Global Art Research Articles

PANDEMIC POETRY AND SURVIVOR COMPLEX IN REMI RAJI’S WANDERER CANTOS (2021)

Historical occurrences have always been one of the sources that critics have linked with the inspiration and composition of literary writings. Like their other counterparts in the world, Nigerian artists have been inspired immensely by historical occurrences which are sourced from oral history or tangible experiences of the nation and the world. The experiences that have been mirrored in global art, however, had remained localised until the outbreak of the coronavirus plague in 2019. For the first time after a long time, historical experiences coincide in literary writings across the world on account of the covid-19 surge. This paper takes a critical look at Remi Raji’s latest poetry collection, Wanderer Cantos (2021), with a particular focus on his covid-19 section - “Coronavirus Cantos and Monologues: My Life in the Bush of Impossible Virus”. The inquiry into Remi Raji, regarded as a third generation Nigeria poet, engages with the evolutionary trends in modern Nigerian poetry After noting that Remi Raji’s covid-19 compositions are different from others because of his personal experience as a victim of the virus, the paper points out how the poet has used his encounter to meditate on the social trauma that beclouded his space and the world during the lockdown. The aggregation of the personal, domestic and universal experiences mirrored by the poet in the isolated verses, leads to a conclusion that emphasises common humanity as the thrust of Remi Raji’s covid-19 intervention but also exposes to re-interrogation settled theorising such as the postcolonial.

Des artistes latino-américains au Centre national des arts plastiques : les présences invisibles

The article focuses on the presence and visibility of Latin-American artists of the Centre national des arts plastiques (Cnap), in Paris- France. It is the first and most perennial world initiative to create a state fund of works dedicated to “living art,” an initiative that began in the end of the eighteenth century and persists to this day. The study of the temporality of the entrance of works in the collection, pointing to the importance of the decade of 1980, it contributes to the history of the global art by repositioning the institutional impact of the exhibition “Magiciens de la terre,” and the centrality of Paris to the Latin-American artists, especially during exile. In this ample context, we discuss the invisibility of women artists from the corpus of works in the Cnap.

‘‘Made in Korea’’: Tradition and Transculturality in Changgeuk Lear

Abstract: Changgeuk Lear of the National Changgeuk Company of Korea presents an intriguing case of interculturalism. Produced in 2022 by an elite creative team representative of Korean theatre , Lear is remarkable for its lack of traditional spectacles that have characterized many Korean Shakespeare performances. This essay analyzes the transcultural esthetics of changgeuk Lear in comparison to the Koreanized spectacle of changgeuk Romeo and Juliet (2009), placing both productions in the history of changgeuk and the efforts to popularize the genre in the global age. The ontology of Lear is underpinned by a new notion of living tradition promoted by Kim Sung-Nyeo, which I relate to the concept of transculturation. I propose to reclaim the term transculturality for intercultural performance discourses, thereby deconstructing the false dichotomy of Korea as tradition and the West as modernity. Through a dynamic fusion of traditional chang and global art forms , changgeuk Lear creates a transcultural “K-opera” that represents a renewed sense of Koreanness .

Socialism in Contemporary African Art: Butchering the End of Time

Abstract This introductory essay and accompanying special issue of ARTMargins explore the role of African socialisms in contemporary art. Artists looking at Africa's radical history face the challenge of responding to a generalized amnesia about the continent's protagonism on intellectual and political radicalism after 1945. Working with under-researched themes, scarce historical records, and apprehensive oral sources, these artists are often tasked to amplify forgotten pasts while simultaneously critiquing the political contingency of historical investigation in global contemporary art. Global contemporary art—largely shaped by the neoliberal transition that followed the very histories explored by these artists—is often shown in its limitation to engage with socialist history critically. Through the authors’ analyses, many artworks nuance discussion of the erasures, fixed narratives, and nostalgia for Africa's socialist past. Looking to this past, artists attempt to reorganize contemporaneity and its typical disregard for history beyond romanticization. Talho (2014), a work by Mozambican photographer Filipe Branquinho, is analyzed as a case study raising central questions on contemporary artists’ engagement with Africa's socialist past.

Elucidating the paradox of sustainable art consumption: an interdisciplinary analysis

This study scrutinizes the paradoxical relationship between the burgeoning demand for sustainable materials and the persisting environmental impact of the global art market. Its interdisciplinary inquiry, methodologically informed by a survey and interviews with art gallery managers, seeks to elucidate the driving forces behind this phenomenon, comprehend the contribution of sustainable art consumption within an interdisciplinary framework, and identify potential strategies to foster a genuinely sustainable art market. The interdisciplinary analysis unveils a combination of several influential factors perpetuating the paradox of sustainable art consumption, such as socioeconomic forces, artistic motives and values, and regulatory and policy shortcomings. Implications for art market structures and rules, as well as policy and regulations, are discussed. Further, the article looks into the limitations in implementing the proposed framework, predominantly concerning resource constraints, the art market’s diversity and complexity, and the delicate balance between artistic freedom and sustainability. Additionally, it addresses challenges such as enforcement and compliance, measuring and monitoring impact, collaboration and coordination, and adaptation to a perpetually evolving market. The article provides a comprehensive argument for the pressing need to reconcile the art market’s ecological footprint with the rising demand for sustainability, offering potential avenues for achieving a truly sustainable global art market.

Средневековье (от Рождества Христова к XIII столетию). Восток и Запад

The essay provides a summary overview of the main phenomena of artistic culture during the Middle Ages in the West and the East (from the Birth of Christ to the 13th century). The paper covers the global art culture of the medieval period both from the point of view of the general historical process and in the consideration of individual types of art (sculpture, architecture, painting, literature, music). The author examines the achievements of medieval authors in these types of creativity: the increasing trends towards simplification in depiction of man and mythological creatures in Western art, the progressive development of art in the East (the rise of architecture and urban planning, the development of fine art). There is a turn towards the acquisition of civilizational forms of existence in Western art under the influence of feudalism and monotheistic religion. Special attention is paid to understanding the category of the universe in the medieval period, the construction of fortifications as reflections of the militant mood of the Middle Ages, manifestations of lyrical imagery in the artistic culture of the West and the East. As a result, the author concludes that medieval art represents a huge, richest layer of the artistic culture of mankind, the most important stage for the creation of artistic classics in the East and later in Russia.

Lagrange-enhanced GRA framework for probabilistic simplified neutrosophic multiple-attributes decision-making and applications to painting teaching quality evaluation

Universities are important talent training bases in China and the main driving force for achieving the strategic layout of “revitalizing the country through science and education” and “strengthening the country through talent". Oil painting is a global art with rich humanistic and artistic value. Most art colleges in China have set up oil painting courses. Analyze the current situation and value of oil painting course teaching in local art (teacher training) majors, and leverage the educational role of oil painting courses by enriching course offerings, emphasizing the integration of humanistic innovation, improving teacher literacy, and striving to further improve the quality and efficiency of oil painting course teaching. The quality evaluation of oil painting teaching in universities is viewed as multiple-attribute decision-making (MADM). The grey relational analysis (GRA) is a useful tool to cope with the MADM issue. The probabilistic simplified Neutrosophic set (PSNSs) is easy to characterize uncertain information during the quality evaluation of oil painting teaching in universities. In this paper, in order to obtain the weight information, an optimization model implemented to obtain a simple and exact formula which can be employed to derive the attribute weights values based on the Lagrange function and the probabilistic simplified neutrosophic number grey relational analysis (PSNN-GRA) technique is implemented for MADM to rank the alternatives. Finally, a numerical example for quality evaluation of oil painting teaching in universities is used to verify the practicability of the PSNN-GRA technique and compares it with other techniques.

Mapping the Impact: A Comprehensive Review of Art-Based Interventions for Dementia (2000-2022)

The global arts in healthcare movement affects patient care and hospital surroundings. This paper reviews and bibliometrically analyzes Impact Art-Based Intervention for Dementia Patients from 2000 to 2022. A total of 57 documents were created on October 16, 2022, using Rstudio 4.2.1 and biblioshiny for bibliometrix. These papers were used for doing an in-depth study to identify research patterns. In Scopus, Dementia is the most popular journal, and in Web of Science, Dementia-International Journal of Social Research and Practice. Scopus uses “Dementia” as the most common author keyword and add keyword, but Web of Science uses “Impact”. Most popular writers include Camic, P. M. (Scopus), Charura, D., and Surr, C (WoS). UK scientific papers dominate Scopus and Web of Science. Scopus is most associated with Canterbury Christ Church University, whereas Web of Science is Leeds Beckett University.

International Mobility and the “Academic” Ethos of Women in the Global Contemporary Art World: Double-Edged Means of Gaining Recognition

This article draws on a research study of intra-European migrations by Spanish artists and artist intermediaries in order to investigate the specific ways in which women build careers within the globalized contemporary art world. The uncertainties involved in pursuing both an artistic career and international migration frequently lead to “academic” behaviours among women in the population studied. Strategies such as turning to international programmes for artistic creation and international mobility and accumulating professional certifications facilitate these women’s career entries and allow them to aspire to internationalization, but such strategies may be counter-productive in the long term. This article shows how the academic professional ethos commonly found among women artists carries the risk of trapping them in gendered stereotypes and pushing them either towards dominated positions in the contemporary art world or professional bifurcation.

Decorative Arts for International Cultural Exchange in the Information Age: Implications for Global Art Education and Identity Formation

Abstract Using the “One Belt, One Road” initiative, the study constructs a model of decorative arts to promote international cultural exchanges, and analyzes its role in promoting the principles of harmony, tolerance and mutual benefit. Using principal component analysis and PLS-SEM model, the study focuses on the specific impact of decorative arts in four aspects: international cultural exchange concept, resource conditions, organizational structure and international cultural education. The study results show that decorative arts significantly promote the idea of international cultural exchange, optimize resource conditions, build an effective organizational structure and advance international cultural education. Specific data show that the impact coefficient of decorative arts in promoting the concept of international cultural exchange on global art education and identity shaping is 0.726, the impact coefficient of resource guarantee is 0.714, the impact coefficient of social organization is 0.788, and the indirect impact coefficient of international cultural education is 0.685.This indicates that decorative arts have an essential position in international cultural exchange and have a global art education and identity shaping has a significant favorable influence. The study highlights the critical role of decorative arts in the era of globalization, provides new perspectives for a deeper understanding of their role in international cultural exchange, and offers essential references for developing strategies to promote global arts education and identity shaping.

Lyric Lear

William Shakespeare’s plays are one of the main sources of inspiration for the international opera scene. Over the centuries, some 350 opera composers have adapted one of his plays. Yet few of these works have been successful enough to enter the world repertoire of the most performed scores. King Lear is one of Shakespeare’s longest and most complex plays. Significantly, Aribert Reimann’s version, created in 1978, is the only one, out of the twenty other operas adapted from King Lear and composed between 1817 and 2000, to have entered the aforementioned world repertoire. The aim of this article is to find out how Reimann and his librettist Claus H. Henneberg managed to do it and, more generally, what this opera says about operatic adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays. We will thus pay particular attention to the way Reimann and Henneberg tackled four major structuring issues. The first concerns the total length of the work and the cuts to be made in the original text. Then, we will look at the way the German pair dealt with the complex and polymorphous nature of Shakespeare’s characters, before tackling the question of enunciation on the operatic stage and its specificities in terms of action. Last, since opera is a global art form, we will wonder whether a libretto is a drama set to music or a drama written for music, and see how Reimann and Henneberg answered this question.

NFTs applied to the art sector: Legal issues and recent jurisprudence

Responding to the necessity of scarcity and uniqueness in the digital format, NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) have recently gained much attention in cultural industries, especially video games and the art market. Faced with the digital paradigm shift and the challenge of dematerialization, creators started to use NTFs in order to emulate the concept of rarity for displaying, promoting, and monetizing their works in digital environments. An NFT is a certificate of ownership implemented through encrypted metadata pointing to a unique copy of a digital file. Likewise, NFTs enable the tokenization of a large array of digital, or even physical, assets. For this reason, they are used to facilitate the digitalization of contents heavily dependent on copyright and scarcity. Non-Fungible Tokens represent an emerging reality of significant economic, social, and cultural importance, which also raises important legal issues especially concerning the very nature of the NFT, as property or license, and the usage of copyrighted contents or trademarks. Indeed, the most frequent legal issues with NFTs are related to the attribution and exploitation of the Intellectual Property (IP) rights of the underlying content or litigations about non-contractual matters (i.e., theft). Litigious cases affecting NFTs most often take on an international dimension due to the decentralized nature of the technology on which they are developed, distributed on servers hosted in a multitude of countries, as well as the business practices of trading platforms that connect users from all over the world. Consequently, the principles of Private International Law (PIL) are applied to solve legal conflicts. This study focuses on the resolution of litigations related to NFTs in the three countries leading the global art markets: the US, the UK, and China. The analysis focuses on the application of international private law in relation to recent jurisprudence concerning conflicts involving NFTs and artworks.

Global arts on mission: Longitudinal perspectives

The conference theme, “Global Arts on Mission: Embedded, Embodied, and Empowered” explored the arts in mission for the first time in the 50-year history of the ASM. This article features the Presidential address from the annual meetings. Its purpose was to consider the dynamics of contextualized arts on mission over the last 45 years drawing from three case studies of my work as a missiologist-cum-ethnomusicologist. The theoretical concept of musicking provides a foundation for exegeting musical cultures, revealing the dialogical nature of shared musical performance. Not only does it point to how the nations around the world continue to discover their unique voices in raising songs of witness and worship to the Lord Jesus Christ, but it also presents longitudinal perspectives of the enduring impact of global arts on mission.

Contemporary art from the Global South in the art auction market from 2020 to 2022

In recent years, emerging artists from the Global South have garnered substantial attention in the art market. This study seeks to examine the market value and ecosystem evolving around these emerging artists by analyzing the sales results of 51 artists between 2020 and 2022. This research aims to establish patterns linking unprecedented sales results with exhibition history and highlights the essential network required for these artists’ commercial success. The study reveals that the emergence of artists in the global art market results from a deliberate effort by a network of stakeholders. Our exhibition database led us to a group of 438 stakeholders who promote this sample of artists. By examining artists’ origins, backgrounds, and careers, this study provides context for analyzing the impact of artistic migration on artists’ visibility, the importance of being promoted by a variety of specialists, and the surge of African artists in the global art market since 2020. Our findings indicate that the structure of the art world has shifted toward a decentralized global art market characterized by a diverse range of actors and inputs dispersed globally. This diversification has disrupted traditional power structures in the art world, opening up new possibilities for emerging artists from the Global South, thereby contributing to a more equitable and inclusive art market.

K11 alternative diplomacies: Penetrating the global arts markets

This article explores structure, motivations and cross-cultural mechanics of operations of alternative cultural diplomacy in China, performed by K11. The K11 Art Mall franchise, opened in Hong Kong in 2008 by Chinese billionaire Adrian Cheng, has established its visible presence in the global arts markets by supporting contemporary Chinese artists and sponsoring major international arts residencies and large-scale events and exhibitions. Deconstructing and exploring the neo-liberal multilateral nature of K11 diplomacy, the research questions how K11 operates and navigates the international communication complexities within the global arts market. It analyses how this diplomacy is different from government-led bilateral cultural diplomacy of China and why it creates less frictions and contradictions on the international level. The article reveals that the rapid integration of K11 into the international art market is a combination of different factors. Beyond the economic power of K11 to sponsor major international events in collaboration with prestigious partners, it also possesses more flexibility and tolerance to navigate the normative environments of the ‘epistemic community’ of the global arts world, which do not always work well with national authoritative regime’s pressures. However, positioning itself as an apolitical player with a global vision, K11 is dominating a niche within the national art market, where it does not compete with state authorities. Moreover, it generates a high economic and cultural capital in China by nurturing contemporary Chinese arts and raising their prestige and value on the international level.

Capitalizing on art and artifying capitals: China’s journey to Venice and scandal around the Kenya Pavilion

Embedded in a globalized framework, contemporary Chinese art operates as a powerful network of socio-economic and ideological relationships. Both China and Chinese artists have been assimilated into the global art system, which is firmly built on the basis of capitalism. The world saw a surge in artistic activism in the years between 2008 and 2014, with biennales emerging as the gravitational field in which left-wing theories critically addressed economic and cultural exploitation, as well as the disparities arising from the global capitalist system. While western discourses on contemporary art rejected complicity with the neo-liberal order, refusing to be reduced to ‘a consumable sign of opposition’, the Chinese artworld still upheld neo-liberal values at the Venice Biennale. The incidents involving Chinese artists ‘renting’ the Kenya Pavilion and representing Kenya for the 55th and 56th Venice Biennales in 2013 and 2015 became viral media sensations, prompting accusations of ‘neo-liberalism’ and ‘neo-colonialism’. This article takes the Venetian farce, with a focus on the Kenya Pavilion, as the point of departure to investigate the fame-driven image of China.

The Doubling Self

Abstract The Tunisian state and Tunisian cultural systems that predate it dictate social and material realities for Tunisian women. Where these systems of authority conflict, a woman may feel that she is herself in the reality she inhabits, yet she is also an other who surveils herself, resulting in a self/other dichotomy. Surrealism, while frequently associated with early twentieth-century Europe, is a liberatory approach that stretches across global art, poetry, and literature. One of its primary objectives is to challenge accepted realities. This article argues that artworks by the contemporary Tunisian artists Meriem Bouderbala and Najah Zarbout invoke the aesthetics and ideologies of surrealism to mediate the ground between the embodied self and the observer self through portrayals of female sexuality as constituted by multilayered selves. In doing so, they evoke a surrealist history of vision, doubling, and mirroring, reframing the female body as an absent presence that eludes surveillance and regulation.

Slow Collecting: Sustainability and the Need for a Paradigm Shift by Iberian Collectors

Collectors are major actors in the global art market as they often spend large sums of money fostering the business. Concerning sustainable collecting practices—i.e., the balance between what is the best for people and for the environment—collectors’ actions seem contradictory. Firstly, ontologically, to collect is to accumulate artworks; secondly, art—the object of the collectors’ desire—and the global art world are not closely aligned with the climate crisis. The art ecosystem encourages trips to participate in art events worldwide, increasing the carbon footprint impact, and rarely uses recycled materials, causing waste. The economic model of the art market lacks sustainability, raising the question: how can we promote a sustainable collecting attitude? In this exploratory study, we will observe art market players, especially the Iberian Peninsula collectors’ actions, in terms of their contribution to reducing the environmental impact of purchases. Based on data, reports, interviews, and published sources, we will investigate collectors’ awareness of the subject and evaluate their adopted actions. As, to date, no analysis has been carried out on the trends of Iberian collecting in the field of climate sustainability, we have focused our study on finding data from the primary source par excellence: the collectors themselves. The aim is to fuel the need for a paradigm shift, concluding on a slow collecting attitude.

Impact of social media on artistic ecosystems: An overview of DIY music cultures in India

This article offers an overview of the Indian DIY (do-it-yourself) music ecosystem in relation to current broad debates on DIY scenes, their connections to mainstream cultural industries, platform capitalism, and national policies. This article specifically focuses on the impact of social media on India's artistic ecosystem as social media have been one of the most recent influencing socio-technological factors that have changed the dynamics of India's DIY music cultures. The author examines how the Internet has fuelled and transformed DIY music in India with special attention to three trends—rise of the regional; rise of the small town; and rise of the independent. This article also draws attention to concerning influences of social media on the art ecosystem ranging from precarity and exploitation, trolling and scams to compromising collective solidarity in favor of neo-liberal notions of individual success. This article argues that social media participation for DIY artists is not equitable and fair. Social media, however, facilitates building of social and commercial capital for artists who have had no access to it in the deeply hierarchical conventional system in India. Social media also opens the possibility of negotiating the hegemonic cultural norms, be it with reference to gender, class, caste, or rules imposed on art by established powers. It is ultimately the techno-capitalist power that dominates the artistic eco-systems but through social media, DIY artists find and create small agentic and resistive opportunities, and make themselves a force to reckon with in the Indian and global art and entertainment ecosystem.

CHOLAMANDAL ARTISTS’ VILLAGE: AN INTERACTION BETWEEN THE TRADITION AND MODERNITY (INDIA, THE MADRAS SCHOOL)

Based on the analysis of scientific literature, a successful example of an independent and self-organized community of Cholamandal artists was studied as a continuation of the artistic searches and experiments of the Madras school during the second half of the 20th – early 21st centuries. The prerequisites for the emergence and development of the Cholamandal commune headed by K. Paniker are analyzed. The activities of individual artists of the art association – painters (K. Paniker, R. Pooviah, T. Tarani), graphic artists (K. Haridasan, K. Ramanujam), sculptors (C. Patnaik, S. Nandagopal) and others are considered. The plot and thematic features of their achievements are clarified – the search for original interaction with folk, religious and tantric art is characteristic for these artists. The special position of folk art becomes one of the distinguishing features of the association’s activities. Traditions and their inheritance are seen as an important communicative part and as a source of experiments for modern practices, which, in turn, supported the cross-platform nature of Cholamandal. The settlement included not only workshops and an exhibition gallery, but also an open-air theater for dancing and theatrical performances, a textile workshop, a library and all the necessary infrastructure for everyday life. Cholamandal artists are known for their experiments with traditional Indian techniques and materials such as terracotta, bronze casting, a combination of fresco and oil painting. They combined these techniques with contemporary styles and themes to create unique works of art, reflecting the richness and complexity of India’s artistic tradition. The Cholamandal commune also played an important role in popularizing of modern Indian art among a wide audience. Art exhibitions and events held at Cholamandal attracted art enthusiasts and collectors from all over India and abroad and have helped bring Indian contemporary art to the attention of the global art scene.