Art Foundation Research Articles

Contesting the American Scripture: The Qur'an as a Critical Foundation of the Liberal Arts in the 21st Century

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on recent changes in Rhodes College's Foundations in the Liberal Arts curriculum that were motivated by a desire to help students become competent and engaged debaters of meaning and value in the trying times of the 21st century. I focus on how my own two foundational liberal arts classes—“The Bible* and Nationalism” and “The Bible* and Comparative Ethics”—sought to widen the category of scripture for college students in their value discussions, as well as the benefits and potential limitations of moving away from the Bible as the sole source of moral formation in the American classroom.

Some style tendencies of Hellenism which formed the basis for the pictorial canon of Eastern church rite

The article systematically presents and substantiates the stylistic concept of some unique artistic tendencies of Hellenism, which share a common sacred nature with the pictorial canon of eastern churches. It also proposes updated retrospective artistic principles to reassess the role of these tendencies. This finding allows us to reveal additional roots of the pictorial canon and review the cause-and-effect relationship between the narrative-symbolic-decorative attributes of ancient funeral rituals and the spiritual-philosophical foundations of early Christian art. It suggests filling the gaps in art history and cultural studies within the framework of relevant themes by introducing modeled and unified conceptual-categorical constructions into scientific circulation. The purpose of the research. The main purpose of the article is to rethink and systematize some artistic and stylistic tendencies of the Hellenistic’s era in late antiquity, from which all Eastern church pictorial traditions drew their conceptual and stylistic foundations during their formation period. The methodology. A combination of specialized methods was applied: historical-comparative method for identifying key artistic tendencies; cultural-deductive method for formulating artistic categories; abstraction method for delineating key stylistic features of sacred attributes, as well as for identifying differences and similarities; expert artistic assessment method for theoretical characterization, substantiation, and expansion of conceptual-categorical components; stylistic correlation method for unifying newly discovered stylistic connections of Hellenistic artistic products and the Christian tradition. The combination of the listed methods allows us to reveal the concept of the stylistic basis for the pictorial tradition in the church paraphernalia of the Eastern rite and to systematize the existing authoritative evidence base regarding to origins of the pictorial canon of the Egyptian and Greco-Roman periods. Conclusions. Our analysis shows that in the broad context of the formation of the pictorial canon, peculiar to the churches of the Eastern rite, some artistic trends of the first centuries of the new era turned out to be an unchanging and stable conceptual basis for the pictorial canon in a complex artistic and philosophical coordinate system. Thus, the artistic canon of the Eastern churches, formed between the VI and IX centuries, is nothing more than a borrowed status-functional category for the multi-level gradation of Christian value aspects with specific techniques and means of Hellenistic fine art of the times of ancient Egyptian and Greco-Roman syncretism. Their intermedial nature and appellative character in relation to the Theogony of the ancient world limit the traditional interpretation of the Christian symbolism of the vast majority of canonical images in the artistic plane. The scientific novelty. For the first time our research analyzed the cause-and-effect relationship between canonical Christian stylistic attributes and Greco-Roman and Egyptian features as the ideological basis of the latter for the formative role of the former. It reassessed and re-evaluated some Hellenistic artistic tendencies in terms of their significance and complexity. A number of expanded cultural and art historical concepts and categories of the ancient world are proposed and substantiated.

EXPLORE THE IMPORTANCE OF THE ASPECTS OF SHADOW AND LIGHT AS A FUNDAMENTAL TOOL IN PENCIL DRAWING

In this written article in pencil drawing, which is one of the foundations of fine art, be it household items, geometric elements, landscape or portrait, in all of them the main tool is the light and shadow aspects. Each step is illustrated with drawings.

The Panhellenic student competition “Hack the Art: Yanoulis Halepas”: Extending art experience, communication, and learning through multimodal digital applications

This paper presents the case of an innovative national digital student competition for school groups of secondary education, entitled: “Hack the Art: Yanoulis Halepas.” Conducted remotely in Greece during the 2022 – 2023 school year, the competition was organized by the Onassis Foundation and the Onassis Library in partnership with the Teloglion Fine Arts Foundation, the National Gallery of Greece–Alexandros Soutsos Museum, the Cultural Foundation of Tinos, and the Cultural Center of Panormos-Municipality of Tinos. Accredited by the Hellenic Ministry for Education and Religious Affairs, it was realized under the aegis of the General Secretariat for Greeks Abroad and Public Diplomacy. This competition was the fourth iteration of this digital format since 2020. This time, we invited student teams from Greek high schools, both in Greece and abroad, led by at least one educator, to learn about the life and work of the great Greek sculptor Yanoulis Halepas and to communicate art by creating projects of augmented reality, virtual reality, digital storytelling, and 3D video games for PC and android devices. This innovative educational project enhanced students’ experience and conceptual understanding of art, motivating them to interact with cultural heritage and experiment with multimodal digital tools. Furthermore, it offered an alternative educational paradigm for teaching history, literature, visual arts, and technology by applying object-based learning, game-based learning, and project-based learning methodologies. According to the assessment results, this learning approach successfully integrated significant artworks into the school curriculum, extending their lifespan and visibility through digital transformations and reinterpretations.

Specifics of the embodiment of European genre models in Chinese piano music as the basis of performance stylistics

Statement of the problem. A performer who gives “new life" to a composer’s work lets the sound world of music pass through him. In this process, the genre-stylistic “inclination” of the work becomes a signpost on the way to the realization and improvement of its performance style. The article accents the significant of the relating the genre and performance stylistics. From this viewpoint, the Chinese piano works based on the European genre models are considered in the article. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. The relationship between the genre and the performance style of the piano works of Chinese composers has been out of the focus of musicologists’ attention until today. The purpose of the article is to consider the specifics of the embodiment of European genre models (such as prelude, sonata, variations) in Chinese piano music as the basis of their performance stylistics. Achieving the goal required a systematic musicological approach and the involvement of historical-typological, musicalaesthetic, genre-stylistic, structural-functional, and interpretative research methods. Research results and conclusion. The samples of Chinese piano music (preludes, sonatas, variations) demonstrate that the specified group of works preserved their constant genre features, while the nationally directed means of expression were adapted to the norms of the European genre matrix, which in many ways contradicted the national ideas and mental foundations of Chinese musical art. The piano prelude genre has become very popular in the works of Chinese composers. All elements of the national musical style, closely related to the deep roots of Chinese musical and, more broadly, artistic thinking, are involved in the process of “concentrating” energy in miniature form with special laconic and aphoristic expression. The complex large-scale structure of the sonata genre promotes the principle of “activity”, offering the performer various musical ideas and emotions. The mental foundations of Chinese art were significantly adapted, especially in the first part – the sonata allegro, where tonal, figurative and textural contrast is the basis of the interaction of themes. New methods of folklore implementation, in which the role of language-creating and form-creating attitudes is growing, have a perceptible influence on the sonata work of Chinese composers. The European genre model of variations reveals new prospects for its development in combination with a freer national model of variations inherent in Chinese music. There is a peculiar “rational” approach to free variation, “ordering” according to the textural, tonal, figurative principle. Thus, the ccomposers try to “inscribe” national mode and intonation means of expression and performance techniques into the structure of the European genre. At the same time, under the influence of the Chinese traditional system of thinking, European genre models receive a certain “national” interpretation, although the features of a specific sample of the European genre remain as dominant, which determines the style of performing these composition. Such works – diverse and interesting – serve to develop the pianist’s performance skills and gain the widest recognition in the repertoire of many contemporary performers.

Concert activities of Chinese pianists: the history of development

Statement of the problem. The article discusses the formation and development of concert activities of Chinese pianists, starting from the 20th century. The performance art of Chinese pianists, although recognized today as an extremely bright phenomenon, is still the least studied among all areas of music art in the country. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. Analysis of the current musicological studies shows that, despite a significant number of the works devoted to the piano music of China and the performance creativity of Chinese pianists, the formation of latter’s concert activity as a whole remains in the shadows. In this regard, there is a need to summarize this experience and forecast the further development of Chinese national piano art, which is the scientific novelty of the proposed study. The purpose of the article is to determine the stages of the formation of the concert activity of Chinese pianists in the context of the development of the country’s national piano performance. The main methods involved in the work were analytical, historical-typological, theoretical, interpretive, and comparative one. Results of the research. The facts of the concert practice of both foreign artists and the formation of national pianistic cadres, which formed the foundation of the Chinese national pianistic art, are analyzed and compared. The factors that contributed to its development or, on the contrary, inhibited it, are determined. The concert performances of M. Paci, B. Zakharov, A. Cherepnin, which became a “performing model” for Chinese pianists at the beginning of the twentieth century, are considered. The first solo concerts of Chinese performers Ding Shande, Li Cuizheng, Zhou Guangren, Gu Shenying, Jing Shi, Liu Shikun, Li Minqing, etc. are analyzed. Their role in the festival and competition movement, which made it possible to announce to the world about the development of Chinese pianistic art, is determined. The article provides historical facts about the biased concert activity and dramatic fate of many Chinese pianists during the “Cultural Revolution”. The trends in the renewal and further development of Chinese piano performing art (since the late 1970s) and its rapid rise (after the 1980s) are determined. The largescale touring and international competition activities of modern Chinese pianists Lang Lang, Li Yundi, Jiang Tian, Du Ning-wu, etc. are analyzed. Conclusion. The assessment of the presented scientific works on the performing activities of Chinese pianists confirms their limitations and inconsistencies regarding some facts and personalities of the artists. The dramatic period of the “cultural revolution” is worse represented in the aspect of hushing up many facts, forgetting the names of outstanding performers because of their tragic fate. A comparison of facts from many different sources made it possible to make an attempt to restore a truly fair picture of the development of piano performance in China, to outline its main trends and prospects. Keywords: piano perf

Serat gumuyu: Sumber pengaruh untuk membentuk persepsi kebahagiaan dan kesehatan mental masyarakat

The manuscript is one of the cultural relics of the past which is a source of cultural institutions of the community. The manuscript is also used as a reflection of local wisdom and a foundation for oral traditions, art, and Javanese values, as is the case with the Serat Gumuyu script. This study uses a qualitative descriptive approach to obtain complete information about laughter can shape the perception of each individual to manage a more positive mindset so as to form happiness and improve people's mental health from Serat Gumuyu. The theory used is Seligman's mental health theory, which focuses on the psychological aspects of mental health and which focuses on positive psychological theories, especially happiness. This research data is in the form of quotes derived from Serat Gumuyu. The source of this research data is Serat Gumuyu, serial number NB 1567 code obtained from manuscripts in the collection of the National Library of the Republic of Indonesia. The data collection method uses content analysis techniques to describe the manuscript, editing and transliteration. The text is hermeniutic analyzed by Ricoeur to explore the axis of the roots of cultural forces socially and mental health in Javanese society. This research presents how laughter in Serat Gumuyu contains the benefits and factors that make someone laugh. This serat invites us that the positive influence of laughter can provide many benefits and is not visible physically but in human mental health also becomes better and optimal. Keywords: Serat Gumuyu, laugh, mental health

The Venice Biennale, French porcelain and historical retrospective on marketing and expertise in the field of fine arts

The relevance of this article is based on shaping new modern world’s market relations one of which is the art market. The aim of the research is the analysis of the marketing interrelations and tendencies in the market of the 20th-21st centuries together with the previous historical periods. In order to hit the goal of the research, theoretical, empirical and comparative researching methods have been used. It sets theoretical foundations of the visual arts marketing and the ways of their practical application. Already before the modern art market as an element of a total capitalistic market came to exist, the movement of visual art works, in the ancient epoch, included elements of marketing approaches and technologies caused by the then-existing processes of sale and purchase of art works, their exchange and collecting. The article is about the expertise of their quality and originality; definition of the already existing methods of promoting art works in the society. It is worth paying a particular attention to ceramic products like porcelain (china) that, in its turn, occupies an important place among art works, together with paintings and sculptures. In the beginning of the 18th century, the porcelain arrived to Europe from China. Collectors have for three centuries admired porcelain products. It should be admitted, there is a particular category of the Venice Biennale visitors. They are porcelain collectors. The practical value of this research stays in the analysis of the marketing instruments in the modern art market for the benefit of not only modern artists but also of the managers of all levels who work in the field of visual arts, at exhibitions, for companies producing collection ceramics tableware, at auctions and in the world’s museums

‘The earth doesn’t tell its secrets’ – his father once said ‘The earth doesn’t tell its secrets’ – his father once said , by Noor Abuarafeh, Sharjah, Sharjah Art Foundation, 2017, 255 pp., $15 USD (paperback), ISBN 9789948232049

‘The earth doesn’t tell its secrets’ – his father once said <b>‘The earth doesn’t tell its secrets’ – his father once said</b> , by Noor Abuarafeh, Sharjah, Sharjah Art Foundation, 2017, 255 pp., $15 USD (paperback), ISBN 9789948232049

The Analysis of Impacts for Ancient Rock Painting on Modern Pictures: the Case of Mongolia

The main goal of our study to investigate the manner in which rock paintings continue to serve as the foundation for visual art, as they were an essential component of intellectual culture for ancient humans. The symbols and imagery of the ancient petroglyphs found through Mongolian territory basically convey the ancient people's understanding of the world. Their creative perceptions were evidence and artistic in their imagination. By analyzing and studying the characteristic differences of shapes, types of symbols and carvings expressed in rock paintings, rock paintings have become the basis of modern paintings.

Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation's ArtsCONNECT grants

Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation's ArtsCONNECT grants

Некоторые аспекты военно-патриотического воспитания

The substantive role of batyrs in the education of national patriotism is considered. Horse riding, fights, conquests, love for military affairs developed a special «institute of batyrs», which solved almost all the most complex problems that arose in traditional Turkic-Kazakh society. Military history played an important role in the process of educating young soldiers. The moral and ethical norms that have developed in nomadic society give full reason to believe that the institution of great heroes served as the main source of inspiration for young people and performed an important function of patriotic education. Military-patriotic education is one of the important factors in ensuring military security, especially in the context of the changes that are taking place in the modern world. In all universities where there are military departments, it is necessary to introduce the subject of «Military History». Students studying at military departments should know the theory and practice in the construction of the Armed Forces, the theoretical foundations of military affairs and military art, learn to think about the military and get educated in the spirit of respect and friendship of peoples. The outward-political situation in the world requires enormous responsibility for strengthening the country's defense capability. The study of military history, national spiritual and moral values accumulated from the ancient period, a prerequisite among other areas in the military-patriotic education of students of Higher Educational Institutions. The huge role of the military history of the Kazakhs is revealed, where honor and dignity were the main factor in the development of the civilian position of the younger generation

Romantic Painters on Art

Philipp Otto Runge and Caspar David Friedrich, well known Romantic painters, were not only notable masters of the brush but also theorticians of art. The present essay is devoted to an analysis of their theories. Its novelty consists in the fact that it analyzes for the first time the theoretical views that are expressed in the texts of both artists. Runge’s charactertistic feature is a pantheistic experience of God. According to him, it must be expressed in art. He proposes his own dialectic of being, which essentially consists of development, struggle, and mutual annihilation of opposite elements at the moment of achieving perfection. It is precisely this dialectic that, according to him, forms the foundation of art, where he sees an opposition between feeling and reason. Runge pays special attention to the notion of the “spirit of art,” which appears on the basis of the feeling of mutual connection between the human being and the universe, as well as of the artist’s foresentiment of God. In its foundation, art is symbolic and therefore close to religion. The spirit of art manifests itself in what one can call the music, poetry, or symbolism of a work of art. In art, Friedrich sees the spiritual foundation of the world. He distinguishes between skill and “spirituality” in it. According to him, one can master the skill, but one inherits spirituality from birth, and few artists possess it. As a Romantic landscape artist, he opposed illusionism in painting. He considered the creative element in art, which is born in the artist’s inner world, as pivotal. Feeling plays the principal role in art. For this reason Friedrich foregrounds the uncon-scious, although he is convinced that reason and skill must actively participate in the creative process as well. Friedrich preferred winter, foggy, and crepuscular landscapes, which expressed Romantic moods well.

Философско-культурологические предпосылки современной китайской неореалистической масляной живописи

The philosophical foundations of modern art are inextricably linked to the development of culture and the pecu-liarities of a particular artist's creative process. Chinese neorealist painting is a representative reflection of the philosophy of the “new period” epoch in the national culture, which focused the society's attention on the signif-icant changes in the fine arts of the Celestial Empire in the post-reform period. It is proved that the philosophi-cal and cultural preconditions of the artistic concept of neo-realist art were the theories of neo-Kantianism. Phil-osophical ideas of a new reality of human existence, a different quality of social relations actualized the ideas of humanistic ideals of professional activity of the modern artist, the value of national identity. The concept of neorealist painting in China is an expression of world and traditional national philosophy in art, due to which it acquires a number of specific features, one of the most important among which is the assumption of subjectiv-ism in the interpretation of reality.

Exploring the hidden geometry in the physical of sacred buildings of Iran in the Zandiyeh Era (case study: Vakil Mosque)

ABSTRACT Geometry is one of the most important foundations of Iranian art and architecture, which can be seen in the magnificent buildings left from the past that are important in architecture. One of the most important buildings of Iran from the Zandiyeh Era (250 years ago) is Vakil Mosque, which is located in Shiraz. Vakil Mosque is a sacred and Islamic building in Iran, which is the aim of this article to investigate and find geometry in the architectural body of this building. In the current research, descriptive-analytical methods were used to collect data. Then I studied the geometrical drawings of this mosque, which some of the most important books of Muslim scholars in this field have been studied to obtain the geometry of the plan and elevations of Vakil Mosque, and after many tests and finding acceptable answers, options were proposed as the physical geometry of this sacred building. Finally, I came to the conclusion that the architect or architects of this magnificent building have used their utmost efforts in designing its physical to create golden proportions and regular geometry on it, and this order and geometry is the reason for the glory and strength of this building. The findings of this article can be used along with other similar studies to recognize Iran’s architectural works and restore its original Islamic-Iranian identity.

The deep past in the virtual present: developing an interdisciplinary approach towards understanding the psychological foundations of palaeolithic cave art

Virtual Reality (VR) has vast potential for developing systematic, interdisciplinary studies to understand ephemeral behaviours in the archaeological record, such as the emergence and development of visual culture. Upper Palaeolithic cave art forms the most robust record for investigating this and the methods of its production, themes, and temporal and spatial changes have been researched extensively, but without consensus over its functions or meanings. More compelling arguments draw from visual psychology and posit that the immersive, dark conditions of caves elicited particular psychological responses, resulting in the perception—and depiction—of animals on suggestive features of cave walls. Our research developed and piloted a novel VR experiment that allowed participants to perceive 3D models of cave walls, with the Palaeolithic art digitally removed, from El Castillo cave (Cantabria, Spain). Results indicate that modern participants’ visual attention corresponded to the same topographic features of cave walls utilised by Palaeolithic artists, and that they perceived such features as resembling animals. Although preliminary, our results support the hypothesis that pareidolia—a product of our cognitive evolution—was a key mechanism in Palaeolithic art making, and demonstrates the potential of interdisciplinary VR research for understanding the evolution of art, and demonstrate the potential efficacy of the methodology.

Those Who Will Join Us

“Those Who Will Join Us” reviews Bouchra Khalili’s multimedia installation The Circle (2023) in the context of Sharjah Biennial 15. The Circle was commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation and won one of the biennial prizes, and suggests larger questions about what it means to be in the world, how we might remake the world, and what the role of art could be within this. The installation, which includes archival images and small televisions around a large two-channel video projection, is an investigation of the Movement of Arab Workers (MTA) and its theater groups, Al Assifa and Al Halaka. These agitprop t heater groups, formed by North African migrant workers and students like the rest of the MT A, were active in Paris and the south of France between 1973 and 1978. Khalili’s work particularly focuses on the 1974 presidential run of D jellali Kamal, a pseudonym for an anonymous Al Assifa member whose candidacy was seen as an extended public performance meant to reveal the ways in which migrants were denied civil rights.

Laying Waste to History: Recyclia and Urban Art Traditions in Mozambique

ABSTRACT The present article examines the material and cultural foundations of art made with recycled materials in Mozambique, assessing the continuities (and discontinuities) it exhibits with urban art elsewhere. It connects the longstanding practice of recycling street waste into artwork to economic hardship, colonial history, the environmental crisis, and the increasing influence of hip hop and global urban cultural trends. While the scholarly discourse surrounding urban art has tended to focus on the street as an exhibition space and the use of materials such as spray paints that remain unaffordable for many in Africa, this study argues that despite their prevailing recourse to indoor exhibition, many of Mozambique's street ‘recyclists’ harbour similar aims, practices, and concerns to urban artists elsewhere. Considering artwork by a wide range of artists and of varying technologies, media, and overall complexity, the article thus seeks to connect existing scholarship on the use of recyclia in African arts to the much-theorised practices of street art, graffiti and style writing.

Dynamics of Figurative-Stylistic Evolution of Solo Arrangement of the Folk Song (From «Zharty, kokhannya, lyubov ta zhenykhannya» / «Jokes, Love and Marriage» to «A my nashu slavnu Ukrayinu rozveselymo!» / «We Will Cheer Up Our Glorious Ukraine!»)

The article highlights the dynamics of the movement of artistic thought of the Ukrainian community in 1900–1918 on its way to the first attempt to form its own independent state. The data is provided on the settlement and number of Ukrainians in the specified period is intended to show a large-scale panorama of the development of the most common genres of music making in everyday life, because the universally recognized feature of the Ukrainian mentality as cordocentric already conditioned the desire for artistic self-expression, music and singing. The author’s attention is focused on the genre of arrangement Ukrainian folk songs for voice with instrumental accompaniment, which created a powerful folklore wave associated with the trends of increased national self-determination and democratization of the aesthetic foundations of Ukrainian art. The policy of the russian tsarist culturists of that time was aimed at spreading the so-called «Little russian surrogate» – encouraged the publication of artistically inferior songs that had humorous, entertaining, love-sentimental, burlesque or frankly vulgar content. However, the purposeful patriotic activity of such artists as M. Lysenko, K. Kvitka, K. Stetsenko, O. Koshyts, B. Yanovsky, Yа. Stepovy, F. Kolessa, O. Nyzhankivskyi, D. Sichynskyi, S. Charnetskyi caused a significant evolution of the genre of solo arrangement and raising it to the high level of a vocal miniature / romance, defined by the purely Ukrainian musical term «solospiv» ≈ «solosиng». The evolutionary growth significantly affected the topic of the genre, when songs of civic pathos, full of pride for the heroic past and the desire for national self-determination and statehood, began to gain national popularity.

The Study on of Art Portfolio Management of the Art Foundation – Use the Guy and Myriam Ullens Foundation as an Example

This study provides an in-depth examination of the existing literature on art portfolio management to understand the relevant theories and data analysis techniques. The Guy &amp; Myriam Ullens Foundation is selected for the study, which scrutinizes the investment allocation strategies across different art categories and historical periods, as well as investigating investment criteria, risk mitigation strategies and investment returns. In addition, it analyses the operational framework of art foundations and summarizes successful portfolio management practices, providing a valuable reference for other art investment institutions and collectors. The study employs a multi-faceted approach, including literature review, case studies, portfolio theory and other research methods. This comprehensive survey addresses the field of institutional art investment.