Contemporary Art Research Articles

Is God evolving? Totems in contemporary art

This article explores the evolution of totemic symbolism in contemporary visual art and its profound link with religious concepts, particularly the image of God. It examines how artists reinterpret sacred themes through totems, reflecting both historical religious traditions and modern societal transformations. Through a review of totemic representations from ancient to contemporary artworks, this study illuminates the evolving portrayal of divine figures – from traditional religious icons to more personalised spiritual symbols. This evolution not only signifies changes in artistic expression but also suggests a deepening societal understanding of divinity. The analysis highlights the totem’s role as a mediator between the human and the divine, offering insights into the spiritual connections that transcend conventional religious frameworks. This research not only enriches the discourse on the relationship between art and religion but also underscores the dynamic interaction between cultural heritage and contemporary artistic exploration.Contribution: This study enriches the field of art history and religious studies by tracing the transformative representation of totems in art from ancient symbolism to modern reinterpretations. It underscores the totem’s role as a dynamic symbol in contemporary visual culture, facilitating deeper spiritual connections and dialogues across various cultural and religious landscapes. The findings of this study provide a nuanced understanding of how contemporary art mediates complex theological concepts, thus offering new perspectives on the intersection of art, religion and spirituality.

Fungal Intelligence and the Posthuman

Fungi have become paradigmatic for the wonders, the adaptability, and the resilience of the nonhuman in publications, ranging from Anna Tsing Lowenhaupt’s anthropological analysis of the matsutake mushroom (2015) to Merlin Sheldrake’s popular take on the ‘world-making’ capacity of fungi (2020). This article explores different conceptualisations of ‘fungal intelligence’ and the posthuman in art, (popular) science, and literature. In a three-step argument, it moves from the world of contemporary art to the recent flurry of textual production about fungi in anthropology and (popular) science and the concomitant construction of fungal intelligence. Readings of Aliya Whiteley’s The beauty (2018) and Silvia Garcia-Moreno’s Mexican gothic (2020) are then used to scrutinise how these literary texts create a posthuman ‘other’ intelligence that is depicted as threatening in its uncanny otherness. In both texts, the monstrosity of the posthuman fungal other is positioned as a new iteration of the classic gothic monster.

Musical Identity in Contemporary Creative Works Among Thai Jazz Artists

This study aims to explore the musical identity of Thai contemporary jazz artists by examining their attitude, musical content, and music creation process. Thirteen informants participated in this qualitative study through in-depth interviews. The results demonstrated that musical identity could be divided into three categories: 1) regional musical identity, 2) individual musical identity and 3) cultural musical identity. The factors associated with the emergence of musical identity include musical movements and phenomena, integration between two musical styles in terms of articulation and contextual elements, and contemporary and hybrid-crossover music approaches in today’s world. These factors, along with social interactions both within and outside the jazz community, affect the transformation of musical identity. The findings of this study will help Thai jazz artists and those involved in the jazz industry effectively build their musical identity, create value for their music, and elevate their works to an international level.

Opacity, difference and not knowing: what can psychiatry learn from the work of Édouard Glissant?

Martinican poet, novelist and cultural theorist Édouard Glissant (1928–2011) rejected contemporary simplistic notions of creole hybridity popularised in the 1980s and 1990s in favour of a unique and explicitly antiessentialist...

Precision Drift

In 1956 Murakami Saburō (1925–1996) placed a wall clock in an 80 cm cubic wooden box. This simple gesture, like many of Murakami’s simple artistic gestures, provoked a complex rethinking of the position of the audience in contemporary art and sound’s particular role in that shift. The author takes the process of art handlers unpacking and setting up Work (Box) as a pathway to exploring the acoustic and material encounter with the piece, and the intricacies and implications of its relationship to duration and bodily presence.

On the Road to the “Manifesto”: The Surrealists’ March Between Blois and Romorantin from May 5 to May 15, 1924

Abstract: This article aims to demonstrate that, in a sense, the 1924 “Manifesto of Surrealism” of André Breton was written by walking as a way to reassess its impact in the light of the recent revival of the “manifesto” form in contemporary art. The “Manifesto Marathon” held on October 18–19, 2008, at the Serpentine Gallery in London on the initiative of Hans-Ulrich Obrist enabled some sixty artists to propose manifestos that were subsequently published. It is interesting to note that the artists hardly mention, and in any case that the catalogue never reproduces, the Surrealist ” Manifesto,” which appears totally absent and invisible alongside the Futurist Manifesto (1909), the Dada, Constructivist, and Situationist manifestos, and so on. This is undoubtedly because the Surrealist “Manifesto" is not sufficiently inscribed in our cultural and visual landscape, in our memory or is considered purely literary. From our point of view, however, it is clearly a performative form. The ten-day journey that Breton, Louis Aragon, Max Morise, and Roger Vitrac made on foot between Blois and Romorantin (Sologne) in the first half of May 1924, just before Breton wrote the Surrealist “Manifesto,” which was published in October 1924, appears as an ironic and distanced response to the Olympic Games, which began in Paris on May 4, 1924. It was a sort of “countermarch,” in the spirit of the nineteenth-century wanderings of Verlaine and Rimbaud, or of the Grand Meaulnes in Alain-Fournier's 1914 novel of the same name. Breton told André Parinaud that it was an "initiatory" journey. Walking has something to do with automatic writing, which in a different way expresses the need for continuous movement, differential speeds and physical and nervous exhaustion. In fact, from March to May 1924, Breton had once again engaged in automatic writing and had even organized it collectively by distributing writing notebooks to the members of the group.

Digital Printing in Art: Enhancing Narrative and Expression on Contemporary Works

This study explores the utilization of digital printing technologies in contemporary art, specifically examining how these technologies influence narrative depth and artistic expression. Using a case study approach, this research adapts findings from previous study to demonstrate that digital technologies significantly enhance artistic expression and narrative complexity. These findings highlight the capability of digital tools to innovate artistic practices and enrich the interpretation and appreciation of art in contemporary society. The implications of this study are valuable for artists, and educators in understanding and leveraging the interplay between technology and art.

The Artistic Characteristics of Chinese Impressionist Painter Wu Guanzhong

This study aims to explore the artistic characteristics of Chinese Impressionist painter Wu Guanzhong. By combing through Wu Guanzhong's artistic experience, it analyzes the evolution of his painting style and its unique expression in the fusion of Chinese and Western art. The study provides an in-depth analysis of Wu Guanzhong's works in terms of subject matter, materials, composition, color, brushwork and other aspects, revealing his unique artistic language and his contribution to the development of modern Chinese painting. At the same time, this study combines literature review and case studies to explore the impact of Wu Guanzhong's art on contemporary Chinese art education, and suggests how to inherit and innovate Chinese national art in the contemporary context. This study provides new perspectives for understanding Wu Guanzhong's artistic achievements and his position in cultural exchanges, and offers useful references for the future development of Chinese art.

The Seed Keepers

Seeds always presuppose cooperative arrangements of tending and care. Seeds are useful to think with because they connect the past, present, and future, carrying old biologies and inherited histories as well as genetic transformations and new possibilities. This essay traces a history of botanical classification in herbariums, photographs, and seed libraries in Palestine that stretches back to the nineteenth century. Through individuation and taxonomic ordering, colonial botanical archives isolated plants and people from history and vanished Palestinians from their land. The colonial archive's formal organization and orientation to preserving dead or disappearing objects also opens space to investigate the proliferation of archive-based artworks by contemporary Palestinian artists such as Larissa Sansour and Jumana Manna. Sansour and Manna's artworks demonstrate that the value of seeds lies in their cultivation, transformations, and local adaptations. The seed is an alternative archive that maintains the vitality of being in the world. The seed is well-suited to planting Palestinian futures that are living, growing, and changing.

Can the Alienated Helper Speak?

This autoethnographic study explores the often overlooked and undervalued roles of assistants in the contemporary art world, focusing on their experiences of alienation and burnout. Through a combination of personal narrative and theoretical analysis, it examines how support roles, despite being essential to artistic production, remain invisible within the dominant art discourse that idolizes creative authorship. I begin with a reflection on my experiences as both an assistant and a curator, highlighting instances of emotional labor and burnout among support staff. The narrative is contextualized within broader cultural and social frameworks, drawing on feminist theory and sociological studies that critique the hierarchical nature of artistic labor. Extending to autofictional literature, the analysis showcases how assistants articulate their alienation and critique the art world’s exploitative dynamics. By interweaving personal and literary accounts, the study underscores the paradox of interdependence in art, where the labor of assistants is both indispensable and disregarded. The conclusion advocates for a reexamination of artworld structures, urging greater recognition and support for those in support roles.

Haptics and contemporary art -Focusing on the deconstruction of ocularcentrism-

Haptics and contemporary art -Focusing on the deconstruction of ocularcentrism-

Inked Expressions: An appreciation of selected contemporary tattoo art among Ghanaians in Kumasi and Accra metropolises

Tattooing has been practiced for several years across the world. It is considered an art form that transmits cultural expressions and reflects the differences between groups of people globally. In Ghana, the popularity of contemporary tattooing has soared for various reasons. However, there is little scholarly research on tattoo culture in Ghana. Therefore, the study attempts to appreciate the aesthetic elements of selected contemporary tattoos in Kumasi and Accra metropolitan areas to reveal their social, philosophical, and other underpinnings. Qualitative ethnographic approach was employed in which a total of twenty-two (22) tattooed respondents were obtained for data collection using homogenous purposive and exponential discriminative snowball sampling techniques. Unstructured-Interviews and naturalistic observations constituted the data collection instruments. The study found that contemporary tattoo designs in Kumasi and Accra metropolises diversely included minimalist designs, religious symbols, portraits, decorative designs, philosophical symbols, among others, which aesthetically convey the religious identity, philosophy of life, and self-expression of tattoo wearers. While the study concludes that contemporary tattoo art in Ghana (Kumasi & Accra) is an embodiment of a dynamic and evolving art form that symbolically resonates with the persona, philosophy of life, sociocultural and religious expressions of tattoo wearers, it is recommended that further research should be conducted on the side effect of tattoo art on the health of tattoo wearers in Ghana. This will help determine whether or not tattoo art should be formalised as an acceptable academic field of study as well as be promoted by art institutions, galleries and museums in Ghana.

작가의 상징자본과 인공지능 미술의 정당성: 데미안 허스트의 「Beautiful Paintings」를 중심으로

This study aims to understand the linkage between an artist's symbolic capital (reputation) and the legitimization of that artist's AI art. Based on Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital, to do so, we theoretically reviewed symbolic capital. Then, the qualitative study was conducted by considering contemporary artist Damien Hirst's AI art project “Beautiful Paintings” as a case. Secondary data such as Hirst's career records, research papers, articles, reports, websites, and the artist's social media were collected and analyzed. The results indicate that the symbolic capital of Hirst has accumulated in the art world and the art market influences the acceptance of his AI art in the market. Hirst, to transfer his symbolic capital to AI art, highlights his role in producing the AI art via social media and connects his established image with the debate surrounding AI art. Furthermore, Hirst intends to generate a visual similarity between his recognized artistic style (Spin Painting) in the art world and Beautiful Paintings, as well as emphasizing the 'randomness' inherent in both AI art and Spin Painting. By doing so, the success of AI Art, supported by the symbolic capital of the renowned artist, implies that the hierarchical structure built within the art world for the legitimization of artworks is partially maintained even in art applying new technologies.

A Machine Walks into an Exhibit: A Technical Analysis of Art Curation

Contemporary art consumption is predominantly online, driven by algorithmic recommendation systems that dictate artwork visibility. Despite not being designed for curation, these algorithms’ machinic ways of seeing play a pivotal role in shaping visual culture, influencing artistic creation, visibility, and associated social and financial benefits. The Algorithmic Pedestal was a gallery, practice-based research project that reported gallerygoers’ perceptions of a human’s curation and curation achieved by Instagram’s algorithm. This paper presents a technical analysis of the same exhibit using computer vision code, offering insights into machines’ perception of visual art. The computer vision code assigned values on various metrics to each image, allowing statistical comparisons to identify differences between the collections of images selected by the human and the algorithmic system. The analysis reveals statistically significant differences between the exhibited images and the broader Metropolitan Museum of Art digital collection. However, the analysis found minimal distinctions between human-curated and Instagram-curated images. This study contributes insights into the perceived value of the curation process, shedding light on how audiences perceive artworks differently from machines using computer vision.

Place-Based Perspectives on Understanding the Value of Sustainable Heritage-Inspired Arts and Crafts in Jordan

This article highlights the challenges of rigorously evaluating and meaningfully communicating the socio-economic impacts of arts and crafts in northern Jordan. This article aims to identify and analyse the challenges confronting place-based arts and crafts industries in Jordan and propose valid policies and practices to address these challenges. The methodology employed involved a comprehensive review of the existing literature to elucidate the challenges faced by heritage-based artisans, and we propose several policies aimed at promoting and safeguarding the arts and crafts heritage. The findings supporting this research were derived from a series of practical workshops and focus group interviews conducted in 2022. This article also presents empirical evidence to highlight the identified challenges. It emphasises the importance of the proposed policy recommendations for the Jordanian sector, providing the audience with a sense of empowerment and an understanding of the potential solutions. This work could offer insights into how local communities innovatively leverage creative capacities, create localised impact, and address local challenges. We argue that the value of arts and crafts is better understood locally to provide impactful experiences based on community-led and community-generated creativity and flexibility. A creative participatory approach is used to create contemporary art designs and train young people on artistic and craft-making skills, application, and production as a credible precedent and best practice for developing creative cultural “enterprises” in Jordan.

A Reconsideration of Aesthetic Value and Moral Value of Artwork - An Immoralism Approach

While contemporary art, famous for its abstract form and transgressive nature, is prevalent in the artistic world, the artistic world hasnt established an objective aesthetic evaluating system that allows viewers to fully experience the aesthetic value of transgressive art, which is the most radical, offensive, and morally problematic art form among the contemporary arts. The article reviews the two traditional evaluative approaches, Autonomism and Moralism, and discusses their limitations. Then, the article introduces the concept of transgressive art and Immoralism. The author also recognizes the theoretical gap that fails to illustrate in what perspective viewers can fully understand the aesthetic value of transgressive art. The article then establishes that the moral value of transgressive art lies in the fact that moral defects can contribute to its aesthetic value if the artwork is viewed from a receptive and reflective perspective. The article is significant in filling the theoretical gap and establishing a more systematic evaluative system.

КЫРГЫЗ СҮРӨТ ИСКУССТВОСУНУН УЛУТТУК ЖАНА БӨТӨН УЛУТТУК ПРОБЛЕМАЛАРЫ

The purpose of the research in the article is to determine the ethnonational and international problems of modern Kyrgyz art. The economic and socio-political reforms of the late 20th and early 21st centuries had a particular impact on the transformation of Kyrgyz fine art. The methodology of art differs from the methodology of science in that the artist does not always pursue the same goal as the scientist. Art is not a search for truth, but the creation of the most effective form that can convey thoughts, feelings and images to the viewer. For this purpose, the article uses a comparative typological research method. Sometimes in conceptual art the entrepreneurial process is the only part of the work on display, with no visible results. The article interprets new terminological designations of contemporary art (performance, installation, environment, ready-made, science art). The main content of the article analyzes how Eastern and Western cultures influenced Kyrgyz art and examines the criteria of art. As a result, ethnonational and foreign problems of art were introduced experimentally into practical processes, nevertheless, the originality of Kyrgyz artists was preserved and reflected in their work.

Miniaturists — Graduates of the Imperial Academy of Arts on the Modern Art Market

Graduates of the portrait miniature class at the Imperial Academy of Arts, which operated for more than half a century, were many first-class miniaturists whose names are now, unfortunately, known only to specialists. By now, most leading museums have published their collections of portrait miniatures, but historically, none of the researchers have considered the study of the art market (and the miniatures of academician artists appearing on it) as an opportunity, firstly, to identify new works of miniature art, and secondly, to find out whether an artist’s academic education or title influences contemporary pricing and the interest of buyers (which can be private collectors or museums) in his works.Nevertheless, it is the information on the functioning of the art market that provides data for more in-depth and comprehensive research. Thus, the sales index of a certain author much more clearly than numerous exhibitions can show its demand among art lovers. It should be noted that not all users of auction platforms are professional collectors. There are cases when personal exhibitions of artists did not contribute to the growth of interest in their work on the part of art collectors. There is also an opposite situation, when works by artists about whom only a rare researcher knows become a desiderata for many collectors. The present study expands the understanding of the place on the contemporary art market of Russian miniaturists associated with the Academy of Arts (its graduates and academicians), and makes it possible to fill in the gaps in the attribution and identification of the peculiarities of their works. It is concluded that there is no direct connection between the fact of studying at the Imperial Academy of Arts and the prices of their works, but the high artistic level of miniatures allows us to say that the title of academician was indeed given to the most worthy masters.

Encoding format transformations in contemporary formation

The research dealt with the topic (transformations of coding format in contemporary art) with regard to the path of the contemporary artist and the importance of his connection to his society. The research problem was determined by answering the following question: (What are the hypothetical requirements for the mind to carry out an aesthetic reading of the various art formats?)As for the second chapter, it included the theoretical framework, which contained two sections, the first included (the concept of communicative codes), while the second section included (the diversity of contemporary formation codes), while the third chapter was concerned with research procedures, and the fourth chapter contained the results and conclusions.

Интерпретация образного строя картины «Сын человеческий» Р. Магритта в рекламном продукте 2008 г. концерна Volkswagen AG: компаративный подход к анализу рекламы как текста культуры

Through a comparative approach, the research aims to identify the ways in which the advertising artist Kirill Chudinskiy (the 2008 Volkswagen AG advertising campaign) interprets the imagery of René Magritte’s work “The Son of Man” and to discover the main means of representing the cultural meanings of the classical painting in the advertising product. The paper examines the features of Chudinskiy’s creative interpretation of the images of the classic painting masterpiece, as well as various means of artistic representation (allusion, symbol, allegory, depersonalization, antithesis, anthropomorphism), which help create the image of the advertising reality. The scientific novelty of the research is accounted for by the fact that the comparative approach to studying an advertising product (poster) allows for deciphering the content of the cultural dialogue between a contemporary artist and the legacy of the past; revealing the aesthetic value of a digital painting; and identifying affective techniques used in the process of creating a mass product and provoking the consumer to perceive the experience of classical art through the discovery of cultural text structures. In addition, the studied advertising product of 2008 by Volkswagen AG has not previously been the focus of researchers’ attention. As a result, it was found that, firstly, the interpretation of the image of the central character in Magritte’s work allows the advertising artist to create a hero of his time, expose his vices, while simultaneously engaging the viewer in an intertextual dialogue. Secondly, by offering his own compositional solutions in the poster, Chudinskiy, to some extent, provokes the viewer, ironically commenting on the subordination of modern people to the world of things, while simultaneously encouraging the viewer to acquire a thing, i.e., a product, through advertising. Thirdly, by transforming the images of the sky, the sea, and man, which are symbolic on the canvas of the Belgian surrealist, Chudinskiy, on the one hand, actualizes the reality of the advertising product, and on the other hand, inspires the recipients with the idea that they will become part of this reality the moment they acquire the product. Fourthly, the creator’s intellectual game with the recipient through the work of art encourages the consumer to decipher the cultural text, i.e., to engage in cognitive activity, relying on knowledge, associations, and memory.