Modern Masterpiece Research Articles

Vulnerable Amalgamation of Loneliness And Spirituality: An Analysis Of 'The Rabbit Hutch' By Tess Gunty

The provocative tale of spiritual freedom from bodily entrapment, as portrayed in Tess Gunty's debut novel, The Rabit Hutch, is a modern masterpiece. Set in the post-industrial context, the decaying city of Vacca Vale city in Indiana is struggling to deal with the impacts of withdrawal of Zorn Automobile Company. The novel presents glimpses of the lives of people residing in an affordable apartment called La Lapinière or, mostly known as the Rabbit Hutch. Gunty uses her versatile narrative technique here through utilising different styles such as the use of epistles, black and white pictures, along with obituary comments to closely knit the stories. The desire of the central protagonist, Blandine Watkins for achieving spiritual freedom through dreaming for a bodily escape shows the intent of the novelist to sketch spirituality as the method of freeing oneself from worldly suffering. The subplots of different situations of people living in different apartments helped in connecting the larger view for changing scenario due to withdrawal of the automobile company. The theme of loneliness and worldly misery is portrayed through the life of Blandine while indicating her belief on the Catholic mystics to escape from this entrapment. The novel beautifully sketches the journey of the characters from loneliness to spirituality based on imaginary prediction while handling the real-life issues and political unrest encountered by the habitants.

Teaching the Russian literary language to foreign master and postgraduate students within the special course “Modern Russian literature”: key problems and prospects

The article puts insight into current issues of teaching the Russian literary language to foreign under-graduates and postgraduates, specializing in “Linguistics and Intercultural Communication”, in the course of studying “Modern Russian Literature”. We use a broad historical and cultural context to substantiate the fundamental role of Russian literature in the formation of world culture and the global literary canon, and highlight the great influence that such Russian classical writers as Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev and Chekhov had on the development of foreign literature in the East and West. We observe and trace continuity in classical and modern literary eras and the best long-lasting spiritual, moral and linguistic traditions of the Russian people. We assume that the key problems the teacher should focus on are: Russian literature as a significant phenomenon of world culture, the development of classical traditions in the history of Russian literature at present, the dialogue among cultures and the translation of modern writers’ works into foreign languages, historical and philosophical problems in literature, and historical heritage of the Russian language. The article comprehensively studies the Russian language value dimensions and linguistic axiological directions. The data show the presence, stability and preservation of the fundamental values (life, love, truth, good, beauty, hope, grace, honour, etc.) in the Russian literary language. These values form the spiritual conceptual sphere in Russian culture and constitute its main moral foundations. Serious attention is paid to the aesthetics of the language. We show the aesthetic potential, artistic expressiveness and stylistic richness of the modern Russian literary language, based on the works of E. Vodolazkin, L. Ulitskaya, M. Shishkin, M. Kucherskaya, M. Stepnova, D. Rubina and others. We focus on the problem of preserving the Russian literary language and the high status of Russian in general, revealing complex realities of modern multinational and multicultural world. We recommend such modern masterpieces as “Laurel” by E. Vodolazkin, “The God of Rain” by M. Kucherskaya, “The Garden” by M. Stepnova, “The Writer” by M. Shishkin, “Yakov’s Staircase” by L. Ulitskaya as sources to improve literacy and general cultural competence of foreign students.

Adalékok Marczibányi István (1752–1810) műgyűjteményének történetéhez

The art collection of István Marczibányi (1752–1810), remembered as the benefactor of the Hungarian nation, who devoted a great part of his fortune to religious, educational, scientific and social goals, is generally known as a collection of ‘national Antiquities’ of Hungary. This opinion was already widespread in Hungarian publicity at the beginning of the 19th century, when Marczibányi pledged that he would enrich the collection of the prospective Hungarian national Museum with his artworks. But the description of his collection in Pál Wallaszky’s book Conspectus reipublicae litterariae in Hungaria published in 1808 testifies to the diversity and international character of the collection. In the Marczibányi “treasury”, divided into fourteen units, in addition to a rich cabinet for coins and medals there were mosaics, sculptures, drinking vessels, filigree-adorned goldsmiths’ works, weapons, Chinese art objects, gemstones and objects carved from them (buttons, cameos, caskets and vases), diverse marble monuments and copper engravings. Picking, for example, the set of sculptures, we find ancient Egyptian, Greek and Ro man pieces as well as mediaeval and modern masterpieces arranged by materials.After the collector’s death, his younger brother Imre Marczibányi (1755–1826) and his nephews Márton (1784–1834), János (1786–1830), and Antal (1793–1872) jointly inherited the collection housed in a palace in dísz tér (Parade Square) in Buda. In 1811, acting on the promise of the deceased, the family donated a selection of artworks to the national Museum: 276 cut gems, 9 Roman and Byzantine imperial gold coins, 35 silver coins and more than fifty antiquities and rarities including 17th and 18th-century goldsmiths’ works, Chinese soap-stone statuettes, ivory carvings, weapons and a South Italian red-figure vase, too. However, this donation did not remain intact as one entity. With the emergence of various specialized museums in the last third of the 19th century, a lot of artworks had been transferred to the new institutions, where the original provenance fell mostly into oblivion.In the research more than a third of the artworks now in the Hungarian national Museum, the Museum of Applied Arts and the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest could be identified, relying on the first printed catalogue of the Hungarian national Museum (1825) titled Cimeliotheca Musei Nationalis Hungarici, and the handwritten acquisition registers. The entries have revealed that fictitious provenances were attached to several items, since the alleged or real association with prominent historical figures played an important role in the acquisition strategies of private collectors and museums alike at the time. For example, an ivory carving interpreted in the Cimeliotheca as the reliquary of St Margaret of Hungary could be identified with an object in the Metalwork Collection of the Museum of Applied Arts (inv. no. 18843), whose stylistic analogies and parallels invalidate the legendary origin: the bone plates subsequently assembled as a front of a casket were presumably made in a Venetian workshop at the end of the 14th century.There are merely sporadic data about the network of István Marczibányi’s connections as a collector, and about the history of his former collection remaining in the possession of his heirs. It is known that collector Miklós Jankovich (1772–1846) purchased painted and carved marble portraits around 1816 from the Marczi bányi collection, together with goldsmiths’ works including a coconut cup newly identified in the Metalwork Collection of the Museum of Applied Arts (inv. no. 19041). The group of exquisite Italian Cinquecento bronze statuettes published by art historian Géza Entz (1913–1993), was last owned as a whole by Antal Marczibányi (nephew of István) who died in 1872. These collection of small bronzes could have also been collected by István Marczibányi, then it got scattered through inheritance, and certain pieces of it landed in north American and European museums as of the second third of the 20th century. Although according to Entz’s hypothesis the small bronzes were purchased by István’s brother Imre through the mediation of sculptor and art collector István Ferenczy (1792–1956) studying in Rome, there is no written data to verify it. By contrast, it is known that the posthumous estate of István Marczibányi included a large but not detailed collection of classical Roman statues in 1811, which the heirs did not donate to the national Museum. It may be presumed that some of the renaissance small bronzes of mythological themes following classical prototypes were believed to be classical antiquities at the beginning of the 19th century. Further research will hopefully reveal more information about the circumstances of their acquisition.

The Persistence of Primitivism and the Debt Collectors

Abstract As the discipline of Art History increasingly aims to decolonize the gaze, questions have become paramount around cross-cultural influence and indebtedness, the traffic and translation of forms and ideas in the colonial modern era, and the mechanisms of postcolonial retrospection. Harney addresses these questions and the resonances of aesthetic primitivism in scholarship on African and diasporic modernisms and global contemporary artistic practices through a critical review of their weight within three recent volumes: Suzanne Preston Blier's Picasso's Demoiselles: The Untold Origins of a Modern Masterpiece (Duke UP, 2019), Joshua I. Cohen's The Black Renaissance: African Sculpture and Modernism Across Continents (UC Berkeley, 2020) and David Joselit's Heritage and Debt: Art in Globalization (MIT, 2020).

Strange Objects: Surface Reading Popular Art Periodicals

ABSTRACT Drawing on a private collection of popular British art periodicals from the 1920s to the 1950s, loaned to me during the COVID-19 pandemic, this article explores different ways of reading these magazines’ visual and verbal contents. It takes the unique circumstances of the pandemic—inability to travel, or to access libraries and archives—and asks what we can learn from reading such magazines in isolation. Designed as an “experiment,” it foregrounds acts of questioning and of description, placing an emphasis on curiosity and open-ended enquiry. Inspired by Sharon Marcus and Stephen Best’s ideas around “surface reading,” I use the collection to develop a taxonomy of image-text interactions in art periodicals such as The Studio, Colour, Drawing and Design, The Art Gallery, and Modern Masterpieces. To examine how these interactions worked in practice, I focus on The Artist (1931–present). Using creative-critical approaches, including my own practice as a watercolorist, I examine how didactic pairings of words and images helped to teach an amateur audience how to create their own art. Throughout, I seek not just to introduce readers to a new set of magazines, but to question what modes of enquiry and forms of expression constitute “proper knowledge” in periodical studies.

Network Narratives in Global Cinema: The Shift from Community to Network and Their Narrative Logics

In the backdrop of global interconnection, such films as “Crash”, “Syriana”, and “Babel” drew attention to the six-degrees-of-separation “network narrative.” This type of distributed narrative with multiple access points or discrete threads has long evolved, perhaps since Griffith’s “Intolerance” and via modern masterpieces: Altman’s “Nashville” and “Shortcuts” weave many characters into a portrait of their social ground unmapped by themselves; Bunuel’s “Phantom of Liberty” shifts among characters only through the contingent movement of the camera. These two elements (multiple characters, a floating agent) intermingle now in the way that the protagonist takes the role of the very agent navigating among contingently networked characters in further decentralized directions: “Birdman” centers on the hero’s salvation but many other people around him form and cross small dramas; the protagonist in “Waking Life” shuffles through a dream meeting various people; “Holly Motors” stages a Parisian’s bizarre city odyssey, with the true agent turning out to be a car/cars; “Mysterious Object at Noon” experiments on the ‘exquisite corpse’ relay of a story through different people whom the director encounters while moving around... What does this non-linearity with different causal relations imply? How do mobile agents floating over decentralized events relate to global networks in general? This paper investigates today’s network narratives through an interdisciplinary approach to the notion of network as opposed to community even beyond film narratology. For instance, if the masculine formula of Lacan’s sexuation (all are submitted to the phallic function but for one exception) underlies community, its feminine formula (not all are submitted to the phallic function but there is no exception) works for networking. Community forms the totality of all and an exception that fuels the universal desire to make it utopian, but network has the infinity of drives to (dis)connections dismantling community, yet thereby leaving no exceptional outside. Community is a closed set of subjects who may be ‘abjected’ from it; network is an open whole of endless links along which the subject-abject shift constantly occurs in the mode of being ‘on/off’ rather than ‘in/out.’ In Deleuze’s terms, community works as a “tree-like” vertical system of hierarchical units in the historical trajectory to its perfection, whereas the network creates a “rhizomatic” horizontal movement of molecular forces in non-dialectic, non-linear directions. Foucauldian “discipline” is a key to subjectivation in the community, but it turns into Deleuzian “control” in the network that promotes flexible agency and continuous modulation without exit. As actor-network theorists argue, nothing precedes and exists outside ever-changing networks of relationship. The network narrative will thus be explored as a cinematic symptom of the radical shift from community to network that both society and subjectivity undergo with all the potentials and limitations in our global age.

La puesta en escena del teatro áureo. Ayer, hoy y mañana by Duncan Wheeler

Reviewed by: La puesta en escena del teatro áureo. Ayer, hoy y mañana by Duncan Wheeler Philip Allen Wheeler, Duncan. La puesta en escena del teatro áureo. Ayer, hoy y mañana. Translated by Mar Diestro-Dópido, Reichenberger, 2020. 269 pp. ISBN: 978-3-944244-91-4. Readers of the present collection of articles and chapters previously published in English will find a refreshing—and all too uncommon—compilation of recent historiography and literary theory complimented by contemporary accounts of the reception of Golden Age plays that spans nearly six centuries of the Spanish theatrical tradition. In doing so, Wheeler's contribution not only challenges and successfully dismantles many unfavorable stereotypes of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish plays, but also delves into a contemplation of how these works are still relevant today. Moreover, the author reiterates that the underlying themes and motives found in these works can still resonate with today's audiences if they allow for the innate plurality of possible interpretations of these masterpieces to foster a new vision of Spanish Golden Age theater and a reconsideration of the literary canon. Wheeler recounts a narrative of the evolution of Spanish theater, following a chronological timeline that he establishes in Chapter 1 by placing the reader in late sixteenth-century Seville. The chapter presents a treasure of examples of the controversies and academic debates that surrounded the popularity of the corrales there during this time. Wheeler further posits that the exoticism of the Andalusian capital as represented in the comedias facilitated the dissemination of the city's culture throughout the realm, asserting that the newly established Spanish court in Madrid created a cultural identity inspired by that of Seville and illustrates the strong interrelationship between theater and politics that he uses as a point of departure for the upcoming chapters (21). Wheeler's exploration of the evolution of representations of Baroque Spanish theater and its broader sociopolitical implications continues in Chapter 2, in which Wheeler addresses how certain interpretations of gender relations in Golden Age dramas contributed to Spain's "Black Legend" throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The assertion made is that other European countries used topics like uxoricide to perpetuate the conceptualization of Spain as a retrograde, uncivilized society. The chapter refutes this negative stereotype by demonstrating how its detractors selectively ignore the fact that the same issues are present in works like Shakespeare's Othello. Wheeler also provides textual evidence to spotlight the instances in which spousal abuse against women is condemned by authors, both in canonical and non-canonical works, whereas cases in which women murdered their husbands are not present. Chapter 3 expands on such considerations of Golden Age Spanish theater and how they have contributed to a misunderstanding of the role of these literary works during [End Page 236] Francisco Franco's dictatorship, misconceptions that were perpetuated by the theories of José Antonio Maravall, whose conceptualizations of Golden Age Spanish theater have been embraced in Spain, leading to the widely-accepted notion that "Lope y Calderón eran considerados lacayos del Estado por excelencia" (71). Wheeler uses textual evidence from Maravall's own writings (that have been echoed by subsequent scholars) to discredit these ideas, arguing that they stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of the original works. Chapter 4 uses mid-twentieth-century adaptations released outside of Spain as further evidence to counterargue the notion that Golden Age plays only resurfaced in the twentieth century as state-sponsored propaganda. The fifth chapter of the volume quickly concludes the examination of Golden Age plays during the dictatorship and focuses on how national initiatives—such as the National Theater Company—have taken strides to find a place for the early modern masterpieces in today's popular culture. Wheeler goes beyond identifying the challenges that these initiatives have presented and offers suggestions as to how to make these productions resonate better in the twenty-first century by drawing inspiration from techniques that have proven successful with recent audiences. The author reserves the most salient example of a Golden Age drama adaptation that was embraced by audiences and critics alike, both inside and outside of Spain—Pilar Miró's feature film El perro del hortelano...

Transforming a National Historic Landmark Into a Green Nanogrid: The Case of Crown Hall

S.R. Crown Hall, depicted in figure 1, located at 3360 South State Street, Chicago, Illinois, on the main campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), is home to the College of Architecture. Crown Hall is a modern masterpiece that Time magazine called, one of the world's most influential, inspiring and astonishing structures. Designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in 1956, Crown Hall cohesively represents his architectural concepts and theories in their most complete and mature form. Crown Hall is a straightforward expression of construction and materiality, allowing the structure to transcend into art. Its refinement and innovation place Crown Hall among the most distinguished buildings of its age and define its importance in the history of architecture. Crown Hall was granted National Historic Landmark status in 2001 by the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. Crown Hall was last restored in 2005 by the architects Mark Sexton and Gunny Harboe, who led the multimillion dollar restoration project of this landmark building.

The Expanding Art of Comics: Ten Modern Masterpieces by Thierry Groensteen

Reviewed by: The Expanding Art of Comics: Ten Modern Masterpieces by Thierry Groensteen Colin Beineke (bio) Thierry Groensteen. The Expanding Art of Comics: Ten Modern Masterpieces. Translated by Ann Miller. University Press of Mississippi, 2017. xii + 240 pp, $65, $30. Click for larger view View full resolution Thierry Groensteen and his colleagues in France and Belgium were polishing theories and practices of comics formalism in the 1980s which North American criticism has only recently begun to hew of its own accord. During my early years as a graduate student, I more than once referred to Groensteen's The System of Comics1 as "my Bible" when recommending it to others—positioning it as the key to unlocking nuanced formal close reading—and although I have since reined in my dogmatic enthusiasm, the experience of reading comics alongside Groensteen remains invigorating and enlightening. Few comics scholars have such a keen eye for spotting the underlying patterns of the form while also possessing the clarity of voice to expound upon them. Groensteen's standard critical approach draws descriptive theory from a wide body of comics rather than imposing a pre-ordained framework upon a specific few, a process that remains refreshing in a humanities dominated by ideological methodologies. However, Groensteen's third book to be translated and published by the University of Mississippi Press, The Expanding Art of Comics: Ten Modern Masterpieces, represents a departure from his rigorously theoretical works: The System of Comics and Comics and Narration.2 A series of discrete examinations tackling ten so-called comics "masterpieces," The Expanding Art offers English readers, for the first time, extended Groensteenian readings [End Page 213] of major works. Originally published in Belgium by Les Impressions Nouvelles—a house founded by Marc Avelot, Benoît Peeters, and Jan Baetens, and whose catalog is aimed at a popular readership—The Expanding Art might be considered a companion to Groensteen's previous Impressions Nouvelles book, Comics: A User's Guide (La bande dessinée, mode d'emploi),3 which is framed explicitly as a beginners-styled introduction to the art form. The Expanding Art, then, serves as a practical application of the theoretical basics outlined in A User's Guide. Pulled from this Franco-Belgian framework of general readership, The Expanding Art is placed staunchly within an American academic milieu, a transition resulting in moments of dissonance. Groensteen's prose is admittedly more accessible here than in his strictly theoretical work, while his overall approach leans towards explication and review rather than deep critique and analysis; yet his intermittent use of jargon, as well as his frequent off-hand references to specialized critics and practitioners, suggests an informed readership. Given this tension, the best course of action may not be to evaluate The Expanding Art using either set of standards—the popular or the academic—but via the criteria Groensteen himself outlines for the project. In deliberate contrast to the popular ideation of beeline evolutionary progress, Groensteen—in a mere four pages of introductory matter—argues for a more nuanced conceptualization of flowering expansion within the comics field: a shrewd pivot from a linear trajectory of "progress," often associated with the overblown narrative of comics' "growing up," to an outward branching outgrowth. Rather than highlight texts which represent some imagined, recently acquired apex of the form, Groensteen instead posits an examination of works that have pushed comics in radically novel directions: "Each of these books has created an opening, achieved a breakthrough, offered a new narrative model, or taken up an emerging tendency and perfected it" (3). For instance, Groensteen argues that Dominique Goblet's Pretending Is Lying represents an expansion into the visual arts, while Chris Ware's Building Stories signals a move towards comics as a "book-art object" (4). Considering this alternative framework, it is surprising to note that the comics Groensteen ultimately selects—including Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, David B.'s Epileptic, and Craig Thompson's Habibi—could have been easily assembled using the model of progressive evolution he attempts to subvert, especially given that, for many, the "graphic novel" represents the most recent acme of the comics form. And indeed, for all his claims of expansion, Groensteen ultimately...

Alexander Girard, Architect: Creating Midcentury Modern Masterpieces by Deborah Lubera Kawsky

Alexander Girard, Architect: Creating Midcentury Modern Masterpieces by Deborah Lubera Kawsky

Heritage Agencies and the Conservation of Brazilian Modern Masterpieces: A Partial Report

Heritage agencies have been protecting modern architecture in Brazil since 1948, starting with Oscar Niemeyer’s Pampulha Chapel. So far 75 modern works have been listed mostly because of their artistic value. Listing prevents demolition. Unfortunately, it does not ensure proper conservation, and many interventions have disfigured works of architecture listed as modern masterpieces. Among those tolerated by the Brazilian heritage agencies, an early one is the roofing of the balconies of Oscar Niemeyer’s Ouro Preto Grand Hotel. Among those approved were the construction of theatres diverging from those designed but unexecuted at the time of the listing, and renovations associated with the introduction or updating of air conditioning systems. The former included one by Niemeyer himself, at his Ibirapuera Park complex, and another at Affonso Eduardo Reidy’s Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro. The latter included the Pampulha Dance Hall, two Ibirapuera Park Pavilions, and the Planalto Palace. The paper analyses these retrofits along with the restoration project of Reidy’s Pedregulho Housing Estate, and discusses the connections of the heritage agencies’ stands regarding these interventions with scientism and the traditions of the conservation field. It suggests a bias of the agencies toward affirmation of historical values and celebration of picturesque disorder, and defends the need for their reorientation towards affirmation of the modern compositional logic.

Foucault and Foucault: Following in Pierre Menard’s Footsteps

In his short story Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote, Borges describes the extraordinary and paradoxical feat of an imaginary 20th century French writer who recomposes, as it were, part of Cervantes’ early modern masterpiece. Borges’ duplication of the text of the Quijote is meant to give narrative shape to the acknowledgement that a text acquires different meanings in different epochs. This essay first sets Borges’ approach to the construction of the past within a lineage of authors, which harks back to Nietzsche and points to Foucauldian genealogies. It then renews the endeavour of Borges’ character Menard, as it reproduces significant portions of Foucault’s 1971 paper Nietzsche, la généalogie, l’histoire. Whilst the selections of the Foucauldian text are not simply rewritten, as they are given a new English translation, they are also recombined and reconsidered in the light of our contemporary cultural and political context, which underwent significant changes during the apparently short span of time that separates us from the composition of Foucault’s seminal work.

THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF KOSOVO “PJETËR BOGDANI” RAPID CONDITION ASSESSMENT AND DOCUMENTATION

Abstract. The National Library of Kosovo “Pjetër Bogdani” is a symbol of Prishtina, Kosovo and the quest for knowledge. It is simultaneously an icon of modernity and symbol of the past. Unfortunately, it suffered through the Kosovo war and neglect in times of economic difficulty. It was also unfortunately featured in the British newspaper The Telegraph in their travel section: “One of the world´s 30 ugliest buildings?” In late 2015 the Kosovo Architectural Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to spirit of creating and preserving unique architecture, became concerned with the reputation and condition of the Library and contacted the Kosovo Ministry of Culture, visited the site and initiated a project to raise awareness and document this modern masterpiece. The Getty Foundation and their Keeping it Modern grant program awarded funding for initial condition assessment, documentation, capacity building and investigations. This paper discusses the project to document and improve the image and awareness of this important structure and set priorities for its future.

FRBR 모형에 의한 중국어 서지레코드의 저작유형 분석 - 중국국가도서관을 중심으로 -

이 연구는 FRBR 모형의 저작개념에 의한 중국어 서지레코드의 저작유형을 분석하였으며, 중국국가도서관의 OPAC을 통해 "중국도서관분류법(中國圖書館分類法)" 22개 주류마다 100건씩 총 2,200건의 중국어 서지레코드를 무작위 추출하여 FRBR 모형의 저작유형별로 출현빈도를 조사하였다. 분석결과 중국어 서지레코드에 있어 FRBR 모형을 적용할 경우 유용할 것으로 예상되는 저작은 '단순저작'과 '복잡저작'을 합산한 18.6%로 나타났다. 서지적 관계가 일반적으로 복잡할수록 FRBR 모형의 유용성이 높다는 것이 사실이지만, 한 저작에 후속, 개정, 복제, 각색, 비평서 등과 같은 다양한 저작유형을 갖고 있는 저작은 주로 '마르크스-레닌주의'(A)에 소장된 여러 위인의 저작물과 '문학'(I)에 소장된 일부 고전작품, 현대명작 등에 한정되어 있다. 또한 FRBR 모형의 저작개념을 비평 등으로 확대 적용하려면 '군사'(E), '언어, 문자'(H), '문학'(I)과 '종합적 자료'(Z) 등에 우선적으로 적용하는 것이 보다 효과적인 것으로 나타났다. This study analysed work types of Chinese bibliographical records based on FRBR model to identify how many useful data there are in bibliographical records and how much difference in usefulness there is according to themes. For the purposes, the study randomly extracted samples of 2,200 Chinese books with 100 cases of 22 kinds from "Chinese Library Classification" through National Library of China's OPAC, targeting Chinese books collected by the National Library of China to analyse the work types of Chinese bibliographical records and their usefulness in application of the FRBR model according to themes and data types. The results are summarized as follows: Firstly, in applying the FRBR model for Chinese bibliographical records, 18.6% was considered as useful works for which simple work was added to complex work. Secondly, although it is a fact that usefulness is higher as bibliographical relations are more complex, only works by famous people collected in 'Marxism-Leninism'(A) and some classics and modern masterpieces collected in 'Literature'(I) have diverse versions of works such as sequels, revision, reproduction, adaptation, and critical books. However, if criticism, review, explanation and bibliographical introduction are included in specific subjects of 'Military'(E), 'Language and Words'(H), 'Literature'(I) and 'Comprehensive Book'(Z), it was clear that their usefulness is relatively high.

The glorious golden ratio

This title provides an utterly fascinating exploration of the Golden Ration, maths most intriguing and elegant phenomena. For centuries, mathematicians, scientists, artists and architects have been fascinated by a ratio that is ubiquitous in nature and commonly found across many cultures. From the ratio of certain proportions of the human body and the helical structure of DNA, to the design of Greek temples and modern masterpieces, the Golden Ratio is a key pattern that has wide-ranging and perhaps endless applications. What exactly is the Golden Ratio? How was it discovered? Where is it found? These questions and more are thoroughly explained in this fascinating and engaging tour of one of mathematics most interesting phenomena. Requiring no more than an elementary understanding of maths, this volume will give readers a new appreciation of the indispensible qualities and inherent beauty of mathematics.

Distancing Techniques in Fassbinder’s Effi Briest

Fontane’s ambiguity and complexity in his novel Effi Briest appealed to Fassbinder’s love of intricate social relations. Fontane presents Effi mainly in a restrained neutral manner although it can be argued that the author’s meta-voice adds some touches of subtle criticism. Fassbinder’s approach to Effi in his film of the novel is more distanced, critical and ironic. Clearly influenced by Brecht’s idea of “Verfremdung”, Fassbinder uses an array of distancing techniques in his film: voice-over narration, fades to white, short episodic scenes, captions, various “framing” devices, cool mannered acting, etc., to prevent empathy and to allow the viewers to draw their own conclusions in a calm detached manner. Although less avant-garde, provocative and extreme than much of his other work, Effi Briest remains a difficult film which challenges the viewer. Fassbinder’s film is radical more in terms of style than content—Effi fails to achieve her potential and cannot be considered a Brechtian heroine. Fassbinder has left us with a dense, richly layered modern masterpiece, far removed from undemanding Hollywood films with their easy empathy and escapism.

Yale Art Gallery

AbstractRarely does the first major work of an iconic architect face his last major work, in the same building type, open to the public, free of charge, and in excellent condition. Louis I Kahn's seminal, recently restored addition to the Yale University Art Gallery is just across Chapel Street from his Yale Center for British Art. Jayne Merkel describes the interiors of these mid‐20th‐century modern masterpieces and the recent Herculean efforts to return them to Kahn's intentions while making them suitable for the preservation, study and exhibition of art according to 21st‐century standards. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Taboo words in the contemporary Persian and Kurdish Novels (Bufakur, Hasar and Sagakani Bawkm) as example

Sociolinguistics is a field of contemporary linguistics that as a social phenomena and in term of social and culture study language. Sociolinguistics derives from linguistics and sociology, sociolinguistics is a branch of linguistics which study the role of social factors and study the language and its role on the culture and community. So, taboo is a part of language and its use belongs to the social factors. Literature and its productions as a source of community culture is under the role of community and its changes, it can be reflected in term of social situations, events and changes. Sadiq Hidayat wrote the most modern masterpiece of fiction in Iran. Blind owl was a tormented narrative, hopeless and paradox modernism. Every taboo word of this novel in sort of nightmare, sleep and alertness of Iranians people and it includes up side down of Iran history. Likely, (fence and my father's dogs) shows the patriarchy of Kurdish society and most of taboo words used by the men especially father. Hence these two masterpieces reflects the social and political situations of the period of the writers. The research use the descriptive and analysis method by going back of those works that done about both writers according to the comparative American school by the illustrating the most differences and similarities of these two novels which are religious, taboo and sex taboo.

Ideologies and the Corruption of Thought

Thirty-five years ago Joseph Gabel pub-lished a modern masterpiece, which in 1975 appeared in English as False Con-sciousness: An Essay on Reificalion . Combining his special knowledge of existential psychiatry, axiology, Marx-ism, and political history, Gabel pro-posed utterly novel idea that victims of serious mental disturbances (espe-cially paranoia and schizophrenia) re-produce those distorted thought pat-terns commonly associated with ideo-logical beliefs at collective level. Such beliefs initially had been laid bare in 1920s by Gabel's intellectual progenitors, Karl Mannheim and George Lukacs. Gabel's remarkable innovation was to transfer private crisis of mental collapse into analytic frame-work previously reserved for ideological critique, making him an expert on what was later called the micro-macro prob-lem. Ideologies and Corruption of Thought includes Gabel's essays over last 40 years, characteristically treating micro and macro theoretical matters simultaneously. Originally writ-ten in French and German, they have been recast in idiomatic English and bibliographically updated. Using a unique mode and vocabulary of analy-sis, Gabel offers theoretical investiga-tions of McCarthyism and Stalinism (original and more recent types), as well as Althusser, Orwell, and Jonathan Swift in his capacity as a psychiatric theorist. He also explores anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism, and a fascinating case study of a paranoid who regarded him-self as pope. In addition this volume includes a range of general commentar-ies on ideological thought, utopianism, and false consciousness. This rich feast of social and political analysis and theory illuminates a range of contemporary concerns--racism, Utopian fantasy, ethnocentrism, anti-Semitism, interplay of social struc-ture and mental illness, and ideological transformations of social life--which only Gabel's unique mixture of clini-cal and political could achieve. It will be studied with interest by all theo-rists and politically alert readers in social sciences, philosophy, and related fields of study.

Positive Theory and Voice and Equality

S idney Verba, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady (VSB) have concentrated scholarly attention on the inequality of political voice in America. Employing an innovative survey design that produced a novel data set of political activists, VSB demonstrate that activists and nonactivists have different sets of policy concerns and that different modes of participation send different messages to public officials. In short, the participatory process-which they argue is based on citizen resources, psychological engagement, and access to networks-is biased. More participatory equality would yield a different mix of policy messages to political leaders. We asked three senior scholars, who approach the problem of participation in America from different angles, to evaluate VSB's work. They declare Voice and Equality a modern masterpiece of political science and probe the best they can for weakness. John H. Aldrich emphasizes positive theory. He stresses the limits to assuming that all acts of political participation are part of the same theoretical universe and therefore to constructing a measure of the overall volume of participation. Aldrich argues that only a domain-specific approach to participation (e.g., elections, community action, interest-group politics) that focuses on an actor's goals and his or her interactions with other actors and institutions in the domain can explain why someone is an activist. Jane Mansbridge highlights normative theory. She observes that adversarial theories of democracy suggest that the inequality of participation matters because it affects the Who gets what? question, while participatory theories of democracy suggest that inequality matters because it affects the Who are we as citizens? question. Mansbridge argues that research must be concerned with both the distributive and educative effects of participation. Finally, Jennifer L. Hochschild stresses practical politics. For example, she notes the limits of VSB's finding that group identity is irrelevant to political activism. Hochschild proposes an empirical investigation of how group-specific factors (e.g., black consciousness) affect participation. In sum, the reviewers maintain that VSB's general theory of political participation in America must address contextually specific and historically disaggregated factors: particular goals and domains of political activity, the redefinition of political values that occurs during the political process, and group-level forces of identity and consciousness. In a rejoinder, VSB defend their work and yet graciously accept the many useful suggestions made by Aldrich, Mansbridge, and Hochschild. The discipline's ongoing research agenda should explore participation, representation, and democracy in America.