English Arts Research Articles

Illness as Metaphor

The late British artist Donald Rodney (1961–98) developed a unique vocabulary critiquing wider representations of the black male body that extended beyond his status as a person living with sickle cell disease to the lives of others with a shared racial background. Critical yet full of wit, Rodney was, until his death in 1998 from complications related to sickle cell disease, one of the most compelling artists to come out of the Black Arts Movement of 1980s Britain. From X-rays of his cells to tiny sculptures made from his own skin, Rodney created conceptual self-portraits of his life as a young black man. This article considers illness, art, and activism while reflecting on the effects of living with sickle cell disease and the continued invisibility around this illness, both on the African continent and beyond for the very reasons Rodney’s works highlight. In focusing on the notion of illness as metaphor in art and analyzing the metaphorical tropes of illness present in Rodney’s artworks produced during the late 1980s to early 1990s, the author’s intention is to think through the entangled understandings of illness and masculinity to seek new readings of Rodney’s works. The artist’s deeply moving, conceptual, and critically engaging oeuvre not only confronts the viewer with both the presence and absence of the black male body, but also presents the spectator with the realities of the artist’s daily negotiations living with sickle cell disease. This disease affects people of African, Caribbean, Eastern Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and Asian descent, and there is still no cure for it. It is a “black” disease that raises polemics of care toward black bodies and the invisibility of sufferers within the wider medical discourse. Rodney’s works form a compelling case for an artist’s dedication to making both him and his works visible while simultaneously acting as a form of resistance against marginalization and oppression on the basis of both race and gender. Rodney’s practice is considered here within wider discourses dealing with a postcolonial reading of pain, aesthetics of illness, and representations of the male body.

Eugene Palmer and Barbara Walker

In Britain, black artists are arguably receiving the most sustained level of attention in a generation, from several historical exhibitions and international conferences to academic-based research initiatives and acquisitions by prestigious national museums. While offering artists a certain level of exposure, such initiatives have tended to privilege institutional agendas rather than the very artistic practices they purport to endorse. The paucity of genuine exhibition opportunities and significant publishing are factors that continue to bedevil a wider selection of black British artists. This article focuses on two specific exhibitions and artists: Eugene Palmer’s Didn’t It Rain (2018) and Barbara Walker’s Sub Urban: New Drawings (2015), both organized at the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, UK. The author stresses the contrasting relationship to photography that each artist pursued in the making of their respective bodies of work and argues for a more engaged assessment of practice. The works of these artists deserve to be recognized for their fascinating and singular contributions to contemporary art practices.

Sonia Boyce

The British artist Sonia Boyce was a central figure in the British Black Arts Movement and has in recent years achieved widespread critical acclaim within the field of British art. Although she is now known for her performative and collaborative approach to art making, she began her career making figurative oil pastel and charcoal portraits that have become synonymous with black artistic practices of the 1980s. This article presents a new reading of three of these iconic portraits—Auntie Enid–The Pose (1985), Missionary Position II (1985), and Big Women’s Talk (1984). The new reading respects, but diverges from, previous interpretations that have typically focused on representations of black domestic life and the politics of identity. Taking direction from several interviews with the artist, including one conducted by the author in 2015, the article uses a formal analysis to propose the hitherto unacknowledged or under-appreciated interplay with modernism and other art movements within the three artworks in question.

John Akomfrah

This article considers recent films by the artist John Akomfrah (b. 1957, Ghana). It argues that Vertigo Sea, The Airport, and Purple exemplify a new phase of black British art production. While building on the methods and themes that characterize his time with the Black Audio Film Collective, these projects exemplify ways in which diasporic histories provide crucial insights into the early twenty-first century—notably around questions of national sovereignty, spaces of flow and mobility, and human interventions in shared ecosystems. Ultimately, these films present a way of “doing history,” a form of visual genealogy Akomfrah calls “an essay” that is suited to a landscape in which fixed temporal or spatial narratives are no longer adequate.

فن الإبیجرام عند نزار قبانی

ملخص البحث فن الإبیجرام عند قبانی یعالج هذا البحث فنا من الفنون الأدبیة الذی یتناسب مع روح العصر وطبیعته حیث السرعة والإیجاز، وعلى الرغم من ذلک فإنه لم یعالج بالقدر الذی یستحقه من قبل الأدباء والنقاد والمتخصصین فی حقل الدراسات الأدبیة وهو: فن الإبیجرام عند الشاعر العربی نزار قبانی؛ إذ ما زالت المکتبة العربیة تفتقر إلى کثیر من الأبحاث والدراسات حول هذا الفن مع أن التراث العربی غنی به نثرا، وشعرا، ولکن الأمر یحتاج إلى باحث مدقق یستنطق نصوصه النثریة والشعریة. وکان من أوائل من أشار إلیه عمید الأدب العربی الدکتور/ طه حسین، فی کتابه جنة الشوک تحت مصطلح الإبیجرام، وأخبر المتلقی بأن هذا الفن تأخرت نشأته فی أدبنا العربی؛فلمیکدیعرفهالأدبالجاهلی، أونحنلانعرفمنالأدبالجاهلیمایمکننامنأننقطعبأنالشعراءالجاهلیینقد حاولواأوقصدواإلیه. وقد عالج الباحث قضایا بحثه فی ضوء بعض المناهج القدیمة والحدیثة التی تمکن الباحث من تحقیق هدفه المنشود فی بحثه. ودرس البحث بدایة؛ نشأة هذا الفن، وتحریر مفهومه، ثم انتقل بعد ذلک لدراسة بناء قصیدة الإبیجراما فی شعر نزار قبانی، والتشکیل البصری بـ (علامات الترقیم)، ودراسة الإیقاع واللغة، ثم بعد ذلک النتائج التی انتهى إلیها البحث. الکلمات المفتاحیة للبحث : فن – إبیجرام – - قبانی دکتور باسم محمد عبد الفتاح فروات قسم الأدب والنقد - کلیة اللغة العربیة بالمنوفیة - جامعة الأزهر Basemfrawat.lan@azhar.edu.eg English Abstract Art of Epigram at Qabbani This research deals with an art of literary arts that is commensurate with the spirit and nature of the times in terms of speed and brevity. However, it is not addressed as much as it deserves by the writers, critics and specialists in the field of literary studies: The Arab Library still lacks a lot of research and studies on this art, although the Arab heritage is rich in prose, and poetry, but it requires a researcher scrutinized prose texts prose and poetry. He was one of the first to be referred to by the Dean of Arabic Literature Dr. / Taha Hussein, in his book Paradise of thorns under the term epigram, and told the recipient that this art was delayed in our Arabic literature; Ignorant Literature We can say that the ignorant poets have tried or intended it. The researcher tackled the issues of his research in the light of some old and modern approaches that enable the researcher to achieve his desired goal in his research. The research first studied; the origin of this art, and the liberalization of its concept, and then moved to study the construction of the poem Epigrama in the poetry of Nizar Qabbani, and visual composition (punctuation), and study the rhythm and language, and then the results of the research. Key words : Art, Epigram, Nizar, Qabbani Dr. Basem Mohamed Abd El Fattah Farawat Department of Literature and Criticism Faculty of Arabic Language in Menoufia Al Azhar university University email: Basemfrawat.lan@azhar.edu.eg

From the Sublime to the Ridiculous

This article examines extinction in recent performances by the British contemporary artist Marcus Coates. It considers three works, including Human Report (2008), Apology to the Great Auk (2017) and The Last of Its Kind (2017), which tackle the disappearance of species and habitats in ways that are often comic and absurd. While humour might initially appear incongruous and insensitive as a way of dealing with such serious subjects, this article argues that Coates cultivates this characteristic of his ecologically-orientated performances in sincere and strategic ways. I demonstrate how these works wield satire, parody, bathos and the absurd to raise awareness of extinction and even foster a desire to act in the face of it. The article situates Coates’s performances in the realm of the ‘ridiculous’ as conceived by Timothy Morton (2016), in which satire and melancholy coalesce and where we might ‘encounter the art of the absurd’ (144), in order to consider the ecological possibilities of humour in this body of work.

Absence and Presence: Top of the Pops and the Demand for Music Videos in the 1960s

While there is a surprising critical consensus underpinning the myth that British music video began in the mid-1970s with Queen's video for ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, few scholars have pursued John Mundy's (1999) lead in locating its origins a decade earlier. Although the relationship between film and the popular song has a much longer history, this article seeks to establish that the international success of British beat groups in the first half of the 1960s encouraged television broadcasters to target the youth audience with new shows that presented their idols performing their latest hits (which normally meant miming to recorded playback). In the UK, from 1964, the BBC's Top of the Pops created an enduring format specifically harnessed to popular music chart rankings. This format created a demand for the top British artists' regular studio presence which their busy touring schedules could seldom accommodate; American artists achieving British pop chart success rarely appeared on the show in person. These frequent absences, then, coupled with the desire by broadcasters elsewhere in Europe and America to present popular British acts, created a demand for pre-recorded or filmed inserts to be produced and shown in lieu of the artists themselves appearing. Drawing on records held at the BBC's Written Archives and elsewhere, and interviews with a number of 1960s music video directors, this article evidences TV's demand-driver and illustrates how the ‘pop promo’, in the hands of some, became a creative enterprise which exceeded television's requirement to cover for an artist's studio absence.

A 60-year dysfunctional relationship: How and why curriculum and assessment in fine art in England have always been problematic and still are

This article gives a brief account of the last 60 years of fine art in English art schools, concentrating on the curriculum and assessment only. Sixty years ago, there were national examinations and teachers taught to the test. The main causes of changes to assessment and curriculum were policy decisions of the 1960s, which abolished national examinations. This was followed a decade later by the need to accommodate post-Duchampian art practice. This new paradigm of fine art placed an emphasis on criticality, information and interdisciplinary practice with a reduced role for self-expression, formalism and traditional skills. The challenge this offered to the curriculum was that there was no longer any core set of skills or knowledge that all students need to learn. This has come up against higher education sector requirements to provide a detailed description of what all students should learn and against which they are assessed. Behind this intractable contradiction lies a clash of two incompatible world-views: the one interpretive within fine art and the other positivist held by those who determine assessment policy. A consequence of the ubiquitous adoption of these assessment regimes and the pressures of marketization is that teaching to the test is once again becoming the norm, albeit without standardized examinations.

English Influences, Russian Experiments

Abstract This article analyzes the Neo-Russian style in children’s book illustrations in Russia and compares it to analogous artistic developments in England, revealing a similar evolutionary path to that of other national variants of Art Nouveau. The initial aesthetic impulse for this evolution came from the promotion of crafts and medieval handicrafts by “enlightened amateurs.” The history of children’s books, with its patently playful nature, aestheticization of primitives, and free play with quotations from the history of art, is an important episode in the history of Russian and English Art Nouveau. Starting with a consideration of the new attitude towards the “theme of childhood” as such, and a new focus on the child’s perception of the world, this article reveals why the children’s book, long treated as a marginal genre, became a fertile and universal field for artistic experimentation at the turn of the twentieth century. It then focuses on Elena Polenova’s concept of children’s book illustrations, which reflected both her enthusiasm for the British Arts and Crafts movement, and, in particular, the work of Walter Crane, and her profound knowledge of Russian crafts and folklore. The last part of the article deals with the artistic experiments of Ivan Bilibin and the similarities of his book designs to those of Walter Crane.

Affective Mobilizations: Pinkwashing and Racialized Homophobia in Out There

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the affective economies which materialize around race, sexuality and queerness in the British context to enable the production and mobilization of an exceptionalist discourse of gay-friendly and post-homophobic Britain (i.e., pinkwashing). The author investigates the discursive workings of pinkwashing coupled with the racialization of homophobia, through a critical reading of the BBC Two documentary Out There (2013a), written and narrated by British gay-identified writer, activist and artist, Stephen Fry. The documentary captures and is in fact captured within a global moment of human rights speculation in which some European nation-states have invested in affective discourses of queer futurities as a marker of their capacity for tolerance, in contrast to predominantly racialized subjects/communities within and outside of Europe, increasingly naturalized as always already homophobic (i.e., racializing homophobia). My reading of the documentary demonstrates the interconnection between pinkwashing and racialized homophobia as discursive inventions which depend on the mobilization of affects such as love, pride, terror, hate and (un)happiness, as currencies of governance. Far from being universal or abstract, I contend that British LGBTQ human rights speculative discourse draws on a highly racialized affective economy—which constructs racialized communities within Britain and racialized populations and states outside the West, as excessively homophobic, rendering pre-dominantly gay male British subjects (and homopatriarchy) as exceptional patriots.

On comics and the chronicles of emaciation: an interview with Katie Green

Katie Green is a contemporary British comic artist, graphic pathographer, and illustrator who has gained wide acclaim through Lighter Than My Shadow (Jonathan Cape, 2013), a graphic medicine memoir...

Comprehension of the English National Character in Building Professional Linguistic Culture

Abstract The article discusses the integrative competence-based cultural approach to studying the complex and multifaceted world of the culture of the target language through comprehension of the English national character reflected in arts as a way to personal development, interdisciplinary professional mobility and professional culture of the student majoring in Linguistics. The English national character is revealed through its artistic understanding in such most ‘English’ genres as portrait, landscape and caricature, as well as in the perpendicular architectural style and features of landscape architecture. The authors have designated the content-semantic blocks of Linguistics and Culture Study courses to demonstrate the students who specialize in translation and interpretation the traditions reflected in the national character through the prism of art, thus revealing the semantics of the concept of the national character. The image of the English national character as constructed by English art is analyzed. Its main features are revealed: conservatism, patriotism, snobbery, respect of law and privacy, tolerance, politeness, practicality and rationality, conventionalism, eccentricity and sense of humor, contradiction and sometimes paradox. Interactive technologies that ensure the assimilation of educational material aimed at promoting national, ethnic and religious tolerance, respect of the values of a different culture, focus on cross-cultural communication, inculturation and socialization of the individual are presented in the article.

The Return of Miserabilism: Richard Billingham's Ray & Liz

This essay discusses Richard Billingham's debut feature film, Ray & Liz (2018), through the lens of miserabilism as both an historical art movement and as an endemic feature of British film culture. The film provides both continuity and innovation in Billingham's work, connecting with his 1990s photographs of his family (originally displayed alongside the work of other Young British Artists [YBAs] at the London Sensation exhibition in 1997), and introducing new formal aspects of narrative cinema into his career in the visual arts. Called a “cine-memoir” by Billingham, Ray & Liz portrays incidents from the artist's family's life and his own upbringing near Birmingham, focusing on his father's alcoholism and his parents' loss of custody of Billingham's brother. The film questions many of the assumptions about how poverty is represented in contemporary cinema and challenges the tendencies of miserabilism towards apolitical nihilism on one hand and simplistic message-making on the other.

NIE for Improving English Medium Instruction in Art Theory Course: A Case of Korean Higher Education

본 연구는 국내 대학 미술이론과목의 영어강의에 있어서 수강생의 전공내용 이해도와 영어능력을 함께 향상하기 위한 개선 방안으로서 영어 미술신문 활용을 제안한 신문활용교육(NIE) 사례연구이다. 서울시 소재 한 사립대학의 미대생을 대상으로 실시한 설문조사 결과를 분석하여 다음과 같은 결과를 얻었다. 첫째, 대다수의 수강생이 영어 미술신문의 난이도와 그에 기초한 퀴즈의 난이도가 보통이라고 응답하였다. 둘째, 대다수의 수강생이 영어 미술신문을 활용하는 수업에 만족한다고 응답하였다. 셋째, 수강생의 1/3 이상은 강의 중에 교수가 영어를 50% 사용하기 원한다고 한 반면, 또 다른 1/3은 교수가 영어를 60-70% 사용하기 원한다고 응답하였다. 넷째, 대다수의 수강생이 NIE를 적용한 미술이론과목 영어강의를 통해 현대미술의 최신 동향을 이해할 수 있다고 하였다. 다섯째, 수강생의 절반 정도가 수강 후에 영어 미술신문 독해 시간이 빨라졌고 NIE를 적용한 강의가 영어능력 향상에 도움이 된다고 응답하였다. 이 결과를 토대로 다음의 시사점을 제안할 수 있다. 대학의 미술이론과목의 영어강의에서 수강생들의 영어능력 편차가 존재하므로 기초과정과 심화과정 교과목을 별도로 개설하거나 영어와 한국어 사용 비율을 달리하는 세분화된 교과목을 개설할 필요성이 있다. 미술이론과목 영어강의의 기초과정에 영어 미술신문을 활용한 NIE를 적용하면, 영어강의에 대한 수강생들의 만족도를 높이고 전공내용 이해도를 증진하게 되며 독해력을 포함한 영어능력 향상에 기여할 수 있다.In this case study of Newspaper in Education (NIE) for English Medium Instruction (EMI) in the college art theory course, the researcher proposed an improvement plan for improving students understanding of course contents and English proficiency. The following survey results were obtained from art major students of a private university in Seoul. Firstly, the majority of the students answered that the difficulty level of English art newspapers and quizzes based on their contents was moderate. Secondly, the majority of the students answered that they were satisfied with EMI in the college art theory course applying NIE. Thirdly, more than one-third of the students answered that they wanted their professor to use 50% of English and another one-third responded that they wanted the professor to use 60-70% of English during the course. Fourthly, the majority of the students responded that they could understand the latest trends in contemporary art through the course applying NIE. Fifthly, nearly half of the students answered that the time to read English art newspapers became faster and the course applying NIE was helpful to improve their English proficiency. Our results suggest that there is a need to open basic and advanced courses or more courses with different ratios of English and Korean since there are deviations in English proficiency among students. Applying NIE to EMI in the college art theory course as a basic level course will enhance students satisfaction, improve their understanding of course contents, and cultivate English proficiency including reading ability.

Walkie-Talkies, Wandering, and Sonic Intimacy

Walkie-Talkies, Wandering, and Sonic Intimacy

Understanding Individual Voluntary Giving as a Practice: Implications for Regional Arts Organisations in the UK

This research examines individual voluntary giving as an integrative practice. Our research speaks to the new funding challenges traversing the British arts sector. Historically reliant on government funds, increasingly regional non-profit arts organisations must diversify their income sources and target a range of voluntary givers. By drawing on practice theories and interpretive qualitative data, we illuminate how giving understandings, procedures and engagements interconnect and interact, coming together in ways that lead to specific giving choices that prioritise cause-based charities over the arts. In doing so, we make two original contributions towards existing sociological research on voluntary giving. First, we transform and broaden the scope of empirical research by conceptualising voluntary giving as an integrative practice. Second, we offer a lens through which to investigate and explicate shared social processes, mechanisms and acts that traverse structures and individuals, co-construing and reproducing voluntary giving patterns.

The Maltese cactus: an autoethnography of the colonization of desire

ABSTRACTThis article presents an autoethnographic account of an encounter between two men – a Mexican scholar and a British artist – who met in Malta, to examine how post-colonialism influences the seemingly personal experience of erotic desire. The author, a man of indigenous descent, explores how his erotic attraction interweaved with powerful dynamics that were the product of the other man’s European cultural background. He problematizes this attraction by reflecting on the white ethnocentrism that colored his partner-seeking process. This autoethnography analyzes how European colonialism in Mexico affected not only language and religion, but also the deceivingly intimate aspect of erotic desire.

An interview with Arthur Ranson

Arthur Ranson (b. 1939) is a British artist widely known for his work on Look-in (Danger Mouse, Sapphire & Steel) and 2000AD (Anderson: Psi-Division, Shamballa, Mazeworld, Button Man). This interview, undertaken throughout July–October 2018, explores his career as an illustrator and artist and explores a range of topics, including key points in his career; his approach to composition, colour and storytelling; comics and realism; whether comics are, as Jack Kirby once declared, journalism; artists he admires, including Mike Mignola, Neal Adams, Alex Ross, Jack Kirby and Allison Bechdel; the Bechdel test and representations of female characters in comics; reflections on Cassandra Anderson; the Judge Dredd films; John Wagner; Mazeworld; his collaborations with writer Alan Grant; and the single panel from his incredibly body of work in comics and illustration that he’s most proud of.

변방에서 중심으로 : 영국 그라피티 예술의 정치성 비평

This essay is a critical research of the politics within British graffiti art developed since the 1980s, and it discusses the problems that have arisen as graffiti art, a symbol of resistance and youth culture, has entered art and cultural institutions. Graffiti is a democratic art open to anyone, both created and viewed in the public space of a city. It has the character of vandalism that undermines private property, and a temporality as it can be removed at any time. It also resists nations, social policies and political situations, having illegal and counter-cultural connotations.BR When this marginal, frontier graffiti art enters into the art institution, it is difficult to avoid the debates of capitalism and consumerism; questions such as copyright, authorship, and commercialization. Nonetheless, many graffiti artists are trying to achieve a balance between street art and those institutional boundaries. They want to communicate with the public in various ways, in both the central and the subcultures. Within the spaces of reality and the virtual space of network environment, artists criticize law, capital, politics and society, and try to re-contextualize the political meaning and identity of graffiti.BR The performative strategy of British graffiti artists is to engage with the problems of nation and society, not seriously, but take satire and playfulness that is easily understand and apply it to their work. Through these works they are trying to define the urban space in a new way and expand the activity and characteristics of street art. However, the important thing is to keep the appropriate distance from the system of consumption and commercialization. This distance provides the autonomy and politics which graffiti has.

Influence of British Pottery on Pottery Practice in Nigeria

The pottery narratives of Nigeria majorly linked with the activities of a great British potter Michael Cardew who Established pottery centres in Nigeria, and trained many Nigerians in Pottery. Cardew studied under Bernard Leach (1887 – 1979) who travels extensively and taught pottery around the world.Leach studied pottery under Master Kenzan VI in Japan and returned to England in 1920 to establish his own pottery at St. Ives with Shoji Hamada. The impact in pottery created by Cardew in Nigeria from 1950 is a direct British Pottery influence imparted to him by leach at St. Ives. A British potter and artist, Kenneth C. Murray studied pottery under Bernard Leach at St. Ives in 1929 and returned back to Uyo in Nigeria to produce and teach students pottery. Murray produced pottery wares from the Kiln he built at Uyo and took his students to exhibit the ware along with other art works at Zwember gallery (Britain) in 1937. Chief Adam Joshua Udo Ema also studied pottery in 1949 in Britain and later returned to work as a pottery officer at Okigwe Pottery centre as well as established three pottery centres in Nigeria Namely; Ikot Abasi Pottery centre at Etinan, Pottery centre at Mbiafun Ikono, and pottery centre at Ikot Ntot in Abak. Many other Nigerian studied pottery in Nigeria. Lady Kwalii pottery experience was influenced by Michael Cardew. Her pottery influence seen pottery products exhibited in various parts of the world depicted a coordination of Niger and British Pottery influences. A case study design is considered for methodological approach. Data were taken from primary and secondary sources and analyzed respectively. British influence on Nigeria is indeed outstanding.