected to: “ Although Axis Mundo “takes its cues from, but flips the script on, exhibitions that seek to chart the circle of lesser-known artists surrounding a more lauded figure,” certain artists—namely, Meza, Roberto Gil de Montes, Navarro, Sandoval, Terrill, Vargas, Velázquez, and the group Les Petites Bonbons—come to the forefront (p.25). All merit our attention and all are men. The academic essays by Alvarado, Bryan-Wilson, Gunckel, and Gómez-Barris help offset the catalogue's androcentrism. Still, some of the women and not entirely male artists, like Faith Wilding and ¡Cholita!, a band that... You do not currently have access to this content.

Educational Activities of the Abramtsevo Artistic Circle and Vasilii Polenov’s House of Theatrical Enlightenment

Abstract This article examines the activity of the Abramtsevo circle, mainly in the spheres of theater and church architecture. The partnership of two close friends, Savva Mamontov and Vasilii Polenov, generated most of the circle’s ideas and shaped its grand plans. The article analyzes the group’s cultural and educational projects, revealing the different ways in which the educational ideas of the Abramtsevo community influenced the realization of Polenov’s concepts and plans, which in turn were implemented in the artist’s social and theatrical life during the 1910s and 1920s.

The Abramtsevo Artistic Circle and the Search for a National Landscape

Abstract The strong national voice at Abramtsevo, based on a sense of harmony among native landscapes, religious and folk life, and estate culture was intrinsic to Slavic revival movements of the late nineteenth century. The estate and its surroundings were settings for Russian-themed paintings and inspired artists to seek and express a Russian “spirit of nature.” The search for a national landscape was connected with literary and intellectual culture fostered at Abramtsevo and neighboring estates, and with the presence of religious centers in the area. Local topography and collaboration among the Abramtsevo artists in the 1880s led to new ideas about a national landscape as artists ranged further afield in the next decade. Landscapes of mood and decorative works based on natural forms shifted the role of landscape from concrete subject to a source for formal experimentation.

The “Dilettantism” of Savva Mamontov in Russian Art

Abstract This article examines questions related to dilettantism, typically defined in negative terms as engagement in an activity without proper professional training. However, this concept can also prompt a positive association, connoting freedom from inertia, ossified techniques, and professional stereotypes and clichés. The present article contends that dilettantism is especially necessary in transitional periods of art history. At such moments, innovations may arise more readily in intimate and amateur circles, rather than in professional contexts. Such a circle developed in the 1870s-90s among the community of artists who gathered around the prominent industrialist and philanthropist Savva Mamontov, a man of diverse talents, who astutely intuited new trends in art. This group of artists came to be known as the Abramtsevo artistic circle, after the name of Mamontov’s country estate located just outside of Moscow, where the vast majority of their artistic activities took place. In Abramtsevo’s informal, creative atmosphere ideas for new aesthetic projects spontaneously materialized across a range of different artistic spheres—theater, architecture, decorative, and applied arts—in which members of the circle were essentially amateurs. But it is precisely in these areas that the artists would make their most significant contributions. Thus, the first seeds of a novel understanding of theatrical production as a single immersive entity were initially sown on the amateur stage of the Abramtsevo estate and subsequently fully blossomed in Mamontov’s Private Opera (1885-91; 1896-99), which played a foundational role in the development of Russian musical theater. The Church of the Spas nerukotvornyi [Savior Not Made by Human Hands], built by members of the Abramtsevo circle (1881-82), became the first exemplar of the Neo-Russian style in the history of Russian architecture, an important constituent of stil modern or Russian Art Nouveau. The activities of the kustar workshops in Abramtsevo—the carpentry workshop (1885) and the Abramtsevo ceramic studio (1890)—made a significant contribution to the development of the applied arts and industrial design in Russia, leading to their “rebirth” on a national level.

Artists at Play

Abstract The exhibition of Russian folk art at the Paris “Salon d’Automne” of 1913 has been generally overlooked in scholarship on folk art, overshadowed by the “All-Russian Kustar Exhibitions” and the Moscow avant-garde gallery shows of the same year. This article examines the contributions of its curator, Natalia Erenburg, and the project’s instigator, Iakov Tugendkhold, who wrote the catalogue essay and headed the committee—both of whom were artists who became critics, historians, and collectors. The article elucidates the show’s rationale and selection of exhibits, the critical response to it and its legacy. It also discusses the artistic circles of Russian Paris in which the project originated, particularly the Académie russe. Finally, it examines the project in the context of earlier efforts to present Russian folk art in Paris, and shows how it—and Russian folk art as a source and object of collecting and display—brought together artists, collectors, and scholars from the ranks of the Mir iskusstva [World of Art] group, as well as the younger avant-gardists, and allowed them to engage Parisian and European audiences with their own ideas and artworks.

The Poetics and Aesthetics of Otherness

Abstract Although traditionally associated with the ascendance of National Romanticism, Slavic folklore, and the Neo-Russian style in painting, architecture, and the decorative arts, the Abramtsevo artistic circle was also privy to the inception and production of a number of manifestly Orientalist works, such as Vasilii Polenov’s Christ and the Adulteress (1888), Mikhail Vrubel’s ceramic sculptures of The Assyrian, The Egyptian Girl, The Pharaoh, and The Libyan Lion (1890s), and the costumes and set designs for the theatrical productions Judith (1878, 1898), Joseph (1880, 1881, 1887, 1889), The Black Turban (1884, 1887, 1889), King Saul (1890), and To the Caucasus (1891). In addition, a series of hybrid works that fused elements of the exotic with national thematic and stylistic content, such as Viktor Vasnetsov’s Underwater Kingdom (1884) and Mikhail Vrubel’s Princess Volkhova (1898), were likewise produced under the auspices of Savva Mamontov and the Abramtsevo community, thus blurring the boundaries between native and foreign, local and global, self and other, and Slavophilia and Orientalia. The present article posits that an understanding of the romanticized, Neo-Russian artistic and theatrical productions, and the nationalist polemics of the Abramtsevo artistic circle is necessarily incomplete without a detailed examination of the various Orientalist crosscurrents which informed and structured many of the group’s artworks throughout the 1880s and 1890s—a narrative that has been largely left out of scholarly accounts of the movement.

Viktor Vasnetsov’s New Icons

Abstract This essay examines Russian artist Viktor Vasnetsov’s search for a new kind of prayer icon in the closing decades of the nineteenth century: a hybrid of icon and painting that would reconcile Russia’s historic contradictions and launch a renaissance of national culture and faith. Beginning with his icons for the Spas nerukotvornyi [Savior Not Made by Human Hands] Church at Abramtsevo in 1880-81, for two decades Vasnetsov was hailed as an innovator, the four icons he sent to the Paris “Exposition Universelle” of 1900 marking the culmination of his vision. After 1900, his religious painting polarized elite Russian society and was bitterly attacked in advanced art circles. Yet Vasnetsov’s new icons were increasingly linked with popular culture and the many copies made of them in the late Imperial period suggest that his hybrid image spoke to a generation seeking a resolution to the dilemma of how modern Orthodox worshippers should pray.

A Study on the Confucian Cultural Factors of Chinese Cultural Policies after ‘18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China’

The Chinese cultural policy after the 18th CPC National Congress reflects more confucian cultural factors. This is reflected in: First, the status of confucian cultural factors in China's official discourse system has significantly improved; Second, confucian cultural factors are more in-depth to all aspects of China's official media and cultural life; Third, confucian cultural factors have become an important factor in China's foreign cultural propaganda. After the 18th CPC National Congress, Confucian cultural factors and discourses have far exceeded the previous official language discourse system and become an important phenomenon in the previous leaders. Moreover, the official emphasizes the moral education of confucian morality and ethics, such as emphasizing ethics and humiliation, emphasizing public order and good customs. Emphasize family and family-style, advocate elegance and ethics in the cultural and artistic circles, emphasize the importance of cultural traditions. The important role of morality, cohesion, and cultural consensus; it also reflects the inevitable requirements of the development of the times, and is also related to personal factors such as the interests of General Secretary Xi Jinping. As far as the entire Chinese society is concerned, the recognition of confucian culture in the years since the 18th CPC National Congress has reached its highest point in nearly a hundred years. The social recognition of confucian culture has reached the highest level in nearly a century, and it can be further stabilized in the future due to political necessity, social development direction, and personal factors of the leader.

中國畵壇의 혁신논의와 齊白石의 계승과 초월

中國畵壇의 혁신논의와 齊白石의 계승과 초월

Promoting “African Art” and African Modernisms in Johannesburg in the 1960s

ABSTRACTIn the 1960s, during the years in which apartheid was to become fully entrenched in South Africa and black Africans relegated to second-class citizen status, there was an apparently paradoxical growth of interest in art circles in the art of black Africans. Two major players in the Johannesburg art market who acquired large collections of historical African art and promoted contemporary forms said to be African in quality are identified as having fuelled this interest. This article traces the founding of both the Günther Gallery and the Totem Meneghelli Gallery and the influence they exerted on the artists they exhibited and on other emerging galleries in Johannesburg—such as Gallery 101 (later the Pelmama Gallery)—in their constructions of particular African themes and aesthetics in the 1960s and early 1970s. The fact that many of the gallerists involved in this Africa-philia were immigrants from Europe is examined in relation to the apparent paradox noted at the outset and to the politics of race in the South African context and of “primitivism” in the wider art world.

UKRAINIAN SECOND-STAGE NONCONFORMISM: FEATURES OF DEVELOPMENT

Purpose of the study is to present the author’s standpoint on the issue of inner resistance in the non-liberal Ukrainian art community. The research covers the period since the 1960s through 1980s, when the author was a student at the Kyiv State Art Institute, a researcher at the Museum of Folk Architecture and Life of the Ukrainian SSR, a senior researcher at the Ukrhudozprom (Ukrainian applied arts enterprise), and a member of the Union of Artists of Ukraine. Using the previously unpublished materials (his own diary, interviews with the participants in the process, memories of artists, workers and members of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine), the author suggests an interpretation of the problem of Ukrainian nonconformism with regard not only to the artistic, but also to the sociocultural component of the phenomenon. The methodology employed in the study includes new methods of studying nonconformism, built primarily on the author’s own experience. In addition, the methods of art history studies and analysis, the structural-functional approach and the method of interviewing were used. The applied methodological approach broadened possible understanding of the long-hushed issue of artistic resistance to the official totalitarian doctrine. Scientific novelty of the results. The author intends to cover the problem basing on the impartial analysis of the studies of Ukrainian and foreign art historians and on the author’s own experience as the participant of the art process of the time. The article for the first time presents author’s personal theoretical approach to the important scientific problem, arising from a situation with no unanimous opinion and assessment of the artistic phenomenon. Conclusions. The revival of nonconformism as a cultural and artistic phenomenon meant enacting of modernist stylistics, embracing forbidden formalism and using postmodern trends within the cultural space of Soviet Ukraine. After the death of Stalin historical conditions changed, and the artistic circles reacted on temporary political “thaw” accordingly—that was a start of inevitable social changes resulting in new artistic phenomena and new artistic forms. As for the Ukrainian nonconformism, it should be noted that it never mimicred artistic life of the West of the studied period. As to the global context, it, undoubtedly, influenced the Ukrainian “phenomenon of dissent”. The methodology of the avant-garde ideas, as well as its stylistics, were revived anew in the Ukrainian nonconformism of the 1960s through 1980s. The “second revival” of nonconformism in Ukraine was the transgression of the so-called “Executed Renaissance” of the 1920s and early 1930s.

„Cały świat – samo życie”. Rola materii w malarstwie Tadeusza Kantora w latach 1945–1964

The topic of the paper is the idea of matter in Tadeusz Kantor’s painting after World War II, including metaphorical painting, the informel, and the painting of the matter (1945-1964). The artist defined matter as an indeterminate, universal foundation which is a vehicle of the attributes of all that can be perceived by the senses, both animate bodies and inanimate things. A starting point are Kantor’s own texts – his notes and publications reflecting particular stages of his artistic evolution, critical essays on art, as well as later statements referring to the period under scrutiny. The present analysis is an attempt to find out whether Kantor’s postulates were really reflected in his art. Its main goal is to reconstruct his line of reasoning concerning matter and focus on the activities rooted in his theories, which is why contemporary reception and interpretations of his painting have not been taken into account. The frame of reference includes philosophical and artistic ideas known to Kantor or available to the artistic circles of the period. The text has been divided into four parts corresponding to particular stages of the artist’s development: (1) 1945-1947, when Kantor was trying to find ways of artistic expression beyond traditional topics of painting, such as the human figure, (2) 1947-1954, the metaphorical period, when, as a result of his visit to the Palais de la Découverte, he tried to represent the world invisible to the eye, (3) 1955-1959, the informelperiod, when paint became for him an equivalent of the matter, a synecdoche, one substance symbolizing all of it, and (4) 1958-1964, painting of the matter, when he kept using also other substances added to paint and chose a “concrete” approach to the painting’s meaning. The authors argue that over the first two decades following World War II Kantor succeeded in creating a new kind of painting, corresponding to the present, in which matter was to be dominant. To achieve that goal, for many years he was experimenting with different ways of representing matter – its ruling forces and principles. His initial existential observations, which challenged the uniqueness of humans in the universe, were later supplemented by shocking contact with science at the Paris Museum of Inventions. In the next decade, Kantor stopped making references to science and accepted process as a basic method of reaching the ontological foundation of the world, i.e. “matter.” His art was no longer “production,” but turned into “action.” At the last stage under consideration, he decided that the painting must not present signs referring to reality beyond it. He rejected the idea of painting as illusion and mediation, claiming that the matter of art is concrete, that it becomes “what it is.”

1950년대 일본 미술계의 지형과 조양규의 문화적 위상

1950년대 일본 미술계의 지형과 조양규의 문화적 위상

Croce e i fiorentini durante la Prima guerra mondiale. Un fronte franco-tedesco nella filosofia italiana

The dispute between interventionists and neutralists opposes two fronts in the Italian philosophical landscape, where the Neapolitan pole dominated by Croce opposes the city of Florence - home of the French Institute and seat of literary and artistic circles close to Futurism and Bergsonism. From the beginning of the war, the Florentine journals “La Voce” and “Lacerba” publish frequent attacks on Germanic culture. Croce reacts from the pages of “La Critica” and “Italia Nostra”. The typical themes of French anti-German propaganda reverberate on the Italian political and philosophical debate, adapting to the peculiarity of its cultural context.