Art Geography Research Articles

Rivers as categories of order. A methodical assessment of the position of art geography

Rivers as categories of order. A methodical assessment of the position of art geography

IX Международная научная конференция «География искусства»

Geography of Art is an interdisciplinary synthesis inspired by the theme of creative genius comprehending and exploring space. The project began in 1994, with the first collection of works published at the Russian Heritage Institute under Yuri Vedenin’s guidance; the first conference was held in 2009. In recent years, the conferences have been held annually under the auspices of the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Arts, GITR Film and Television School, the Russian State University for the Humanities. The IX International Conference Geography of Art of 2023 united culturologists and art historians, geographers and philosophers from all over Russia and abroad. Traditionally, the participants discussed issues related to artistic space of literary and pictorial works, local texts, geographical and cartographic images, and virtual spaces created by art. As always, a separate section was devoted to “mastering,” using, modeling space in screen and photography art. An innovation in the scholarly dispute of the 2023 conference was the culturological and anthropological discourse on the visual image genesis and transformation from archaic to modern times, as well as the transgression of genius loci in the online media and virtual space.

ARTISTIC EXAMINATION OF TRADITIONAL PESHKIR SAMPLES REGISTERED IN A.R. İZZET KOYUNOĞLU MUSEUM

Handicrafts have always existed from the earliest times of humanity. Handicraft is an extensive area that includes several techniques, types, materials, and products. Especially Anatolia is a rich geography of art where the weaving culture is intensive and there is a high demand for handicraft products. The peshkirs (Towels), which contain very beautiful examples of handicraft products, appeared especially after the 18th century. In this study, 16 peshkir crafts in A.R. Izzet Koyunoğlu Museum were examined. In this direction, the official permissions required from the museum were taken, and the inventory records were searched. These crafts were discussed according to their technical, material, color, motif, and composition features. The common and different features of the peshkirs are referred to. In general, we see that there are samples where stylized flower and plant motifs are used in the patterns of the towel, and the weaving is self-patterned. It is determined that there are motifs in the herbal, geometric, figured, and symbolic groups. he samples examined were also grouped in accordance with embroidery techniques. It has been observed that techniques such as calculation craft, chinese needle, rolling with thread breaking, and bartın craft are used in embroidery. Obtained data are shown in tables.

Conjunctions of Islam: rethinking the geographies of art and piety through the notebooks of Ahmet Süheyl Ünver

How should we understand the relationship between artistic practice and religious devotion? This paper answers that question through a close engagement with the archive of the artist, teacher, doctor, and writer Ahmet Süheyl Ünver (b. 1898–d. 1986). Working from notebooks and archival files produced about Eyüp, Istanbul’s most important Muslim district, I offer the concept of ‘conjunctions of Islam’ to develop two linked arguments. First, Ünver’s work challenges essentialist invocations of ‘Turkish’ or ‘Islamic’ art. Instead, his work shows us how these terms are historically and geographically specific, embedded within networks of people, places, objects, and histories. Second, Ünver also shows us how definitions of Muslim identity trace geographies other than the territorial nation. Indebted to discussions of relational place-making and topology, my use of conjunction helps us see the making of an urban Muslim self in a new way. In doing so, this article extends recent cultural geographic discussions about skill and creativity, provides a new perspective on the geographies of Islam, and enriches our ability to explain how complex forms of the past are articulated in contemporary Turkey.

Цифровые и аналоговые пространства: VIII Международная научная конференция «География искусства»

The VIII International Scientific Conference Geography of Art was held in May 2022. This is a new step in a long-term project devoted to the issues of “mastering” geographical space through art, including the semiotics of spaces created by artists, sculptors, and architects. Among other aspects, the conference examined how art creates geographical images and fantasy worlds, which always have a trace of the real world’s spatial regularities. Since 1994, the project has existed in the form of collections of scientific articles, and since 2009—in the form of conferences as well. The project was conceived by Russian geographer Yury Vedenin, and later Olga Lavrenova, philosopher and culturologist, picked up the initiative. In recent years, the conference has been organized by the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Arts, GIRT Film and Television School, and the Russian State University for the Humanities. In 2022, the Faculty of Geography and Geoinformation Technology of the HSE University joined the team of organizers. A separate section of the conference was dedicated to media, photo and cinema. There were reports on the historical and cultural aspects of creating virtual spaces, and on the images of the territories created by screen arts. Following the tradition, conferees considered the role of territorial factors in the formation of art schools and individual art works. This year, the discussions focused on digital media. An important place was given to photography as a tool for shaping geographical images and fixing them in time. The combination of a digital replica of the world with new landscape art creates a new augmented reality as a work of art. The geography of fashion and musical culture are also expressed in digital reality. A separate subject is the structures of chaos and order in cinema—the very concepts of space, which are yet another traditional talking point at the conference. These topics are in the mainstream of the discussion of semiotics of space created through art, as well as the geographical aspects of art development, including digital art.

The Landscape of Public Art Research: A Knowledge Map Analysis

This is the first article to date that employs a knowledge map analysis to provide insights into the landscape of public art research, a multidisciplinary area that is concerned with issues around the geographies of art, space, and community. This study uses bibliometric analysis and knowledge visualization tools provided by CiteSpace mapping software to review scholarly journal output on “public art” since 1964—which is the first occurrence of this term in an article indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection database covering English-language journal publications. The analysis reveals the value of bibliometric analysis for engaging data on the growth and popularity of public art as a research landscape—which is perceived as both a research field and research discourse. Accordingly, this study constructs knowledge maps, and thereby trends, of popular topics and networks of authors and institutions that have emerged in the public art research landscape. Such knowledge maps exhibit a “metageography” of cross-disciplinary connections within public art research (where these knowledge maps in themselves can be rendered as artworks, too). This study, as such, provides new reference points for scholars to position themselves in, and further deepen bibliometric investigation into, the landscape of public art research.

ВИЗУАЛЬНЫЕ ОБРАЗЫ ПРОСТРАНСТВА. ОБЗОР VII МЕЖДУНАРОДНОЙ КОНФЕРЕНЦИИ «ГЕОГРАФИЯ ИСКУССТВА»

The Geography of Art International Scientific Conference has a long history. Geography of Art began in 1994 and was originally conceived as a purely publishing project. In 2009, the first conference was held under the auspices of the Likhachev Russian Research Institute for Cultural and Natural Heritage and its director Yuri A. Vedenin. The topics at the conferences are traditionally very diverse, but the “protagonist” of all discussions, debates, and subsequent collections is invariably space, in all its guises, and its interaction with culture. The original subjects such as the geography of art schools and traditions and the placement of artifacts on the earth’s surface have over time been supplemented by conceptual questions of the construction of spatial images in painting, literature, and cinema. Over the past few years, the conference has been organized by the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences of RAS, the Russian Academy of Arts, GITR Film and Television School, and the Russian State University for the Humanities. In 2021, for the first time, the conference was arranged in a hybrid format: some sessions were held in person at the Russian Academy of Arts and GITR, while some discussions were convened online. This made it possible to significantly expand the geography of our participants. An important topic was brought up—the possibility of generating images of space and transforming the spatial picture of the world by different types of art, including screen art, creating new meanings of places and regions. A separate section was devoted to the concepts of space and the corresponding images in digital media, cinematography and photography. The section discussed the peculiarities of national cinematography from the point of view of forming the country’s image, which can play a significant role in intercultural communication, and regional images created with the help of photography and IT-technology as an attractor in the formation of recreational flows. Among other things, the conference covered the specifics of space perception in the era of digitalization, the creation of representations, and spectacularity. A separate topic was the construction of narrative topoi within the framework of different versions of screen adaptations of the same work. All discussions complemented each other in creating a three-dimensional picture of spatial images by means of digital and screen arts, generating a modified reality supplemented by photo and film visualizations.

МНОГОМЕРНЫЕ ОБРАЗЫ ПРОСТРАНСТВА: ОБЗОР VII МЕЖДУНАРОДНОЙ НАУЧНОЙ КОНФЕРЕНЦИИ "ГЕОГРАФИЯ ИСКУССТВА"

The international scientific conference «Geography of Art» has been considering the interaction of art and space for many years. The first conference was held in 2009. In 2021, the seventh conference was held in a hybrid format, which allowed scientists from remote places and other countries to be invited. The role of art in shaping the cultural landscape, cartographic, artistic, and literary images of the world, and concepts of space in art were discussed. Art creates the meanings of geographical objects of different levels, «sculpting» the semantic form of urban space. «Genius and Place» is a theme that reveals how artists, writers, and poets re-create the meanings of the places they are associated with. Literary geography and local texts are one of the dimensions of this problem. As usual, the conference was characterized by a broad interdisciplinary approach.

Expression and features of distribution of the modern style (art nouveau) architecture in the cultural landscape of Lithuania

This article is an example of an interdisciplinary scientific field of geography of art, which examines the links between landscape and architecture. The specific aim of the research is to review and evaluate the spatial and artistic expression of Modern Style (Art Nouveau) architecture objects in the cultural landscape of Lithuania. The analysis is based on data classification of scientific literature, cartographic works and on urban field research. One of the main results of the study is a map of distribution of Modern Style objects in Lithuania, which helps to identify Modern Style architecture areas in morphological regions of Lithuania landscape. The majority of Modern Style building is located in the central areas of Lithuanian cities due to development and specifics of territorial planning of the largest cities in Lithuania in the beginning of the 20th century. To evaluate the spatial expression of Modern style architecture is needed to do a wider research into the aesthetic quality of the landscape.

Art Centers and Peripheral Art [A Lecture at the University of Hamburg, October 15, 1982

Change in the history of art has many causes, but one often overlooked by art historical institutions is the complex, unequal set of relationships that subsist between art centers and peripheries. These take many forms, from powerful penetration of peripheral art by the subjects, styles and modes of the relevant center, through accommodation to this penetration to various degrees and kinds of resistance to it. Mapping these relationships should be a major task for art historians, especially those committed to tracing the reception of works of art and the dissemination of ideas about art. This lecture, delivered by Nicos Hadjinicolaou in 1982, outlines a “political art geography” approach to these challenges, and demonstrates it by exploring four settings: the commissioning of paintings commemorating key battles during the Greek War of Independence; the changes in Diego Rivera's style on his return to Mexico from Paris in the 1920s; the impact on certain Mexican artists in the 1960s of “hard edge” painting from the United States; and the differences between Socialist Realism in Moscow and in the Soviet Republics of Asia during the mid-twentieth century. The lecture is here translated into English for the first time and is introduced by Terry Smith, who relates it to its author's long-term art historical quest, as previously pursued in his book Art History and Class Struggle (1973).

An Introduction to Nicos Hadjinicolaou's “Art Centers and Peripheral Art” (1982)

Change in the history of art has many causes, but one often overlooked by art historical institutions is the complex, unequal set of relationships that subsist between art centers and peripheries. These take many forms, from powerful penetration of peripheral art by the subjects, styles and modes of the relevant center, through accommodation to this penetration to various degrees and kinds of resistance to it. Mapping these relationships should be a major task for art historians, especially those committed to tracing the reception of works of art and the dissemination of ideas about art. This lecture, delivered by Nicos Hadjinicolaou in 1982, outlines a “political art geography” approach to these challenges, and demonstrates it by exploring four settings: the commissioning of paintings commemorating key battles during the Greek War of Independence; the changes in Diego Rivera's style on his return to Mexico from Paris in the 1920s; the impact on certain Mexican artists in the 1960s of “hard edge” painting from the United States; and the differences between Socialist Realism in Moscow and in the Soviet Republics of Asia during the mid-twentieth century. The lecture is here translated into English for the first time and is introduced by Terry Smith, who relates it to its author's long-term art historical quest, as previously pursued in his book Art History and Class Struggle (1973).

The Museum of Modern Art and the History of Modernism

Right from its opening in 1929, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) recreated modern art as a new myth that was rescued from European history and thus became accessible as an independent value for an American audience. Paradoxically, the myth stemmed from the opinion that modern art’s history seemed to have expired in pre-war Europe. Upon MoMA’s completion of a major expansion project in 2004, there was considerable anticipation about how the museum would represent its own history and raise its profile in a new century. As it turned out, the museum opted for a surprisingly retrospective look, since its curators were tempted to exhibit its own collection, so unique up until the sixties, in the new exhibition halls. This launched a dilemma for MoMA, as it became a place for past art with little space for new art. In an in-depth analysis of what constitutes “modern” art in the context of the preeminent questions circulating in the art world during this time—When was modern art? and Where was modern art?—the author presents a focused chronology of the administration of MoMA under the museum’s first director, Alfred Hamilton Barr Jr. (1929–43), and, later, William Rubin, director of the Department of Painting and Sculpture (1968–88), with regard to their influence on the museum’s mission, exhibitions, and international profile. The author concludes with commentary on contemporary changes in art geography and contemplation on the effect on artists of the emergence of a global art market.

Construction of Environment Art Design System in Web Mode

With the national emphasis on environmental issues is gradually increasing, more and more experts and scholars on the environmental art design system of more and more research. The requirement of environmental art design system is getting higher and higher. Traditionally, two-dimensional images are used to describe environmental art geography, and the environmental information obtained lacks intuitiveness and interactivity. The purpose of this paper is to realize the social sharing and service of environmental art information so that the public can conveniently enjoy the risk warning service of environmental information. Starting from the framework reconstruction of system construction, this paper takes the Web framework pattern as the basic framework of system realization, and creates different entity models and terrain models in virtual environment through Creator modeling software. After collecting the original environmental data, the edge processing of the environmental data is carried out to produce the 3D environmental design system. In the process of 3D virtual reproduction of the environment, Vega driver software was used to shape the Web 3D scene of the environment, and the Marine environment module in Vega was used to realize dynamic and static environment simulation and simulation effect. The experimental results show that the display effect of the environmental art design system constructed in the Web mode is more realistic, intuitive, interactive and satisfactory.

ПРОСТРАНСТВА КИНО: ОБРАЗНЫЙ МИР КУЛЬТУРНОГО ЛАНДШАФТА. ОБЗОР VI МЕЖДУНАРОДНОЙ НАУЧНОЙ КОНФЕРЕНЦИИ «ГЕОГРАФИЯ ИСКУССТВА»

The international scientific conference “Geography of Art” is devoted to the development of a wide problematic field of interaction between art and geographic space. It traditionally considers not only spacing of artifacts and monuments over the earth’s surface, but also specific features related to the reflection of geographical space in art and creation of fantasy worlds in which the dependence on consistent patterns of the real world formation can easily be traced. The conference has been held since 2009; it was initiated by the geographer Yu.A. Vedenin and carried forward by the philosopher and culture specialist O.A. Lavrenova. In recent years, organizers of this representative forum are the Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Arts, Film and Television School (GITR), the Russian State University for the Humanities. In 2020, for the first time the conference was held online. As always, there was discussed the role of territorial factors in formation of art schools and individual works, as well as a creative perception of the cultural landscape, the place of art in the formation of the territory image. An important topic was a concept of space in art works, the possibilities of comprehending, transforming, “reformatting” the space by different art types including screen art, creating in this way the “increment of meaning” of places and regions. Within the framework of this conference there were discussed НАУКА ТЕЛЕВИДЕНИЯ № 16.3, 2020 162 THE ART AND SCIENCE OF TELEVISION historical and cultural features of the national and world cinema, which capture real spaces and create their own modifications. Participants touched upon the topic of traveling in the cinema, virtual representations of cultural landscapes using digital narratives and, accordingly, the possibilities and specific features of the virtual travel. The issue of studying urban spaces by means of cinema was considered in a wide semantic variety—from buffoonery to marginality. A city appears as a universal scenery for a performance while real street loci with their inhabitants become heroes of modern visual media. A separate topic was the discussion of constructed spaces of Korean TV series and their adaptation in Russian culture as a tangible result of the process of intercultural communication. All the above mentioned studies represented by conference participants actually complement each other in terms of understanding the figurative component of the cultural landscape.

Josef Strzygowski (1861–1942), Dmitry Ainalov (1862–1939) and the Question of Geographical Borders in the Theory of Art: The Possibility of a “Geographic Eye”

Cyril Mango in his book “Byzantium. The Empire of New Rome” (1980), wrote that Byzantineart, along with Byzantine studies, flourished as a prolific ally more in Russia than anywhere else in the world. In contrast, the theory of art in Western European countries branded as derogatory for many centuries the typical iconographical and stylistic features of Byzantine art with the geographically-based stigma “maniera greca” (Greek Manner). This definition often compromised, with some rare exceptions, a correct appreciation of Byzantine and Eastern art in Europe, minimizing the contribution of the East to the development of art in western civilizations. An exception, and a break with this misconception of the Byzantine component of western art, is the controversial essay by the Austrian art historian Josef Strzygowski “Orient oder Rom”(1901). In his study, Strzygowski radically opposes the Rome-based aesthetical theories, such as the widely accepted ideas of Franz Wickhoff and Alois Riegl, surprisingly finding the roots of German and Slavic art in Iran, Armenia and Egypt. The theories of Strzygowski, although connoted from anti-Roman resentment and strong German nationalism, gave a fundamental impulse to the revaluation of Eastern art in Europe. Indeed the ideas of Strzygowski are not very new. In 1890, during a sort of Eastern Grand Tour, he attended the Russian Archeological Congress where he met the Russian scholar Dmitry Ainalov. In 1900 (one year before “Orient oder Rom”), Ainalov published the essay “The Hellenistic Origins of Byzantine Art”, in which he emphasizes the originality of Byzantine art as a Hellenistic product and claims its independency from Roman art. These ideas, which were shared by the Russian scholarship and tended to see patriotically Byzantine art in its uniqueness, helped paradoxically through the mediation of the radical ideas of Strzygowski European scholars to be able to “break down the borders” and develop a better comprehension of the importance of the East. The case of Strzygowski–Ainalov is an example of a typical attempt by the History of Art to evaluate an art object as a pure expression of the spirit of a population and of a particular geographical area. From this initial situation, the paper intends to examine the fundamental contribution of the geography of art to the formation of art theories. To paraphrase Michael Baxandall and his famous “Period Eye”, can we speak of a “Geographic Eye” when we try to comprehend an art period? To what extent is a Geography of Artpossible today? What are the roles of geographical features and borders in the analysis of an art work? What is meant with the geographical definitions (such as “German”, “Italian”, Russian”, or “Western” and “Eastern”) once they are applied to art? In the light of the recent debates on the possibility of a global art history, as well as the developing of new geopolitical horizons, do we have the same conception of the Geography of Art today as the scholars of the past? What are the advantages and the risks of a methodology based on a geographic parameter in considering an art object or an art period?

Challenges of creative collaboration in geographical research

There is a long history of collaboration between artists and geographers, with creative forms of research and dissemination of findings taking shape as artworks. In addition, there has been significant push from academia for researchers to maximise their research in ways that cater to, and engage with, broader public audiences. Art and creative practices tap into this through formats such as exhibitions, performances and participatory workshops which draw upon arts-based research methodologies with which geographers are becoming increasingly engaged. However, with this enthusiasm to adopt art practices for research dissemination purposes, tensions can arise in determining the levels of collaboration and authorship between artists and geographers, especially when the artist is employed as a research assistant on the project. In this ‘In Practice’ article, we explore the tensions and challenges that creative collaborations produce with respect to copyright and authorship, specialist skills and the delicate balance of doing creative research as part of a research team. We argue that geographers and artists need to address these issues from the outset and revisit them throughout the research process, and we offer some suggestions for how art–geography research collaborations might best be negotiated.

Lagos Art World: The Emergence of an Artistic Hub on the Global Art Periphery

Abstract:The global geography of art has changed greatly in recent years. Whereas global art hubs were formerly found only in the West, they now exist in locations all over the world, including Africa. Though some art worlds in Asia and Latin America have been studied in recent times, there is insufficient empirical data on art worlds in Africa. This is a study of the Lagos art world, which shows how an “art system,” with all of its attendant structures and agents, has emerged in the city of Lagos, Nigeria, in the last few years. Lagos reflects the dynamics of globalization and is building up the art infrastructure and the critical mass needed for a sustainable art world: an ambitious and fast-growing group of young local collectors, an art fair, an international photography festival, regular art auctions, new art galleries, historical and critical publications, a university art museum, symposiums, art foundations, residencies, and competitions. Lagos is becoming not only a “global city,” but also a “global art hub.”

Art tourism: A new field for tourist studies

This article argues the case for art tourism as a new field of tourist studies. At present, art tourism is currently obscured under cultural tourism’s voluminous bounds – which are as inappropriate as they are unwieldy and overloaded. More specifically, it cannot adequately contain art tourism’s distinctive origins, forms of experience and articulation between art worlds, cities and regions and tourism industries. In part, a more dedicated research field is also needed to keep track of its rapid growth and development as a primary driver of regional and urban regeneration and for the much expanded exhibitionary complex it encompasses. As a place-changing vehicle for city life, art tourism also needs separate forms of data collection to assist in its effective planning and design. Museums that have historically catered for local art publics now need to relate increasingly to growing touring art publics. The article sets out the historical and contemporary significance of art tourism in order to identify the breadth of a new tourism agenda, as well as its connections to other disciplines including art, architecture, social anthropology, cultural economy, urban studies, museology, aesthetics and the sociology and geography of art.

Regards croisés sur les mondes de l’autoportrait : le cas des artistes d’origine marocaine Hicham Benohoud, Mehdi-Georges Lahlou et Zakaria Ramhani

This article takes a contemporary look at the practice of self-portraiture by three artists from Morocco: Hicham Benohoud, Mehdi-Georges Lahlou and Zakaria Ramhani. The career trajectories of these creators illustrate the various dynamics of institutional opposition and integration mechanisms that belong to the new geographies of art, in the era of globalization. The article's goal is to investigate the manner in which individual, local and global concerns are expressed in their understanding of an imaginary projection of corporality. The works are studied through the lens of local characteristics particular to the artist's Maghreb-Muslim culture. In the first section, the artists' careers, in relation to their training and the places where they have exhibited their work, are presented in tandem with the paradoxes of globalization. It is thus specified that if the artists were trained primarily in the West or made their careers there to achieve international success, it can be attributed to a lack of support from the Moroccan artistic scene, but also to the difficult access to the international art world for artists coming from the art scenes of the Maghreb. In the second part, we postulate that the artists' self-portraits attest to the different issues related to Maghreb-Muslim culture, such as the current socio-political situation in Morocco and the Islamic ban on representation. Lastly, we maintain that these self-portraits are a wider reflection of the varied concerns that transcend the borders of the Maghreb, as the artists reflect on the meeting of the Eastern and Western worlds.

The arts of poverty politics: Real Change

ABSTRACT This paper explores disruptive poverty politics arising from creative activisms that challenge homelessness/impoverishment. We analyze forms and potentials of creative activisms that challenge hegemonic meanings and practices around impoverishment. Bringing together geographers’ work on creative activisms, geographies of art, and the dialectics of thinkable and unthinkable poverty politics; we analyze activism by Real Change, a Seattle economic and racial justice organization confronting the city’s shelter crisis. We argue that creative poverty activism produces performative encounters that challenge exclusionary space-making and create political connections between people experiencing poverty and those who are not. Using portraiture and public art/performance, activists disrupt normative sights, practices, and socio-spatial relations on which poverty knowledge rests in public spaces. These interventions re-script spaces of privilege produced through capitalist relations of dispossession and exclusion, and the ideological projects that undergird them. Disruptive poverty politics create encounters across socio-spatial difference that challenge privileged subjects, raise new voices, and create previously unimaginable political forms. Our analysis extends prior work on visual poverty politics that has theorized the reproduction of hegemonic poverty politics (of difference, blame, stigma, individualized causes) through representational practices. We extend relational poverty analysis into the realm of the visual, performative, and creative, revealing new sites, forms, and possibilities of disruptive poverty politics.