Art Lovers Research Articles

Book Review: Ars erotica: Sex and somaesthetics in the classical arts of love

Book Review: Ars erotica: Sex and somaesthetics in the classical arts of love

Stendhal syndrome: Can art make you ill?

IntroductionA psychosomatic disorder, Stendhal Syndrome, causes tachycardia, dizziness, sweating, disorientation, fainting, and confusion when someone is looking at artwork with which he or she connects deeply emotionally. In 1817, a French author named Marie-Henri Beyle, whose pseudonym was Stendhal, described his experience visiting the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence and feeling overwhelmed by all the beauty and rich history surrounding him. Over a century later, visitors to Florence continued to suffer from similar symptoms. In 1979, Dr. Graziella Magherini, Chief of Psychiatry at the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence, observed more than 100 tourists who were hospitalized after looking at art in Florence and coined the term Stendhal Syndrome.ObjectivesTo review literature on Stendhal syndrome, a bizarre travel-related syndrome.MethodsPubMed and Google Scholar search using the keywords Stendhal syndrome, travel syndromes, culture shockResultsVictims are typically impressionable, single people between 26-40 years old, who are stressed by travel and may be struggling with jet lag. For art lovers, the thrill of arriving somewhere like Florence that gathers so much famous art is like meeting all your heroes at once. This strange aesthetic sickness is surely evidence of the special power of Renaissance art.ConclusionsStendhal Syndrome does not currently appear in the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). Psychiatrists have however, documented the syndrome in medical journals and advise that tourists pace themselves in art museums and get enough rest in between viewings of Italy’s breathtaking, powerful masterpieces.

The Mama of Dada: Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, the original mastermind behind Fountain, 1917

The most disruptive sculpture that broke the art world and the notion of art itself; the notorious Fountain, by Marcel Duchamp changed art history forever. Since the anonymous submission to the salon of independent artists in New York 1917, art lovers have never been able to come to a consensus about the piece. Debates and disputes polarized the opinion of the public. As a result, the name Duchamp had become synonymous with the term Readymade, Dada and the avant-garde. Absurdly, sufficient evidence suggests that the French artist Duchamp was not the artist behind Fountain. The female Dada poet and German American contemporary artist, Baroness Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven, was the mastermind behind it.

Jan Philip van Thielen and his flower garland paintings

The subject of this research is the artworks of the Flemish painter Jan Philipp van Thielen – a prominent author of the pieces depicting flower garlands in the XVII century, but so little-known nowadays. His name is unjustly forgotten in Russian historiography, although his paintings exhibited in the national museums; although in Western historiography, his popularity has grown in recent decades. Special attention is given to the painter’s works in different genres (religion, portraits, mythology), which are framed by a flower garland accentuating and symbolizing the central images. The scientific novelty of consists in ratification of art of the once renowned and now almost forgotten painter Jan Philipp van Thielen, as well as in the proof that he was one of the most popular flower painters in Flanders, and his patrons and customers were such high-rank aristocrats as Diego Felípez de Guzmán 1st Marquess of Leganés (1580-1655), and Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria (1664-1662), both art lovers and philanthropists. The acquired results demonstrate that Jan Philip van Thielen painted flower garlands in different genres. In the art of Flanders of the XVII century with remarkable success the showed the beauty of garlands and their use for enhancing the religious or moralizing meaning of the central images. His works are widely exhibited not only in museums, but also in auctions, which once again proves his important role in the painting of the XVII century.

Artystki i miłośniczki sztuki – kobiety w żydowskim życiu artystycznym międzywojennej Warszawy. W kręgu Żydowskiego Towarzystwa Krzewienia Sztuk Pięknych

Artists and Art Lovers: Women in the Jewish Artistic Life of Interwar Warsaw. In the Circle of The Jewish Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts Research on Jewish artistic life in interwar Warsaw, especially in the context of the activities of the Jewish Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts (Żydowskie Towarzystwo Krzewienia Sztuk Pięknych), reveals active and numerousparticipation of women, both artists and art lovers (by and large a group of professionals, bourgeois, political and social activists, Jewish art collectors). In the article, special attention is paid to Tea Arciszewska and Diana Eigerowa, a collector and philanthropist, the founder of the Samuel Hirszenberg scholarship for students of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. The author, using selected examples, discusses the role of artists in the artistic community, their individual exhibitions in the Jewish Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts (Stanisława Centnerszwerowa, Regina Mundlak), a group of young artists living in Paris (Alicja Hohermann, Zofia Bornstein, Pola Lindenfeld, Estera Karp), as well as a circle of art lovers and patrons, some of whom—such as Tea Arciszewska and Paulina Apenszlak—also dealt with art criticism.

The Lexicon of Profit and Commerce in Ovid's Ars Amatoria and Other Works

This paper studies the vocabulary of advantage, exchange, and loss in Ovid's Ars Amatoria, which stands apart from the rest of the Ovidian corpus (and from the rest of Roman erotic elegy) in its special, systematic handling of these words. Philological analysis of utor and related terms shows that the praeceptor amoris of Ars, importing language of commerce and profit into his teaching, contradicts his supposed intent of creating durable romantic relationships. To establish the unique treatment of this lexicon in Ars Amatoria, I analyze the employment of these terms across the genre of Latin elegy and across the remainder of Ovid's poetic output. Through systematic usage of terms such as usus and damnum, profit and loss, Ars Amatoria strips the elegiac relationship down to its material, commercial basis: the praeceptor amoris is teaching not the art of love, but the business of getting free sex from sex-laborers. The lexicon becomes a means of destabilizing the speaker's surface-level occupation with enduring romantic liaisons—of demystifying the elegiac relation and demonstrating that it is, at heart, an exchange of money for sex. The poet highlights the commercial exchange between meretrix and amator, ultimately giving the lie to the traditional emotional/affective façade of elegiac relationships. This lexical study additionally offers new insights into a number of Ars-like moments in Ovid's poetry after Ars.

И вновь незримый бой... Рецензия на книгу А.И. Демченко «Appassionata»

Alexander I. Demchenko is well known to the musicological community and art lovers as the author of numerous books on various aspects of artistic creativity. His new monograph (Appassionata, Essays on Beethoven’s Music, Commemorating the 250th Anniversary of his Birth. Monograph. Moscow, 2021. 164 p.), addressed both to specialists and a broad circle of connoisseurs of the art of music, is focused entirely on analysis of the content-semantic essence of the artistic heritage of the great composer, to which all the cited facts of his life and consideration of the means of musical expression are subordinated. The core of the presentation is embodied in the works of Beethoven the basic essence of human existence (life activities, lyrical feelings, repose) and what determines the leading constants of Beethoven's attitude to the world (heroic moods, drama, epos).

THE UNREAL WORLD IN THE NOVEL BY MARC LEVY “IF ONLY IT WERE TRUE”

The paper is about the novel “Et si c’était vrai...” translated into English as “If only it were true” by a modern French writer Marc Levy who amazes readers with the extraordinary plot. Mark Levy’s novel “If only it were true” does not fit into the usual literary templates, it is permeated with an atmosphere of fantastic delirium, nightmares, hallucinations. The tragic collision of the novel is already revealed in the plot itself: heaven and earth, life and death. The aim of the article is to discover the real and unreal world in the novel by Marc Levy “If only it were true”. The problem analysis was used in the paper. The results are the following. The heroes of the novel Arthur and Lauren went through the faith, hope and love that make up the success in their lives, through the art of love for the world, which they have learned. The strength and feelings of the heroes of the novel are able to work miracles, returning them to a full life, but they would also be powerless before death, if not for their all-conquering love. In the novel one can find not only bitter thoughts about the transience of human life, but also an optimistic faith in eternal renewal, the beauty of nature, love. To conclude it is necessary to say the value of M. Levy’s book “If only it were true” is in high humanism, in the glorification of true beauty, the inner need for love for a woman, male friendship, growing stronger in a common cause for the sake of character’s salvation. The spiritual life of the characters is depicted in details; the psychologism of the novel deepens the meaning of the fantastic events that take place.

Mystical <i>Ars Amand: </i>Considerations Based on the Texts of Meditation Literature of the 17th and 18th Centuries

The present article discusses the literary, linguistic, cultural, and spiritual qualities of unknown or forgotten monuments of ancient Polish literature. It also constitutes an attempt to prove the universalism of the art of the word. The analysis of messages of meditative and mystical literature of the 17th and 18th centuries provides a basis for this study. Most of the quoted records remain anonymous. However, it can be said with certainty that their authors were both women and men. It is worth noting that the quoted texts from meditative and mystical literature were composed in different spiritual traditions, including both the Carmelite and Benedictine spirituality. In particular, the author's research interests focused on how the writers of ancient mystical and meditative literature presented the art of love, both in terms of spiritual love (the relationship between God and man) and universal love that involves every dimension of the world we live in (the relationship between men themselves and between man and the world). A historical and literary analysis, which seems an indispensable tool for research on ancient Polish literature, has been applied to the study. The history of spirituality and old culture serves as a background for literary reflections. The literary and artistic quality of the quoted texts can be detected in numerous cultural references, literary references, a rich diversity of symbolism (the symbolism of the heart, symbolic images presenting intimacy between two people in love), diverse forms of expression (a dialogic structure of texts, an intimate inner monologue), an artistic depiction (the role of imagination). The conducted analysis has allowed the author to demonstrate the universality and timelessness of ideological and cultural messages of Polish mystical and meditative literature. Furthermore, it has been proven that the art of the word presented in the records is rooted neither in one national tradition nor in one language nor one culture. Although the texts date back to a remote period, they still present the universal beauty of the art of thought and the art of the word.

А.В. ХУДЯШЕВ (1885–1927): ЧЕРТЫ БИОГРАФИИ И АНАЛИЗ ТВОРЧЕСКОГО НАСЛЕДИЯ ХУДОЖНИКА

Alexander Khudyashev is a sculptor, painter, teacher, organizer who played a prominent role in the artistic life of two Siberian cities - Tomsk and Barnaul in the 10–20s of the twentieth century. This article, based on the documents found, represents for the first time the main stages of his life and work, active participation in the All-Siberian Association of Artists «New Siberia». Until recently, very little was known about the life and work of this artist. The authors of the article, relying on archival materials, restored the biography of A. Khudyashev, in particular, more fully covered the Barnaul period of his life. On the basis of the documents found in the State Archive of the Altai Krai, the facts of the early years of the master's biography, the period of study at the Kazan Art School, and studies at private art studios in Moscow became known. The article describes his organizational work in Tomsk: on the board of the Tomsk Society of Art Lovers, participating in annual periodic art exhibitions, organizing a number of exhibitions («Exhibition of paintings and sculptures by local artists» and «Autumn exhibition of local and non-resident authors»). In Novonikolaevsk (now Novosibirsk), together with the assistant of the Leipzig Royal Academy of Arts, Czech artist F. Havelka, he participated in the preparation of the first in the history of the city art exhibition of Tomsk and Novikolaevsk professional artists and students of the Tomsk Real School and private studio F. Havelka. The pedagogical activity of the master is noted: in parallel with the creative and organizational work, Khudyashev taught sculpture in F. Havelka’s private drawing classes, drawing in the theological schooland first city women’s school, as well as in the Mariinsky female gymnasium. In 1918, the artist returned to Barnaul, where, according to A. Khudyashev's questionnaire recently discovered in the State Archive of the Altai Territory, he continued his teaching activities at the Barnaul Pedagogical Technical School and at the Workers' Faculty, and also worked in the Altai provincial department of public education. In addition, the artist was engaged in design activities. Becoming a member of the AllSiberian Society of Artists «New Siberia», he took part in the First All-Siberian exhibition of painting, sculpture, graphics and architecture, opened by members of the "New Siberia" in 1927 in Novosibirsk. The history of the Museum of Fine Arts in Barnaul, the first art museum in Altai, is connected with the name of A. Khudyashev. In difficult historical times, the change of the social and political system, the civil war, the introduction of the New Economic Policy A.V. Khudyashev sought to save a unique collection of the first art museum in Altai, understanding the importance and necessity of his work for future generations. The article introduces for the first time into the scientific parlance and analyzes three of his remaining paintings, now stored in the State Art Museum of the Altai Krai, tells about the composition and fate of the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Barnaul.

Art Forgery: The International Context

The article deals with the problem of art forgery, its local and global dimensions, whilst also exploring the origins of this practice. The author argues that works of art have always aroused and continue arousing great interest among collectors, art admirers, and specialists in forgeries. It has been found in the research that collecting has been practiced since ancient times, in a certain way promoting the process of art forgery. The author mentions well-known and reputable world auction houses and reveals the role of some of them in trafficking forged paintings. The article emphasises that the scandals related to trading art forgery cast a dark shadow on auctions and galleries in general. Paintings have proven to be one of the most common items of antiquity and forgery. It is established in the article that the prices for the artworks of famous masters have increased from thousands to millions of dollars over the years, and that they are generally recognised as a reliable investment. The replenishment of collections with purchased works of art is always a large and lucrative business. However, not all of these masterpieces are originals. The presented research shows that this problem keeps gaining momentum and needs to be resolved on a global level. The article notes that the 20th century can be characterised by positive achievements and discoveries of humankind. However, it has engraved in history the problem of art forgery mired in scandals of a worldwide scale. The author highlights famous forgeries and falsifications as well as the most popular art forgers and paintings. The forgers were found to have skillfully used the hardships connected with the chaos and displacement of cultural property caused by the two world wars. As a result, forgery artworks appear on the auctions, where they can find their new owners. It misleads museums, collectors, and millions of art lovers. The article describes the methods, which forgers use in their work, and reveals their motivation for making fake art products. The details and ways, which allows distinguishing a counterfeit artwork from the original, are also covered in the research. The article shows how the international community invests great efforts to find originals, detect existing forgeries, and prevent the creation of new fakes. Interpol’s opening of a previously classified database of stolen works of art has proved helpful in partially blocking forged artwork distribution channels. Keywords: works of art, forgers, forgeries, art market, auction houses, galleries, museums, theft, search, Interpol.

A ARTE DE AMAR ... E DE FINGIR: UM ENSAIO DISCURSIVO SOBRE O AMOR EM OVÍDIO

This essay aims to analyze discursively the work The Art of Loving, by Ovid. From the notion of a discursive perspective (CHARAUDEAU, 2004), it is intended to highlight the use of discursive strategies in the work of this Latin writer, whose purpose is to sustain the logic of love in the game of appearances. We intend to verify, with this analysis, if the strategies used by Ovid apply to contemporary love games.

The Artistic Features and Innovation of Watercolor Painting

Watercolor painting is one of many forms of painting. Because of its strong expressiveness of context and rich connotation, it has a certain sense of hierarchy, and is highly sought after by art lovers. With years of development and evolution, watercolor painting has gradually formed a unique set of artistic aesthetic characteristics, and presented a more diversified development trend in artistic expression. This article discusses the artistic characteristics and artistic innovation of watercolor painting successively, in order to let more people understand watercolor painting and devote themselves to the research and learning of watercolor painting.

Proust under the Covers

Abstract This essay begins as a reminiscence of its author’s early readings, including the first volume of Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. It then reflects on Proust’s depiction of his family, his love of art, and his pessimistic views on love.

Ecological Awareness: Matrimony of Agriculture and Art

This article examines how Mithila folk painting reflects ecological consciousness of the society and the intertwined Maithili life with local flora and fauna that consequently maintains natural environment intact in the region. At the onset of climate issue worldwide, folk painting of Mithila communicates its local as well as international spectators about the preservation of surrounding nature blending it with ritual phenomena, agrarian lifestyle and inculcating geographical values to the new generation through the visual depiction. Once the indigenous art, transformed into leading folk painting, due to commercialization has lifted its spiritual veil to worldly affairs. In this course of shift, ecology based painting proves to be a boon for the art lovers and buyers as it attempts to balance the degrading nature with its preservation technique appropriate to its own native land. A pivotal visualization of the merriment of lifespan and landscape amidst spirituality and perpetuity remains the characteristic feature of this indigenous art work.

On Teaching Tiffany Stained Glass in Art School

The article describes the multi-layer stained glass making technology, an art technique most vividly reflected in the projects designed and produced by L. C. Tiffany. The present paper is a continuation of the series of academic articles published in the scientific journal Secreta Artis in 2018 and 2019 that reveal the step-by-step process of creating a Tiffany stained glass, from sketch and cartoon preparation to artwork finalization. The proposed method has been tried out and proven in practice: taught to students at the Academy of Watercolor and Fine Arts of Sergey Andriaka, the technology is, likewise, used to create original pieces of art, as well as make stained-glass windows as part of various architecture projects. A multi-layer stained glass allows one to significantly expand the glass palette at hand, enrich compositions with exquisite color and tonal effects, which are particularly difficult to achieve in a single-layer stained glass, insert different objects and materials in-between layers of glass. The purpose of the article is to demonstrate to artists, designers, teachers, students and all fine art lovers artistic possibilities of Tiffany stained glass and provide a step-bystep guide to its production. The outlined technique can be applied in a stained glass workshop, with a basic set of tools and equipment. The article formulates key multi-layer stained glass making methods and delineates some of the most typical challenges and ways to overcome them. The methodology is exemplified by L. C. Tiffany’s work in stained glass, along with the artwork designed by the author of the article.

Hilary Koprowski (5.12.1916-11.04.2013) polski lekarz, pionier wirusologii i immunologii, pianista klasyczny, wizjoner, erudyta

Hilary Koprowski (1916-2013) Wybitny naukowiec, pionier wirusologii i immunologii, twórca pierwszej w świecie doustnej szczepionki przeciw wirusowi poliomyelitis (?polio?) wywołującemu chorobę Heinego-Medina, a także ulepszonej szczepionki przeciw wściekliźnie i różyczce, inicjator badań nad przeciwciałami monoklonalnymi w diagnostyce nowotworów i immunoterapii. Opublikował ponad 900 prac naukowych. Dyrektor Instytutu Wistara (1957-1991) oraz profesor Instytutu Biotechnologii i Zaawansowanej Medycyny Molekularnej, dyrektor Centrum Neurowirusologii i Laboratoriów Fundacji Biotechnologii w Thomas Jefferson University (1992-2013) w Filadelfii. Erudyta i humanista, gigant intelektu, poliglota, wielki miłośnik muzyki, sztuki i poezji. Autor opowiadań, wierszy, sztuk teatralnych, utworów muzycznych. Doktor honoris causa kilku światowej sławy uniwersytetów. Wieloletni członek Amerykańskiej Narodowej Akademii Nauk i Polskiej Akademii Nauk. Uhonorowany licznymi godnościami akademickimi oraz odznaczeniami narodowymi wielu państw (USA, Polska, Francja, Belgia, Finlandia). W 2012 r. dzieci polskie mianowały prof. H. Koprowskiego Kawalerem Orderu Uśmiechu. W roku stulecia odzyskania niepodległości przez Polskę, 11. listopada 2018, pośmiertnie uhonorowany Orderem Orła Białego dla niezwykłych Polaków. Patron m. in. Gdańskiego Parku Naukowo-Technologicznego.

#artoninstagram: Engaging with art in the era of the selfie

This study aims to understand how people engage with art in the era of selfies, digital devices, and social media. It examines the audience experience of an art exhibition, where visitors are encouraged to use social media to share their art experience, to understand how such an approach might change the nature of visitor engagement with art. Arguably, selfies taken in the art space enrich the visitor’s experience and engagement with art and function as co-creational, empowering, and authentic marketing tools for museums. Data for this research were collected through non-participant observation (ethnography) and netnography at the National Gallery of Victoria, in Melbourne, Australia. The results show that rather than promoting disengagement from the art piece, selfies in the art space become “networked material-discursive entanglements” empowering art consumers to co-create value and arts organizations to reduce their distance from consumers and reproduce the iconic authenticity of the artwork in the virtual space. The article contributes to selfie theory by overcoming the traditional view of selfies as manifestation of narcissistic self-expression. Instead, it promotes an interpretation of selfies as an empowering and democratizing means used by art consumers to develop narratives and identity projects in a context such as the museum where traditionally the development of the narrative is apanage of an elite. A further contribution provided by this research stems from the identification of clusters of visitors (i.e., reality escapers, art lovers, photoholics, and selfie lovers), placed on a continuum of value co-creation, which arts administrators need to be conscious of as they enter a more dynamic era of art consumption. By outlining managerial implications, this study provides an initial reflection on how arts managers can navigate the emerging era of the selfie in the museum context.

“Carpe Diem” Professor – In Memoriam of Francis Robicsek (1925-2020)

Francis Robicsek was an outstanding cardiothoracic and vascular surgeon, anthropologist, biomedical engineer, philanthropist, art lover, and collector. During a career of almost 55 years, he managed to influence almost every aspect of cardiothoracic and vascular surgery. He is best known for his novel approach to the treatment of sternal instability, the Robicsek weave, which is currently the reference standard. His accomplishments include over 35,000 surgical interventions, 672 medical publications, 734 lectures, 4 textbooks on Mayan culture, and approximately 100 pupils. His remains one of the most fascinating stories in modern surgery.

AntsOMG: A Framework Aiming to Automate Creativity and Intelligent Behavior with a Showcase on Cantus Firmus Composition and Style Development

Creative behavior is one of the most fascinating areas in intelligence. The development of specific styles is the most characteristic feature of creative behavior. All important creators, such as Picasso and Beethoven, have their own distinctive styles that even non-professional art lovers can easily recognize. Hence, in the present work, attempting to achieve cantus firmus composition and style development as well as inspired by the behavior of natural ants and the mechanism of ant colony optimization (ACO), this paper firstly proposes a meta-framework, called ants on multiple graphs (AntsOMG), mainly for roughly modeling creation activities and then presents an implementation derived from AntsOMG for composing cantus firmi, one of the essential genres in music. Although the mechanism in ACO is adopted for simulating ant behavior, AntsOMG is not designed as an optimization framework. Implementations can be built upon AntsOMG in order to automate creation behavior and realize autonomous development on different subjects in various disciplines. In particular, an implementation for composing cantus firmi is shown in this paper as a demonstration. Ants walk on multiple graphs to form certain trails that are composed of the interaction among the graph topology, the cost on edges, and the concentration of pheromone. The resultant graphs with the distribution of pheromone can be interpreted as a representation of cantus firmus style developed autonomously. Our obtained results indicate that the proposal has an intriguing effect, because significantly different styles may be autonomously developed from an identical initial configuration in separate runs, and cantus firmi of a certain style can be created in batch simply by using the corresponding outcome. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, the presented implementation is immediately applicable to the creation of cantus firmi and possibly other music genres with slight modifications. Second, AntsOMG, as a meta-framework, may be employed for other kinds of autonomous development with appropriate implementations.