Art Movement Research Articles

Exploration and Research on "Creative Thinking" in Dance Education at Training Institutions

Dance is an art form that uses the human body's artistic movements as a medium to convey life experiences and express inner emotions. Dance has existed since prehistoric times, even before the development of language, and has continued to the present day. In recent years, with the guidance of national policies and the influence of the new media industry, dance has garnered increasing attention and popularity. As a result, public-oriented dance training institutions have rapidly developed. Xi'an, China, has emerged as an attractive "internet-famous" city in recent years, providing a large capacity and substantial opportunities for the dance training market. A variety of training institutions have flourished, displaying diverse educational approaches. Given this context, we conducted research on three typical institutions through interviews and hands-on experiences to explore their approach to "creative thinking" in dance education. Before conducting formal research, we provided a subjective definition of "creative thinking" from the perspective of our field of study, specifically in the area of "dance education" with which we are personally familiar. This definition entails breaking away from traditional "demonstrative teaching" methods, transforming the "teacher-authority" dynamic, and establishing an "open" learning atmosphere. Under this framework, we conducted our investigation.

In the footsteps of Lyubomir Dalchev and Anatas Dalchev in Italy – toposes, images, texts (Preliminary notes)

The article reports on the progress of research devoted to the „Italian period“ in the lives of two great Bulgarian artists, Lyubomir Dalchev and Atanas Dalchev, spanning the years 1926 to 1928. It presents observations on the critical reception of this stage in their biographies, the relationship between the cultural geography of Italy and the poetics of their works, and the logic of the translation dialogue facilitated by the poet and translator A. Dalchev. The article also includes visual illustrations outlining the main routes of the two authors‘ creative engagement with Italy. The research establishes the connection between the aesthetic pursuits of the Dalchev brothers and the Italian cultural tradition. It highlights how they not only became familiar with key phenomena and examples from the history of art, cultural studies, and philosophy, but also actively participated in the powerful artistic movements of the 1920s, leaving a lasting mark on the development of the cultural ties between Bulgaria and Italy.

Five Algerian postcards: a brief history of ‘Images Populaires’ in Maghribi chromolithography

ABSTRACT This article provides a historical introduction to chromolithographic printing in the Maghrib, paying special attention to the role of print in the spread of vernacular iconographies and figurative forms of Islamic art. I focus on five postcards – all produced in Algeria before 1928 by Éditions Bonestève – whose vibrant illustrations depict a variety of figures, creatures, and narrative scenes. They act as windows onto a huge visual archive of printed matter from the 19th and early 20th centuries that remains understudied in both the literature on colonial visual culture and Islamic art history. Perhaps due to their explicitly religious iconography, what is often overlooked about these chromolithographic images is how they were co-produced by European and North African actors and consumed by diverse markets of Muslims and non-Muslims alike; understanding them as fundamentally hybrid is crucial to appreciating their full mobility, their widespread aesthetic and political influence, and their ability to be read in diverse and sometimes contradictory ways. Ultimately this article challenges the dismissive label ‘images populaires’, while also asking whether a new reading of certain images as ‘popular’ and ‘Islamic’ is in fact possible if we look to their historical (re)appropriations within different communities, geographies, and political or artistic movements.

The Impact of Historical Art Movements on Medicine

Art and medicine have long influenced one another, with historical art movements shaping not only aesthetic trends but also conceptions of health, disease, and human anatomy. This paper examines the intertwined evolution of art and medicine across pivotal historical periods, highlighting the Renaissance’s focus on anatomical accuracy, Romanticism’s emotional engagement with the human condition, and Modernism’s reflection of trauma from warfare and disease. The analysis considers how visual representations, from anatomical sketches to symbolic portrayals of illness, have impacted public health perceptions and medical education. Additionally, the study examines the therapeutic uses of art in contemporary settings, underscoring the psychological benefits of art therapy in clinical care. By tracing these influences, this paper sheds light on art’s role in shaping healthcare practices, patient experience, and medical ethics, while advocating for continued interdisciplinary collaboration to enhance medical humanities and patient-centered care. Keywords: Art and Medicine, Historical Art Movements, Renaissance Anatomy, Modernism and Trauma, Art Therapy.

The Role of Art in Empowering Marginalized Communities

Art has historically played a significant role in providing a voice to marginalized communities, enabling them to share their unique cultural narratives, express resilience, and advocate for social justice. This paper examines how visual, performing, and folk arts contribute to the empowerment of communities that have long been excluded from socio-political and economic development. Through historical analysis of art movements such as the Mexican Muralist Movement and the Black Arts Movement, alongside case studies like the Allsorts SLAM and “I am Liverpool,” the study underscores art’s role in fostering identity construction, well-being, and social capital. Additionally, the paper addresses the challenges in aligning art-based initiatives with the true needs of marginalized groups and proposes strategies for creating sustainable, community-centered art projects that drive long-term empowerment. Keywords: Marginalized communities, Empowerment through art, Cultural identity, Social justice.

Exploring Global Arts Movements and Their Impact on Health Education

This review investigates the intersection between global art movements and health education, exploring how art can play a transformative role in promoting health awareness and education, particularly in under-resourced communities. Drawing on philosophical theories of creativity, behavior change, and real-world case studies, this research highlights how arts initiatives have contributed to public health awareness and education. The paper addresses the integration of arts in health education, the challenges faced, and the opportunities for creating a more holistic approach to health promotion. The review concludes by emphasizing the importance of cross-disciplinary partnerships to further integrate arts into health education for a more profound global impact. Keywords: Global arts movements, Health education, Public health, Arts initiatives, Social change.

To Be Free! The Art of Gavin Jantjes

This article contemplates the life and work of the Oxford-based South African artist and activist Gavin Jantjes, born in 1948 when apartheid officially became the law of the land in South Africa with the National Party’s election to power. Because Jantjes’s understanding of his role as an artist took shape in Cape Town in the 1960s, when every aspect of his life was dominated by the racism of the apartheid state, he has questioned both the incongruities of his life and what his role as an artist has meant, establishing himself as an outspoken and imaginative critic of institutionalized racism and other forms of discrimination. Facing the dual obstacles of race and poverty, as well as the pejorative assumption of the Western European modernist canon that Africans lacked the ability to produce meaningful contemporary visual art, Jantjes engaged head on as an artist and activist with tensions between Western modernism and classical African art and the trope of “primitivism” in Eurocentric art historical discourses. This article foregrounds Jantjes’s multiple roles, both in and outside of the studio and gallery spaces, by examining his paintings, prints, and drawings, as well as material related to his curatorial interventions, writings, and formidable publishing efforts, to reveal pivotal moments in his personal and artistic journeys across five distinct yet overlapping phases of his artistic movement from 1970 to 2023.

Chinese Art’s Influence on Roger Fry’s Aesthetics Formalism

Roger Fry was one of the greatest art critics of the 20th century, who promoted the rise and development of the Western modern art movement and constructed a set of modern aesthetics formalism and art criticism theories, exerting a huge influence on modern art. Despite the formation of Fry’s aesthetics formalism cannot be separated from the background of the transformation of Western cultural traditions, the influx of Chinese art into the West at that time also had an impact on Fry’s aesthetics formalism. Fry extracted and reinterpreted from Chinese art, forming a distinctive formalist aesthetic theory. In Fry’s various works, the influence of Chinese classical aesthetics can be seen, such as blank space, rhythm, and emotional expression. The research will explore the correlation between Roger Fry’s aesthetic formalism theory and Chinese art. The study will analyze how Chinese art was introduced into the West and how Roger Fry was influenced by Chinese art. It will focus some particular elements like rhythm and blank space, explore how Fry reinterpreted them and applied to modern art criticism theory, using his work “Cézanne: A Study of His Development” as an example.

Calculated Randomness, Control and Creation: Artistic Agency in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

The recent emergence of generative AI, particularly prompt-based models, and its embedding in many social domains and practices has revived the notion of co-creation and distributed agency already familiar in art practice and theory. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and its central notion of agency, this article explores the extent to which the collaboration between the artist and AI represents a new form of co-creation and distributed agency. It compares AI art with artistic movements such as Dada, Surrealism, Minimalism and Conceptual Art, which also challenged the notion of the autonomous artist and her agency by incorporating randomness on the one hand and rule-based systems on the other. In contrast, artistic practice with AI can be described as an iterative process of creative feedback loops, oscillating between order and disorder, (calculated) randomness and calculation, enabling a very specific kind of self-reflection and entanglement with the alienation of one’s own perspective. Furthermore, this article argues that most artistic projects that explore and work with AI are, in their own specific way, a demonstration of hybridity and entanglement, as well as the distribution of agency between the human and the non-human, and can thus be described as a network phenomenon.

Brilliant blue: The blue rock art of Awunbarna, Northern Territory, Australia

Within the extensively painted rockshelters of Awunbarna (Mt Borradaile) in western Arnhem Land, appears a cluster of paintings that are conspicuous amongst the traditional white, red, yellow, and black figures. Brilliant blue pigment has, for generations, captured the imagination of local Aboriginal community members and visitors, including rock art researchers. This rock art was created using laundry whiteners (such as Reckitt’s Blue) during a period of intense change in the region brought about by European arrival. This paper explores the largest documented cluster of laundry blue rock paintings in northern Australia. We investigate the subject matter, distribution, and manner of use at Awunbarna alongside its broader cultural and artistic context. We find that laundry blue rock art emerges as part of a flurry of innovative rock art being created in this region at the turn of the nineteenth–twentieth century and continuing, in rare instances, until the 1960s. We argue that blue paintings and the Painted Hand Figures represent two relatively short-lived, innovative experimental phases within an art-making tradition with Awunbarna as the epicentre for this rock art movement. Likewise, we suggest a very small number of artists may be responsible for the blue rock art of Awunbarna indicating its use may have been restricted to artists of a certain status.

Neurosurrealism in the Service of Revolution: Aesthetic Features and Critical Potential of Neural Network Art

The rapid development of neural network technologies in recent years has given rise to the formation of many interdisciplinary research areas, including neural network aesthetics. The aesthetics of generative creativity today is studied not only in the context of the history of digital art, but also in comparison with the practices of other artistic trends and schools. Thus, the expression “neural surrealism”, which has become entrenched in popular discourse, undoubtedly refers to the aesthetics of classical surrealism, framed and fixed in Andre Breton’s program texts: neural network algorithms allow you to create images that seem both realistic and absurd due to unexpected combinations of objects, distorted proportions and presence of uncanny images. Although “neural surrealism” can be seen as a depoliticized and unbiased game of generated images in contrast to the surrealism of the 1920s and 30s, which was not merely an artistic movement but a radical social project, it appears that the very ability of neural networks to generate extraordinary and unpredictable images holds a certain critical potential. Using the methods of formal-stylistic and ideological-content analysis, the author of the article concludes that “neurosurrealism” in a sense continues the line of classical surrealism to undermine the automatism of perception and patterns of thinking. Generative algorithms become a kind of “exclusion production machines” that allow you to see reality from an unexpected angle. In addition, the very fact of using neural networks in art raises important questions about the nature of creativity, the limits of artificial intelligence and the future of man in the world of smart machines. Neurosurrealism problematizes well-established ideas about the originality and intentionality of artistic expression, which indicates the close connection of generative artistic practices with the aesthetics of classical surrealist creativity. The conducted research will be useful to specialists of a wide profile: media theorists, art historians, philosophers, cultural scientists, as well as developers and representatives of the creative industries.

Parole e simboli: “The Great Figure” di W.C. Williams

Published in 1921, The Great Figure is among William Carlos Williams’s most paradigmatic poems. It inspired an equally famous Poster-portrait (1928) by Charles Demuth, the poet’s longtime friend. Both artists may be said to have been ‘Precisionists’: Demuth by direct association with the American Art Movement of this name, Williams by the accuracy of his medium. This essay presents a close analysis of the poem vis-à-vis the painting. To show how difficult it is to turn Williams’s ‘simple’ language into Italian, the essay analyses Vittorio Sereni’s version of the poem.

Techniques and Philosophy Steps of Ampek Sasaran Junguik Sati: In the Context of Minangkabau Culture

This research aims to investigate the technique and philosophy behind Step Ampek Sasaran Junguik Sati in the context of Minangkabau culture. Langkah Ampek is a traditional movement in Minangkabau martial arts that has been passed down from generation to generation. This research uses a qualitative approach by collecting data through direct observation, interviews with skilled practitioners, and analysis of related cultural texts. The results showed that Langkah Ampek is not only a series of physical movements, but also reflects philosophical values in Minangkabau culture. The philosophy includes spiritual, moral, and social aspects, which are reflected in each step of the movement. The techniques used in the Langkah Ampek Sasaran Junguik Sati are closely related to natural conditions, daily life, and the history of Minangkabau culture. This research also identified that Sasaran Junguik Sati plays an important role in maintaining Minangkabau cultural identity and strengthening the sense of solidarity among community members. The practical implication of this research is the importance of maintaining and developing traditional cultural heritage as an integral part of cultural sustainability and community development in Minangkabau.

‘Repeat play’: Musical Minimalism in the Processes of Samuel Beckett’s Late Drama

This essay promotes a focused evaluation of Samuel Beckett’s work in the context of musical minimalism, which it identifies as a closely related and aesthetically significant point of comparison, sharing an attitude towards a work of art as an unfolding process rather than a static product. Beginning with a comparative analysis of Play and Philip Glass’s 1963 score, the origins of Beckett’s connection with minimalist music are explored, with characteristically ‘Beckettian’ ideas shown to be at work in Glass’s compositional idiom. Then, looking ahead twenty years, Beckett’s Quad is examined in light of minimalist music by Steve Reich, whose technologically motivated compositions written in the years between Play and Quad are given as appropriate equivalents for many of the tele-play’s formal peculiarities. By examining Beckett’s work in connection with the unique achievements of minimalist music, we can better define our understanding of Beckett as a ‘minimalist’ working concurrently with a particular artistic movement. Additionally, we can identify common artistic concerns in his work and the music of Glass and Reich, in which highly repetitive patterns, often aided by technology, are employed to emphasise the interrelated processes of conception, performance, and interpretation at work within a piece of art.

Being/Becoming

Abstract: Ontology analyzes what can be said to exist given what satisfies the framework employed. Metaphysics covers that much and what can be said about the relationship between these different frames. Therein lies a gap that inspires much controversy. Denise Ferreira da Silva has shown us how taking what is known to be the case as all that can actually be the case runs amok, especially with regard to analyses of race and racialization. This essay offers a treatment of this gap by taking up Sonia Sanchez's protocol from a program developed within the Black Arts Movement wherein what can be said to be can also be said to be significant given the framework employed.

RHYTHM AND MOVEMENT IN NATURE, ART, AND EDUCATION

RHYTHM AND MOVEMENT IN NATURE, ART, AND EDUCATION

Cooking Up the Black Arts

This article reviews Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor’s classic text Vibration Cooking beyond its initial use as a culinary handbook, reading deeply into its many references to improvisation and liberation. Through countless allusions to friends and colleagues in free jazz, Black Arts, and other crucial 1960s Black artistic and political circles, Smart-Grosvenor’s text uses recipes to both cover and convey the work of everyday liberationist praxis in the Black Arts Movement circles of which she was a crucial member. In this article, I review Smart-Grosvenor’s longstanding relationships with key musicians, activists, writers, and performers for whom improvisation across many modes engendered processes of Black liberation. For Smart-Grosvenor, the liberatory capacities of improvisation also existed in cooking, where ritual, inherited food cultures, ad hoc executions, and commensality worked together to create space for and feed a movement for Black freedom.

The Influence of African Heritage on Afro-American Literary Expression

This research paper explores the profound influence of African heritage on Afro-American literary expression. It begins by examining the historical context, emphasizing the impact of the transatlantic slave trade and early Afro-American literature's retention of African cultural elements. The Harlem Renaissance is highlighted as a pivotal moment that celebrated African roots and set the stage for future literary developments. Central themes derived from African heritage, such as resistance, resilience, and connection to ancestry, are analyzed, illustrating their prominence in both historical and contemporary works. The paper deal with storytelling techniques and narrative structures influenced by African oral traditions, folktales, and myths, highlighting how these elements enrich Afro-American literature. The use of rhythmic language, communal narration, and the call- and-response pattern are discussed as significant aspects that enhance narrative depth and cultural authenticity. The integration of African symbols, music, and communal values as cultural motifs is explored, showcasing how these elements infuse literary works with layers of meaning and cultural resonance. The reclamation of African identity is a key focus, with discussions on Afrocentric perspectives in modern literature, the impact of the Black Arts Movement, and contemporary literary movements. The challenges and opportunities of navigating dual heritage and cultural hybridity are addressed, emphasizing the complexities of identity formation and cultural expression.

A REVIEW OF MAIL ART WORKS IN TERMS OF ART PHILOSOPHY

Mail art emerged in the mid-20th century under the influence of movements such as Fluxus and Dada. It is generally defined as a type of artistic work sent via mail. Such artworks are often considered part of alternative art practice, disseminated using the postal system as a means of communication and transportation of works. Mail art is a populist art movement that focuses on sending small-scale works through the postal service. Mail art, which the artist uses as a means of expression, is a type of art that improves the artist's creativity, offers the opportunity to express himself in a different type of art, and can exhibit all forms of freedom (freedom of expression, freedom of creation, freedom of thought, freedom of will, etc.) as in other types of art. The artist creates mail art using his aesthetic perception with all his originality, because an aesthetic perspective is needed to create any art object. In order to examine this aesthetic and artistic view, technical and material knowledge is needed. Mail artists often use simple and inexpensive materials. These may include materials such as postcards, envelopes, stamps, newspaper clippings, stickers and handmade prints. Using a variety of techniques, artists can draw, create collages, or use other creative techniques on their posts. In this context, the importance of the aesthetic view of the designs made in mail art from past to present will be emphasized, and the mail art works made in various media and made by artists will be examined and how they are viewed from a design and aesthetic perspective will be examined. At the same time, art as a method in the art healing analysis of these treatments is viewed as an epistemological examination.

Stephane Mallarme – poetul absolutului și al contradicțiilor

Symbolism was first a literary, then an artistic movement, which brought together a large number of writers and artists from all over the world based on its aesthetic program. Thanks to its cosmopolitan character, symbolism, originally French, would conquer all of Europe and America, both Spanish and Anglo-Saxon. This movement was French in essence and expression, but foreigners participated in it from the very beginning: Greeks like Jean Moréas, the pseudonym of Papadiamantopulos, Flemings like Rodenbach, Maeterlink, Verhaeren, Max Elskamp, Albert Mockel and Van Lerberghe, Anglo – Saxons such as Stuart Merrill and Francis Viele-Griffi, Jews such as Gustave Kahn, Spaniards such as Armand Godoy and many others, among whom should be mentioned the work also written in French by the Italian Gabriele D'Annunzio, the English Oscar Wilde and the Romanian Alexandru Macedonski (contributor to one of the first magazines of the current, „La Wallonie”). Mallarmé meant for the evolution of poetry what Einstein would mean later for revolutionizing physics. He took the decisive step that spirituality required for poetry to move to a higher level.