Group Portrait Research Articles

Johann Ignaz Cimbal „védjegye”, a VSG-monogram

Next to his signature, Viennese painter Johann Ignaz Cimbal often added a peculiar sign in his frescoes and oils. It is a combination of letters, appearing in a different form in each of the studied cases (Zalaegerszeg, Oberlaa, Zwettl, Peremarton, Tornyiszentmiklós, Nagykároly [ Carei]), which – and the poor state of the works – make the identification of the letters difficult. In most cases the sign reads VSG, so it is not the initials of the painter.In some Cimbal works the three letters also appear with iconographic meaning. On the picture of the King Saint Stephen side altar in the parish church of Tornyiszentmiklós the letters shining in the halo around the Holy Cross were identified as VSG earlier and decoded as “Vera Sacra Crux”. However, it is more likely that this abbreviation hides the same meaning as the monograms next to Cimbal’s signatures.Guidance to the elucidation of the monogram was provided by the ceiling fresco in the southern vestry-room of Székesfehérvár cathedral. The clearly readable VSG abbreviation appears in the corners of the triangle symbolizing the Holy Trinity, which leaves no doubt that it is in connection of the Holy Trinity. The most obvious explanation is the letters being the initials of the German words for the three divine entities, Vater, Sohn and [Heiliger] Geist.The attribution of the picture (Maria Immaculata) on the high altar of the parish church of Sárospatak to Cimbal was suggested on the basis of this motif, here in three corners of a triangular aureole around the Ark of Covenant. The attribution is also confirmed by style critical analyses. (Analogous are Cimbal’s Immaculata figures in Zalaeregszeg, Tornyiszentmiklós and Székesfehérvár.)The abbreviation alluding to the Holy Trinity, which is perfectly embedded in the iconographic fabric of some paintings, was also used by Cimbal independently of the theme, attached to his name. Inserting a sign referring to the Holy Trinity above his name must have been a religious gesture. Having completed a picture, the painter crossed himself, as it were, offering his work to God. He sealed his offering with the mysterious sign of God “in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost”. (A similar religious gesture must underlie the signature 70 of an early Cimbal work, the Saint Anne altar picture in Vienna’s Barmherzigenkirche. The abbreviation “Zimbal i. VR” is traditionally interpreted as “In veneratione” with the explanation that the painter made the picture as a votive offering.) Cimbal always created a new composition out of the three letters, so it cannot have been his aim to make a recognizable constant “trade-mark”. (For this purpose he used his name with the customary addition “invenit et pinxit”.) The linking of the three letters is not just a customary formal solution as in monograms, but it has a meaning: it symbolizes the unity of the three divine persons, just as the circle in the triangle in Székesfehérvár.An extremely expressive iconographic solution needs special mention, applied almost to each of his depictions of the Holy Trinity in Hungary. It is the sceptre held by the three coeternal persons (hence it has extreme length). As it occurs so frequently, it cannot be part of an occasional client’s wish but much rather it is the painter’s invention. Perhaps a comprehensive examination of the entire oeuvre will discover further examples in support of the author’s hypothesis that the Holy Trinity was a particularly favourite theme of Cimbal. It was again his personal devotion that led him to use the Holy Trinity monogram.The motivation behind commissions for religious art works in the period was first of all the client’s personal religiosity. The religious motifs of the artists can usually only be inferred from indirect data and in connection with few works. One such sign is that for the duration of painting the frescoes Franz Anton Maulbertsch joined the Scapular Confraternity of Székesfehérvár, while the group portrait on the organ loft of Sümeg permits the assumption that he took part in the devotions of the Angelic Society founded by bishop Márton Padányi Biró. His pupil Johannes Pöckel who settled in Sümeg was a member of the local Confraternity of the Cord. Unfortunately, no information to this effect is known about Cimbal.His signature and Holy Trinity monogram testify that not only the client but also the painter offered his work to God.

Rev. John Burton frames the Fiji Methodist Mission, 1924

In his role as General Secretary of the Australasian Methodist Missionary Society in the 1920s and 1930s, Reverend John W. Burton travelled each winter to one of the ‘mission fields’ in the South Pacific to inspect the mission’s activities, and to encourage and advise. Accompanying him was his camera; Burton had long been an enthusiastic photographer. Following his 1924 visit to Fiji he created two albums of his photographs, one illustrating the indigenous Fijian mission, the other the Indian mission. This article focuses on the ‘social biography’ of the photographs, and examines Burton’s choice and balance of subjects in each album, which cover educational and other mission activities, village and town scenes, landscapes and individual and group portraits. It also considers the placement and message in context of many of the individual photographs when they were later reproduced to illustrate stories in the mission magazine, Missionary Review, of which Burton was the Editor.

You can leave your hat on: Men’s portraits, power, and identity in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic

ABSTRACT This article analyses how citizens in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic used hats in portraits to display their socio-political identity. It demonstrates that in cities like Amsterdam, The Hague, Delft, and Deventer, male sitters had themselves portrayed with their hats off to express their membership of the patrician class, or wearing their hats if they wanted to emphasize their status of private citizen. This “hat language” reflected the Ciceronian idea, commonplace in early modern Europe, that both a life devoted to public service and a life as privatus were honourable. Hat language presumably emerged in individual men’s portraits during the 1610s, when hats also gained meaning in group portraits. It derived from the older tradition of depicting helmets as symbols of military power. Hat language was employed by major portraitists, including Cornelis van der Voort, Michiel van Mierevelt, and Rembrandt, as well as Gerard ter Borch as late as the 1670s.

Материалы Тувинского отряда Саяно-Алтайской экспедиции 1952 и 1953 гг. на негативах из собрания Кунсткамеры

В статье даны основные сведения о коллекциях негативов (число кадров, тип используемой пленки, полнота научного описания предметов), отснятых Е. Д. Прокофьевой и А. Д. Грачом в 1952 и 1953 гг. в составе Тувинского отряда Саяно-Алтайской экспедиции Академии наук СССР. Источниковой базой исследования стали сведения из книги поступления Музея антропологии и этнографии им. Петра Великого (Кунсткамеры) РАН, коллекционные описи, публикации собирателей коллекций. Статья вводит в научный оборот информацию о коллекциях негативов и некоторые изображения, характеризующие основное сюжеты съемки. Рассматриваются вопросы о внесении изменений в исходные изображения (кадрирование, изменение контрастности) исследователями для публикаций полевых материалов. Выявлены и систематизированы материалы, которые были опубликованы собирателями, и те негативы, что оставались без внимания с момента создания. Обозначены тематические блоки в коллекциях негативов Е. Д. Прокофьевой и А. Д. Грача: археологическая, этнографическая и антропологическая съемка; рабочие моменты экспедиции; индивидуальные и групповые портреты; пейзажная съемка; экспозиция Тувинского областного краеведческого музея. Основной проблемой в научном изучении коллекций стала краткость описаний, которые составляли собиратели при регистрации своих материалов, отсутствие информации о фотографах, редкость перечисления лиц на групповых снимках.

Tracce di SMOG: un «ritratto di gruppo» affrescato da Saša Sokolov. A proposito di “Obščaja tetrad’” (1989)

In 1989 Russian author Sasha Sokolov published “Obshchaia tetrad, ili zhe Gruppovoi portret SMOGa” (The Shared Notebook, or a Group Portrait of the SMOG), a lyrical essay whose form lies between prose and poetry. In this text the writer commemorates his poetic experience as a young member of the SMOG underground group in Moscow in the early 1960s. However, unlike other memories published on the matter by former smogists, this is a highly lyrical work that recreates the atmosphere and the emotional drive felt by the young poets back then. In analyzing the short text, it is possible to enucleate the structure, the motifs, the images, as well as the collage through which the author puts together the «shared notebook» of the group. The text is the result of the harmonic and organic interweaving of verses and images taken from other smogists, as well as from the smogists’ literary models.

Experienced mainstream teachers and student teachers position themselves explicitly and implicitly in relation to inclusive classrooms: global and local implications

ABSTRACT This qualitative study espouses an interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological framework to explore how mainstream experienced teachers (METs) and student teachers (STs) position themselves vis-à-vis inclusive education (IE). The theoretical framework emphasises that global changes in education require the placement of IE in the forefront of educational practice and research. It also foregrounds the centrality of narrative texts and language resources in the construction of the professional identities of individuals and groups. The data, 80 stories written by METs and STs, were analysed using thematic content analysis and positioning analysis. Interpretation of the findings revealed two group portraits which position themselves vis-à-vis IE. Well-acquainted with the inclusive mainstream classes, the METs demanded changes in initial teacher education whereas the STs’ positioning was rather vague, lacking clear insights, knowledge and generalisations. The discussion interprets these findings and proposes changes in initial teacher education and inclusive classes.

Portrait and types of heroes in literary works

The article analyzes the types and appearance of the portrait of heroes in a work of art. In particular, on the example of the trilogy “Dastan about Karakalpaks” by T. Kaipbergenov, the author's artistic skill is studied, a scientific theoretical idea of new types of artistic portraits is given. Materials of the article are analyzed according to their individual portrait (portrait of a hero) and group portrait (two or more hero portraits). Moreover, there are used three methods of the literary investigation of the portrait such as syntactic portrait (portrait depicting the general appearance of the hero), static portraits, and condition portraits. However author tries to find peculiarities of the assimilated-portrait based on example from Kaipbergenov's work, especially author is likely to highlight emotional and portraits that represent only the hero's point of view. In terms of structure, this portrait consists of three parts. In the first part, the writer describes in detail the character and appearance of the hero, especially the facial features. The other is that the distinguished character has two heroes, and the difference between the sign in Aldosbiy and theirs is that his character is mainly drawn on the basis of that character. These edges are not always exaggerated. They may pop up in certain situations. Character traits in a dramatic-psychological situation are either customary or transient (character specific to the situation only) for the character portrayed in the work of fiction. The image is consistent. That is to say, Maman's fast-paced state of grip on horses is compared to an eagle ready to fly.

Waiawa Station (1934)

Waiawa Station (1934) Nakashima Naoto Translated with an introduction by Ken K. Ito In a key moment in Nakashima Naoto's "Waiawa Station" (Waiawa eki, 1934), an elegiac first-person story about a Hawaii boyhood in the early twentieth century, the narrator strains to talk with his Japan-born brother. After casting about for shared topics of interest, he hits upon the idea of asking about his brother's reading: "Shigeru, what sorts of books are you reading now?" "What?" he said, turning his side to me as though he were thinking of something else. But he knew I was studying him. With a thin smile, he said, "A born-in-Hawaii (Hawaii umare) like you wouldn't know." At that moment, I was somehow afraid of my brother. I regretted getting into this troubling conversation. A gulf opens between the brothers, a gulf of knowledge and understanding that terrifies the narrator. The term translated here with deliberate awkwardness, Hawaii umare, requires some explanation. Although it is used as a nominative in the grammar of the original Japanese, it cannot but raise a question: A Hawaii-born what? This is because Hawaii umare is frequently used in adjectival form, as in Hawaii umare no […]. Considering the narrator's discomfort, as well as the topic of the conversation which turns on cultural literacy, the implied subject is likely "Japanese," as in Hawaii umare no Nihonjin. But this raises further questions: If the narrator is Japanese like his brother, why is one brother incomprehensible to the other? What are the cultural and linguistic competencies, the experiences, and sentiments that distinguish Hawaii-born Japanese? These are the questions that run through "Waiawa Station," whose most prominent plot line involves the narrator's relationship with Shigeru, the older brother who had been left behind in Japan when his parents emigrated and is unable to adjust to the culture of Hawaii and work on the plantation when he arrives later in Hawaii at the age of 18. [End Page 229] Shigeru's own sense of dislocation underpins his condescension and contempt for the narrator. His hopelessness will eventually lead to suicide. Although the other sections of the story can seem episodic—a collection of childhood moments set in Waiawa—they are best read as a counterweight to Shigeru's sense of loss: the narrator recounts with warmth and longing the human connections of a village located ten miles outside of Honolulu on the shores of Pearl Harbor. "Waiawa Station" is an expression of a deeply felt sense of place. These themes draw upon the writer's own life. "Waiawa Station" is autobiographical fiction that invites the reader to equate the protagonist/narrator with the writer—beginning with the protagonist's name, which is the writer's own. The life of the character overlaps with that of the writer. The biographical Nakashima Naoto was born in Waipahu in 1904. His family moved to Waiawa during his childhood. He attended elementary school and Japanese language school in Pearl City and went on to Kaiulani School, a public grammar school in Honolulu. Contemporary newspaper accounts show that he had a brother named Shigeru who committed suicide in 1917 by throwing himself in front of a train. Shigeru's death caused all the members of Naoto's family, except for his father, to travel to Japan shortly afterwards to repatriate his remains. The Nakashimas settled in Kumamoto, the parents' home prefecture. Naoto attended school there until he left to go to Waseda University in Tokyo, where he studied English literature but did not graduate. In the late 1920s, he began to publish fiction in coterie magazines in Japan and in Japanese language newspapers in Hawaii; his stories invariably centered on two subjects: a Hawaii childhood and the lives of returning immigrant families. "Waiawa Station," published in Bungakkai (Literary World) in 1934, was one of the few Nakashima stories carried in a major literary magazine. Nakashima moved in literary circles in Tokyo, and "Waiawa Station" shows the marks of Japanese literary discourses: the deliberate autobiography of the story exploits conventions of writing and reading associated with the shishōsetsu, or "I-novel"; and the group portrait of adolescents growing into...

Fang FangWuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City by Michael Berry

insightful group portrait of a family that finds fascinating yet tragic ways to test the limits of creativity, faith, and the law. Fonseca ’s iconoclastic characters believe that if we look hard enough, we’ll see that there’s “a world beneath the world.” That may be true, but as this book reminds us, it can get awfully scary down there. Kevin Canfield New York Fang Fang Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City Trans. Michael Berry. New York. HarperCollins. 2020. 328 pages. “IMAGINE THIS: the author Fang Fang did not exist in today’s Wuhan. . . . What would we have heard? What would we have seen?” asked writer Yan Lianke. In this sense, Fang Fang’s Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City serves rather as a historical record than a private literary work—it is a fascinating eyewitness account of “the trivial, tragic, and absurd during Wuhan’s seventy-six days of lockdown ” in 2020, which has reminded people of Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year and The Diary of Samuel Pepys. Seemingly, the diary is all about quotidian details: weather, food, her toothache, or her classmates. The author is in her midsixties , she has diabetes, and she lives alone with her old dog. She becomes anxious only gradually, as the situation worsens each day. Despite earlier experience with another coronavirus (SARS) in 2003, the government fails to respond properly in face of the novel virus. From the time of the “lockdown,” when all forms of public transportation are shut down, most residents have to walk from one hospital to another in search of admission. Doctors and nurses are exhausted and overwhelmed by strenuous overwork. Among them is Li Wenliang, the “whistleblower” doctor, who first speaks out, warning of the danger, only to be reprimanded by the police. He dies in his own Central Hospital about one month after himself being infected. Fang Fang’s anxiety turns into anger when the Health Commission officials attempt to muzzle sources of information about Covid-19. From TV she learns that more than forty thousand people in a neighborhood have attended a mass banquet—only several days later does the municipal leader admit that the virus is indeed “contagious between people.” She labels the incompetent government officials as bureaucratic and obsessed with formalities , tending to “drop the ball,” and letting written directives guide their work. According to the furious author, such unhelpful activity is “a form of criminal act.” Fang Fang’s writing style is so conversational that the reader won’t be expected to find well-crafted, sophisticated passages in Wuhan Diary. Throughout the book she takes a matter-of-fact approach and records the ground zero of the pandemic. She not only talks about the misery of the common people but also considers her country’s mental health more generally. On February 14 she writes: “We need just a little more humanistic spirit . . . just enough so that when someone is infected with coronavirus, a crowd of people doesn’t end up sealing their front door with a steel rod so that everyone is locked inside.” Even though Fang Fang has been decried by some people for publishing heresy and demonizing Wuhan, many have praised her as the “conscience of Wuhan” and believe that she “gave voice to the fears, frustrations, anger, and hope of millions of her fellow citizens.” She never loses hope in the darkest time, because she can always find solace in small domestic comforts, such as when neighbors and colleagues frequently bring her face masks and food. She is moved to tears when medical teams from nineteen provinces and from the army flood into Wuhan, together with donated medical supplies. Besides the ordeal of daily life and the physiological impact of forced isolation , Fang Fang also speaks out against social injustice, the banning of information , and corruption, for which she resolutely demands accountability. Some critics comment that although she might appear to “live meekly” during the lockdown, she writes “bold sentences”: “One speck of dust from an entire era may not seem like much, but when it falls on your head it’s like a mountain crashing on you” has become one of the most...

Greek Catholic Church and its Clergy in the Western and Northern Territories of Poland Between 1947 and 1957 – аn Outline of a Collective Portrait

The text is an attempt to show a group portrait of Greek-Catholic clergy and consecrated persons who, after 1947, (after the “Vistula” action) found themselves in the western and northern parts of Poland. The analysis was carried out based on 142 people (diocesan priests, monks and nuns), who had to function in extremely unfavourable conditions, which in practice resulted in an actual ban on the functioning of the Greek Catholic pastoral ministry and on any religious performance by consecrated persons of the ministry among – also resettled – believers. On the basis of archival materials from state and – above all – ecclesiastical (Greek-Catholic and Roman-Catholic) archives, as well as the literature on the subject, the aforementioned group was analysed in terms of age, date of ordination, entry into the monastery or congregation, or the exercise of ministry – in the absence of an alternative – in the Latin rite. The question of a return to the native spiritual habit (when it was possible) and of the involvement in structures loyal to the authorities (the state “Caritas” or “Patriotic Priests”) was also examined. This publication is the first attempt to address the issue on such a nationwide scale.

Vasilii Maksimov: Individuality and Collectivism in Pëtr Krestonostsev’s Artel of Artists

This essay explores the circumstances which led the Russian painter Vasilii Maksimov to compose an unusual group portrait in the early months of 1864. The work was painted shortly after fourteen students withdrew from the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg and formed a cooperative association known as the St. Petersburg Artel of Artists, a commune spearheaded by the painter Ivan Kramskoi. Shortly after these events, Maksimov would join an Artel of artists established by the Academy graduate Pёtr Krestonostsev. Few scholars discuss this Artel but exploring the ways it mirrored collective ideals for artistic practice then prevalent in Paris sheds light on how homosocial networks of support rose to the fore in this historical moment. Maksimov’s 1864 group portrait records the productive conflict that resulted from artists’ desire to work with one another through discourse and collaboration in both eastern and western Europe in the period.

Vasilii Maksimov: Individuality and Collectivism in Pëtr Krestonostsev’s Artel of Artists

Abstract This essay explores the circumstances which led the Russian painter Vasilii Maksimov to compose an unusual group portrait in the early months of 1864. The work was painted shortly after fourteen students withdrew from the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg and formed a cooperative association known as the St. Petersburg Artel of Artists, a commune spearheaded by the painter Ivan Kramskoi. Shortly after these events, Maksimov would join an Artel of artists established by the Academy graduate Pёtr Krestonostsev. Few scholars discuss this Artel but exploring the ways it mirrored collective ideals for artistic practice then prevalent in Paris sheds light on how homosocial networks of support rose to the fore in this historical moment. Maksimov’s 1864 group portrait records the productive conflict that resulted from artists’ desire to work with one another through discourse and collaboration in both eastern and western Europe in the period.

„To było między pierwszą a drugą”. Zabójstwo Róży Berger podczas pogromu w Krakowie 11 sierpnia 1945 r.

Roza Berger is the only conϐirmed casualty of the Krakow pogrom, which took place on 11 August 1945. The woman died in her own apartment at Wolnica Street 4. The press did report on her death, but the exact circumstances of the crime remain unknown. New light on those events has been shed by a folder containing ϐiles of the investigation launched in August 1945 against Citizens’ Militia ofϐicer from MO Station II in Krakow. These documents not only provide detailed information about the circumstances of Roza Berger’s death, but also make it possible to reconstruct the atmosphere of the pogrom conducted in the vicinity of the building where the murder was committed. Supplemented with information from archival ϐiles, the documentation discovered also makes it possible to paint a group portrait of MO policemen from a station located 80 kilometers from the crime scene.

Creative heritage of Lev Alperovich (1874–1913): from realism toward symbolism

The article presents Lev Alperovich, a little-known to general public Belarusian painter of the beginning of the 20th century, who was Ivan Trutnev’s student in Vilnius Drawing School and a student of Ilya Repin in the Emperor’s Arts Academy in St. Petersburg. The works of Lev Alperovich that survived after the World War II are kept in the National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus. The analysis of the painter’s biography and creative heritage reveals a new vector which was gradually emerging in Minsk at the beginning of the 20th century, i.e remoteness from the academic late “peredvizhniki” realism and the ambition to find a niche in the evolving Russian modern style or the European Art Nouveau style and symbolism. Relatively sparse artistic heritage of Alperovich – single and group portraits, genrepainting, everyday life scenes and staffage landscapes – allows the author to single out this painter as a Belarusian painting phenomenon of the 20th century.

The Johnson Circle: A Group Portrait

The Johnson Circle: A Group Portrait

Distortion-free wide-angle portraits on camera phones

Photographers take wide-angle shots to enjoy expanding views, group portraits that never miss anyone, or composite subjects with spectacular scenery background. In spite of the rapid proliferation of wide-angle cameras on mobile phones, a wider field-of-view (FOV) introduces a stronger perspective distortion. Most notably, faces are stretched, squished, and skewed, to look vastly different from real-life. Correcting such distortions requires professional editing skills, as trivial manipulations can introduce other kinds of distortions. This paper introduces a new algorithm to undistort faces without affecting other parts of the photo. Given a portrait as an input, we formulate an optimization problem to create a content-aware warping mesh which locally adapts to the stereographic projection on facial regions, and seamlessly evolves to the perspective projection over the background. Our new energy function performs effectively and reliably for a large group of subjects in the photo. The proposed algorithm is fully automatic and operates at an interactive rate on the mobile platform. We demonstrate promising results on a wide range of FOVs from 70° to 120°.

Retratos de grupos de artistas no Brasil:

Apesar do significativo associativismo envolvendo artistas plásticos no Brasil, poucas são as representações de grupos de artistas em pintura. Neste artigo estudaremos os quadros Alguns colegas (1921), de Arthur Timótheo da Costa, e Artistas da SBAAP (1952), de Angelo Bigi. A pesquisa com retratos de grupos impõe analisar-se não só as relações que estabeleceram os autores dos quadros, seus modelos e o público, mas, igualmente, as redes tecidas pelos artistas representados entre si, no momento de sua criação. Partiremos de algumas questões básicas: Quem são? O que os uniu? Quais as motivações para a elaboração do quadro? Quem está presente ou ausente e por quê? Como foram representados?

КЛАССИФИКАЦИЯ НЕМЕЦКИХ АНАЛИТИЧЕСКИХ ГЛАГОЛЬНО-ИМЕННЫХ КОНСТРУКЦИЙ С СЕМАНТИКОЙ «ОБЛАДАНИЕ» И ИХ ПЕРЕВОД НА РУССКИЙ ЯЗЫК

The article provides a brief survey of the German analytical verbal-nominal constructions with the semantics of possession, suggests their classification and variants of the Russian translation. Heinrich Böll’s novel “Group Portrait with Lady” with parallel translation into Russian serves as the research material. The paper considers, classifies and translates into Russian the main semantic groups of the analytical expressions of the German language consisting of the verbal and nominal components, the noun with the meaning “possession”, which is the semantic core of the constructions under study.

Modern Group Portraits in New York Exile: Community and Belonging in the Work of Arthur Kaufmann and Hermann Landshoff

In the period 1933–1945 the group portrait was an important genre of art in exile, which has so far received little attention in research.[1] Individual works, such as Max Beckmann’s group portrait Les Artistes mit Gemüse, painted in 1943 in exile in Amsterdam,[2] were indeed in the focus. Until now, however, there has been no systematic investigation of group portraits in artistic exile during the Nazi era. The following observations are intended as a starting point for further investigations, and concentrate on the exile in New York and the work of the emigrated painter Arthur Kaufmann and photographer Hermann Landshoff in the late 1930s and 1940s, who devoted themselves to the genre of group portraits.

The Johnson Circle: A Group Portrait by Lyle Larsen

The Johnson Circle: A Group Portrait by Lyle Larsen