Conceptual Art Research Articles

Creativity, credit, and copyright in the age of artificial art

ABSTRACT Generative artificial intelligence is transforming the way we make, and think about, art. With prompting from human users, these generative systems now produce aesthetically compelling and seemingly creative works in a variety of artistic domains. In doing so, they challenge the ways we think about artistic credit, about creativity, and about the mechanism of legal copyright, which is meant to protect and promote creativity in a capitalist art market. All of this is currently at play in the courtroom, as artists contest the ways in which their artworks can be rightfully fed into these artificial systems (“the problem of the inputs”), and other artists are challenged over whether they might be credited for the visual images these systems generate (“the problem of the outputs”). Here, we explore these problems as they arise in visual art. We argue that the contested legal landscape surrounding these artificial systems reflects the ways they challenge our received notions of artistic credit and creativity. And we suggest that clarifying or changing the application of copyright in light of their generative capacities will ultimately involve revising our conception of art.

The Artistic Expression and Aesthetic Value of the Artistic Conception of Tang Poetry on Landscape

The Artistic Expression and Aesthetic Value of the Artistic Conception of Tang Poetry on Landscape

How deep is your art: An experimental study on the limits of artistic understanding in a single-task, single-modality neural network.

Computational modeling of artwork meaning is complex and difficult. This is because art interpretation is multidimensional and highly subjective. This paper experimentally investigated the degree to which a state-of-the-art Deep Convolutional Neural Network (DCNN), a popular Machine Learning approach, can correctly distinguish modern conceptual art work into the galleries devised by art curators. Two hypotheses were proposed to state that the DCNN model uses Exhibited Properties for classification, like shape and color, but not Non-Exhibited Properties, such as historical context and artist intention. The two hypotheses were experimentally validated using a methodology designed for this purpose. VGG-11 DCNN pre-trained on ImageNet dataset and discriminatively fine-tuned was trained on handcrafted datasets designed from real-world conceptual photography galleries. Experimental results supported the two hypotheses showing that the DCNN model ignores Non-Exhibited Properties and uses only Exhibited Properties for artwork classification. This work points to current DCNN limitations, which should be addressed by future DNN models.

Ancient Oriental Spirituality: On the Aesthetic of Spirituality in the Film “Creation of the Gods I: Kingdom of Storms”

The Chinese film “Creation of the Gods I: Kingdom of Storms”, adapted from the 16th-century fantasy novel *Investiture of the Gods* by Ming dynasty author Xu Zhonglin, presents scenes filled with the mystical essence of Eastern mythology. Director Wu Ershan employs “spirituality” as the core of the film's visual design, adhering to the philosophical theory that "all things possess a soul." This approach infuses the film's scenes and props with vibrant emotional tension and the vitality of ancient Chinese aesthetics. Through elements such as artistic conception, totem symbols, and primitive religious philosophy, the director imbues the film's visual aesthetic with spiritual energy, conveying the ancient oriental resonance through the mysterious and spiritual culture of the Shang dynasty.

Antyk – germańskość: dwie tradycje nazizmu?

Nazi ideology appropriated many traditions of thought, syncretistically combining them to justify German’s racial superiority. This belief stems from Volkist thought, with its concept of the Aryan/Germanic superman, racial purity and the connection to ‘blood-and-earth’. Ancient art, which was the formal basis for the architecture and sculpture of the Third Reich, was also treated as an expression of Germanic culture.The article discusses how Nazi ideology attempted to combine the volkist concept of Germanicness with the legacy of ancient art, and use both to legitimise the idea of racial superiority justifying the practice of conquest, annihilation and subjugation of other peoples. The juxtaposition of classicist artistic concepts with the shaping of a “Germanicˮ nature also reveals the total dimension of the indoctrination of its own citizens to participate in the construction of a new “orderˮ.

DecoupleCLIP: A Novel Cross-Modality Decouple Model for Painting Captioning

Image captioning aims to describe the content in an image, which plays a critical role in image understanding. Existing methods tend to generate the text for more distinct natural images. These models can not be well for paintings containing more abstract meaning due to the limitation of objective parsing without related knowledge. To alleviate, we propose a novel cross-modality decouple model to generate the objective and subjective parsing separately. Concretely, we propose to encode both subjective semantic and implied knowledge contained in the paintings. The key point of our framework is decoupled CLIP-based branches (DecoupleCLIP). For the objective caption branch, we utilize the CLIP model as the global feature extractor and construct a feature fusion module for global clues. Based on the objective caption branch structure, we add a multimodal fusion module called the artistic conception branch. In this way, the objective captions can constrain artistic conception content. We conduct extensive experiments to demonstrate our DecoupleCLIP’s superior ability over our new dataset. Our model achieves nearly 2% improvement over other comparison models on CIDEr.

Exploring the Visual Communication of Illustration Narrative in Brand Promotion Through the Symbolic Meaning of Thorn Elements

Abstract: In todays market, the use of visual representations is increasingly prevalent, with illustrations becoming a key promotion tool. Due to their ability to deliver immediate and powerful impact on viewers, illustrations are now a top choice for companies in advertising. Various styles and techniques of illustration have evolved, enriching the artistic language of advertising; different combinations of elements can evoke diverse reactions and interpretations among audiences. This paper aims to establish a framework for the use of illustration in advertising by analyzing a specific element and its symbolic meanings. It begins with a discussion of the fundamentals of symbolism in illustrations, followed by a detailed analysis of thorn as an artistic concept. The paper concludes by demonstrating how these strategies can be applied in market, offering guidance for future product design and promotions.

Aesthetics and Creativity: A Preliminary Exploration of Modern Poetry Teaching in Primary School Chinese——Taking Ai Qing’s Teaching of “Green” as an Example

Among all literary works, the language of poetry is the most concise, unique, and timeless, and its expression of emotions is particularly rich. Learning poetry can enhance one’s ability to appreciate various literary works. The way to enhance the aesthetic understanding of poetry itself is closely related to quality education in Chinese language teaching. Undoubtedly, it is particularly important for classroom teaching to guide students in creating poetic scenarios, inspiring them to explore the artistic conception of poetry, and guiding them to appreciate the unique expression of poetry. Teaching students the general method of self-reading and self-understanding modern poetry can be seen as a way to make poetry teaching twice the result with half the effort. Based on this, this article takes Ai Qing’s “Green” as an example to explore the teaching path of modern poetry in primary school Chinese for reference.

Provision of "Isms" and Spontaneous Art: From the Development of Art History

This paper explores the development of art from early cave paintings to modern Provisionism and spontaneous art, analyzing how art, as a significant form of human cultural expression, has continuously evolved with changes in society and technology. As time progresses, the definition and boundaries of art are no longer fixed but have expanded along with the shifting roles of artists. The rise of Provisionism indicates that artists are no longer merely creators of works but designers of audience experiences, with the meaning of artworks further extended and enriched through audience participation. At the same time, spontaneous art blurs the line between art and everyday life, suggesting that ordinary actions and improvisations can be considered art in the right context. This paper also discusses how these emerging art forms challenge traditional art concepts and provide new perspectives for the future development of art.

ARTISTIC DIALOGUE IN UKRAINIAN CHAMBER AND INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC AND ITS KEY TRANSFORMATIONS

The article examines the manifestations of artistic dialogue, focusing on chamber and ensemble music by Ukrainian composers of the 20th and 21st centuries. Artistic dialogue as a reflection of the main vectors of chamber music development in composers’ explorations influenced the processes of enrichment and transformation of its expressive field, and its specificity shaped the national character of this field. It has been shown that the interaction of the artist with cultural and artistic layers is effective in developing a comprehensive understanding of the processes of musical creativity in the dichotomy between tradition and innovation. Built into the composer’s idea, the communicative features of the artistic dialogue make it possible to outline the specifics of chamber music, its coordinates of cultural and artistic identification such as the internal artistic concept and the external artistic and stylistic space. In the interaction of the artist with various artistic fields, the author traces and identifies the patterns of development and vectors of innovation that influence the development of chamber music as a component of Ukrainian musical culture and contribute to its holistic understanding in the interdependence of artistic processes with European artistic trends and worldviews. The integrity of the expressive field of chamber and ensemble creativity is studied in several artistic and dialogical sections that reveal its essence and key changes. The components of the composer’s worldview and stylistic trends of the time establish the idea of the national character of Ukrainian chamber music of the early twentieth century, where the features of the late romantic style are embodied through Ukrainian coloristics, generous use of Ukrainian intonation and harmony complexes, genre models of folk art, programmatic approach, etc. This is confirmed by Mykola Lysenko’s search for chamber and ensemble genres by his followers, composers of the Halychyna school of composition of the first half of the twentieth century. A more complex version of the embodiment of national elements is the work of Borys Liatoshynsky, where entire creative periods of life are formed at the crossroads of Ukrainian and Slavic themes. Through the study of the composers’ schools, their professional, cultural and artistic attribution, two models of chamber music development are distinguished: hermetically academic, associated with the influences of Lysenko and his followers, and innovative, open to comprehensive genre and style transformations in the dialogical interdependence of academic tradition and experimental explorations, associated with the school of Liatoshynsky. The artistic dialogue in the communication of Ukrainian artists with the innovative processes of European stylistic discourse made it possible to trace the distinctive features of genre transformations in the chamber and instrumental music of the second half of the twentieth century and to identify their fundamental stages. Artistic dialogue is at the heart of the activities of performers of chamber and instrumental music, representing the dialogic nature of composers’ explorations and performers’ interpretations. The performing aspect is covered in several ways: as a process of organizing performance by the community of ensemble players; as a search for a coordinated position in the performing interpretation of the composer’s stylistic image; as a performing and stylistic embodiment of the author’s intention in ensemble interaction

Effect Program Educational Based on According to Raigloth Expansion Theory in Teaching Post-Modern Arts for Students of the Institute of Fine Arts

General Background: The evolving landscape of postmodern art necessitates innovative educational approaches to equip students with the skills and knowledge required to navigate this complex field. Specific Background: This research investigates the impact of an educational program grounded in Reigeluth's expansive theory on the teaching of postmodern art at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad. Prior studies have highlighted the need for effective instructional designs that engage students and enhance their cognitive achievements. Knowledge Gap: Despite the proliferation of educational theories, there remains limited empirical evidence on the effectiveness of expansive instructional design in the context of postmodern arts education. Aims: This study aims to assess the effectiveness of an expansive educational program on students' cognitive achievement in postmodern art compared to traditional teaching methods. Results: Utilizing an experimental design with two equivalent groups, the findings reveal statistically significant differences (p < 0.05) in post-test scores favoring the experimental group that engaged with the educational program based on Reigeluth's theory. Novelty: This research contributes to the literature by demonstrating that an expansive instructional approach can significantly enhance students' understanding and appreciation of postmodern art. Implications: The results underscore the necessity for art education curricula to incorporate innovative instructional designs that foster deeper cognitive engagement and mastery of complex artistic concepts. By bridging the gap between theory and practice, this study offers valuable insights for educators seeking to improve instructional effectiveness in the rapidly evolving domain of postmodern art. Highlights: Impact of expansive design on cognitive achievement in postmodern art. Controlled study shows significant differences in student performance outcomes. Innovative teaching methods enhance student engagement and understanding. Keywords: postmodern art, educational program, Reigeluth's theory, cognitive achievement, instructional design

Analysis of Cultural Narratives in Works of Art for the Study of Ukrainian-Russian Relations

The article is devoted to the consideration of cultural narratives in works of art as a reflection of the nature of Ukrainian-Russian relations. The purpose of the article is to analyse the cultural narratives presented in works of art during the war, from the perspective of studying Ukrainian-Russian relations. The research methodology includes a qualitative analysis of works of art created during the war, using methods of content analysis and semiotic analysis. The research used the method of narrative analysis to reveal subjective ideas about the given problem. The presented factual information is analysed in the explicit content of the narrative. Content-oriented analysis is aimed at clarifying the implicit content: meaning and significance, manifestations of certain motives, features of the formulation of the narrative, its meaningful changes. Formal analysis consists in clarifying the structure of narratives, the sequence of changes, their relationship with the temporal axis, complexity and interconnectedness; feelings and images reflected in works of art. Semiotic analysis is used to study works of art, the meanings embedded in them in view of the change in the socio-political situation (from annexation to full-scale invasion). Scientific novelty. Its use, along with the traditional one, creates a new path for the development of conceptual art, which is now relevant, since it allows not only to restore one’s identity on the basis of ancient cultural traditions, but also to form a new awareness of oneself in the world space. Conclusions. As a result of the study, it was found that the pro-Russian narratives that existed in the cultural space of Ukraine before 2014 have disappeared, and pro-Ukrainian ones are being promoted more actively, which indicates an awareness of their identity and a desire for national independence. A rather dramatic change can be traced in relation to Russian culture, which is recognised as imposed from the outside and implanted over the centuries by force. Subsequent research involves systematisation and analysis of modern symbolism that arose during a full-scale war and evokes lasting associations.

On the Shaping of Characters in Dance Drama

Dance performance is a kind of artistic dynamic image soaked with "emotion", and only by grasping the unity of inside and outside and the situation, can we completely shape the character image and achieve a certain artistic aesthetic effect. In dance creation, the creator is an inseparable and complete process of artistic creation, from deeply capturing the dance image, creating and organizing the dance language, arranging and designing the dance section, to finally reflecting the artistic conception on the stage by the actors through rehearsal. This paper takes the dance drama "Zhaojun Out" as an example to discuss how to shape the characters with dance, improve the dancers deep aesthetic thinking on the dance image, and shape the character characteristics of the main characters in the dance drama.

‘I think you’re a liar!’ Ladies Lounge, Picassos in toilets, and other original performances of conceptual art

‘I think you’re a liar!’ Ladies Lounge, Picassos in toilets, and other original performances of conceptual art

SCENOGRAPHY DESIGN IN A DIRECTOR’S ARTISTIC PRACTICE

The paper describes a methodology of designing scenography for a contemporary theatrical performance in the academic process. The systematic approach to artistic visualisation of a performance, modernisation of its structure, selection of scenography functions, style and type of design widen the range of the director’s interaction with the audience as well as contributes to effective management of the creative process from the stage of the artistic concept design through to its implementation. The method of depicting compositional schemes to design action development helps individual types of art interweave with the director’s concept, develop creative thinking and cope with numerous management challenges. Designing diverse parts of staging paves the way to developing students’ skills of comprehending the processes of integration of arts and technologies. The “directing scenographic concept” method contributes to the integration of the director’s and the artist’s professional activities, helps to express a creative idea in a groundbreaking form, and turns into an effective tool of innovative design and management of a theatrical performance.

Theoretical Dimension of Modern Designers’ Conceptual Forms of Creativity

The aim of the article is to identify key characteristics of artistic and design practices interaction; to define directions of conceptual design development based on the results of analysing scientific and theoretical foundations of conceptualism as a special form of the artists’ creativity in the 20th century. Results. It is demonstrated that the focus of modern designers on conceptual forms of creativity is explained by the fact that they contribute to forming unique authors’ projects of aesthetic and value content, innovative searches in the context of cultural and civilisational shifts. A conceptual costume of the beginning of the 21st century is a kind of mediator between art practices of conceptual art and design practices in the sphere of project culture, synthesising social and psychological aspects of fashion, social and symbolic functions of clothing. A conceptual design narrativises philosophical, artistic and technological aspects of design, enriching design products with an expressive metaphoricity. It is revealed that in modern art history a clear definition of the term system of the conceptual direction in design has not been formed till now. The research of this complex phenomenon, synthesised by fashion and artistic clothing design, requires a complex interdisciplinary approach. The conceptual costume is studied as an art-design object from the standpoint of global and local tendencies in the society development, which declare certain worldview values in the form of a visual metaphor. Scientific novelty. For the first time, the theoretical understanding of the conceptual costume grounds on the interaction of design with culture and art as a special space of its direct functioning, which makes it possible to form project conceptualism as a special methodology. Conclusions. The authors’ concepts in the costume are extrapolated in different ways: as visual quotations or metaphors; as a transformation of the art object idea into the form of the costume. Actually, they need in-depth and detailed studying.

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.

“Different New Music in Yugoslavia”: The Earliest Minimalist Manifestations

Some of Yugoslavia’s most radical musical manifestations unfolded during the 1970s and 1980s. Aided by postwar Yugoslav cultural programs, the iconic Student Cultural Center (SKC) in Belgrade – a student-managed “safe space” for free expression and creativity – opened its doors in 1971 and instantly became a magnet for experimental musicians throughout the Western and Eastern Blocs. A group of rebellious composers and performers – Opus 4 and the Ensemble for Different New Music made some of the largest strides in Yugoslav music history and defined a new era of avant-garde and a unique brand of minimalism, influenced by performance and conceptual art, Cage-style experimentalism, Fluxus, and the use of multimedia. This study briefly illustrates their robust vision that connected the East with the West in a fruitful exchange of ideas, despite the geo-political division of the world at the time.

Imperatives Under Chinese Monochrome Art: Revisiting “Magiciens de la Terre”

“Les Magiciens de la Terre” has long been hailed as the first international contemporary art exhibition including both artists from Europe, Africa, Tibet, China, and other non-western places. Yang Jiechang, Gu Dexin, and Huang Yong Ping were the only three Chinese artists to participate in this exhibition. They made their debuts in front of unfamiliar overseas audiences, in which their art practices were rearranged, and Yang started his familiar series of “100 Layers of Ink.” My paper shifts the attention away from the single monochrome artwork of Yang’s 100 Layers of Ink at the Smart Museum, recenters it on the original context of the inception of this series at “Les Magiciens de la Terre,” and examines the general imperatives of those three artists’ first debuts — “distinct originality” and “being well-prepared.” The heightening emphasis on originality had already surfaced on the contemporary Chinese art scene and culminated in the curatorial plan of the exhibition’s curator, Jean-Hubert Martin. On the other hand, because of the importance of the debuts, “being well-prepared” underlined every aspect of their art-making for the exhibition, including enlarging scales, complicating the artistic concepts, and increasing working time. All those factors contributed to the sudden shifts in their art practices and shed new light on the imperatives under Yang’s monochrome art and his reflections on colors.

The expression of "Balanced Harmony" aesthetic paradigm in aesthetic and artistic concepts

The so-called "Balanced Harmony" aesthetic paradigm simply means that Chinese aesthetics emphasizes the reconciliation and unity between two conflicting and confronting aspects of aesthetic things and aesthetic systems, or between two extremes and two ends. The so-called "neutral" aesthetic paradigm simply means that Chinese aesthetics, when interpreting the ontology of "beauty is harmony", puts emphasis on the reconciliation and unity between the two conflicting and confronting aspects of aesthetic things and systems, or between the two poles and the two ends of the …… system, which are balanced and neutral. The so-called "neutral" aesthetic paradigm simply means that Chinese aesthetics interprets the ontology of "beauty is harmony" and regards this state of reconciliation and unity, which is balanced and neutral, as the highest ideal, principle, goal and realm of aesthetics and art. The so-called "neutral" aesthetics paradigm simply means that Chinese aesthetics pays special attention to the coupling structural relationship between things of beauty and within artistic events, pays special attention to thinking between two opposing aesthetic contradictions, and is particularly good at using the simple and dialectical "dichotomous" method to understand and explain the aesthetic world.