Twentieth-century Art Research Articles

Hybridity and the Unifying Space of Painting: Larry Abramson in Conversation with Theolonius Marx

Abstract While the drive toward homogeneous and pure visual languages was at the foundation of early twentieth-century utopian modernist art systems, the Dadaist and Surrealist reaction to this utopianism took the form of extreme and often violent hybridity. Marcel Duchamp's 1913 “readymade” of a bicycle wheel placed atop a kitchen stool is a paradigmatic manifestation of the linguistic hybridity characteristic of post-utopian twentieth-century art. In the 1920s Francis Picabia made paintings constructed of separate and discrete layers of images, which, when viewed together, produced an unsettling visual “monster.” Picabia's practice of superimposition was a significant forerunner of prevailing contemporary practices in postmodern painting. In his essay “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” philosopher Fredric Jameson (1991) identifies pastiche as one of the main characteristics of cultural production in the age of postmodernism. Pastiche is defined as a work of art consisting of motifs borrowed from one or more sources, an incongruous hodgepodge of materials, forms, and images. In this age of pastiche, what are the options open to artists—to endlessly quote, imitate, or parody existing images and styles, or to construct a new and significant system of meaning? To discuss the centrality of the principle of hybridity in postmodern art—and in my own artistic practice of the past fifty years—I summoned Theolonius Marx, a fiction of my imagination who helped me handle the dilemmas of conceptual art in the 1970s. In this “conversation,” Theolonius and I ponder how hybridity has placed a challenge to utopian modernist concepts, and what the conditions are for it to thrive today as a relevant and sustainable medium.

Worlding China: Huo Mingzhi’s transnational dealership and global narrative of Chinese art in the early twentieth century

This article studies the multifaceted interactions between a Beijing-based art dealer Huo Mingzhi (霍明志, 1880-?) and the Euro-American art market in the early twentieth century. By delving into the circulations of both Huo’s stock of Chinese antiquities and his transcultural narrative, this article provides a sketch of Huo’s strategies to reify Chinese cultural identities through Chinese antiquities in the international arena and a glimpse into the cultural environment of collecting Chinese art at the time. Despite being an influential tastemaker and expert in Chinese antiques during his day, Huo has rarely been studied either in art history or general historical research. By tracing Huo’s contact with institutions and individuals within the changing context of the early twentieth century art market, I explore Huo’s self-presentation as a mercenary dealer and also as a transcultural scholar, whose monographs and collections re-trained the eyes of a broad range of connoisseurs and amateurs for Chinese art, domestically and internationally. Studying Huo’s bilingual writings: Bowu Huizhi 博物彚志 and Preuves des antiquités de Chine 達古齋古证录, I argue that Huo not only contributed to the transmission of Chinese material culture and the acceptance of Chinese art abroad, but also conjured a strategic vision for cosmopolitan Chineseness.

The poetics of the art historian

This work constitutes a first advance of study about the work of the writer, art historian, critic and German anarchist Carl Einstein. He proposes an analysis of the methodological theoretical matrix on which he establishes his unique historiographical conception of 20th century art, making focus on the period that goes from the rise of the German expressionist movement to the avant-garde consolidation of cubism. The proposed hypothesis maintains that Einstein finds in Cubism (especially in the works of Picasso, Braque and Gris) not an "object" of investigation but a "method" for his model of critical historicization of twentieth-century art.

Checklist of Welty Scholarship 2022

Checklist of Welty Scholarship 2022 Catherine H. Chengges This checklist is based on current listings in online bibliographies and research done through Carlson Library at the University of Toledo. Useful databases included Ebsco (Academic Search Complete), FirstSearch (WorldCat, WorldCat Dissertations and Theses), and ProQuest (DAI). Responsive authors and publishers, as well as Google Scholar and Google Books, were also helpful. 1. Bibliographies Chengges, Catherine H. "Checklist of Welty Scholarship 2021." Eudora Welty Review, vol. 14, 2022, pp. 167–71. 2. Books Agner, Jacob, and Harriet Pollack, editors. Eudora Welty and Mystery: Hidden in Plain Sight. UP of Mississippi, 2023. Critical Perspectives on Eudora Welty series. [See entries by Agner and Pollack, Ford, Frye, Kreyling, Leiter, Mark, Marrs, Nolan, Pickard, Pollack, and Pickard and Richard.] Bloom, Harold. Eudora Welty. Chelsea House, 2022. [updated edition in Bloom's Modern Critical Views which "provides new perspective on this beloved American writer"] Pitavy-Souques, Danièle. The Eye That Is Language: A Transatlantic View of Eudora Welty. Edited by Pearl Amelia McHaney, UP of Mississippi, 2022. Critical Perspectives on Eudora Welty. Preface Acknowledgements The Eye That Is Language: An Introduction Chap. 1 Technique as Myth: The Structure of The Golden Apples (1979) Chap. 2 A Blazing Butterfly: The Modernity of Eudora Welty (1987) Chap. 3 A Rereading of Eudora Welty's "Flowers for Marjorie" (2018) Chap. 4 Of Human, Animal, and Celestial Bodies in Welty's "Circe" (2005) Chap. 5 "The Fictional Eye": Eudora Welty's Retranslation of the South (2000) Chap. 6 Private and Political Thoughts in One Writer's Beginnings (2001) Chap. 7 Eudora Welty and the Merlin Principle: Aspects of Story-Telling in The Golden Apples—"The Whole World Knows" and "Sir Rabbit" (2009) Chap. 8 "The Inspired Child of [Her] Times": Eudora Welty as a Twentieth-Century Artist (2010) Chap. 9 "Moments of Truth": Eudora Welty's Humanism (2014) Afterword by François Pitavy Notes Works Cited Additional Publications by Danièle Pitavy-Souques Index Trefzer, Annette. Exposing Mississippi: Eudora Welty's Photographic Reflections. UP of Mississippi, 2022. Critical Perspectives on Eudora Welty. Chap. 1 Eudora Welty's Visionary Modernity—"Learning to See" Chap. 2 Framing Photographs—Welty in Life, Vogue, and The WPA Guide to the Magnolia State Chap. 3 One Time, One Place—A Visual Narrative Chap. 4 Institutional Landscapes—"Seeing through the Fabric of Everyday" Chap. 5 Leisure Landscapes—The Mississippi State Fair, the Circus, and the Negro State Fair Parades Chap. 6 Memorial Landscapes—Performance, Pathos, and Play in the Cemetery Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index 3. Articles Agner, Jacob. "Welty at Home, or How I Learned to Love the Zoom Room—A Note on the Eudora Welty House & Garden's 'Welty at Home: Virtual Book Club' (2020–2022)." Eudora Welty Review, vol. 14, 2022, pp. 123–28. Agner, Jacob, and Harriet Pollack. "Introduction: Underground Woman: The Secret History of Eudora Welty and the Mystery Genre." Eudora Welty and Mystery: Hidden in Plain Sight, edited by Jacob Agner and Harriet Pollack, UP of Mississippi, 2023, pp. 3–30. Bracken, Elizabeth. "Eudora Welty at Camp Nakanawa." Eudora Welty Review, vol. 14, 2022, pp. 101–05. Butterfield, Judy. "'An Is Different from My Is': The Lost Mother and the Subjectivity of the Motherless Child in Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and Welty's Delta Wedding." Eudora Welty Review, vol. 14, 2022, pp. 25–41. [winner of the 2022 Ruth Vande Kieft Prize] Chen, Kewei. "Queer Disorientation in The Optimist's Daughter." ORBIS Litterarum, vol. 77, 2022, 159–74. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/oli.12344. Clements, William M. "Three Ways to Use a Story: Telling the Trestle Incident in Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding." Arkansas Review, vol. 52, 2021, pp. 163–71. Cole, Hunter McKelva. "Frank Lyell: Eudora Welty's Bachelor of Arts." Eudora Welty Review, vol. 14, 2022, pp. 5–24. Ford, Sarah Gilbreath. "New Introductions to Welty's Works: A Contemporary Reframing." Eudora Welty Review, vol. 14, 2022, pp. 117–21. ———. "Unsolved Mysteries: Reading Eudora Welty's The Optimist's Daughter with Agatha Christie's The Body in the Library." Eudora Welty and Mystery: Hidden in Plain Sight, edited by Jacob Agner and Harriet Pollack, UP of Mississippi, 2023, pp. 178–201. Frye, Katie...

Twentieth-сentury modern art: evolution and main trends

In the eighteenth century, Western civilization entered a historical epoch known as the Enlightenment, which established a new cultural and artistic paradigm of modernity. A German philosopher Jürgen Habermas remarked in this context: “The Enlightenment project formulated by the Enlightenment thinkers in the eighteenth century consisted in their desire to create an objective science, a universal morality and law, and an autonomous art based on their internal logic of development.” The following two centuries brought incredible diversity and depth to the Western art scene. They witnessed an unprecedented array of movements and creative originality. In addition, and in pursuit of the proclaimed ideal of total autonomy, twentieth-century artists revised the three most essential principles of art. The masters of modernism reinterpreted a traditional relationship between the means of representation and the object of art. They developed a new understanding of the role of the author in creating an artwork. And finally, they changed their view of the relationship between art and life. Those three features, in my opinion, comprise the substantive evolution of twentieth-century modern art.

Nigel Oscar Weiss. 16 December 1936—24 June 2020

Nigel Weiss was an astrophysicist and applied mathematician, born in South Africa but based in Cambridge for most of his career. He made a number of important contributions to the study of sunspots, where he produced a detailed model of their complex structure. He also made important contributions to theory of the solar 22-year magnetic cycle, using pioneering numerical modelling and drawing attention to the dynamical effects of symmetry breaking and of historic proxy data through observations of radioactive isotopes in tree rings and ice cores. A major part of his work was the numerical and theoretical investigation of many aspects of the interaction of magnetic fields with thermal convection in the Sun and stars. The numerical studies in particular were pioneering in the context of computer resources at that time. He led a talented group of students and postdocs, many of whom have held senior positions in UK and US universities. He combined great physical insight with expertise in numerical computation, nonlinear dynamics and bifurcation theory, and was an inspirational supervisor and mentor, combining high academic standards with an open generous nature. Apart from his work he had a strong interest in twentieth-century art and served on the National Gallery Consultative Group for many years.

Wolfgang Beltracchi and the authenticity of forgery: Not a moral failure

Reiner Schurmann’s Broken Hegemonies is a philosophical approach to how humans have historically created a rhetorical framework of ideas to operate in their existence. For this article, I will discuss Schurmann’s text, specifically his Hegemonic Fantasms of Nature and Modern Consciousness (as well as the associated concepts of the tragic condition and tragic denial) in order to understand Wolfgang Beltracchi as a skilled albeit complicated artist, researcher and art forger. Beltracchi operates within the Hegemonic Fantasm of Nature as the law (per Marcus Tullius Cicero and Marcus Aurelius) as well as with nature as the destitution of the hegemonic construct of nature (per Meister Eckhart) and the Hegemonic Fantasm of Modern Consciousness of the subject ‘self’ (per Luther and Kant), as well as the diremption of hegemonic concepts (per Martin Heidegger). I will further discuss Nature as the law of authenticity and provenance within the twentieth-century art market as discussed in Anthony Amore’s The Art of the Con, Arne Birkenstock’s documentary, Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery, as well as articles from Deutsche Welle (DW) and Times Magazine, and then define diremption as the self-reflexive gaze as discussed in Martin Heidegger’s essays from Basic Writings and Schurmann’s interpretation of Heidegger’s text, Contributions. While I am of the opinion that Beltracchi is operating under the particulars of laws and ‘ethics of naturality’ (via Roman Stoicism), he is also operating outside of Nature and into the narration of singularity that contradicts the Hegemonic Fantasm of Modern Consciousness. I will argue that Beltracchi utilizes the fantasm of the art market to operate within the fantasm of forgery and, in doing so, becomes an ‘obedient spirit that lets itself be broken’ and re-subsumed by art itself.

М. Горький и немецкий экспрессионизм

Based on archival documents and materials of M. Gorky’s personal library, the article examines the question of the writer’s attitude to German expressionism, the brightest trend in German art of the early twentieth century. The facts of Gorky’s creative and personal contacts with leading German theater directors M. Reinhardt and E. Piscator, with revolutionary expressionist writers I. Becher, E. Toller, etc. Аre considered, the interest of the Russian writer in various types of German expressionist art is revealed: literature, theater, cinema and painting. The analysis of Gorky’s works in the context of the work of the German Expressionists reveals a certain similarity in their ideological and aesthetic views, reveals their common anti-war, protest and humanitarian pathos aimed at protecting the human person suffering in the world deformed by wars and revolutions.

From Anthropology to Artistic Practice: How Bricolage Has Been Used in the Twentieth Century as an Ideal Model of Engagement with the World

The aim of this article is to return to the concept of bricolage as theorized in 1962 by the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and examine its presence and utility in the art and architectural history of the twentieth century. While Lévi-Strauss was the first theorist to present bricolage as an analogy for the creation of mythical thought among indigenous cultures, the concept has seen a wide range of conceptual, methodological and practical applications across different fields, including design, visual arts, urban planning and the built environment. This article will examine the applicability of bricolage as a technical metaphor for the creative process and its relevance to artistic creation by tracing its trajectory over the course of the twentieth century. It will evaluate the significance of objects and events of ‘everyday life’ in the creative practices of contemporary artists, and draw attention to the emerging role of the architect as bricoleur or improviser, to conclude that it was the art of the ‘ordinary’ that gave creative inspiration to twentieth-century artists and architects to engage with the materiality and past experiences of the world.

Beyond Craft: Textile Practices in the Art Museum

Textiles have traditionally fallen beyond the collecting and exhibiting remit of museums of modern and contemporary art. In recent years, however, there has been a re-appraisal of their place within canonical narratives of fine art history and practice. Beginning with a consideration of the expanded retrospective of the work of Anni Albers staged at K20 Düsseldorf and Tate Modern in 2018, this paper questions received categories of art and craft and the history and place of textile art within twentieth and twenty-first century art museums. Homing in on some further examples of textile works brought into the Tate collection and displayed at Tate Modern, I propose that museum practices become increasingly transparent and the craft of exhibition making be used to bring about an expanded, inclusive recognition of diverse media and multiple stories in the history of art.

Media Primitivism: Technological Art in Africa By Delinda Collier

Media Primitivism: Technological Art in Africa By Delinda Collier

Subject-Position and Béla Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta (1936) in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980)

Twentieth-century art music composed by Bartók, Ligeti and Penderecki constitutes a large portion of the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel, The Shining. This music was not written for the film, and the use of these pieces might leave listeners doubtful as to the legitimacy of a connection between them and the scenes in the movie they were used to enhance. However, in the case of the Bartók work excerpted in the film – Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936) – an analysis of the subject-position of the music allows for another interpretation. Eric Clarke identifies subject-position in music as “the way in which characteristics of the musical material shape the general character of a listener’s response or engagement,” a definition based on earlier explorations of subject-position in film studies. My analysis of the subject-position of Bartók’s piece and the scenes in which excerpts of the work appear in The Shining reveals similarities in their potential effect on an audience member.

Mission Impossible: Guernica. The Battle for the Interpretation of Picasso’s Work during the Cold War

During the Cold War Picasso’s Guernica was on loan at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Throughout this period, its interpretation was the subject of much debate. The museum was interested in situating the painting within its own narrative of twentieth-century art history, while, at the same time, the painting functioned as an icon in contemporary political struggles in the form of reproductions and pictorial versions. This article reviews some of these contradictory positions towards Picasso’s work during this intense “battle for the interpretation”.

A Class Struggle in Umberto’s Boccioni’s Painting- Street Noises Invade the House (1911)

The modern art of the early twentieth century is the reaction to Realism, and impressionists were the first who broke away from so called rule bound represented bourgeoisie. That is to say that they are the harbingers of the twentieth century art. As Europe was shifting swiftly with the new things being built, the impressionists were changing the whole concept in the art with an attempt to avoid myths and history in painting and developed a new perspective to look at the painting and do it as it is for anyone. This avant-garde art has brought about symbolism, cubism, fauvism and futurism. It has also put the dimension of art and painting in a new mode of representation. Futurism embraces the chaos of the advances in technology with the features like dynamism, speed, energy, vitality and change as an inspiring way to reject the tradition and face the future. Against this backdrop, this paper examines how futurism, an artistic mode of representation has situated the context of art into a social change in Umberto Boccioni’s painting- Street Noises Invade the House (1911) vis-a-vis the Marxist approach of class struggle. In addition, the paper also analyzes the formal elements- color, structure, balance and harmony employed in the art by the artist that constitute the composite whole.

Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp

Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp

Nadia Boulanger and Her World, edited by Jeanice Brooks

<i>Nadia Boulanger and Her World</i>, edited by Jeanice Brooks

Deeper insights into the photoluminescence properties and (photo)chemical reactivity of cadmium red (CdS1\u2212xSex) paints in renowned twentieth century paintings by state-of-the-art investigations at multiple length scales

Cadmium red is the name used for denoting a class of twentieth century artists’ pigments described by the general formula CdS1−xSex. For their vibrant hues and excellent covering power, a number of renowned modern and contemporary painters, including Jackson Pollock, often used cadmium reds. As direct band gap semiconductors, CdS1−xSex compounds undergo direct radiative recombination (with emissions from the green to orange region) and radiative deactivation from intragap trapping states due to crystal defects, which give rise to two peculiar red-NIR emissions, known as deep level emissions (DLEs). The positions of the DLEs mainly depend on the Se content of CdS1−xSex; thus, photoluminescence and diffuse reflectance vis–NIR spectroscopy have been profitably used for the non-invasive identification of different cadmium red varieties in artworks over the last decade. Systematic knowledge is however currently lacking on what are the parameters related to intrinsic crystal defects of CdS1−xSex and environmental factors influencing the spectral properties of DLEs as well as on the overall (photo)chemical reactivity of cadmium reds in paint matrixes. Here, we present the application of a novel multi-length scale and multi-method approach to deepen insights into the photoluminescence properties and (photo)chemical reactivity of cadmium reds in oil paintings by combining both well established and new non-invasive/non-destructive analytical techniques, including macro-scale vis–NIR and vibrational spectroscopies and micro-/nano-scale advanced electron microscopy mapping and X-ray methods employing synchrotron radiation and conventional sources. Macro-scale vis–NIR spectroscopy data obtained from the in situ non-invasive analysis of nine masterpieces by Gerardo Dottori, Jackson Pollock and Nicolas de Staël allowed classifying the CdS1−xSex-paints in three groups, according to the relative intensity of the two DLE bands. These outcomes, combined with results from micro-/nano-scale electron microscopy mapping and X-ray analysis of a set of CdS1−xSex powders and artificially aged paint mock-ups, indicated that the relative intensity of DLEs is not affected by the morphology, microstructure and local atomic environment of the pigment particles but it is influenced by the presence of moisture. Furthermore, the extensive study of artificially aged oil paint mock-ups permitted us to provide first evidence of the tendency of cadmium reds toward photo-degradation and to establish that the conversion of CdS1−xSex to CdSO4 and/or oxalates is triggered by the oil binding medium and moisture level and depends on the Se content. Based on these findings, we could interpret the localized presence of CdSO4 and cadmium oxalate as alteration products of the original cadmium red paints in two paintings by Pollock.Graphical abstract

Review: Molecular Capture: The Animation of Biology, by Adam Nocek

Review: <i>Molecular Capture: The Animation of Biology</i>, by Adam Nocek

The emergence of Liu Kang\u2019s new painting style (1950\u20131958): a multi-analytical approach for the study of the artist\u2019s painting materials and technique

Liu Kang (1911–2004) was renowned Singapore artist trained in Shanghai and Paris, and known for his contributions to the Nanyang style—an art movement practised by migrant Chinese painters in Singapore between the late 1940s to the 1960s. The style depicts aspects of the tropical way of life, synthetising the artistic traditions of the School of Paris and Chinese ink painting with remarkable stylistic innovations. The aim of this study was to characterise Liu Kang’s painting materials and technique by way of ten paintings from a significant period in his oeuvre, 1950–1958, during which his Nanyang style emerged. The selected artworks are from the National Gallery Singapore. A broad range of analytical techniques was employed to study the painting supports and paint layers. The results indicate the prevailing use of commercially prepared linen canvases with double-layered oil-based ground. Single- and triple-layered structures of the ground, as well as semi-absorbent ground, were used sporadically. The identified group of pigments partially overlaps with those already known from Liu Kang’s earlier practice and also incorporates some noteworthy peculiarities like manganese, cerulean and phthalocyanine blues, phthalocyanine green, zinc yellow, and naphthol red AS-D. Some of these newly identified pigments made a distinctive appearance in the individual artworks, but ultimately Liu Kang was not convinced about increasing their role in his painting practice of the 1950s as presented in this research. This study highlights the significance of drawing and photography as integral elements of his artistic process. It also delves into the artist’s different painting approaches and discusses their evolution, which culminated in the stylistic innovation that became Liu Kang’s signature for decades to come. The obtained data may assist art historians and conservators in authenticity and attribution studies, evaluating the condition of artworks and designing conservation strategies. Moreover, this study contributes to the growing body of knowledge about twentieth-century artists’ materials, which are characterised by the complex mixtures of inorganic and organic compounds. It also provides information about the availability of art materials in Singapore in the 1950s.

“Blue Rose” Movement: Twenty-First Century. Moscow Symbolism in the Light of Recent Studies

The article traces the history of perception and study of the masters of the “Blue Rose” as a symbolist movement in the Russian art of the early twentieth century. The versatile sphere of expression of the leading representatives of the “second wave” of Russian Symbolism, traditionally associated with the Moscow decadence of the 1900s, is subjected to more thorough and differentiated analysis in the context of recent research. If the first art historians of the “Blue Rose” group phenomenon concentrated on movement’s generalized description, nowadays the program aspects of the Blue Rose aesthetics are being explored in details, the poorly studied artists’ creative biographies are brought up to date. The growing archive base allows us to take a new look at the key moments of “Blue Rose” poetics’ formation and its involvement in the development of modernism, indicating a new stage in the study of the works of Moscow symbolists.