Revolutionary Art Research Articles

The Visual Culture of the Revolutionary Processes of Latin America in the Islamic Revolution of Iran: The Street and the Studio

Abstract This article delves into the artistic production of a group of Iranian painters whose work is considered revolutionary art. It shows how the murals and canvases painted during the early revolution of 1978–1979 in Iran were influenced by the visual culture of the revolutionary movements in Latin America. The study brings to light an overlooked aspect of the Global South revolutions during the Long Global Sixties. It supports the idea that the 1978–1979 “Islamic” revolution was chiefly a revolution against a dictatorship also driven by groups inspired by leftist ideology and iconography. These groups, consisting mainly of younger revolutionaries, were motivated by ideals like solidarity, anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism, internationalism, and Third World relations.

Revolutionary Art and the Creation of the Future: The Afrofuturist Texts of José Antonio Aponte and Martin R. Delany

Afrofuturism (an artistic perspective in which Black voices tell alternative narratives of culture, technology, and the future) and the Dark Fantastic (interrupting negative depictions of Black people through emancipatory interpretations of art) are two interrelated concepts used by Black artists in the Atlantic World to counter negative images and emphasize a story from a Black perspective. Likewise, these concepts have been used to recreate and re-narrate history with an eye towards subverting white supremacist historical narratives. By using Afrofuturism and the Dark Fantastic as lenses through which texts by authors from the African Diaspora in the Atlantic World are examined, an alternative narrative of Black histories and futures concerned with revolution, liberation, and justice can be seen. The two texts that are the subject of this research include José Antonio Aponte’s descriptions of his book of paintings under interrogation in 1812–1813, and Martin Delany’s novel Blake; or the Huts of America (1859–1862), providing images of enslavement that run counter to a white supremacist telling of history. They both imagine alternative pasts and futures for Africa and the Afro-Diaspora involving revolution and magic. These works, though produced at different times and locations in the nineteenth century, offer new ways in which to discuss liberation and freedom in the context of the artistic production of the Atlantic World.

THE PROBLEM OF MORAL AGENCY IN BIOART

The meaning of creating aesthetic value has been defined as an activity as an end in itself in the sense of not serving any other interest or human need. In this respect, art seems free of social value judgements and practical concerns. In parallel, an artist’s conflict with social values is accepted as normal in the name of the freedom of artistic expression. The risk of moralism causes a separation between ethics and aesthetic values. The discussion surrounding "moralism" and "artistic autonomy" revolves around the argument for a clear separation between art and ethics, or their integration with one another. Whereas moralism reduces aesthetic value to ethical value, autonomism claims autonomy of aesthetic and ethical values because of the legacy of ethical criticisms. In this respect, this article dwells on the limits of art’s moral agency by placing it outside the extreme divide between moralism and autonomism. For this aim, the claim that every artwork cannot necessarily be subjected to ethical judgement or agency, because not all artworks consist of propositional knowledge, will be eliminated. Second, considering the fact that nonpropositional artwork is immanent to the social networks that they emerge from and their mutual effects on these networks, it will be asserted that artwork as a fabrication of reality can be seen as responsible for its actions. The relationship between art and ethics when the subject matter is "living beings" will be assessed through a bioethical lens by analyzing notable examples of bioart. Does art have a responsibility to treat living beings? The use of biotechnology by artistic aims and the forms of how bioengineered life becomes an artistic medium can be seen as either a break from traditional art and an artistic revolution or an intervention to “natural” processes and destroy the perception of the nature-human relationship. To emphasize the moral responsibility of new media art involving biotechnologies, it is recommended to concentrate on their connection to the broader social-material field and their impact, in addition to the physical characteristics of these artworks or the medium through which they are presented. By examining the impact of these artwork on biotechnological networks and societal relationships, it is possible to trace their ethical and political effects and differentiate the boundaries of their moral agency within the realm of bioart.

A Study on China’s Lingnan School of Painting: Centered on its Revolutionary and Eclectic Natures

In the first half of the 20th century, the Lingnan School of Painting was active in the Chinese painting world for more than 40 years. Its founders, Gao Jianfu, Gao Qifeng, and Chen Shuren, studied in Japan in their early years and followed Dr. Sun Yat-sen in his “political revolution”. After returning to China, they took on a wide range of disciples through art education, thus forming a school of their own. They applied their revolutionary ideas to the field of art and launched an “artistic revolution” movement. By absorbing the modeling techniques of Western and Japanese paintings, they carried out the “eclectic mix of Chinese and Western styles” reform of Chinese painting and tried to break then China’s conservative and rigid feudal culture with this new type of painting so as to realize their goal of “saving the nation with art”. The Lingnan School of Painting had a far-reaching historical impact and played an important role in the development of Chinese society and art.

Impact of E-Learning System: Google Classroom Interaction between E-Facilitators and E-Learners at the University of Ibadan Open Distance Learning Centre, Nigeria

Open Distance Education, an e-learning delivery system, is structured toward quality education for development and growth that meets the needs of the modern world. Its e-learning method is geared toward quality education that provokes critical thinking, scientific innovation, artistic revolution, and managerial skills. With all these qualities, criticizers still believe that the orthodox method of learning drills, as such face-to-face interaction, fixed location, and immediate feedback are still the best learning practice. Therefore, this article examines the impact of the e-learning system of Open Distance Education as a friendly learning flexibility and teaching mode that provokes mutual understanding, critical thinking, and immediate feedback between online facilitators and e-learners. Also, it investigates how its teaching approach stimulates innovative research, learning security, and interactive mutuality. Seven (7) excerpts are purposively selected from Google classroom interactions. The article uses Schechner's performance theory and the theories of Freud and Jung. Performance theory emphasizes human activities, while the theories of Freud and Jung talk about human interactive engagements. Theories are used to analyze interactive mutuality and knowledge based-performance between e-facilitators and e-learners. The data are subjected to content analyses.

Negotiating body, sex, and self-fashioning in Fújì music

A growing body of literature interrogating the voluptuous rendering of human sexuality in popular culture has focused on sex scripting in Western films and the commodification of women and their representations in popular media. However, exploration of how linguistic metaphors and innuendoes are deployed to affirm or contest expressions of desires that are sacred, sensitive, or taboo in Fuji music has received little scholarly attention. Of what significance is contesting social structure on sexuality to Fuji as a Nigerian popular musical genre? This empirical study explores this question while drawing on an ethnographic and interpretive literary analysis. Drawing from Hakim’s notion of ‘erotic capital’, the analyses and discussion operationalize the sexual scripting framework, Black feminist thought, and African/Black revolutionary art. I argue that sexual narratives and connotations in Fuji performance are often generated as powerful resources to contest sexual sensitivity and push back on silence on sexuality, negotiate and solicit artistic identity, and exact influence on public conversations on sexuality. By and large, this article affirms the engagement of sensual lyrical content as constitutive of revolutionary art and a social transformative site in which the body is negotiated as a catalyst for sexonomics in the contemporary ‘ear-tearing pant-and-bra’ musical evocations.

One Hundred Years of Revolutionary Experiments in Art Education

“One Hundred Years of Revolutionary Experiments in Visual Art Education” defines and clarifies four often-invoked yet elusive concepts in visual art and visual art pedagogy: “experimental,” “progressive,” “critical,” and “radical.” Using the Marxist-theory based Whitney Independent Study Program in New York as a case study, an institution now transitioning from over a half-century under the continuous leadership of director Ron Clark, it helps write the history of the past one hundred years of revolutionary art training. In particular, this essay argues that the critical theory in contemporary art education taught at organizations like the Whitney Program, though built on a foundation initiated by experimental art schools such as the Bauhaus, Black Mountain College, and Vkhutemas, has dramatically reinvented the terms in which progressive politics are understood in visual art. To truly understand the Whitney Program’s unique form of revolutionary experimentation requires contending with the radical element of its pedagogy as laid out in the definition this essay provides of radical pedagogy, that is, the ISP’s emphasis on social change. This emphasis comes to the ISP in large part from the Frankfurt School, which, beginning in the 1920s, embarked on a critique of the culture and social forms of modernity, exploring the anomie and alienation at the heart of capitalist class inequality. The ISP is radical in the literal meaning stemming from the Latin radix (root), as it questions the basis of art at an ideological level: what roles it serves, and how it can align with other forces in society advocating for social justice, racial, gender and class equality, and economic redistribution.

Laboratories for Organizing People: Selected Essays on Art and Byt

Laboratories for Organizing People: Selected Essays on Art and <i>Byt</i>

Individual and historical: Walter Benjamin in one-way Moscow street

This paper analyzes the influence of the film director and actress Anna Lacis on the Walter Benjamin?s letter and interests. Benjamin?s thought-world, with Anna Lacis, enter the idea of revolutionary art, dialectical materialism, as well as party activity. Benjamin?s letter reveals dynamism, fragmentation and focus on the objective world of contemporaneity, in which the futuristic manner of the letter, the constructivist foundations of the organization of the world and the orientation to the facts in the literary record are recognized. The paper discusses the relationship between individual and collective, creative and organized life in Benjamin?s understanding during his stay in Moscow in late 1926 and early 1927.

Enrico Prampolini’s Scenography in Theoretical-Practical Discourse of Italian Futurism

The purpose of the article is to reveal the peculiarities of the concept of stage design of E. Prampolini, one of the Italian futurism theoreticians and practitioners, and to find out the influence of the master on the further development of scenography. Research methodology. The analytical and historical method have been applied to study the treatises of Italian futurists and the historical period of the futuristic scenography formation. The method of comparative analysis enabled comparing E. Prampolini’s concept with the theoretical and practical achievements of other representatives of Italian futurism and the trends of stage design of post-dramatic theatre. The theoretical method has been used to highlight the main trends of futuristic scenography according to E. Prampolini. Scientific novelty. The concept of E. Prampolini’s stage design has been studied in the context of the specifics of Italian futurism. The originality of the artist's creative method has been revealed. The main principles of the interrelationship of dramaturgy, directing, and stage design of the futurists, the relationship between stage design and the actor, dramaturgy, and audience perception have been considered. E. Prampolini’s theoretical works, in particular «Chromaphony» (1913), «Futuristic scenography and choreography» (1915), the manifesto «Futuristic stage atmosphere» (1924), little known in the domestic scientific dimension, have been analysed. Finally, common features of futuristic and modern stage design have been revealed. Conclusions. The history of stage design proves that innovative and intriguing artistic achievements usually arise due to the reaction of artists and dynamic changes in the surrounding reality. Revolutionary artists being inspired by the stormy atmosphere, bring changes to traditional approaches and methods of scenographic solution of the performance. At the beginning of the 20th century, thanks to the work of futurists, the artistic design of a theatrical performance not only underwent huge changes, but also changed its definition in stage art. E. Prampolini, as one of the founders of Italian futurism of the «second wave», approved his own specific approaches, based on the artistic concept and understanding of form, light, colour, and movement as the most important tools in the ensemble art of stage design. The concept of stage design proposed by E. Prampolini, according to which only the scenographer with his perceptive means and understanding can create an equivalent world, is as important as the play itself. It led to the appearance of numerous followers and epigones among the futurists of the «second wave», and thanks to the support of the master's close contacts with various European art and theatre schools, was integrated into the pan-European avant-garde context. According to the main revolutionary idea of the master, the stage design of the futurists, the so-called «subjective stage design», is distinguished from the traditional («objective») stage design of the time. According to E. Prampolini, «subjective stage design» is created by synthesising all means of expression, which together turn a futuristic scene into an abstract whole, and it subconsciously affects the viewer, creates a unique «state of mind» for each production, using shapes, colours, movement, and light. The research has revealed that E. Prampolini's futuristic experiments in the field of stage design directly echo the current trends of postmodern theatre. Key words: Ernico Prampolini, futurism, scenography, stage design, light, colour.

LATVIAN LEFTIST ARTISTS, MANIFESTATIONS OF BOLSHEVISM AND LEBYADKIN’S POETICS

The author of the article draws from his research conclusions made while directing the documentary “Gustavs Klucis. The Deconstruction of an Artist” about the world- famous avant-garde artist Gustavs Klucis (1895–1938). The contribution examines the chivalric relationship of the artists with the Bolshevik rule over the period from the October Revolution until World War II, from the first revolutionary art education establishments, production units, and exhibitions to detention camps and execution firing ranges. The main research question, “Is the Bolshevik revolution related to the art of avant-garde and constructivism?” The contribu- tion offers a new version about whether and how the conception of new art supported the conception of a radically anti-human political system. The Russian 1917 Bolshevik revolution formed a strange but also natural alliance with art, resulting in the Russian avant-garde artists taking power. If we talk about the way how Latvian artists moved into the area of leftist ideas, it is more likely to be fate than their art or a philosophical trend. However, a third party intruded into this chivalric romance of art and power. The third party was an undereducated and non-creative perception of the world, called cockroach consciousness, which is best represented by Lebyadkin in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s (Фёдор Достоевский) brilliant novel “Demons” (“Бесы”), which predicts the revolution. The author of this contribution takes a closer look at the role of Latvian artists in creating the attractive features of the Bolshevik revolution and shaping a framework for the repressive system.

A Feminist Critique of Capitalism: Class, Gender, Work, and Unrest in Women’s Art after 2008

In 2010, two years into the global financial crisis that exacerbated the already substantial socio-economic divides of global capitalism, artist and activist Lynn Hershman Leeson released !Women Art Revolution (!WAR), a documentary that is militant in its convictions as much as affirmative of how ‘the Feminist Art Movement fused free speech and politics into an art that radically transformed the art and culture of our times’.1 Hershman Leeson collected material for decades, including about forty interviews with artists, curators, and critics engaged in feminist critique in, and since, the 1960s and 1970s. A commitment to intersectionality informs this social document as a review of the ‘new ways of thinking’ that developed ‘about the complexities of gender, race, class, and sexuality’ in the American feminist art movement.2 That is, Hershman Leeson created a positional and reflective audio-visual record from which the question of class is not absent, but is instead woven into the expansive concept of politics that the feminist movement in art, and more broadly, set as one of its primary goals. ‘What we found was a whole different way to talk about work, and I discovered very quickly it wasn’t the ways the boys talked about work’, says artist Harmony Hammond in her interview of 2008.

Imagined Solidarities: Cairo‐Moscow and the Struggle for Realist Art

This essay examines an understudied history of reciprocal art exhibitions between Cairo and Moscow during the Cold War period. It focuses on the work of Gamal El Sagini, Inji Efflatoun, and Hamed Owais, and sets out their role in forging new networks of revolutionary art in the Soviet Union. By addressing how post‐colonial art was received and utilized in Soviet Russia, this article uncovers the extent of Soviet cultural engagement with Egypt, the African national liberation struggles, pan‐Arabism, and international solidarity amongst the Second and Third Worlds more broadly. Offering a more complex reading of the processes behind Soviet involvement in the utopian project of socialist worldmaking, this essay argues for the need to assess critically Soviet claims to anti‐imperialism, peace, international solidarity, and friendship. It discusses the role of art in these processes, and addresses the changing definitions of realism, nationalism, and humanism in the socialist world, making a contribution to alternative understandings of post‐war figuration.

Song Dynasty Aesthetics. Origins of the New Chinese Furniture Design Style

Summary： In the article, the authors analyse the primary problems which arose during the design product development in the field of industrial furniture production during the period from the beginning of the 20th century, including during the opening of China, to the present. The vector of the furniture industry development is studied through the industrial design evolution. The reasons for the emergence of a new style in furniture design in China, analysed in detail in connection with changes in economic and cultural realities, are studied. The question of the influence of the Song dynasty aesthetics on the formation and development of a "new language" in furniture design is touched upon. This dynasty’s cultural heritage formed the basis of the new style in design not only in terms of appearance, shape and structure but also in a deeper understanding of the principles of constructing form and meaning inherent in traditional Chinese culture. As an important part of the ancient culture of China, the Song Dynasty aesthetics is an invaluable spiritual national heritage of the entire nation, which is fully reflected in the revival of mass interest in national culture in the field of technical aesthetics and industrial production. Compared to Russia, the modern model of design development is completely different. Design in Russia largely follows the development vector laid down within the framework of the Soviet Union's “technical aesthetics” and still largely meets the needs of the industry (of course, with the necessary adjustment for time). In Russian history, the formation of the profession of a designer coincided with two revolutions: a political revolution that led to a change in social attitudes, and an artistic revolution that began before the first and continued after it, while Chinese modern design did not seem to have experienced such significant perturbations. However, it seems that the concept of the New style of design in China and the concept of Russian modern design, based on the experience of the Soviet period, rely on traditions, actively incorporate innovations and strive to find a unique path that best suits the development vector of each of the countries.

Singing a Great Dream: The Revolutionary Songs and Life of Khusiram Pakhrin

Singing a Great Dream: The Revolutionary Songs and Life of Khusiram Pakhrin

MODERN INDIAN THEATRE – A NEW PERSPECTIVE

Before we start to talk about the Modern Indian Theatre, first we should understand the concept of Modern theatre in to- days world. Modernism is an art form which comes from western society during the nineteenth and twentieth century. It focuses on a broad perception of looking into the world. It includes the newly emerging artistic world and social t ra d i t i o n wh i c h ex p e r i m e n t w i t h d i f f e re n t f o r m s . Modernization is a movement or we can say that the artistic revolution where the shape of all art forms changed. In simple words we can say that this Modern art has departed from the traditional art form which it considered outdated or obsolete. Under this new form of art it includes the Abstract art, mixture of different art form etc

Interrogating Radical Theatre and Social Injustice in Sam Ukala’s Break a Boil

The Judicial system in Nigeria, from the local to the federal level, needs to experience radicalism because perverted justice is gradually becoming the new order of the day. Radicalism is one phenomenon that has remained prominent across ages because it continues to take one form or the other in shaping the realities prevalent in any given generation. A radical artist is an aggressive personality because he/she boils with a burning passion for bringing some degree of change to a given society. He/she employs the most viable means available to make this dream come true no matter what it takes. Due to the strong positions artists occupy in our society today, revolutionaries among them activate their role as social critics, commentators, and changers to speak the language of radicalism through art. In its unusual approach, this paper tends to evaluate the role of some of such artists in contemporary African society with emphasis on Nigeria. This qualitative study draws its framework from the radical theatre aesthetics embedded in creative masterpieces with the ideology of motivating contemporary African artists to join in the crusade of using the surest means in bringing the desired change to our immediate society. This study, therefore, limits its scope to Sam Ukala’s Break a Boil as a revolutionary masterpiece, as it portrays the creative artist as one of the revolutionary artists of our time.

Architectures of the commons: collaborative spaces and innovation

AbstractThe present article aims at analyzing the dynamics of innovation that emerges and develops in some iconic collaborative spaces that are epicenters of a technological or artistic revolution. The study focuses on three cases (the Homebrew Computer Club, the TransMedTech institute, and the elBulli restaurant). The results highlight some important common traits between these collaborative spaces, namely: The dynamics of innovation in these spaces is orchestrated by bottom-up initiatives carried out by informal groups of passionate individuals (called the “commoners” in the contribution) who articulate a series of “innovation commons” to develop their collaborative innovative project. Based on our observations, the dynamics of innovation in the collaborative spaces results from the following sequence of commons: 1) social relationship commons, 2) symbolic commons, and 3) innovation commons. Each of these commons corresponds to a collective action governance mechanism over a specific common pool resource which is a key determinant of the innovative project.

The intersections of comedy and politics in Zimbabwe: analysing Baba Tencen’s ‘Borderphobia’ and Prosper Ngomashi’s ‘Pastor and his wives’

This paper is a comparative explication of selected online Zimbabwean comedies as satire. It pursues the revolutionary character of the comedies against an increasingly limiting and impoverishing politico-economic environment. In our rendition, we depart from the general and simplistic thinking that comedy is solely for entertainment’s sake to view it as a puissant genre of art that is deployed not only to articulate big national issues but revolutionise consciousness given the danger of pacifying the people that goes along with oppression. The paper pursues the revolutionary agenda in the comedies as the comedians are inadvertently committed to the search for a breakthrough against a limiting and impoverishing politico-economic environment. Emerging out of this elucidation of comedies is that steeped in the comedies, is a sharp sense of resistance against oppression as well as an intense interest in liberating reflection and struggle. The centrepiece of the article is to comparatively engage Pepukai Zvemhari’s ‘Border phobia’ and Prosper Ngomashi’s ‘Pastor and his wives’ against the keen interest in lampooning those in charge of the affairs of the state for breeding trepidation and social phobia among the masses while on their part, life is decorated with profligacy and self-aggrandizement. The two comic skirts perfectly fall into the category of revolutionary art.

On Separateness

On Separateness Andrea Jurjević (bio) one The ticket to the world, my dad insisted, was speaking foreign languages. He didn't mean that in a literal way, of course, but that proficiency in foreign languages would expand my mind and enrich my understanding of the world. I took German in elementary school for several years, but instead of going to class, I often ended up with friends in the school park, sneaking off to smoke cigarettes incognito. Dad also tried teaching me Italian, but that went south with the first lesson, when he said, Okay, repeat after me: Amo il mio papà. It wasn't so much that his parental sentimentality was ridiculous but the fact that I had already taught myself more la lingua by reading the Italian porn mags he hid in the bottom of his wardrobe. I grew up in Rijeka, and we'd spend summers on the island of Krk, where Dad was from. Tourists, from just about every corner of Europe, and sometimes farther, had always been flocking to our coast. I'd help my parents rent a couple of our bedrooms, make frühstück for our guests, and work, first for a tourist agency as a porter and then in a hotel kitchen and a bar. With each new wave of arrivals, with new faces, I crushed fast on some Swede or Brit boy, their manner of speech, so utterly foreign, wonderful, dizzying. The world must be just like that, I used to think, so mysterious, so full of possibilities, so unlike our predictable reality. two Imagining the world through the lens of tourists became boring quickly, and my focus shifted onto music. While in elementary school I befriended an older teenage neighbor who didn't mind my hanging with her as she talked about music, cut band pictures from the Bravo music magazine, and wallpapered her room with them. We lived in one-bedroom apartments [End Page 153] in tall grey buildings. My sis and I had our bunk beds partitioned from our parents' room by a simple plywood sheet; my neighbor's living room doubled as her bedroom. Her parents had a low, glass-covered coffee table, and under that glass she assembled a collage of handwritten notes by various musicians—letters, signatures, drafts of lyrics to some of the best rock'n'roll songs. If I remember correctly, there was Dylan, Mercury, Bowie, Lennon, Hendrix, Joey Ramone, and more. I was captivated by their handwriting, how much individuality and intimacy each little note carried. Something so attractive and personal came through the curves of their script, the particularities of their strikes and dots, scratched-out lines, the varying pressure of their hand-scrawls. The musicians' notes looked cool, yes, but they also had an unusually freeing effect on me, as if their writing—so simply human, physical, and relatable—was closing the distance between what seemed like a grand world and our crammed one, between revolutionary art and the tedious everyday. I absorbed music, and all of its culture, with intense hunger. For a brief hot minute, I swooned at Duran Duran and Yaz, but then I quickly fell for the mad static of the Clash, the New York Dolls, the spellbinding quality of Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy, and especially the deep, dark allure of The Cure as well as Siouxsie and the Banshees. Beyond their otherworldly sound, it was their particular brand of glam—Robert Smith's and Siouxie's spiky hair, black clothing, and deep red lipstick—and a diy approach that made it possible to imagine myself being a part of something bigger. I was especially enchanted by Siouxsie, her fetish and bondage garb, her particular brand of femininity, so commanding, aloof, modern, distinct, so unlike any woman I'd seen. They were the dreamworld I felt more at home in than anywhere else. And I couldn't get enough of it. I remember one day in the early eighties the evening news breaking into a report of the new death-obsessed youth "cult," who wore black, listened to morose music, and romanticized suicide, and, the news anchor said, trying to scare parents all across Yugoslavia, the...