Art History Research Articles

Intertwining of History and Reality: An Exploration of the Creation of Wang Yingsheng’s “The Return of Hong Kong”

This article aims to delve into the background, process, artistic techniques, and cultural significance and social impact of Wang Yingsheng’s important artistic work “The Return of Hong Kong.” Through an analysis of Wang Yingsheng’s artistic style, combined with a detailed interpretation of “The Return of Hong Kong”, this article reveals how Wang Yingsheng integrated his personal artistic pursuits with significant historical events to create a work that is both characteristic of the times and full of artistic appeal. Simultaneously, this article explores the position of “The Return of Hong Kong” in the history of Chinese contemporary art and its influence on Chinese culture.

ON THE “CATECHISATION” OF THE THEATRE GENRE IN M. GLINKA’S WORKS. THE OPERA A LIFE FOR THE TSAR. Dedicated to the 220th Anniversary of the Composer. Essay I

The essay continues the discussion about the specifics of Russian musical theatre, which was started about two hundred years ago by V. Odoevsky and in which several generations of art historians have already participated. We are talking about the content of the “new direction in art”, according to Vladimir Odoevsky, which appeared and headed the world musical culture in connection with the name of the Russian genius, M. Glinka, the author of three theatrical works: the operas A Life for the Tsar (1836) and Ruslan and Lyudmila (1842) as well as music for the tragedy Prince Kholmsky (1840). Let us say in advance that the last of the named works, despite its enduring artistic value, has not yet been included in the university curriculum for training musicians. The performance of this work in concerts is also a great rarity, given that the music to the tragedy Prince Kholmsky is, in essence, the first Russian program symphony, a “symphonic miracle”, as P. Tchaikovsky called it. In several essays, we will consider the three named works in detail: the dramaturgy of the libretto and the features of musical expression, the formation of the images of the characters. All these special issues will be studied in their relation to the Christian world-view, which has been, in our opinion, the main “marker” of Russian art at all times of its existence. This idea, although it is more and more pronounced these days, is still not assessed seriously enough in the scientific humanitarian sphere; it is considered most of all from the aesthetic side, only abstractly touching on the dramaturgy and the musical language of the works, in our case — ​operas and music for theatre. In fact, it is precisely the laws of the spiritual life of man, which underlie the world-view and behaviour of a Christian, that directly determine the logic of the theatrical action structure. Moreover, they explain the content of the libretto and music, constituting that very “novelty” designated by V. Odoevsky in connection with M. Glinka’s theatrical creative work.

Making a Case for Ebony

Abstract This essay makes a case for assessing the significance of material and labor in the context of the global history of early modern art, through an analysis of a single case or cabinet dated to the second quarter of the seventeenth century: an imposing ebony chest inlaid with mother-of-pearl created by Herman Doomer (1595–1650), a contemporary and compatriot of the Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669). The essay endeavors to address the place of enslaved labor in Dutch seventeenth-century taste that favored foreign goods and materials.

Between the Archive and the Feed

This article discusses feminist performance and internet art practices of the 21st century through the lens of Boris Groys’s theory of innovation. It analyses works by Signe Pierce, Molly Soda, and Maya Man, to position practices of self-documentation online in exchange with feminist art histories of performance and electronic media. The text proposes that the discussed contemporary art practices fulfil the process of innovation detailed by Groys through a process of re-valuation of values via an exchange between the everyday, trivial, and heterogenous realm of social media (‘the profane’) and the valorised realm of cultural memory (‘the archive’). Using digital ethnography and contextual analysis, framed by the theory of innovation, the text introduced ‘content value’ as a feature of contemporary art on the Internet. The article demonstrates how feminist internet art practices expand on cultural value through the realisation of a process of innovation via an intra-cultural exchange between the feed and the institution.

Monumental Artworks as Difficult Heritage

Abstract In 1936, Benito Mussolini invaded and occupied Ethiopia. The following year, he declared that Sicily represented „the geographical centre of the Empire“. This new Fascist empire and Sicily’s role within it gave rise to numerous interventions into the island’s urban landscape, from renaming streets and installing commemorative plaques to commissioning monumental colonially-themed artworks. It is on this last category that the present article focuses, examining three such works: two frescoes by Alfonso Amorelli for a privately-owned shopping arcade in Palermo; a mosaic by Michele and Basilio Cascella for a train station in Messina; and a series of frescoes by Gino Morici and Pippo Rizzo for the reception rooms of the local government headquarters in Ragusa. The article explores both the genesis of these works and then, primarily, the factors that have influenced their reception from the end of the Fascist regime in 1943 to today, considering the visibility of the works to the general public; their perceived quality and the artist’s reputation among art historians and critics; and the political and historical moment. Ultimately, the article asks to what extent these artworks should be regarded as examples of „difficult heritage“ and what the management of them in postwar Italy can reveal about memories of Fascist colonialism today.

The History of the Chuvash People through the Eyes of an Ethnographer

Ethnic history presupposes an interdisciplinary analysis of primary sources and basic publications on the subject. For this reason, the researcher must possess the skills not only of a historian; he is obliged to include the scholarly achievements in the study of ethnonyms, geography, genetics, anthropology, archeology, religion, ethnography, linguistics, art history, and folklore studies. In this instance, we turn our attention only to several fundamental characteristics and events in the traditional ethnography of the Chuvash people. The article covers the Caucasian, Volga-Don, and Middle Volga stages, according to the historical period in which the ancestors of the Chuvash were living. They are space-time boundaries in the history of the Chuvash. An interdisciplinary approach (history <-> ethnography) is used. The chronology of events extends from the 2nd to 10th centuries. At the same time, we try to trace the historical dynamics of one or another tendency. All of this should further the study of the ethnic history of one of the numerous peoples of the Russian Federation.

PERFORMING FEATURES OF CHAMBER VOCAL WORKS OF UKRAINIAN COMPOSERS

This study considered performing features of chamber vocal works of Ukrainian composers. The relevance of the study is conditioned by the fact that the issue of research in the music industry is determined by the cultural and social transformations that have taken place in the world and in Ukraine over the past decades. The purpose of this study is to understand the specifics of chamber vocal music by Ukrainian composers and identify the features of the process of mastering this genre of vocal music. The following methods were applied to achieve the research objective: analysis of scientific sources, logical and comparative analysis, descriptive and structural methods, scientific objectivity, and systematisation. The paper identifies and describes the main genre features of chamber vocal works of Ukrainian composers, which are mandatory for creating a performing interpretation. The methods of Ukrainian and foreign teachers in musicology, their systematic positions of understanding the specifics of chamber vocal works, and awareness of the tasks of performing musical works facing song performers are considered. The importance of a systematic approach in the practice of vocalists studying the features of chamber vocal works is emphasised. The analysis of studies allowed characterising possible methods of working on chamber vocal works of Ukrainian composers. The practical significance is conditioned by the possibility of applying the results in preparation for teaching the course of the history of Ukrainian musicology, cultural studies, and the history of vocal art in educational institutions. The scientific information contained in the paper can be used in writing methodological works, textbooks on Ukrainian musicology, and for the study of future research papers.

Architectural simulation from point clouds: Between precision and historical validity

Computer simulation of the incidence of natural light in heritage buildings has entailed a very fruitful field of experimentation within Digital Art History in recent years, although little has been discussed about its validity. This article seeks to demonstrate that although the accuracy of the results decreases when simulating the incidence of natural light of a heritage interior on a point cloud compared to a CAD, the margin of error can be accepted in historical studies. To carry out this test, the church of the Dominican convent of San Jacinto in Seville (Spain) has been used as a model. This interior has been analyzed with RELux and DIALux starting from a CAD and photogrammetry without simplifying it or cleaning it. With these examples, it can be concluded that these tools become useful for the study of historical buildings, despite their limitations.

Canonization/Quantification: Film Canon as an Empirical Matter

The main aim of this article is to open the traditional debate on the issue of canon formation in film studies to the quantitative methods, steadily gaining more momentum in the academic world in the face of the so called ‘computational turn’ in the humanities. For the past two decades, scholars of literature and art history have been attempting to define the canon and the processes governing its formation and transformation based on external, intersubjective criteria and numerical means of analysis. It is therefore worthwhile to inquire about similar mechanisms within the field of film studies. Viewing the canon as a social construct allows us to seek its institutional or social traces, such as the number of retrospectives, critical and academic works dedicated to specific films or filmmakers, awards given to them, or their presence in academic syllabi. Simultaneously, quantitative methods can be instrumental in undermining the canons primacy in historical research by turning towards objectified criteria for sample selection or the analysis of large data corpora. Thus, the issue of the canon may serve as a litmus test for the application of digital humanities methods in film studies, providing a testing ground for their potential and limitations.

I Like Feminism and Feminism Likes Me

Abstract When high-end block buster venues are the primary focus of curatorial reflections, even for feminist writers, what does the poor feminist curator have to say? What does curatorial “care work” look like from a different place? One semester the gallery budget was slashed so brutally, we had to give up the insurance. So, I co-wrote a two act play about Joseph Beuys’s first trip to the US, in 1974, when he asked to meet with “American feminists.” I Like Feminism and Feminism Likes Me (2020) was part slapstick, part exaggerated amateur dramatics, part allegorical attack on male charisma in the New York City borough that elected Trump (Staten Island), and part feminist revenge tragedy. In this paper I reanimate the project through the affective scrim of my experience of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is an experiment in teaching and writing art history through the body: mine, theirs, maybe yours as well.

AlUla Archaeological Decorations Regarding Ornamental Accessories Using Contemporary Printing Techniques by Metal Surface Treatment

The research aimed to explore the use of archeological rock ornamentations from AlUla in designing and manufacturing decorative accessories globally, employing up-to-date printing methods on metal surfaces. AlUla is the place in northwest Saudi Arabia that boasts a very rich cultural tradition expressed through different forms of ancient rock carvings, inscriptions, and decorative motifs. These archaeological constituents represent a great opportunity for the integration of historical art forms with state-of-the-art design practices in line with KSA Vision 2030, set on cultural promotion coupled with technological advancement. The central research problem looks into how AlUla's cultural motifs could be adapted for use in ornamental accessories by employing advanced surface treatment techniques on metals. The approach followed in the research is descriptive and analytical to explore, from a theoretical viewpoint, the historical significance and artistic value of the archaeological decorations in AlUla. It further probes into an experimental methodology of applying methods of contemporary digital printing on metal surfaces. This will not only try to bring to light how these ancient symbols influenced the evolution of the decorative arts in the Kingdom, but also how present-day technology may revitalize these traditional designs for today's market. The findings prove that digital printing techniques are actually useful in producing very complex and culturally inspired metal accessories, thus proving the point of heritage meeting innovation. From this research, it is necessary to establish that it holds great potential for functionality and aesthetic enhancement of ornamental accessories to foster cultural heritage via contemporary art. It goes to recommend further explorations of technological advances in digital printing and applications within metal accessory industries for further emphasis on integrating traditional art forms with modern technologies of production for added value to the cultural heritage and commercial practices.

Chinoiserie in the Radziwill Castles of the 18th Century. Luxury in Oriental Style

The monograph by Doctor of Art History Olga Dmitrievna Bazhenova is devoted to the problem of interpreting the artistic traditions of the East in the culture of Belarus in the 18th century, namely the embodiment of the ideas of the chinoiserie style (Chinese style) in the decorative programs of the Radziwill castles and masterpieces created at the princely manufactories of the 18th century. The central place in the book is occupied by the study of the album of drawn projects of furniture, weapons, ceramics of the court artist Fischer. As the author convincingly shows, the artist's graphic projects and the objects created according to them demonstrate the correspondence of the search for chinoiserie on the territory of modern Belarus to the current trends of this exotic style in European art of the 18th century. The publication is supplemented with valuable analytical information, based, among other things, on archival data. The richly illustrated edition is prepared in Russian and English, which allows it to be relevant not only in the Russian-speaking environment.

Lionel Lindsay’s Maghreb: Orientalism as Anti-Modernism

Lionel Lindsay still troubles Australian art history. An illustrator and etcher of undeniable skill, he voiced conservative aesthetics, including his anti-modernist and antisemitic polemic Addled Art of 1942. However, Lindsay was also philo-Arab, as he demonstrated in his 1929 visit to the Maghreb to meet Etienne Nasr’Eddine Dinet, the Islamophile Orientalist whose 1889 Snake Charmer was Lindsay’s favourite painting at the Art Gallery of NSW. During two months in Bou Saada and Kairouan, Lindsay made dozens of watercolours, drawings and meticulous etchings of ‘local character’, studied here as a group for the first time. Drawing on Lindsay’s unpublished diaries, letters and memoirs this article shows that this anti-modernist Anglo-Australian’s ‘Orientalism’ ignored the settlers and chose favourites among the peoples of the Maghreb.

CompARe: Design and Development of a Gamified Augmented Reality Learning Environment for Cultural Heritage Sites

Understanding cultural heritage by visiting cultural sites is vital to individuals and communities across the world. It is, therefore, important to create authentic learning situations where students can experience and meaningfully learn about cultural heritage; however, authentic learning in situ can be a challenge. Learning during educational field trips at cultural sites is often not well supported, while students’ interest and motivation to learn are not always activated, which ultimately impacts the learning experience during the visit. Furthermore, students may be distracted with off-task activities and by the novelty effect of the setting during the field trip and may find it difficult to dedicate themselves to the learning activities. Augmented and virtual reality technologies, and approaches such as gamification, have created new contexts for location-based, technology-enhanced learning, which can help address some of the challenges faced during educational field trips. This paper describes the design and validation of CompARe, a gamified augmented reality learning environment (LE) created to support student learning while visiting a cultural heritage site. The CompARe LE is built around an inquiry-based scenario in which students, working in groups, take on the role of art historians and are asked to date an important wall mosaic by visiting four digital hotspots located throughout the site. CompARe was developed and validated using a design-based methodology. We present two case studies of upper elementary students using CompARe and discuss the affordances and challenges of the learning experience. We conclude with lessons learned about the effectiveness of the CompARe learning approach and discuss future steps.

Contemporary Painting and Spiritual Landscape--Re-examination of the History and Theme of Shelf Paintings

This paper and the graduation piece continue the course of my research. By investigating the history and development of contemporary painting, of how painting going from representational to abstract, this paper and my graduation piece is aimed to find a new interpretation to integrate the ideas of painting; to achieve the "landscape of spirit" of artist and to interpret the expressive principle of art fully. Finally, combining the landscape of spirit and painting together, highlighting an important factor of creation-"spirit". This paper has taken the analysis from Chinese and Western to be the main content-from representational to abstract; from the West to the East; and from the combination of the East and the West. Of western artists, Picasso, Rothko was chosen to be the representative while the integration of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism from the Wei and Jin Dynasty was chosen to represent the East. Whether it is the religion of the West of the philosophy or the East could be found in painting easily, this show that spirit is necessary in painting. Nowadays, the East and the West are closely linked, Chinese artist's self-study and the "landscape of spirit" could be easily seen. How to explain the "landscape of spirit" is also a problem. This paper tries to explain the "landscape of spirit" by combining art history, study of the connection and development of art and technology, and my own art.

Regional Claims Through Exhibitions—The Transnational Circulation of Włocławek “Fajans” in East Central Europe

The article examines the exhibition history of hand-painted ceramic objects from the “Fajans” factory in Włocławek and the politics of regional contextualization during the period of détente in the 1970s and 1980s. It extends both existing scholarship on transnational art history in socialist Europe and the notion of cultural diplomacy, approached here in the context of regional politics and economic frameworks. The paper highlights the peripheral networks and movements that developed in relation to the socialist cultural politics of working-class artistic engagement and artistic practice as labor. Questions of cooperation between Poland and other socialist states are of particular interest, as are the implications of détente for East Central Europe. The reconstruction of the transnational circulation of “Fajans” objects is based on a comparative analysis of international “Fajans” exhibitions, using documentation from the archives of the Faience Department of the Museum of the Kujawy and Dobrzyń Land, as well as from the archives of the city of Novi Sad. Based on the researched material and the conceptual framework of transnational art history, the article proposes a concept of regional cultural diplomacy.

Bruket av revolutionär historia i rysk protestkonst (2008–2012): ett funktionellt perspektiv

The article addresses uses of revolutionary history in the Russian protest art created during Dmitry Medvedev’s presidency (2008–2012) and reception of these uses. Since the protest art is considered by many as an arena where dissatisfaction with the ruling regime, expressed in the mass protests of the winter 2011–2012, was fueled, the article seeks to define whether the uses of revolutionary history have played a role in consolidation of those dissatisfied with the regime. Focusing on the protest artworks created by collectives Vojna and Pussy Riot, the article answers the question by using and developing Klas-Göran Karlsson’s ideas on functionality of the uses of history. The results show that although many recipients understood the meaning conveyed by the artists, the uses of revolutionary history were most of the time dysfunctional due to the existence of “antirevolutionary consensus” in the Russian society. The article offers new answers to the question as to why the protest art failed to engage the Russian society.

Decolonizing Ukrainian Art History

Abstract In this article, we analyze the influence of the colonial policy of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union on Ukrainian art-historical writing. As we shall reveal, the mechanisms of knowledge production created during that period continued to operate after the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine in 1991. The limitations that were imposed on the art-historical community, which can be regarded as colonial, shaped the crucial narratives (of the “triune nation”) and dictated the thematic scope of Ukrainian scholarship. The new notion of “mysteztvoznavstvo,” introduced in 1937 instead of the previously established Theory and History of Art, eventually led to a profound rift between Soviet Russian and Ukrainian scholarship and the Western world more generally. “Mysteztvoznavstvo” was supposed to be an umbrella term for art history, theory, and art criticism but ended up doing a disservice to each domain. Art theory in Ukraine was virtually nonexistent, whereas art history was mixed with art criticism, resulting in writing that did not meet widely accepted academic standards. This led to the isolation of Ukrainian scholars, who were confined to the Russian-speaking community and had very limited access to foreign scholarship. We also analyze the decolonization processes in the history of Ukrainian art prompted by the invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine after 2013, such as The Revolution of Dignity and “decommunization.” We argue that horizontal art history and decolonial approaches cannot adequately be applied if colonial tools are still used by the discipline. Epistemic decolonization can only be achieved after challenging the standards of “mysteztvoznavstvo” and, thus, by dividing art studies into three separate domains: art history, art theory, and art criticism, as each discipline has its own goals and methods.

THE PINK ROCKS OF CARLO CRIVELLI (CIRCA 1489)

ABSTRACT Until the 1800s, art historians considered the Venetian artist Carlo Crivelli (circa 1435–1495) to be a secondary if not a minor painter. This lack of recognition stems essentially from the dissemination of his paintings in churches and convents throughout the provincial region of Marche (central-eastern Italy), where Crivelli spent the most productive period of his life from 1468 until his death in 1495. As a consequence of this limited accessibility, his paintings could not be seen by mainstream art dealers and historians such as the scrupulous Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574). More than anybody else, the British demonstrated a great interest in Crivelli’s art in the late 1800s by acquiring many of his dispersed paintings that eventually ended up in the National Gallery of London, where the richest collection of the artist’s paintings is preserved today. Among them, ‘The Vision of the Blessed Gabriele’ is the one that attracted our attention not so much for its pictorial qualities and symbolic significance typical of Renaissance paintings, but rather for the many details making up the background of the painting, which accurately depicted the geological and environmental characteristics of the Adriatic port city of Ancona and the nearby Monte Cònero mountain. In this research, besides a meticulous study of architectural, geomorphologic, faunal, and floral details, we focused on the representation of a large outcrop of strikingly pink, thinly stratified rocks, which we studied through a quantitative RGB (red, green, blue) chromatic analysis and then compared the results with those from an analogous analysis of rock samples and outcrop images of all the more-orless red formations of the Umbria-Marche lithostratigraphic succession. This led us to the conclusion that Crivelli’s pink rocks represent the lower Paleogene Scaglia Rossa limestone exposed at Monte Cònero. Thus, the background of Crivelli’s painting ‘The Vision of the Blessed Gabriele’ is no longer an idealized landscape put there as a symbolic or simple wing of a theater stage, but a realistic representation of the physical environment surrounding the main subject of the painting as only a few Renaissance maestros like Piero della Francesca, Andrea Mantegna, and Leonardo da Vinci incorporated in their most famous and studied masterpieces.

Heritage research at the PUMA beamline

The PUMA beamline, created for the heritage community and accessible by all fields of science, welcomed its first users in 2019. Its optical layout uses a horizontal focusing mirror to prefocus the light emitted from the wiggler source for the experimental endstation. It provides a 5 µm × 7 µm microbeam for XRF, XAS, XRD and XEOL analysis or a wide 20 × 5 mm full field when the beam is defocused, and the KB mirrors are retracted. An extremely stable fixed-exit Si(111) monochromator is used to select the wavelength. Many experiments have been performed at PUMA, particularly in archaeology, paleontology, conservation, art history and in identifying safer conditions of irradiation for precious heritage samples. XRF analysis has been used, for example, to show the effects of the interaction of Palaeolithic ivory with soil; to identify the elemental composition of mineralized textiles and to reveal hidden morphologies of fossils.