Legitimate Art Research Articles

Fabric in Film and Film as Fabric: Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon

Maya Deren's films employ still and moving fabric in order to articulate the changing relationships among viewer, actor, and director. Deren's use of fiber-based material is an overlooked aspect of her cinematic work. In this essay I explore the parallel between the medium of film—the screen, as well as the representation of fabric on film—and fabric in several of Deren's films, primarily her well-known 1943 film Meshes of the Afternoon. This is a generative parallel because a comparison with fabric introduces the idea that film could be conceived of as, simultaneously, a tactile material and a legitimate art form to mid-century film audiences. Film's relation to the body is traditionally distanced: the audience sits far from the screen in order to view it; the actors’ bodies exist only as intangible arrangements of light and shadow. Reading film with an awareness of the characteristics and connotations of moving fabric recasts cinema in light of the screen's status as fabric, a potentially tactile medium.

Time, Space and Causality: Joe May, Fritz Lang and the Modernism of German Detective Film

Such are the scars the First World War left on the face of modernity in cultural memory that film historians assume the end of the war to have been as radical a break in the development of the cinema as it was in political history and the arts. Not only would it be counter-intuitive to argue otherwise, but it would also cast doubt on the cinema as a legitimate art form – precisely what the films of the post-war period, under the name of ‘Expressionist cinema’, have stood for: the clean break with the old order, the aesthetic rebellion of a new generation. In matters cinema, however, the generational rupture argument, no less than the ‘art-versus-commerce’ argument (foundational for any avant-garde) may ultimately prove unhelpful even in understanding the aesthetic features of a particular style, not to mention the continuities, coalitions and cross-fertilisations typical of a highly professional elite of craftsmen and technicians, such as every filmmaking practice represents, whether it is industrially-controlled like Hollywood, or organised more like a cluster of craft guilds like the German cinema from the 1910s to roughly 1928. However, because of a periodisation scheme transferred from political history (the foundation of the Weimar Republic, 1918), an over-emphasis on a single film-historical factor (the foundation of Ufa, 1917), and a single film (The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, 1920), the German cinema up to 1918 is generally treated as distant and distinct from the post-war Aufbruch (new start) undertaken by a cinematic avant-garde presumed to have been in open rebellion against the commercial film production of the time. This template of cultural history in turn vitiates the debate about modernism and the cinema, by positing a series of oppositions that have proven to be largely untenable. In what follows I want to argue for a more nuanced assessment, leading to a revision of assumptions (but also a potentially more internally contradictory picture) regarding both the rupture between

Joining the Literary Pantheon: How Contemporary French Poets Attain Renown

The most common image of the poet is of an exceptional creator whose renown is proportionate to his genius, the latter understood as an attribute that can only be explained in terms of the poet’s unanalyzable singularity. The present article identifies two thresholds in the social construction of fame in poetry—attainment of recognition, attainment of renown—showing that renown is obtained only at the end of a long path made up of compulsory stages. There is a path to renown in the art of poetry; it is discernible in statistical regularities. A creator’s renown develops gradually in the art world structures he is active in; in the case of poetry, artistic skill and the poet’s early esthetic choices are at the center of this analysis of the social construction of renown in poetry, which applies to all practitioners concerned to produce highly legitimate art, art that in turn will assure its best representatives an enduring legacy together with economic profits.

Will computer games ever be a legitimate art form?

In his paper, Ernest Adams, a veteran of the videogames industry, discusses the art of the videogame and the extent to which videogames themselves are — or can — art. His paper explores various working definitions of art and applies these to videogame, noting both points of similarity and divergence. He draws parallels with the film industry, but also highlights the limitations of such comparisons and the problems that the videogame industry has faced previously in imitating too-closely the structures and techniques of the film industry. His paper ends with practical advice to the games industry on measures that it should adopt to produce more distinctive and creative work.

Cultuurparticipatie in Vlaanderen: een toetsing van de these van de culturele omnivoor

Ever since Richard Peterson and Albert Simkus (1993) came up with the notion of 'cultural omnivorisation' to describe the process among the younger higher educated of combining legitimate cultural tastes with more popular tastes, the traditional theoretical framework of Pierre Bourdieu (1984 [1979]) has started to erode. Instead of having an exclusive taste for legitimate art forms there now seems to be a fraction within the dominant class that doesn't restrict its cultural consumption to legitimate art forms. In this article we tried to find out whether different cultural participation patterns are discernible within Flemish society. Using the data of the annual APS-survey (Afdeling Planning en Statistiek) from 2000, we found, by means of latent class analyses, six different participation patterns. These could be reduced to three groups of two clusters on the basis of education and age. The same analyses on the APS-dataset of 2001 yielded a similar cluster solution.

Marketing, cultural hierarchy, and the relevance of critics: film in the United States, 1935–1980

A content analysis of United States newspaper advertisements for films documents that film marketing has increasingly relied on the strategy of reference to expert opinion. Whereas this practice was quite rare at the beginning of the time period under study, it became more common over time, with the largest increases occurring in the late 1960s. It is hypothesized that this phenomenon is a result of a fundamental shift in the United States film world whereby the nation's most popular form of entertainment was perceived as a legitimate art form. As an art world for film developed in the 1960s in the United States, audiences began to value and rely on critical assessments of films. Film studios capitalized on the new importance of critics by incorporating quotes from critics into advertisements. Two comparisons support this interpretation of the trends in film advertising. First, a comparison with advertisements for fiction literature, an established art form, demonstrates that while fiction advertisements employed critics' quotes from at least 1935, there was a convergence in the late 1960s in the rate at which advertisements for each art form employed critics' quotes. Furthermore, advertisements for foreign-language films, which were perceived as artistic from an earlier point in time, frequently incorporated critics' quotes prior to the 1960s, and only in the late 1960s do rates in English-language films' advertisements equal or surpass those for foreign-language film advertisements. The results support Shrum's (Shrum, W., 1996. Fringe and Fortune. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ) contention that cultural hierarchy is at least partially maintained by a greater reliance on expert discourse for high than for popular art.

The production of the pupil as a subject within the art curriculum

This paper explores the material nature of language in specific practices which construct the pupil as a subject within the art curriculum. It employs ideas from the work of Foucault and Lacan in order to establish the materiality of the pedagogic gaze. In considering specific drawing practices in school the paper problematizes the task facing teachers as they assess or evaluate pupils' work. It shows that assessment practices can underplay or even pathologize what may be, for pupils, powerful and legitimate art practices, when viewed as practices of signification. By exposing specific hegemonies which inform particular art curriculum practices, the paper explores how a more inclusive and legitimating construction of pupils as subjects involved in drawing practice is possible.

The Silver Age Actress as Unruly Woman Starring Lidia lavorskaia as Madonna

“And as for ‘art,’ well, philosophers differ. But it's widely believed by wise people that art and ego sit uncomfortably together.” Joseph Sobran, The National Review, 1991.Just when Madonna, the performer one critic recently referred to as a “schlockmistress,” seemed doomed to a future as the subject of scholarly articles on pop and post-modern aesthetics, she's in the news again with a coffee table best seller on the joys of sex with anything that moves and some things that don't. Madonna, the high priestess of American pop culture, has constructed a multi-million dollar performance empire, the success of which rests primarily on her extraordinary ability to behave outrageously and market it. Though pre-pubescent females are Madonna's most ardent and uncritical admirers, her concerts and films attract a heterogeneous crowd of men, women, gays, and straights–most of them under thirty. In spite of (or perhaps because of) her immense popular following, the press loathes her. Mainstream critics deplore her dissipated lifestyle, sexual athletics, and public exhibitionism, while avant-garde critics regard her performances as trendy schlock rather than legitimate art. This has little effect on Madonna except to increase curiosity about her (and therefore sales of the book and videotapes) among ordinary citizens who might otherwise be completely indifferent to the Madonna phenomenon.

THE LITERARY FIELD: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF BOURDIEU'S SOCIOLOGY OF ART

Bourdieu describes the structure of society as a result of class conflicts and status competition. Art in general, and the literary field in particular, is interpreted as a differentiated social field that is autonomous in the sense that it follows its own logic - the competition for cultural legitimation. What literature has in common with other social systems is the stratification of its internal structure into a hierarchical arrangement. Thus the literary field can be described as a horizontally differentiated system that is, however, vertically differentiated internally. The concern of the paper is to test Bourdieu's theoretical considerations empirically. Data for the analysis and interpretation are based on interviews of Cologne writers. The data are analysed with the aid of blockmodel and correspondence analysis. As far as the data allows us to operationalise the thesis that the literary field is an autonomous differentiated system, Bourdieu's thesis is confirmed. The internal structure can be described more precisely: the first line of demarcation is, in fact, the difference that Bourdieu described between legitimate and illegitimate art: high-culture literature and low-culture literature are the two poles of the literary field. The realm of the legitimate literature is further differentiated into three blocks (elite, junior elite, periphery). The elite and the periphery differ in terms of the different degrees of success. The junior elite occupies an intermediate place. Bourdieu's sociology of literature is supported by the empirical material at hand.

The art of American car design: the profession and personalities: "not simple like Simon"

Americans have come to take the car for granted. Buying, driving, and keeping up our cars are simple facts of modern life. Those who don t own cars can hardly escape them since they are perhaps the most ubiquitous and arguably the most dominant visual form of our century. But how often do we look at them as art objects? Among the least analyzed and understood of the commercial arts, the American car continues to be one of our most significant and creative contributions to the history of design. Cars have shaped America like no other visual form, except perhaps the movies. Today, however, the movies are acknowledged as a legitimate art form. Surely it is time that cars were taken more seriously. And yet, how can we? Basic questions remain unanswered: How is a car created? How is the idea for a car conceived, how does it develop into a design, and how does the design become a finished product? Does the design process affect the ultimate appearance of the car and, if so, how? Answering these questions will help us begin to see cars as works of art. The questions throw a spotlight on the role played by artistic creativity within the automotive industry; the answers reveal the unique form it has taken. This book presents the first in-depth analysis of the car design profession in this country. It includes the first series of interviews with America s great car designers and the first to approach them and their discipline from an art-historical perspective. In fact, this is the first time the actual process of designing cars has been seriously studied. Armi's novel approach has been to explore the personalities of the car designers with an eye on the effect of those personalities on the process of creation. This book will appeal to all with an interest in the American car: the consumer, the designer, the members of UAW, the auto executive, the advertising executive, and the art historian.

The Hanging Mobile: A Historical Review

The author traces the evolution of the mobile, from its pioneer days to 1983, noting the works of various artists, often of divergent interests, who express themselves through mobile art. He indicates that, although the mobile is only marginally accepted as a legitimate art form by devotees of art, it has nevertheless slowly, in various forms, become part of our daily life.

Plato's Philosopher-King: A Study of the Theoretical Background (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 331 Greater Alcibiades attests. The Phaedo marked the end of Phase I and the beginningof Phase II as Plato developed further the underpinnings for the four theses. None of this, of course, proves the claim that we are dealing with a theory from the historical Socrates, and Sarri recognizes that it does not. He contends that we would have such evidence if we could discover these same theses reflected in writers who were contemporaries of Socrates and Plato, and who were influenced by the former but not by the latter. One such writer Sarri finds in Xenophon. Not that Xenophon is being appealed to as a conveyor of Socratic philosophy; he is not, particularly as a conveyor differing from or competing with Plato. He is approached as simply an observer capable of informing us about the attitudes of people concerning the soul in the period immediately following the death of Socrates. In Xenophon, Sarri finds not only the old conceptions of soul as life, courage, or as the seat of the emotions, but he finds as well the same facets to be found in Plato's Phase I" the soul as the entire personality, as more important than the body, and as an object to be cared for in the pursuit of virtue. In Xenophon, too, is expressed the conviction and the hope, without any compelling arguments to back it up, that the soul is immortal. Further, when these new facets are introduced, they are often introduced as coming from the mouth of Socrates. This is a valuable study, engagingly written and thoroughly documented. Philosophers will find most interest in the segments dealing with the Presocratics and with Socrates himself. A crisp picture emerges of the development of the concept of the soul, a development that is in effect a complete turnabout from the Homeric view of the soul as alien to the personality and thus not related to ethical life, to the view of Socrates in which the soul is identified with the personality and thus is the source of intelligence, of consciousness, and of the ethical dimension of life. On Sarri's account, backed up as it is by the evidence, the development is seen to have followed a pattern, with first one, then another thinker making his contribution, until finally Socrates takes the results of his predecessors' speculation and caps them off with his own original insights. Thus Sarri's work serves to set the record straight against Rohde, who believed Socrates' contribution to the development of the concept of the soul was nugatory, and against Jaeger, Robinson, and others who believed the relationship between the soul and intelligence-consciousnesswas asserted from the earliest period of philosophical thought. EUGENEE. RYAN East Carolina University Rosamond Kent Sprague. Plato's Philosopher-King: A Study of the Theoretical Background. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1976. Pp. 129. $9.95. As the full title suggests, Sprague's book does not attempt to illuminate only Plato's remarks about the philosophical rulers of the ideal city described in the Republic; it seeks also to clarify who the philosopher-king is by analyzing the platonic notion of the techne politike, the art of ruling. The book is interesting, tightly argued for the most part, and helpful. There is much that the student of Plato's political philosophy can learn from Professor Sprague's treatment. It is a mistake, according to Sprague, for one seeking a full understanding of Plato's theory of the best rule to focus exclusively on the three dialogues usually looked to: the Republic, the Statesman, and the Laws. Sprague argues that we can find Plato at work on the notion of the ruler's art in a number of the early dialogues where he is abstracting the common features of the uncontroversially legitimate arts so familiar to Platonic arguments: the doctor's art, the shipbuilder's art, the bridle maker's art, and so forth. Because the ruler's art does not possess all of the necessary characteristics of these other arts, Sprague argues, Plato developed the 332 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY hypothesis that undergirds the political program of the Republic and that is specifically...