Realism In Art Research Articles

Ilya Glazunov: The Sacrificer of the National Spirit

The article explores the philosophical meaning of Ilya Glazunov’s paintings. The author states that the artist understood the art not as the aesthetic category, but through the idea of worship. The artist considered it his ultimate mission to bring Russian meanings back to the Russian people. Essentially, this entails overcoming our metaphysical groundlessness. This approach allows us to characterize the art of Ilya Glazunov as modern and even topical in the era of cultural and intellectual desolation. In this sense, the literalism of Glazunov’s images becomes the strong side of his works. The author of the article introduces the concept of the triptych of the Russian consciousness in the twentieth century, comprised of Mikhail Nesterov’s The Soul of the People, Pavel Korin’s Farewell to Rus and Ilya Glazunov’s Eternal Russia, and explores the idea of Holy Russia shared by these artists. In this connection, the author considers the philosophical meaning of the idea of the God-bearing people, sobornost’ and the diff erences between the Christian logic and the logic of the Antichrist. The author examines the artist’s attitude to avant-garde, realism and icon painting and explains why Ilya Glazunov preferred realism in art. While avant-garde images are apophatic and icon painting exists only within the church consciousness, realistic religious painting turns out to be a direct path to the perception relying on sobornost’. Special attention is paid to Ilya Glazunov’s illustrations of the works of classical Russian literature and his attitude to Fyodor Dostoevsky. The argumentation is entirely based on the analysis of Ilya Glazunov’s specifi c paintings.

Принцип индивидуальности в философии "бессознательного" (русские отклики на новинки немецкой мысли 1880-х гг.)

The article deals with the problem of the “individual spirit” (in the context of the“improvement” of mankind) as a counterpoint to Russian-German cultural ties. It is argued that in the historical circumstances of that time (the emergence of social revolutions and national liberation movements, the successes of natural science, critical realism in art and literature), the anthropological paradigm became the logical conclusion of the era of German classical philosophy. It is proved that the principle of individuality in the philosophy of the “unconscious” should be considered an application for a syncretic (synergistic) unification of the efforts of the humanities and natural sciences in the study of man and society. It is concluded that the obvious contribution of E. von Hartmann as a philosopher (a contemporary of both Feuerbach and Nietzsche) to the renewal of aesthetics, as well as the formation and development of psychiatry, demonstrates the reliability of his empirical experience in understanding the personality and nature of creativity.

Postcolonial vision of Yaroslav Pavlyuk’s novel “The Garden of Drunk Cherries”

The relevance of the article lies in the study of the problem of the lost generation in modern Ukrainian literature, which remains insufficiently studied in literary criticism. The subject of the research is Yaroslav Pavlyuk’s postmodern novel “The Garden of Drunk Cherries”, to which the methods of postcolonial theory are applied. In the analysis, a literary character with a bifurcated consciousness stands out. This is the type of person in whom the traditional Ukrainian self-consciousness is combined with the Soviet one. The main result of the study is to identify the specifics of Ukrainian national identity in the Soviet Union, which was hidden and not exposed to the public, and Soviet identity became a social mask that people wore so as not to differ from generally accepted social standards. The novelty of the results of the study helps to reveal the social mask, which in Soviet-era Ukraine was the Russian language, which people had to use at the official level. The dramatic conflict between the novel main character, who is the author’s alter ego, and the librarian Oresta, is accompanied by letters from the artist Borys Zhdanyuk and famous directors Andriy Tarkovsky and Sergiy Parajanov, whose emotions and thoughts reveal the real picture of the absence of individual and national freedom in the USSR. Using the examples of people of art, it is shown how the Soviet system destroyed dissent and traumatized creative personalities. The bifurcation of the creative personality in Soviet-era Ukraine often led vulnerable people to their degradation. Censorship, control of dissent, the imposition of socialist realism in art, and the threat of arrest have forced writers, artists, and directors to adapt to the system or become dissidents. The novel depicts characters who do not accept the official ideology, trying to save their private world from state interference. The results of the study have the prospect for further analysis of the work of individual writers and generations who have become a lost force and have not used the creative potential inherent in them.

The specifics of the formation and development of the artistic style of Mykola Malyshko (1961–1967)

The purpose of the article. The article identifies the main factors that influenced the formation and development of Mykola Malyshko’s artistic style in the context of the cultural and artistic processes of the 1960s. Methodology. The following scientific methods are combined: analytical, systematic, historico-cultural, contextual, comparative, and art analysis. The use of these methods allowed us to investigate the period of study of Mykola Malyshko at the Kyiv State Art Institute in 1961–1967, to outline the circle of communication of the artist, as well as to determine the characteristic features of his creative style. Scientific novelty. The work is the first fixation of unknown facts from the creative biography of Mykola Malyshko. Conclusions. During the studied period, Malyshko tries himself as an easel painter, monumental painter (mosaic), sculptor. After analyzing the currently existing information, namely «Svoboda, yak vyiavliaietsia, – tse volia dlia svavoli… : [besida Oleny Yehorushkinoi ta Pavla Hudimova z khudozhnykom M. O. Malyshko ta yoho druzhynoiu N. M. Denysovoiu], s. Maliutianka, Kyivskoi obl., 2012–2013 rr.», we can confidently assert that the main factors that influenced the formation and development of Mykola Malyshko’s artistic style in the 1960 s, were active participants in the activities of the club of creative youth «Suchasnyk» and attempts to move away from the methods of socialistic realism in art. This is clearly illustrated by: a mosaic portrait of T. G. Shevchenko made in 1961; exhibitions at the Taras Shevchenko Kiev State University 1963–1964; the development in 1967 of scenography on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of Les Kurbas, which he implemented together with colleagues Viktor Grigorov and Viktor Ponomarev during his studies at the Kiev State Art Institute and in sketches from summer student practice in 1962 and 1964,that the artist himself considers significant in the formation of personal creative style.

Three monumental murals for Baghdad: Data from Mahmoud Sabri, Shams al-Din Faris, Ahmed al Numan study years in the USSR in context

The first Iraqi undergraduate and postgraduate students to study monumental art came to Moscow in the early 1960s. Mahmoud Sabri (1927–2012) joined the Vasily Surikov Moscow State Academic Art Institute in 1960, Shams al-Din Faris (1937–83) and Ahmed al Numan (1939–2013) joined the Moscow State Stroganov Academy of Industrial and Applied Arts in 1961. In this article, I will address the subject of the graduation mural projects created by these three Iraqi artists within the ideological framework of socialist realism in art and art education in the USSR, and influenced also by their own historical and political environments. My aim is to answer various questions surrounding the historical framework of the murals, such as by whom, when, where and how they were created, why they became a manifestation of the students’ political and social experiences and hopes and why these grand projects were, unfortunately, never realized. Explaining the history of the artworks and artistic practice, I will argue that, as products of the final outcome of knowledge transfer at that time, these artworks are effectively documents of their era, responding to and reflecting their socio-historical contexts both in Iraq and in the USSR.

PAVEL FLORENSKY’S CONCEPT OF THE ICON

This article is an analysis of the concept of the icon as seen by Pavel Florensky, a priest, philosopher of religion, and theologian. He expressed his views on the art of icon painting in the articles The Church Ritual as a Synthesis of the Arts, Devotional Icons of St. Sergius of Radonezh, and Reverse Perspective, as well as his work Iconostasis. Florensky’s theory is of great interest for art history, contributing to it not only by highly evaluating Russian icons of the 14th and 15th centuries but also by offering a new approach to realism in art. Yet as his concept is complex, it is also controversial. Viewing the icon as a work of art and following Plato’s philosophy, Florensky believes the objective reality of the Realm of Ideas to be the basis of artistic creativity in general and icon painting in particular. According to him, the creation of art is not an artist’s subjective search for the ways of self-expression but the result of the soul’s ascent to the truth, the world of prototypes. The icon reflects divine reality and is thus realistic in nature. Highly evaluating the icon painting in the 14–15 century Russia, he believes Andrei Rublev’s Holy Trinity to be an art masterpiece. However, developing his concept, Florensky discards the term “image”: for him, the icon is merely a symbol pointing to the prototype. The artistic image is born in the artist’s soul and exists independently from the icon, and can then be born in the soul of the beholder, who is guided to the prototype by the symbol. This is how the icon, as a result of artistic creation, is reproduced in the person viewing it. Florensky underlines the importance of aesthetics in assessing an icon, for a work’s artistic perfection is inseparable from its ability to testify to the prototype, and beauty is measured with the truthfulness of this testimony. Yet by acknowledging the fact that all icons created according to the canon are of the same value, he renounces the artistic criterion and makes the masterpieces of icon painting equal to many other artworks of average quality. For Florensky, the icon is an integral part of a synthetic work of art – the church ritual – and its existence as an art phenomenon is dependent on certain conditions: if these are not met, it “dies” as art.

Fantastic, Spirits, Pseudo-Science and Risorgimento in Nineteenth-Century Italian Narrative: The Case of Tarchetti's A Dead Man's Bone

This paper aims to study the Italian ghost story entitled A Dead Man's Bone, included in Tarchetti's Fantastic Tales (1869) to illustrate, by means of this specific case, both the way and the purpose of the reception of the Gothic and Fantastic in Italian narrative. For this reason, it is necessary to frame the textual analysis within the historical and cultural coordinates of the post-Unification years, in order to, first of all, clarify the fact that the operation ought to be evaluated in a specific ideological and compositional context rather than from a thematic point of view. In this regard, the study of A Dead Man's Bone intends to highlight that the most relevant outcomes of Tarchetti's rewriting of a ghost story by Théophile Gautier have to be appreciated as the opening for new experiments in narrative forms which root in a rapidly changing situation and, nurtured by the disillusionment of the post-unification years. Moreover, the author's use of codes and conventions of a specific subgenre of modern Fantastic, such as the ghost story, is also related with his direct involvement in pseudoscientific movements as Mesmerism and Spiritism. It goes without saying that the author's effort to innovate narrative forms is meant to convey a personal interpretation of the present by means of a new kind of realism in art.

Реалистическая живопись как культурный феномен: научная рефлексия, музейные практики, культурные индустрии

The article is devoted to the dynamics of realism as a cultural paradigm in Russia’s visual arts. Realism in Russian visual arts is a vibrant phenomenon of contemporary culture. The study indicates a correlation between a research interest in realism in visual arts and social context. The article explores the forms of realism in fine art in the museum space. A realistic painting is a significant part of the cultural heritage. It creates the visual range of the exhibition space and unites the country’s museums thematically. The article discusses the marketing trends in realism in visual arts. Realistic paintings are part of both the elite and mass art market. The article provides reasons for the popularity of realism in visual arts in modern popular culture, namely, in cultural industries. Popular culture actively exploits the potential of the realistic painting — the popularity of the artist’s name, the clarity of the visual image, the richness of references to human experience, i. e. childhood memories, illustrations in school textbook, memories of expositions in the country’s leading museums. The study identified the most stable trends in domestic research of realism in Russia’s visual arts (art history, aesthetics, sociology of culture, cultural studies). The subject of discussion is the definition of realism in art. Theorists of art tend to supplement the basic term “realism” with definitions that shift the emphasis and add nuances to the interpretation of realism. The article also highlights the expansion of the field of research in humanities.

СОЦІАЛІСТИЧНИЙ ГУМАНІЗМ І РЕАЛІСТИЧНІ ТЕНДЕНЦІЇ В МИСТЕЦТВІ У НАУКОВІЙ СПАДЩИНІ ВОЛОДИМИРА АНТОНЕНКА

In the article is considered the ideas of ukrainian philosophy of soviet period V. Antonenko, and so the influence of the ideology of that time on the formation of the scientific worldview of the scientist is analyzed. Theoretical reconstruction of V. Antonenko's views on socialist humanism is carried out, principles of which he shows as the highest form of humanism, contrasting the anti-humanist essence of Christian preaching "love of neighbor" and depicts socialist reality as a practical embodiment of true humanistic ideas. Analyzed of views V. Antonenko on art the socialistic realism, which is presented as the highest stage in the development of progressive world art. The scientist traces the origin of art, explains how it was brought to life, what contribution religion has made to its best achievements. V. Antonenko explores the anti-religious and anti-church orientation of the works of many representatives of fine arts. He is analyzing the views of idealist aesthetics and theologians on art. V. Antonenko thoroughly researches the stages of development of humanism, traces its social and cultural movement, which arose in the XIV century. in Italy; studies the humanistic ideas of the leading figures of the Renaissance, who found their further development in the works of the ideological predecessors of the French Revolution of the XVIII century; explores the humanistic ideas of the utopian socialists of the nineteenth century; studies the period of development of Ukrainian and Russian art in the period of radical destruction of old traditions and the influence of religious ideology on their formation; considers a whole galaxy of outstanding artists of the second half of the nineteenth century, who glorified culture and began to speak a new about art as a higher product of human genius, about the principles of realism in art. V. Antonenko's research on the relationship between art and other forms of social consciousness, which are related to the problems of forming norms and principles of communist morality, is analyzed.

Requiem for a Dream: Drug aesthetics in audiovisual processes

Abstract Requiem for a Dream is an engaging three-act narrative presenting a sensorial take on the decaying experience of addiction. Using highly subjective representations of reality tainted by what can be refer to as a drug aesthetics, the second feature film directed by Darren Aronofsky is a four-way first-person account that revolves around Harry, a drifting young man who dreams of being successful, Sara, a widow who dreams of being on television, Marion, a psychotherapy patient who dreams of becoming independent, and Tyrone, an orphan who dreams of making his mother proud. Although there is not one single protagonist, Harry is the pivot figure connecting the four subjects: Sara is his mother, Marion is his girlfriend and Tyrone is his friend and business partner. The film is constructed with short alternating scenes of each character, merging its enunciation with these four individuals’ inner voices to depict how drugs – both prescribed and illegally acquired – affect their consciousness as they fall into addition. Requiem for a Dream can be placed in a category of drug movies that aim to explore the internal effects of substances as their main subject matter. Instead of dealing with historical or sociological aspects, it explores the highly subjective representations of the world tainted by what can be referred to as the aesthetics of drugs. Deriving from Elsaesser‘s definition of productive pathology (2009: 24–30), this article proposes to explore how audiovisual narratives, in dealing with altered and sensorial states of the mind, can amplify the possibilities of storytelling. In other words, how internally focalized drug movies expand the aesthetics possibilities of realism in film, playing with subversive uses of language while still sustaining a verisimilar discourse. The analysis will take two paths. First, based on the assumption that there is no objective access to the physical world except through subjectivity, the initial part of this article will present a reflection on the dichotomy of reality and illusion, proposing a new alternative by taking the perceptive alterations caused by drugs as a starting point to convey how social structures and morality play a definitive role in our understanding of realism in art. Secondly, approaching specifically the idea of drug aesthetics, the article will consider how audiovisual representation is affected when the subjective point of view is of a character with an altered state of mind. Exploring the mechanics used to translate the effects of drugs on consciousness into filmic form, Requiem for a Dream will be studied as an example of applying unorthodox methods of narration to expand an audience’s experience of a subject matter beyond dramatic storytelling and into a sensorial perception of the universe of mental stimulators.

VIEWING THE CONCEPT OF REALISM IN ART THROUGH THE FACT OF WAR

VIEWING THE CONCEPT OF REALISM IN ART THROUGH THE FACT OF WAR

The programmable hexapod

The Gough-Stewart platform (GSP) is a variable strut, programmable octahedral hexapod that uses six computer-controlled linear actuators to support a moveable base. These devices have been developed for a wide range of commercial uses including flight and vehicle simulators, high-precision tools, mining machines and medical instruments including programmable external fixators. The prototype hexapod external was introduced in France in 1986 and improvements in component design and computer algorithms have broadened the clinical repertoire of these devices. An increase in the number of available systems is expected in the next 18 months, owing to the expanding indications for this technology, in addition to termination of long standing patent arrangements and the associated commercial imperatives. These versatile platforms have clinical applications in acute fracture fixation; deformity surgery and limb salvage and provide an attractive combination of flexibility and ease of application. Contemporary orthopaedic practice is illustrated by two-dimensional radiological images, presented in standard anteroposterior and medio-lateral orthogonal planes. These are simplified ‘two axis’ representations of complex three-dimensional objects. It would not be possible to use an automated device to predictably reconstruct a deformed bone without the ability to mathematically describe the positions of the individual components. Pythagoras (c.570 BCE – c.495 BCE) and Euclid (c.300 BCE) are credited with defining the fundamentals of 2D and 3D geometry, and this was refined by Appolonius (c.262 BCE – c. 190 BCE), who anticipated Cartesian geometry by 1800 years. Pappus (c. A.D. 290 – c. 350) introduced a formalised approach to this area of mathematics and described a form of geometry that was not based on the concept of distance. This began with the study of the relationship between points and lines in 2D space and developed into the discipline of projective geometry. The introduction of realism in art in the Italian Renaissance relied on …

Art and Imperfection: Zola's L'Œuvre

Critics have long highlighted the impossible ambitions of Zola's search for realism in art. This article argues that in L'Œuvre, Zola acknowledges the inevitable failures of large-scale artworks to depict broad subjects accurately. Yet, he counterbalances these aesthetic flaws by stressing the ability of small-scale works or sections of larger works to offer accurate depictions of slices of life or of the human body. Zola, in effect, emphasizes the successes of the naturalist project of depicting life as accurately as possible, mediated through an artist's perspective, in fragments and admirables morceaux. Rather than signs of failure, these worthy fragments are reasons to celebrate. Concurrently, he points to inevitable flaws in realistic depictions of life to urge artists to leave their aesthetic labors, if only briefly, to experience myriad facets of life so as to gain a fuller understanding of the complexity of their subject, the world around them.

Sticking to the “Factual.” Man Ray’s Le Retour à la raison (1923), Marcel Duchamp’s Anémic cinéma (1924–26) and Peter Tscherkassky’s Dream Work (2001)

The present article seeks to show that, for the Dadaists, film was an unsatisfying medium because as a technically reproduced artifact it counteracted Dada’s sense of immediacy. The focus of my text revolves around the notion of “facticity” inspired by Wieland Herzfelde, for whom Dada represented a reaction to all attempts at disavowing the “factual.” Manifestations of Dada, such as the readymade, live performance, collage, photomontage and not least the photogram, attest to a radically new understanding of realism in art, adhering to an “anti-mimetic concept of realism” (Elsaesser). As I will argue, Dada did not capitulate to film, but made a ‘compromise,’ by exploring different strategies to reinsert the “factual“ into this medium of reproduction. This could be done by (1) turning a screening into a live performance, (2) eliciting a bodily reaction in the spectator, (3) experimenting with hand-made, camera-less devices of film making, and (4) calling to mind the material existence of the cinematic apparatus. What these strategies have in common is to minimalize (although not necessarily to abolish) the distance between “reality” and its representation in order to maintain film’s initial tactility, as described by Walter Benjamin in “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Man Ray’s Le Retour à la raison (1923) and Marcel Duchamp’s Anémic cinéma (1924–26) are prototypes of the Dadaist ‘compromise.’ A similar impetus can be found in a more recent example, Dream Work (2001), the third part of Peter Tscherkassky’s CinemaScope-Trilogy, which explicitly refers to the early days of French experimental film. What these three films, despite their differences, have in common, is to privilege a certain immediacy (be it during the moment of production or during the moment of reception) and to include an element of tactility, usually absent from cinematic works.

Profondeur de champ in Jean Renoir’s The Golden Coach

ARTIFICE IN DEPTH: THE EVOLUTION OF PROFONDEUR DE CHAMP IN JEAN RENOIR'S THE GOLDEN COACH The ideal response to the problem posed by colour is to completely avoid […] the vérité extérieure and work entirely in studio décor. [… ] The vérité intérieure is often hidden behind a purely artificial environment.(1)- Jean Renoir […] Realism in art can only be achieved through artifice.(2)- André Bazin The Golden Coach (1953), filmed in the aftermath of Renoir's American experience and the production of The River, can appear somewhat anomalous within the context of his career: the deep, singular hues of the Indian environment and the British family's residence in The River (1951 [cf. Figs. A - B]) are sacrificed for the multicoloured commedia dell'arte costumes worn by Camilla and the rest of the theatre troupe....

NRJ Book Reviews: Journalism and Realism: Rendering American Life

NRJ Book Reviews Thomas B. Connery, Journalism and Realism: Rendering American Life (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2011) 281 pages, $24.95 (paperback).Review by Joe HaydenIf you love literature, you are well aware of the affinity between the realm of letters and that of the press, between authors and journalists-or what used to be called bookmen and newsmen. You probably noticed in college that most of America's great novelists, for example, spent time as newspaper reporters or editors and sometimes gravitated back toward their earlier profession and occasionally did both at the same time. Perhaps it is not surprising that writers experiment with genres and careers as they grope their way in the literary marketplace, to use Christopher Wilson's phrase from The Labor of Words. One's occupation is seldom accidental.More elusive than vocation, however, is the actual stuff of those livelihoods- the content, the functionality, the art. And this is Thomas B. Connery's contribution in Journalism and Realism. He is tracing thread shared by belles-lettres and beat writing alike. The thread is realism, and its tapestry spans both fiction and non-fiction, words and pictures, high-brow and kitsch.Connery's synthesis examines the development of this motif, a paradigm of actuality (p. 9), that wasn't just confined to literature but permeated the nation's entire culture. This intellectual history offers no new characters or works, but it does strive to show the connections between them and also to explain how news writing in particular nurtured them. While an assertion that his study validates journalism's essential role in fostering the realistic sensibility is overstated because it's too lightly argued, there's no question that this is indeed an important etiological quest with tantalizing evidence for his thesis.The author acknowledges early on that proclamations about realism in art or are inherently risky because they are so subjective and relative. But he insists that there was a shift during the nineteenth nineteenth century in the focus and nature of American cultural forms of expression of all types, that the new paradigm can be defined by focus on the actual and real, on people, events, and details that are verifiable and based on observation and experience (p. 14).According to Connery, the penny press exerted seminal influence on this style by emphasizing news-gathering and providing frequent factuality. James Gordon Bennett's famous inquiry into the death of prostitute is case in point. However lurid and sensationalistic, the New York Herald's stories broke new ground in aggressively going after the truth. The firsthand reporting combined with descriptive writing was significant push into that different direction (p. 34).Two dabblers in this still-nascent movement were supposedly Walt Whitman and George G. Foster-flâneurs, the French word for idlers or strollers, who wrote about the people, places, and events they encountered on their sojourns. But Whitman is not neat fit for this analysis, perhaps placed in the chapter alongside Foster for his life and legacy more than his writing. Even his wasn't especially marked by fact-laden narratives but by broader cultural interpretations. In many respects, says Connery, Whitman's writing/ reporting is an early, rough, and unfinished version of early literary journalism (p. 49). Foster, however, is an excellent prototype. His recollections of ordinary people ring with authenticity, while his savory descriptions of market fare read like something out of folk-foodie blog.Throughout Foster's writing, as well as that of subsequent realists, is recurring dialectic with romanticism and idealism. Few writers of the 19th century wrote wholly in one style or the other but normally blended the two instead. …

Realist Aesthetics in Nineteenth-Century Russian Art Writing

SEER,Vol. 83, No.4, October 2005 Realist Aesthetics in NineteenthCentury Russian Art Writing CAROLADLAM I 'REALISM' is among the most frequentlyinvoked critical categories in accounts of nineteenth-centuryRussian culturalactivity, particularly, of course, in the literaryfield. In many accounts of Russian painting, too, 'realism'is widely understoodas a definitivemoment in the entire historyof Russian art. It is commonly associatedwith the secession of fourteen students from the St PetersburgImperialAcademy of Art.in i863 in protest at a lack of freedom of choice concerning the subject matter for that year's prestigiousGreat Gold Medal competition, and their subsequent formation of the Artel' svobodnykh khudozhnikov (Free Artists' Workshop), as well as with the Moscow-based Tovarishchestvoperedvizhnykhvystavokproizvedenii russkikhkhudozhnikov (Associationof Itinerant Exhibitions), establishedin I870, whose members included such renowned and influential artists as Ivan Kramskoi, Isaak Levitan, Il'ia Repin, Valentin Serov, and Vasilii Surikov,among many others.In many instancesthe role of 'realism'in Russian art history is fraught with particular significance not just as aesthetic response to a flagging and supposedly derivative classicist aestheticsystembut, firstand foremost,as symbolof Russia'stransition fromfeudalautocracyto modern state. This articleseeksto acknowledgethehistoriographicalcircumstances of this perception of realism in Russian art, as well as to refine and expand our understanding of the emergence and application of 'realism' in Russian art (particularlypainting) by exploring the prehistory of the concept in contemporaneous written art criticism between the mid-eighteenth century and the I87os. To this encl I examine the developmentinpublictextualdiscourseof a setofconcepts that might be said to be cognates of 'realism',insofaras they concern technical and aesthetic issues of visual figurativerepresentation,such as the constitutionof natureand the 'real',the role of copying, and the renderingof detail. Such (necessarilyselective)elements comprisepart of a history of 'proto-realist'thought in Russia itself a significant Carol Adlam is Lecturer in Russian and Head of the Department of Russian at the University of Exeter. CAROL ADLAM 639 component of a far larger exploration of understandingsof the visual in pre-revolutionaryRussianculturethatremainsto be written. The history of such 'proto-realist'visual concepts has been largely obscuredby a numberoffactors, some ofwhich maybroadlybe termed 'historiographic'. The idea that 'realism' constituted an unrivalled visual expressionof the acutely contested liberal-democraticpolitics of the era from the time of the accession of the 'reformist'tsarAlexander II in I855 may be at leastin part attributedto Russia'smost influential nineteenth-centurycriticVladimirStasov(i 824- I906), and in particular his magnum opusof I89I, a retrospective survey of Russian art entitledDvadtsat' piat'letrusskogo iskusstva (TwentyFiveYearsof Russian Art). In this work Stasov consistentlyapplied the term 'realism'to the works he had earlier preferred, with some occasional exceptions, to describeas 'naturalist',noting that 'realism'and 'nationalism'were the two defining features of the 'new' art in the post-Nicholas era.' Thus for Stasovin i 882, 'realism'was the quintessentiallyRussian,emphatically 'national'artthat appearedonce Alexanderhad (asStasovputs it in his characteristicallyflamboyant idiom) 'lifted the tombstone from the sepulchrein which Russialay buried alive', while Russianworksof art before I855, with the exception of Pavel Fedotov's,were the mere 'huts' to the 'real palace and temple of the future national Russian museum' that was the new art.2In earlier writings, however, Stasov rarelyusedthe term'realist',preferringinsteadto speakof the 'new art' or the 'nationalschool'. This is despitethe factthat all Stasov'swritings on art post-date the appearance of Gustave Courbet's 'Realist Manifesto ' in i855, and his travels abroad exposed him to this movement (witnesshis tripto the WorldExhibitionin i 862).3 Stasov'sretrospectiveapplicationof the term in Dvadtsat' piat'letwas in fact an indicator of the specificchallenge faced in the artisticworld by the last two decades of the nineteenth centuryby the emergence of the programmaticallyapoliticalartistswho, mutatis mutandis, viewed the 'mutineers' of the i86os and I87os as ideologically and aesthetically 1 Vladimir Stasov, 'Dvadtsat' piat' let russkogo iskusstva. Nasha zhivopis'. Nasha skul'ptura. Nasha arkhitektura. Nasha muzyka' [I882-83], in V. V. Stasov, Izbrannye sochineniia v trekhtomakh,vol. 3, ed. P. T. Shipunov, Moscow, 1952, pp. 391-568 (p. 415) (hereafter, Stasov, vol. 3). 2 Ibid., p. 392. 3 For example, Stasov discusses genre painting but not realism in art even when he advocates the depiction of 'scenes of everyday life', in his defence of Dutch and Belgian genre painting, or in his attacks on the 'advocates...

A Brief Exploration of Neurological Art History

The invention of realistic portraiture to reveal "inner life" is attributed by some art historians to Jan van Eyck who worked in Flanders from 1420 onwards. We show, using clinical neurological examination of the gold mask of Agamemnon dating from 1550-1500 BC and of the portraits of Henry III and his son Edward I - important English royals - painted between 1216 and 1307, that realistic portraits were made well before the 15th Century. Thus artists unwittingly used neurology as part of their realistic approach to the presentation of the face. Because neurological diagnosis is often visual, neurology, in turn, has a rich potential to unveil examples of realism in art. We consider the art pieces examined here also pertinent to art historians, as they assess the role of art in documenting history.

Self and History: A Tribute to Linda Nochlin

A number of prominent art historians pay homage to Linda Nochlin, the pioneering critic and art historian, in a series of essays addressing the intersection of subjectivity and history. Topics include: 18th-century erotic architecture; Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro; and realism in art.

‘Fides et Ratio’, articles 64–79

Two things ought to be said at the outset. The first is that it is an event of some significance far beyond the confines of Catholicism that the Bishop of Rome should address his fellow bishops on matters of the relationship of theology and philosophy. Whatever else we may say about the document before us, it emerges from a style of church leadership which refuses to absolve itself from the task of addressing questions of the intellectual articulation of the faith. Thereby it (quite properly) asks us some hard questions about those modem conventions whereby serious intellectual work is thought to be properly located only in the open fields of free enquiry (that is, in the institution of the university) and not in the cramped domestic culture of the church. I wonder if what has made some academics cross about Fides et Ratio is that the document refuses to stay behind the sanitary cordon with which institutions of higher learning sometimes surround themselves in order to protect their interests.That is the first thing to be said. The second is this: it’s a pity that an episcopal judgment on these issues doesn’t do a better job of staking its claims. Partly it’s a matter of style: at times the document adopts the threateningly paternalistic tone of communications from the Kremlin in the 1940s and 1950s, urging Socialist realism in art or music: not the sort of thing to provoke thinkers to do their best work, so much as a summons to produce the goods to an officially-approved set formula.