Aesthetic Revolution Research Articles

Auteur cinema beyond the iron curtain: on the relationship between the French and Soviet new waves

ABSTRACT The article explores the relationship between the French New Wave and the Soviet cinema of the Thaw, focusing on the impact of the aesthetic revolution started by the Cahiers du cinéma group during the 1950s and 1960s. It examines responses to Soviet Thaw films in Cahiers du cinéma before and after the emergence of the Nouvelle Vague, and the reception of French New Wave films in the main Soviet cinema journals of the time, as well as statements by Soviet directors about their exposure to the Nouvelle Vague early in their careers. Taking these findings as a starting point, the piece proceeds to compare key sequences from French and Soviet films of the period, showing how the mutual influence between the two groups of directors was mirrored in their cinematic practice. In so doing, the article reframes the relationship between these movements and, more broadly, the post-war emergence of international new waves of cinema, as a network of complex, dynamic interactions between a multiplicity of cinematographic languages and national traditions, moving away from the idea of a unidirectional influence of the centre over the periphery of world cinema.

The Four Winds and The Avant-Garde Apocalypse of War

War and its experience is an important theme in the early twentieth-century avant-garde literature. Among Lithuanian writers, this theme was more prevalent in works by the Four Winds group rather than the Third Front. The theme of war and the avant-garde depictions of war have not been widely researched in Lithuanian literary scholarship, which is the principal goal of this paper. The futurist movement officially began in 1909, when the French daily Le Figaro published the Manifesto del Futurismo (Manifesto of Futurism) by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who glorified “war—the only true hygiene of the world—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of anarchists, the beautiful Ideas which kill, and the scorn of woman.” Italian futurists urged for Italy’s involvement in the First World War, and some even joined the Lombard Battalion of Volunteer Cyclists and Motorists. German expressionists eagerly awaited the war, which they believed would oust their self-satisfied government and the materialism it advocated. Meanwhile, Russian futurists called for revolutionary violence. The avant-garde in Lithuania began later as compared to Western Europe—after the First World War and the Lithuanian struggle for independence, at a time when the European avant-garde had entered its second stage and began to be associated with surrealism and dadaism. Because of this, Lithuanian avant-garde writers did not treat war in the same way as European artists did: their work does not contain the enthusiasm one commonly finds in the European prewar avant-garde, instead placing emphasis on disillusionment, the destruction and the horrors of war, like the postwar avant-gardists did. This paper is not concerned with the aesthetic revolution in depicting war by European and Lithuanian avant-gardists, as it has been extensively analyzed in Lithuanian scholarship. This paper considers depictions of the First World War by European avant-garde writers in the early twentieth century as a cultural-literary background important for understanding the relationship between war and the avant-garde, but not necessarily as a direct influence on the works produced by the Lithuanian avant-garde writer collective known as the Four Winds. This background helps us understand the significance that those experiences of war and armed struggle for independence had for the Four Winds, as well as the meaning carried in their aesthetic reflections of those experiences.

Nanni Balestrini, collage, and the aesthetics of operaismo

This article analyzes a selection of collages made during the 1960s by Italian artist, writer, editor, and extraparliamentary activist Nanni Balestrini in relation to the dissident Marxist intellectual current of operaismo (workerism). Despite his centrality to both extraparliamentary activism and the cultural landscape in postwar Italy, Balestrini’s artistic practice remains largely unexplored. Comprised of clipped, often provocative, newspaper fragments and aesthetically arranged to exploit the expressive potency of typography, the works remain visibly indebted to the tradition of avant-garde collage. However, they summon these procedures to address the challenges of a radically different historical moment. Sustained visual analysis and salient texts of political theory are utilized to demonstrate how Balestrini’s collages investigate concerns that resonate with those of operaismo, and, in so doing, participate in the unfolding of new understandings of proletarian subjectivity and anticapitalist struggle. The constitutive disjunctures of collage and the medium’s potential to spark fresh connections function crucially in this endeavor to reveal a historically contingent form of revolutionary aesthetics. At the same time, the works chart the theoretical and increasingly activist trajectories of operaismo itself, revealing sympathies for the current’s most militant strands. Considered together, Balestrini’s collages and the theories of operaismo emerge as deeply interconnected, mutually illuminating, and reinforcing one another throughout a period of intense political contestation in Italy.

«Лесной отшельник, Pendant к Страданиям Вертера» Я. М. Р. Ленца: ранний опыт терапевтического письма

The article is devoted to the epistolary short novel “The Hermit. A Pendant to Werther’s Sorrows” (1776) by J. M. R. Lenz, insufficiently explored by Russian literary studies, in its comparison to the obvious “praetext”, the novel “The Sorrows of Young Werther” (1774) by J. W. von Goethe. The author of the article assumes that both the short novel by Lenz and the novel by Goethe need to be analysed through the lens of the Sturm und Drang revolutionary aesthetics. The aim of the research is to identify the degree of relevance in intertextual references between the two works. Special emphasis is placed on the reason why Lenz, a fairly original writer, had had to follow the path trodden by Goethe. The article offers a contrastive-comparative analysis of Goethe’s and Lenz’s texts, clarifies the biographical background that prompted the two writers to create these texts. The scientific originality of the research lies in detecting autotherapy among the authors’ intentions; it is determined by a new early modern personality concept formed in the last third of the XVIII century, in particular by representatives of the Sturm und Drang movement. As a result, it has been proved that, especially in Lenz’s case, we deal with the early attempts at therapeutic writing to overcome individual psychological traumas.

Politics and Aesthetics: Jacques Rancière and Louis-Gabriel Gauny

This paper argues that much of Jacques Rancière’s redefinition of emancipation owes a lot to one key character from his archival research on nineteenth-century worker-poets, Louis-Gabriel Gauny, the self-proclaimed plebeian philosopher. This is especially the case in regard to Rancière’s understanding of subjectivation forming a double of the self and a double of social reality as worlds within worlds. The paper puts forward that Gauny’s form of emancipation is valid today as an aesthetic revolution that reveals Rancière’s practices of equality to be an emancipatory way of life. In doing so, it will engage with Gauny’s connection with the contemporary precariat.

The Influence of the French New Wave Movement on Contemporary World Art Film Creation

The French New Wave is one of the three major aesthetic movements in the world film history. The "New Wave" films shocked the world, causing the "New Wave" film movements in America, Europe, Asia and other countries to emerge one after another, triggering a worldwide film aesthetic revolution. The French "New Wave" has a profound impact on modern films. This paper focuses on grasping the emergence, development, prosperity and decline of the French "New Wave" film aesthetics, paying attention to live broadcast and process documentaries, analyzing the artistic skills of the New Wave film to shape characters, effectively summarizing the influence of the French New Wave movement on contemporary world artistic film creation, so as to find out some rules of film development and provide a necessary reference system for contemporary world film art creation, And explore the development direction of Chinese film in the future.

The Pinwill Sisters

This study of the Pinwill Sisters traces their woodcarving designs across Cornwall and Devon, emphasizing their place as part of a wider aesthetic revolution. It addresses in particular the skill and craft of Violet Pinwill (1874–1957), studying her artistry alongside other woodcarvers such as Grinling Gibbons (1648–1721), as well as artists later into the twentieth century (Barbara Hepworth and John Skeaping).

The Literary and Artistic Avant‑Gardes in Revolutionary Mexico (1915‑1929)

This essay analyzes five different moments and scenarios that define the early artistic and literary avant-gardes of Mexico between 1915 and 1924. The initial moments all involve Mexican artists and writers who are based abroad. Born simultaneously in New York and Paris, then reborn in Caracas and Barcelona, the Mexican avant-garde finally sets down its roots in the native land in 1921. The fifth moment receives greater attention as it deals with the Estridentismo movement, launched at the end of 1921 in Mexico City. A detailed reading is offered of the collaboration between the writer Manuel Maples Arce and the painter Jean Charlot, especially in the illustrated edition of the former’s long poem Urbe: super-poema bolchevique en 5 cantos (1924). In each of the moments mentioned the protagonists distinguish themselves as independent rebels within the radical movements of rebellion that constitute the aesthetic revolution we now refer to as the historical avant‑gardes.

Unveiling the Mask of Oppression and Revolutionary Aesthetics in olu Obafemi's Naira Has No Gender

Unveiling the Mask of Oppression and Revolutionary Aesthetics in olu Obafemi's Naira Has No Gender

In Pursuit of the Primitiveness of Easel Painting - The Emergence of Bad Painting

Art, as a manifestation of the human mind, is not valued for its objective depiction of the external world but the subjective recreation based on objective objects. The intuitive feelings and inner beliefs of painting override the objective reality of the depicted objects. And bad painting with the unreserved catharsis of emotions exists as a new artistic trend and a creative path that emerged in Europe and America in the late 1970s. At the same time, Gombrich believed that any painting that meets the two criteria of baseline mode and minimum mode can be classified as primitivism art, and the rebelliousness of bad painting to the established rules, the originality of its content and the pursuit of the true nature of painting share similarity to primitivism art. Throughout the history of art in China and abroad, the phenomenon of bad painting has appeared periodically in the process of art everywhere, and the development process of art itself has also undergone a spiral development from barbaric obscurantism to scientific truth-seeking and finally return to primitive. Therefore, this paper will analyze the phenomenon of bad painting at home and abroad, its spiritual connotation and philosophical foundation, establish the connection between bad painting and primitivism art, explore the primitive interest in bad painting art, and discuss how bad painting uses its unique approach to promote the aesthetic revolution of contemporary easel painting.

Fichte’s Contribution to German Aesthetics

In aesthetics/philosophy of art, Fichte did not produce works as great as Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment or Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics. As a result, it was long believed that he had no role to play in the aesthetics of German idealism. Nevertheless, there are a few works in which we can identify the materials for developing an innovative philosophy of art. In this article, it is argued that Fichte takes two fundamental steps in aesthetics: 1) by transferring the weight of the discussion of aesthetics to the philosophy of artistic creation, he makes, as it were, a Copernican revolution in aesthetics and thus transforms the aesthetics of taste into a philosophy of art based on the creative spirit; 2) he raises the status of aesthetics (in fact, the aesthetic sense) to the level of “a (or the) condition for the possibility of philosophy.”

Два крыла художественного письма

The article examines the correlation between aesthetic and rhetorical aspects of artistic writing in a historical perspective. Before the “aesthetic revolution” of the 18th century, which was marked with the publication of Baumgarten’s Aestheticism, written language, while possessing an essentially creative potential, was conceived purely rhetorically, not as the creation of conditional holistic worlds, but as a textforming craft of a special kind. The discovery of the creative nature of art served as a powerful impulse for its development and shaped classical European artistry. A mental crisis of artistic culture at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries resulted in an imbalance between the aesthetic and rhetorical vectors of artistic writing. Avant-garde provocation, political engagement, and consumer fiction depreciated the aesthetic component of art from various angles. The critical discord between de-aestheticization of artistic writing and the rehabilitation of its aesthetic value was embedded in the formation of a theory of literature as a science, which took place in the polemic between “aesthetics of verbal creativity” by M.M. Bakhtin and purely rhetorical poetics of the formal school. This confrontation, which gave rise, in particular, to the phenomenon of “postmodernism,” continues to this day. It is in this confrontation that the fate of literature as an art of the word is decided.

THEATRE: Ngugi and Revolution in The Trial of Dedan Kimathi

Abstract: Purpose: The purpose of this work is to explore The Trial of Dedan Kimathi through the lenses of revolutionary aesthetics and class stratification as a kind of socio-literary participation. The book's exploration of the notion of revolution delves deeply into topics of tyranny, exploitation, and poverty. Numerous consequences emerged from the examination of the selected text. Research methodology: Theoretical Framework: Marxist literary theory guided the analysis of the study. Results: This research documents European aggression, economic exploitation of Africans, taxes and forced labor, the degradation of people's humanity, a decrease in human capital, the depths of hunger and poverty, and Africans' reaction and resistance to these terrible conditions. In order to come up with a long-term solution, we need to understand and agree that Africans have been oppressed and treated cruelly in the past. Limitations: The study is limited to the play The Trial of Dedan Kimathi. Contribution: The Marxist philosophy has been used as a weapon of change in order to bring about revolutions. Through the medium of theater, people may be entertained, educated, and made more aware. Keywords: 1. Africa 2. Class 3. Kimathi 4. Marxism 5. Revolution

Postmodern Doctrines and Poetic Vision in G’Ebinyo Ogbowei’s marsh boy & other poems

Abstract This paper explores and queries the reliance on postmodernist doctrines that continue to flood the Nigerian cultural and intellectual spaces. Essentially, postmodernism undermines established religious, cultural and political metanarratives that guide the sense of morality, order and decorum that are characteristic of many African societies. To examine the infiltration of the postmodernist philosophy into the Nigerian ideological space, a significant place to begin is the country’s literary productions. Ebinyo Ogbowei’s marsh boy & other poems is a compelling commentary on the author’s appropriation of postmodern creeds to counter long-established metanarratives which have allegedly abetted the fractured political and economic climate of many countries. The poet adopts revolutionary aesthetics, intertextuality, eclecticism, nihilism and pessimism, pornography and playfulness and ruptures linguistic and grammatical conventions to affirm his philosophy of progressive emancipation through revolutionary, nihilistic, and subversive acts. In the end, his postmodernist strategies fail because they plunge his fictional society into deeper chaos and lack of finality and closure, while he embraces coital diversion as an escape hatch from the vagaries of life. This places a huge question mark on the viability of postmodern protocols, especially as it concerns the undermining of religious and cultural metanarratives that have so far provided humanity guidelines for social and political decorum.

Approxism or Socio-Existential Realism: Investigation on Contemporary Revolutionary Aesthetics in the African Novel: A Critical Reading of Seydou Badian’s in “Storm

Realism, in the romantic universe, can be compared to a drama of marveled theater pushing the spectator outside of his being by transforming him into a creature full of unexpected gestures. This realism which reflects in the mirror the existence of man in society never ceases to launch universal calls by informing sapiens-beings to analyze, criticize and, if necessary, to rebuild their society, even the values and the cosmic practices immanent in their landscape over time and history. Realism, which henceforth, in this company, can also be designated as “Approxism” is “a force that goes”, if you will, a force in movement. It is an aquilon that awakens man in the midst of his deep sleep, warning him to react against all the negations in the itinerary of his existence in the society in which he is an integral part. In this case, the man who exists must face upsetting novelties in the society where he exists. It is such a position that characterizes “socio-existential approxism” in African literature. This work allows us to make a critical and revolutionary investigation in the contemporary African novel.

Contributors

Contributors

Uticaj japanske arhitekture na evropske avangarde

There is a widespread consensus among architectural historians that the cultural and aesthetic revolution carried out by the avant-garde artistic currents at the end of the nineteenth century is a strictly Western issue. 'Western' means European culture of Greco-Roman derivation. Nevertheless, it is probably safe to say that when Westerners arrived in Japan during the Meiji Restoration era (1868-1889), Japan was already a 'modern' country. Western thought originated from the ontology of Being and metaphysical thought. In an antithetical way, the East has built its culture on a perception of reality that is less theoretical and more pragmatic. One culture has sought dualism and domination over nature, the other one, integration with it, and has considered dualities complementary terms. These differences have determined divergent aesthetic and formal outcomes. In the figurative arts, the contamination has occurred with greater force than in architecture because European architects found in Japan the exact characteristics of absoluteness they sought in modernity, though reluctant to admit it. Despite this, because of contingent and synchronic circumstances between Japan's opening to the West and European society's disquiet in the nineteenth century, when the avant-gardes artists met the Japoneries, they were fascinated and surprised.

Resistance and Revolutionary Aesthetics in Nnimmo Bassey's Niger Delta Poetry

Resistance and Revolutionary Aesthetics in Nnimmo Bassey's Niger Delta Poetry

Resistance and Revolutionary Aesthetics in Nnimmo Bassey’s Niger Delta Poetry

The criticism of Niger Delta eco-conscious poetry continues to generate new insights about the plight of the region, but with greater attention to the threnodic sensibility of the poets and the degradation of the environment. This article engages with two eco-conscious collections of Nnimmo Bassey, one of the prominent voices in the campaign against environmental degradation in Nigeria, especially the Niger Delta region of the country. With insights from Marxist theory, selected eco-poems from We Thought It Was Oil but It Was Blood (2002) and I Will Not Dance to Your Beat (2011) are closely read to demonstrate how the poet’s violent tone and resistance thematic inclination imbue the poems with revolutionary temper.

The Prosthetic Imagination: A History of the Novel as Artificial Life. Peter Boxall. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. xi+411.

<i>The Prosthetic Imagination: A History of the Novel as Artificial Life</i>. Peter Boxall. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. xi+411.