Symbolic Art Research Articles

The Art of Decorating Traditional Ceramic Tiles in Contemporary Vietnamese Architecture and Interior

Terracotta ceramic brick is a material with a long history in the life of the Vietnamese people, often used to build and decorate ancient architectural works with special techniques, visual arts, and decoration sharp. Over hundreds of years, although at present, the artifacts made from terracotta pottery are no longer intact on the ancient architectural works, they have still been kept as precious heritages, contributing to the formation of the imaging system. Unique statues and symbols in traditional Vietnamese architectural decoration art. Many designers have used traditional ceramic tiles to decorate contemporary architectural, interior, and exterior spaces to create a unique feature for each project. From the perspective of Fine Arts, Design, and a practical approach, the article aims to identify the characteristics, inheritance, and continuation of the artistic heritage of traditional ceramic tile decoration in architectural and interior design contemporary furniture in Vietnam, thereby proposing and suggesting some solutions to this problem.

The Musical Underground as an Alternative to the Art Scene of Totalitarianism and Post-Totalitarianism

The musical underground as an underground art testifying what is outside the framework of the Soviet cultural mainstream of the 1980s and 1990s to various extent is considered in the article. It is proved that the concept of underground correlates with the notion of an alternative to the official party art scene of totalitarianism, and is often confused with the related concept of sixties. It is emphasized that the underground is a form of protest art, that is a form of protest in art. It is determined that the musical underground can be, in fact, political, aesthetic, and artistic. It characterizes the artistic surroundings of the underground in which the artist lives. The musical underground has appeared on the territory of Ukraine since the 1980s after all the complex transformations those taking place in academic art (opera and symphony) and after the final legalization of jazz, rock, eco-jazz and other trends those have become permissible and legitimate in the context of the post-Soviet reality of music. Conclusions. The underground as an underground art expresses its socio-cultural functions in different contexts. Thus, in a totalitarian space underground art becomes a certain locus of elite, selected performers opposing the general oppression of freedom and human rights, and also carrying out the process of creative self-expression, declaration of will in post-totalitarian societies. It is found out that the underground becomes an art symbol aimed at certain vectors of communication and defines itself as a trash culture, or as a niche character and method of culture creation.

Symbolic art of the highest Artist: natural purposes in Kant’s third Critique

An interpretation of Immanuel Kant’s _Critique of the Power of Judgment_ is presented as a coherent whole rather than a collection of disconnected parts. I argue that Kant interprets natural beauty and the purposiveness of living things as symbols of the prowess and goodness of a supreme artist. These symbols support us in our pursuit of moral ends but are not the justification of that pursuit. All cognition of the inexplicable creative intelligence of the supreme artist is symbolic. We are subjectively certain that our moral vocation is the final purpose of nature. My reading proceeds in reverse order from the theological considerations of the _Methodology of the teleological judgment_ which derives a rational theology that is supported by (but not dependent on) physicotheology, via the _Critique of teleological judgement_ which analyzes the inexplicable artistry of living things as illustrations of the technique of the highest artist, via the _Critique of aesthetic judgment_ which sets up analogies between human and divine art, to the two introductions. The antinomy of teleological judgment is a cognitive illusion of the peculiar constitution (_intellectus ectypus_) of our cognitive faculties that explains wholes from parts: we must both conceive of living things as possible in accordance with efficient causes but we cannot conceive of them as possible except through final causes. In particular, it is the internal purposiveness of living things that is beyond our comprehension. If we had an _intellectus archetypus_, that explains parts from wholes, then we would not be subject to this cognitive illusion. The power of judgment adjudicates between reason, which is exalted by the sublime, and the understanding, which is humbled by the purposiveness of living things.

The application of body symbols in contemporary art from the perspective of Da Vinci’s theory

Abstract Motion recognition methods can distinguish body symbols and play an important role in real-time safety monitoring of pedestrians. In order to solve the problem of lack of data for deep learning-based action recognition models, a human motion synthesis method with hidden state initialization is proposed. Commonly used human motion synthesis methods utilize Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) to automatically generate subsequent motion sequences by taking several frames of motion data as input. In previous work, the initial hidden state of the RNN is usually set to zero or randomly initialized hidden state, resulting in a jump between the end frame of motion input and the first frame of motion synthesis, which affects the quality of the generated motion. To solve this problem, a method for estimating the initial hidden state estimation is proposed, which takes the initial hidden state as the independent variable, uses the objective function of the neural network as the optimization objective, and uses the gradient descent method to optimize the solution to obtain a suitable initial hidden state. The proposed motion model with initial hidden state estimation reduces the prediction error in the first frame by 63.51% and 6.90%, respectively, and the total error in 10 frames by 50.00% and the total errors of 10 frames were reduced by 50.00% and 4.89%, respectively. The experimental results show that the proposed motion model with initial hidden state estimation has better motion synthesis quality and motion prediction accuracy than the method without initial hidden state estimation; the proposed method improves the quality of motion synthesis by accurately estimating the first frame hidden state of the RNN human motion model, which can provide reliable data support for motion recognition models in real-time security monitoring.

African Vernacular Symbols of Black Intersex Children in Sinethemba Ngubane's Installations (2007-2016)

African Vernacular Symbols of Black Intersex Children in Sinethemba Ngubane's Installations (2007-2016)

The Value of Chinese Calligraphy Artistic Symbols in the Packaging Design of Creative Products

Cultural and creative products play an important role in promoting social and economic development. China’s traditional art culture is not only indispensable in the development of its own cultural and creative products, but also an important source of inspiration and materials of international cultural and creative industries. Cultural and creative products are not only the exchange and common development of Chinese culture in other countries, but also further promotes the response to the policy of “The Silk Economic Belt and 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road” and “Building a Community with a Future for Humanity.” Chinese calligraphy are a huge part of Chinese art and culture. In this paper, the cultural and artistic value of Chinese characters on packaging design was studied through case study and visual analysis. The analysis is mainly based on the current situation, problems, and innovative exploration of various elements of Chinese calligraphy and artistic symbols in the packaging of creative products. Because of the design and development of the artistic symbols of Chinese characters, the significance of the research results not only display the unique cultural heritage of China, but also provide reference for cultural and artistic exchanges, innovative development, and integrated development of other countries.
 Keywords: Cultural and creative products; Chinese traditional culture and art; Chinese calligraphy art; Artistic symbols; packing design; Integrated development

Chinese sexual symbolic art: The embodiment of the value and influence mechanism of Chun Gong Tu

As a typical representative of Chinese sex symbol art, Chun Gong Tu has unique expressive power and artistic value in terms of spatial layout, compositional elements and symbolic presentation. It embodies the visual aesthetic value, psychological aesthetic value and social value of sex symbol art through the portrayal of characters and environmental backgrounds, and is worthy of in-depth exploration. Based on the introduction of Chun Gong Tu, this paper conducts a quantitative study with the aim of providing a feasible path for the development of contemporary Chinese sex symbol art. The study concludes that Chinese sex art education can significantly and positively influence the interest and cultural identity of the audience, and that interest can further stimulate the cultural identity of the Chinese audience, thus promoting the dissemination and creation of sex symbol art in China.

Modern-day Religious and Spiritualism

Religious art or sacred art is artistic imagery using religious inspiration and motifs and is often intended to uplift the mind to the spiritual. Sacred art involves the ritual and cultic practices and practical and operative aspects of the path of the spiritual realization within the artist's religious tradition. A religious image, sometimes called a votive image, is a work of visual art that is representational and has a religious purpose, subject, or connection. All major historical religions have made some use of religious images, although their use is strictly controlled and often controversial in many religions. Hajra Ahmed’s as a young artist of the present era engendering a unorthodox contribution towards contemporary art of Pakistan and out of the mundane she has done tremendous religious art with aura of religious places of Pakistan. She has captured the passing moment and grasped the essence of the moment transpiring on the religious spot just like a ceremony of a memory through which a observer can understand the same feel which has been captured by the artist. In her paintings she strives to depict the exact situation by the great combo of naturalism and realism. Fresh colors have been used to enhance the personification of tariqat. Apart from the moment she also painted the shrines architecture in an actual manner which represent a symbolism of Islamic art and spiritualism.

Eternal Image of Orpheus in Art as a Model that Creates Reality

The purpose of the study is to analyse the modern embodiment of the eternal image of Orpheus created on the basis of an artistic revaluation of an ancient myth, which over a significant period of its existence has changed its role from the model of archaic society to inclusion in the great cultural context of the art of today. The methodological base of the study consists of a number of methods. Analytical method is used to penetrate the essence of the Orpheus as an artist, which allows us to learn about the motives of his actions. The comparative method is applied to compare and contrast the primary mythological image with its transformed variants. The use of the historical method is necessary in order to trace the development of the eternal image in art in different historical periods. The study of such a well-known image is impossible without the use of a descriptive method since its origins are in mythological sources. The scientific novelty of the study is to consider the eternal image of Orpheus, which exists in art as a generating model of reality. The proof of this thesis is based on the analysis of the examples of modern revaluated embodiment of the mythological plot by giving it the meaning that is relevant to the present socio-cultural meaning. Demonstration of such plot and motive transformations not only eliminates the distance between history and modernity, but also gives rise to a “new” myth that plays the role of a model of new reality. Conclusions. Some well-known plots, being repeatedly told and retold, inevitably undergo changes, significantly moving away from their primary source. The story of Orpheus, reflected in the works of art of different genres, functions as a kind of evolutionary power within the constantly expanding culture. An ancient legend of the Thracian Singer is a constant motif of new creations that not only contradict the cultural and historical development of humankind, but also contribute to it protecting the artistic heritage of the past from cultural oblivion by creating a transformed model of image that is actively involved in the creation of new reality.
 Keywords: myth about Orpheus, eternal image, adaptation, transformation, symbol of art, alter-ego, turn, the gaze of Orpheus.

Creative Narratives of Contemporary Ukrainian Composers as a Subject of Musicological Analysis

The purpose of the article is to determine the creative narratives of contemporary Ukrainian composers from the point of view of musicological analysis taking into account structuralist and poststructuralist intentions in music as a postmodern attitude. The article also aims to investigate the existing compositional structures (at their various levels) in close interrelation of intellectual and hermeneutic reading of the composer's artistic intention with the physical parameters of the work. The research methodology is related to the analysis of the sphere of expression of human thinking and the communicative process, with the consideration of the narrative as a certain discursive structure formed on the basis of a person's own experience, presented by the analytical mechanisms of musicology, in particular, systemic and comparative approaches that help determine the specificity of certain compositional structures in music in comparison with others, to trace the change of approaches of different composers to systems of symbolism in musical art, communication with the listener or appeal to closeness at the level of inner feelings and mystical suggestions. The scientific novelty consists in revealing the specifics of forming narratives in music as a process that combines an appeal to the social component or the inner feelings of the composer, his/her isolation from society, a negative and ironic attitude towards modernity, the search for virtual mystical «worlds» as a sign-sound space. Conclusions. The rigidity of authoritarian thinking in the field of culture leads to the appearance among composers and musicians of supporters of the idea of «art for art's sake», fascination with avant-garde technology, and orthodox maxims of lovers of «pure» classics. It is obvious that the new way of thinking about musical art should consist in the restoration of sincere, true creativity and the understanding of beauty as the basis of art, what it should serve, in particular, the musicological analysis of works from the standpoint of narrative technologies as a system of complex interdisciplinary research.
 Key words: musicological analysis, poststructuralist intentions, mystical suggestions, social component, narrative technologies.

The Value of Artistic Symbols of Chinese Calligraphy Art in Packaging Design of Creative Products

Cultural and creative products promote social and economic development. China's traditional art culture is not only indispensable in developing its own cultural and creative products but also one of the important sources of international cultural and creative industries for its design inspiration and material generation and development. It is not only the exchange and common development of Chinese culture and the cultural fields of other countries in the world but also further promotes the response to the policy of "One Road One Road One Road" and "Building a Community with a Future for Humanity." In the field of culture and art in China, the cultural and artistic symbols of Chinese calligraphy are richly reflected in the design. The research method is mainly through a case study, visual analysis, etc., to reflect the value of cultural and artistic symbols contained in Chinese characters in packaging design. The analysis is mainly based on the current situation, problems, and innovative exploration of various elements of Chinese calligraphy and artistic symbols in the packaging of creative products. Because of the design and development of the artistic symbols of Chinese characters, the significance of the research results is not only as a unique cultural heritage of China but also expected to provide a reference for the world's cultural and artistic exchanges, innovative development, and integrated development.

Сонет «Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd’hui…» С. Малларме в переводческой интерпретации В. Брюсова

The article discusses the V. Bryusov’s translation reception of the poem by S. Mallarmé “Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd’hui…”. The sonnet is an example of symbolist art, headed by S. Mallarmé in France, and first introduced to the Russian literary tradition by V. Bryusov. The analysis of the embodiment of S. Mallarmé’s poetic images in V. Bryusov’s translation is also important because both authors are renowned for their significant contribution to the world literature. S. Mallarmé created a new poetic language and was proclaimed a “prince of poets”, whereas V. Bryusov’s versatile creative work as well as publicism and translations earned him a status of the master of Russian symbolism. Currently there are more Russian translations of the sonnet “The Swan”, rather than any other language, and the very first one also belongs to V. Bryusov. The article considers the third and most well-known translation, the first to be named “The Swan”. The comparative analysis of the original text of the sonnet and its translation allows to identify the specificity of Bryusov’s perception of S. Mallarmé’s poetry and the peculiarities of the poetics of Russian symbolism.

Art Techniques and Means of Expression of “Black Cinema”: From Neo-Noir to Post-Noir

The purpose of the article is to study art techniques and means of expression of neo-noir and post-noir in the cinematography of the late XX — early XXI centuries. The subject of analysis are noir phenomena — the latest and postmodern processes in cinema, based on the aesthetic, genre and style canon of noir. Noir phenomena in the language of cinematography could not remain within the narrow limits of the aesthetics of “black” cinema. That is why they became a space of transformations: stylistic, genre, narrative, semantic, etc.
 The methodology of theoretical analysis in this article is based both on the whole complex of ideas related to the subject of research, and on specific scientific tools. The study is part of a more general research case, which focuses on the analysis of the phenomenology of “black cinema” (or noir) in the cinema of the late XX — early XXI centuries. In a separate publication, the authors of this study investigated the issue of “genre memory” of noir. Also, a part of the research case is the problem of analysis of expressive means and artistic techniques in cinematography of the late XX — early XXI centuries. This problem was also considered by the authors of the study in a series of publications devoted to the “collage” artistic language of the Ukrainian director S. Paradzhanov. The methodological basis of the article relies on the research of Western scientists: Gavin Smith, Charles Scruggs, Jean-Pierre Chartier, Simon P. Otieno, David Copenhafer, Mary P. Wood, Lisa Colpaert, Thomas Leitch, James McRoy, Emily R. Anderson.
 The results. Our definition of the set of basic techniques and expressive means of “noir” phenomena in the cinematography of the second half of the XX — beginning of the XXI centuries allows us to distinguish three spatial-compositional systems that characterize the specifics of noir, neo-noir and post-noir.
 In the first case, we observe a linear unfolding of the action, within which scenes and framing are in a direct cause-and-effect relationship.
 In the context of neo-noir, compositionality is a question of the specific action topos of the film; despite the existence of general rules and characteristics of working with planes and space, the general impression of “panoramity” and different scales is dominant.
 Post-noir aesthetics is formed in the plane of a greater variety of artistic techniques, which is connected with the practical absence of “canonical” boundaries and the property of post-aesthetics to combine various effects, means (and in some cases to resort to “citation” and “redefinition”).
 The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that the formation of artistic symbolism and imagery of neo- and post-classical noir aesthetics as a system is investigated for the first time. The authors analyze the specifics of expressive means of neo-noir and post-noir, which unite the phenomena into one whole.
 The practical significance of the article is that the conducted scientific analysis makes it possible to reveal the forms of representation of “noir” phenomena in modern cinema.

SYMBOLIC IMAGES IN THE WORKS OF SYR POETS

The artistic system of works of Syr poets such as T. Iztileuov, Sh. Omarov, Balky Bazar, Karasakal Erimbet, etc., will be expressed in this article. A scientific description of the language art in the tolgau-terme (poems) of the Syr poets will be given. The artistic and national identity is defined in the thoughts raised by poetic art. The cognitive function of the way of speaking to the reader in the works of poets is differentiated. Allusions to the way of thinking of the poets were made through a symbol that reveals the thought to be clarified. New conclusions were made comparing the opinions of research scientists about Syr poets. The symbolic system in poets’ works was taken into consideration and its spiritual meaning was evaluated. It was planned to open the artistic system in a complex way based on the fundamental research in Kazakh science. The poets’ use of artistic symbols in describing historical situations and the worldview of the poet was determined. A comprehensive analysis of the measurement-expression, structure-system, and representational tools used by the poets was made. It was proved that the artistic system used by the Syr poets is a national value, and the semantic features of the grandiose ideas were obtained.

Associative Image of the Moon in the Chinese Language Consciousness: Experimental Psycholinguistic Research

The article describes a psycholinguistic experiment that examined the associative image of the Moon in the Chinese language consciousness. The objective of the study was to determine the associative content of the image, as well as the national and cultural grounds behind the internalization of its meanings. The free associative experiment was conducted in November 2022 and involved 550 students from 325 universities in China. The associative field was described using the semantic gestalt method developed by Yu. N. Karaulov. The data obtained were statistically processed using the SPSS 26.0 and Microsoft Excel 2016 software. These three methods combined provided a full description of the content and structure of the associative gestalt. The experiment confirmed the hypothesis that the Moon occupies a central position among the traditional symbols of art and literature. In the linguistic consciousness of Chinese youth, the type of association tends to be paradigmatic: they associated the image of the Moon with family and homeland. It also appeared to evoke a stable negative emotional evaluation. The association mechanisms were caused by both traditions and actual emotional states.

Senegalese Stagecraft: Decolonizing Theater-Making in Francophone Africa by Brian Valente-Quinn

Senegalese Stagecraft: Decolonizing Theater-Making in Francophone Africa by Brian Valente-Quinn

Sieg Maandag and Holocaust Art

According to Sarah Gendron, following Terrence Des Pres's notion of "Holocaust etiquette", there are two forms of art which government sponsored museums and memorials feel to be "safe" in representing the Holocaust: pure abstraction or direct, realist representation. The former is permissible since, with its "perceived capacity to sidestep misrepresentation", it "does not seek to portray the event or those involved in a figural way"; the latter is acceptable for precisely the opposite reason, because they "present themselves as re-presentations, portraying moments 'as they were' without intervention, manipulation, or interpretation." The artist appears to bear witness to the event, "providing proof of its 'having definitely been.'" Art which does not fall into these two categories offers more of a challenge to the post-Holocaust world's ability to grapple with the meaning and representation of the genocide of the Jews. One thinks of the photorealism, or blurred "photorealism" of Gerhard Richter; the symbolic art of Józef Szajna where thumbprints, for example, stand in for human beings at roll call; or the anonymous mass of Menashe Kadishman's shalechet (fallen leaves), each representing a human face, all the same but all different. Sieg Maandag's paintings cannot be regarded as falling squarely into any one genre; some are abstract (increasingly so over time), some naïve or surreal figuralism or landscape. Maandag's paintings are reflections of moments of his life and by no means all obviously "Holocaust art." In this paper I argue, however, using Susan Suleiman's notion of the "1.5 generation", that it was his experience as a boy in Bergen-Belsen that stamped Maandag's career as an artist. Through an analysis of several paintings, especially the unfinished and untitled work of a perpetrator who has a fork emerging from his eye pushing into the mouth of a child opposite; Het mooie hemd (the beautiful shirt, 1986); three faces; and the 1983 self portrait where Maandag's crumpled face and an empty speech bubble betray an inability to speak, I suggest that Maandag's concentration camp childhood and subsequent knowledge of the Holocaust are, as Raymond Federman says of his fiction, the "gap" in him that "controls my work and gives it its urgency." Sieg Maandag, famous as the boy walking past the laid out corpses in George Rodger's photograph after the liberation of the camp, deserves greater recognition as a "Holocaust artist" not only because of the subtext of his works but because his oeuvre is in its own right a significant contribution to the field of art perse.

Reflections of a Baniwa artist

In this interview, Denilson Baniwa (Barcelos, Amazon state, 1984) analyses his origin as an activist in the indigenous movement of the Amazon region, working as a graphic designer and social communicator. After moving to Manaus and, later on, to Niterói, Rio de Janeiro state, he took on a more active role as a visual artist and curator. During that time, he grew increasingly cognizant of the impact of the artistic symbols produced by Brazilian academicism in relation to his own history as an indigenous person. Baniwa then analyses the relationship between his art and the environmental crisis, believing that the interdisciplinary nature of his practice is an optimal medium to intervene in reality through the changing of consciousness of onlookers.

Signs of Life – Hearts, Blood and our Breath

In their piece ‘Signs of Life - Hearts, Blood and our Breath: An artistic dialogue on embodiment and boundaries’, the authors and interdisciplinary artists Jane Prophet and Tobias Klein discuss three recent collaborative artworks made with Victor Leung and contextualise those works by referencing their individual art practices. Sensemaking with the heart and blood is central to these kinetic installation artworks: ‘Blood work 1.0’, ‘Blood work 2.0: Unruh’, and ‘Common Datum’. The trio made them by interweaving methods and approaches from arts-based inquiry and computer science within a feminist technoscience framework. Blood has historically been a powerful and often contested symbol in art, described by Anne Pollock, Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, as ‘an object itself and an object within a network of objects’. This article considers the characteristics of blood and what it means to be human by triangulating between the chemical, physical and mechanical characteristics of blood. We focus on blood drawn from both human and nonhuman sources and the passage of air into the blood via the semi-permeable lung-heart connection. The artworks are inspired by the transfusion of blood and the use of organs donated by humans and extracted from nonhumans like horseshoe crabs. These biologically inspired, transparent kinetic sculptures depend on and transform the properties and qualities of blood in different species. The fluidity, coagulation and metal content of blood form the structures and movement of the sculptures. In addition, the artists incorporate shifting energies generated through visible mechanical and invisible magnetic forces to question-through-making the material properties and state change in blood flows.

Reasons for Semantic Extension in the Meaning of Artistic Symbols

This article examines the process of change in the meaning of artistic symbols in the nov-els by J.R.Fowles, whose books are filled with deep philosophical content, which is considered to be one of the main components of any symbol. The paper analyzes excerpts from the writer’s novels A Maggot, The Magus, The Tree, The Aristos, as well as the author’s diaries. The problem of studying an artistic symbol lies in its changeability: a symbol as a unit of culture transmits its basic meanings from generation togeneration, but at the same time it can acquire other new meanings during the development of society and culture. In addition, new meanings of a symbol can be found in works of different authors. The purpose of this study is to identify the reasons for the occurrence of these meanings. The main research methods included a defini-tion analysis of the artistic symbol in special dictionaries, contextual analysis, and methods of interpretation. Basing on the literature review, the author of the article formulates the following definition: an artistic sym-bol is a conventional figurative-semiotic object of language and culture (unconsciously or consciously) in-cluded by the author in a figurative text in which the symbol actualizes one or some interpretations that re-duce the denotative meaning of the word and expand the semantic boundaries of the lexeme. The study re-veals that cultural-historical and pragmatic factors influenced the change in the meanings of different artistic symbols in the works of Fowles. It was also found that pragmatic factors brought more changes than cultur-al-historical factors. This phenomenon is explained by the fact that a person’s personal experience of interac-tion with an object-symbol can be diverse and generate new meanings. However, such meanings of a symbol may not be fixed in the language in contrast to the meanings caused by changes in society. This study is nov-el in that it explores the process of formation of new meanings in an artistic symbol.