Style Of Realism Research Articles

A Sociological Analysis of the Satanic Verses Affair

Bourdieu's work on modern cultural production has certain omissions. It fails to raise the possibility that authors such as Salman Rushdie, either writing from peripheral nations or from powerless minorities within a powerful nation, might be called `heroic modernists'. This would differentiate them from the routinized form of late 20th-century modernist avantgardism, which operates within the logic of the laws of the `restricted literary field' and contributes inadvertently to social reproduction rather than transformation. The argument of the article provides grounds for seeing Rushdie as such a `heroic modernist'. The structural location for contemporary `heroic' modernism is linked to the particular position the writer occupies as a stranger or migrant. However, it is proposed that even writing such as Rushdie's, deriving as it does from the political good intentions of the radical, is constrained to establish itself within a highly competitive cultural field. The article asks whether the `double rupture' of the Verses - a rupture both with the bourgeois bestselling novel and with popular forms - is not the main source of those social contradictions on which the writer himself came to be so impaled. Not the least among such contradictions is the imperative for the purpose of literary distinction of the refusal of a traditional realist style, which led the author towards an ironic iconoclasm: a comic grotesque mode of subverting of the sacred.

Resisting Convention: The Films of Joe Comerford

RESISTING CONVENTION: THE FILMS OF JOE COMERFORD JERRY WHITE Throughout his career, filmmaker Joe Comerford has fiercely challenged mainstream ideas about Irish selfhood. Juxtaposed with the images of Ireland that have filled film screens until the 1960s, Comerford’s work is assertively anti-romantic and offers a rigorously anti-colonial critique of the “New Ireland.” In his treatment of landscape, for example, Comerford eschews traditional preoccupation with the picturesque—with the conventional iconographic project of making Ireland look beautiful, or, alternately, harsh and rugged. His unstable landscapes connote danger and anxiety rather than beauty or grandeur. Further, his work explicitly concerns itself with those on the margins: drug addicts, the desperately poor of Dublin, traveling people, gay men, and criminals on the run. This concern with the periphery breaks down essentialist ideas such as fíor ghael or the “Celtic Tiger,” and interrogates Ireland’s confrontation of its postcolonial future. Drawing on a wide variety of visual and narrative strategies , Comerford intentionally offers “imperfect” solutions to the problem of representation raised by modern Irish culture. In fact, the notion of imperfection itself figures prominently in the debates into which Comerford hurls himself. CONTEXT Although Comerford participates in a blossoming indigenous motion picture community that seeks to correct conventional visualizations of Ireland , his work stands apart from much of the recent Irish cinema receiving international attention. Comerford’s densely constructed films, which should be viewed in both a national and international context, offer contradictory mixtures of narrative, political, and avant-garde strategies. Echoing both the French New Wave and the Third Cinema movement, they combine traditional narrative with techniques that undermine illusionistic realism. THE FILMS OF JOE COMERFORD 134 Comerford aggressively avoids Hollywood’s1 choice to subsume both formal innovation and explicit ideology to the demands of realism. His work is unusual not only because it is confrontational or anti-authoritarian , both formally and politically, but because it clearly chooses to be so. These films distinguish themselves from popular cinema by asserting themselves as ideological representations. Whereas most of Comerford’s films have a narrative drive,2 complete with a beginning, a middle, and an end, he never bypasses formal and political concerns in favor of an obsessive focus on narrative linearity and closure. Neither entirely avant-garde nor entirely conventional, his work has an ambiguous relationship with dominant models of cinema. To some extent, Comerford’s films evoke French New Wave productions of the 1950s and 1960s; his 1988 Reefer and the Model, especially, recalls the cinema of Jean-Luc Godard. Innovative French filmmakers were deeply, albeit self-consciously, influenced by Hollywood, and Comerford ’s derivative relationship with Hollywood is similarly complex. His first feature, Traveler, draws on elements of the Hollywood road movie; Reefer and the Model on the heist film; and High Boot Benny, on the boarding school melodrama. In each case, though, like his French colleagues of the fifties and sixties, Comerford radically transforms the conventions he exploits in ways quite specific to his own national and historic condition. The concept of “Third Cinema” is equally important in understanding Comerford’s films. First appearing in a fiery and idealistic manifesto (“Hacia un Tercer Cine,” or “Towards a Third Cinema”) by Argentine Fernando Solanas and Spaniard Octavio Gettino,3 the term stresses skepticism toward illusionistic/realist narrative. Solanas and Gettino assert THE FILMS OF JOE COMERFORD 135 1 The term “Hollywood” should not be taken to mean films made only in Hollywood, California, but films made in a realist style, produced in an explicitly commercial framework, and generally fulfilling a schema outlined in David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson’s seminal text, The Classical Hollywood Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986). 2 Exceptions to this would be his short experimental films Withdrawal (1974), a nonnarrative portrayal of the tormented psyche of a drug addict, or Waterbag (1984), which deals with a woman who has just had an abortion. These films are not discussed in this article, which is restricted to Comerford’s features, or in the case of the fifty-one-minute Down the Corner, his featurette. 3 Published in the Cuban journal Tricontinental in 1969, the essay first appeared in English in Cineaste 4:3...

Russian Jewish artists in a century of change, 1890-1990

With the break-up of the Soviet Union, countries and cultures under Soviet control opened up to the West. In the past few years, as information has begun to flow more freely, art historians have found themselves having to re-examine subjects in the light of newly accessible information. Nowhere is this situation more apparent than in the study of Jewish artists in Russia. Until recently, books and catalogues written in the West have concentrated on work done by Russian Jewish artists in exile. Now, for the first time, an international group of scholars has been assembled to address the last hundred years of art produced by Jews living in Russia itself. Under Tsarist rule, Jews were confined to communities within the Pale of Settlement, and those interested in pursuing artistic careers were educated locally or found that opportunities to attend urban academies were severely limited. Nonetheless, a significant Jewish presence existed on the Russian art scene before the Revolution. Having suffered persecution and circumscribed professional opportunities for decades, many Jewish artists welcomed the Revolution and threw themselves into the task of building the new Communist society. With the lifting of sanctions on Jews, many found jobs in the new Soviet bureaucracy of culture or as influential teachers, designers, and photographers. Some, like El Lissitszky, became world-famous members of the Russian avant-garde. With the advent of Stalin, the eternal political game played by Russian governments with ethnic minorities took another diabolical turn. Many Jews who had attained positions of responsibility became victims of Stalin's purges. Some survived, adopting the officially sanctioned Socialist Realist style; others emigrated. Beginning in the Khruschev years, the Russian underground gradually gained momentum. Jewish artists, who played an essential role in keeping unofficial art alive, worked solely for themselves or exhibited in their own apartments. Nonetheless, the political tide turned slowly. Today, the new openness between Russia and the West has made it possible for the work of these individuals to be set against a narrative of tragedy and transcendence stretching back over many years. Given the present state of research, this text purposely proposes more questions than it answers. An historical overview by historian Michael Stanislawski is followed by seven essays by an international roster of art historians who address, in chronological sequence, the difficult, frequently uplifting history of Jewish art in Russia in the modern period. Essays are contributed by Ziva Amishai-Maisels, John E. Bowit, Boris Groys, Victor Misiano, Aleksandra Shatskikh, Michael Stanislawski and Seth L. Wolitz.

Japanese College Students' Thinking Styles

The Inquiry Mode Questionnaire by Harrison and Bramson was administered to 58 Japanese college students in the USA to measure their thinking styles. The analysis showed that these Japanese students scored higher on the idealist, analyst, and pragmatist styles than on the realist and synthesist styles. It was also observed that the 9 junior and 34 senior students scored as more idealistic than the 15 sophomores, and the 44 men scored higher than the 14 women on the synthesist style. A positive correlation was found between academic achievement (GPA) and scores on the analyst style. Negative correlations obtained between academic achievement and scores on the synthesist style and among scores on the thinking styles.

Further validation of the Revised Inquiry Mode Questionnaire.

The 1988 revised version of the Inquiry Mode Questionnaire by Harrison and Bramson was administered to 216 nursing students in the post-RN baccalaureate programs at two universities. The first purpose was to validate further this measure of relative preference in forced-choice format for five main ways of thinking, Synthesist, Idealist, Pragmatist, Analyst, and Realist. Significant differences among thinking styles on analysis of variance with repeated measures supported the tests's predictive validity. There were negative intercorrelations (≥ – 0.40) between opposing styles such as Synthesist/Pragmatist, Synthesist/Realist, Pragmatist/Analyst, and Idealist/Realist. Ninety percent (81 of 90 items) were significant in discriminating among the styles of thinking. The second purpose to ascertain whether nurses show a particular thinking-style preference was confirmed. Nurses in this study preferred the Idealist (37.5%), Realist (36.1%), and Analyst (31%) styles of thinking.

Tsars and Commissars: W. Somerset Maugham, Ashenden and Images of Russia in British Adventure Fiction, 1890-1930

W. Somerset Maugham is well-known for, among his other literary pursuits, being one of the originators of modern spy fiction. His novel Ashenden: or the British Agent (1928) is one of the classics of this “genre.” However, what is not appreciated is the fact that Ashenden is also important in other contexts, particularly both for an understanding of modern literary images of Russia and for an appreciation of Maugham’s own ideas about the nature of realism. Throughout the nineteenth century, Russia was one of the most important settings for British adventure — including spy — fiction. In a wide range of popular novels dealing with future wars, anarchists and international espionage, Russia was portrayed as a vast, sprawling land governed in a semi-feudal fashion. The Russian people were oppressed by their government and backwards in their mentality, but possessed of a certain otherworldliness exemplified by the so-called “Russian soul.” Russia was seen as a police state, whose citizens (and any foreigners unlucky enough to transgress against the unreasonable laws of the autocracy) might at any time be arrested, tortured, and exiled to the wastes of Siberia. Ashenden, it is argued here, strove to destroy many of these images of Russia, and particularly the mysticism surrounding the “Russian soul.” Maugham poked fun at the Russia portrayed in popular fiction in order to create a more realistic, less melodramatic style of adventure fiction. Equally, he used this technique as a vehicle to promote his own style of realism, a style in direct contrast to such pillars of “Russian” literature as Turgenev and Dostoevsky. By attacking the images of Russia that appeared in popular British adventure fiction — images often derived from serious Russian literature — Maugham was attacking the literary basis of the latter.

Vitrail civil et décoration intérieure à Lyon au début du XXe siècle : Auguste Morisot

Non-religious stained-glass and interior decoration in Lyons at the beginning of the twentieth century : Auguste Morisot. Auguste Morisot (1857-1951) was born at Seurre (Côte-d’Or) and was present in Lyons from 1876 on. He attended the art school there in order to become a designer for the Lyons silk industry. His original character led him, in 1886, to join a mission of exploration in the valley of the Orinoco, an adventure from which he returned with numerous drawings and water-colours. The author of the present article examines Morisot’s artistic activities as a decorator, particularly in the interior decoration of the town house at Lyons belonging to Monsieur Neyron de Champollon, owner of the Rasurel firm. This commission involved all the interior decoration, woodwork and furniture included. But the artist’s career is most remarkable in the field of the stained-glass pieces — both for churches and for civil settings — which he created between 1898 and 1919. The evolution of Morisot’s style here is interesting. He seems to hesitate between an early style of realism and intimism, dear to the artists of the end of the century, and one of decorative abstraction, foreshadowing Art Deco. This is the style which finally predominates. The study of the archives of the stained-glass workshop of Nicod where Morisot worked shows the importance of the role of the cartoon designer in the process of producing a stained-glass window, a role which is often ignored by historians. The interior decoration of the house of Neyron de Champollon, between 1902 and 1907, is typical of French Art Nouveau, where the decoration is conceived as a whole but is still decidedly artisanal in its realisation and far removed from any ideology of a social art.

Formulating the Ideal American Worker: Public Responses to Constantin Meunier's 1913-14 Exhibition of Labor Imagery

THE AMERICAN WORKER was foremost on minds of reformers, legislators, and public in first two decades of twentieth century. Organized labor, representing skilled craftsman, had gained in numbers and political power, while immigration had swelled ranks of unskilled labor pool. Labor strife was rampant as business countered political gains of workers. Such terms as the labor problem and wars appeared commonly in popular literature. Progressive-era reformers, although attentive in part to needs of working class, struggled to ameliorate these disturbing tensions and to keep intact essential social structure of capitalism. Complex attitudes, particularly as they concerned labor and working classes, found expression in high and popular arts of era. American painters, sculptors, and graphic artists turned their attention to documenting lives of working class and rebelled against genteel subjects which dominated art of Gilded Age. Those artists associated with Ashcan School-John Sloan, Everett Shinn, Charles Oscar Haag, and Abestenia Eberle, among others-forged a new realist style which captured all aspects of contemporary life, including labor. But no American artist had been given popular reception that Belgian artist of laboring themes, Constantin Meunier (1831-1905) received when his exhibition of paintings, drawings, and sculptures traveled to six American industrial cities in 1913 and 1914. His visual imagery confirmed Ameri-

The Logic of Realism: A Hegelian Approach

The many facets of the realism debate reflect the complexity of the subject. Realism was an accepted standard of value only during the romantic period; it became more prominent later as it became more problematic. Major senses of “real” in the nineteenth century are (1) universal essence, (2) irregular minute particular, and (3) causal regularity. Realist plotting typically juxtaposes background tableau and foreground coup de theatre; realist style typically consists of multiple silhouettings. Realism is a semiosis by silhouetting. Hegel's analysis of reality in the Science of Logic explains the association of realism with silhouetting, shows the systematic and historical relationships among the various critical positions and the nineteenth-century senses of “real,” and finally locates them with respect to the trope of inversion. The realist or silhouetting style falls between the relational style of the eighteenth century and the dispersive style of the twentieth.

The Theme of Sterility in Olesha's Envy

Iurii Olesha's Short Novel Envy (Zavist', 1927) has been greatly admired and even has some claim to be considered the “great Soviet novel.“Yet comparatively little has been written about Envy since the first flood of reviews and articles, many uncritical, appeared in the Soviet press between 1927 and 1933.Envy is a complex novel, sometimes described as expressionistic, written in a variety of styles and with many planes of meaning. Elements of realist, romanticist, and symbolist styles are present. Dreams, fantasies, and lies are introduced, often as reality. It is a work in which the author's ideological intentions are far from clear or unambiguous, a work deeply hedged with irony. And it is a work that can yield much to discerning analysis.