Images at Work

2016 ◽  
Vol 133 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Hannah Baader ◽  
Ittai Weinryb
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Material Object ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
Art Historians

In recent years the field of art history has seen a shift in the historical understanding of the material object, drawing further attention to historical experience and potential historical efficacy as a means of historical interpretation. Anthropologists and art historians alike have established viable interpretive schemes for the exploration of material objects. This essay outlines the various problems encountered in articulating notions about the historical efficacy of an object.

Buddhist Art and Architecture in Japan

Buddhism ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Blair
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Social History ◽  
Art History ◽  
English Language ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Buddhist Art ◽  
International Exhibitions ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Art And Architecture

When Buddhism entered Japan in the sixth century, its sculpture, painting, architecture, and texts—and the sophisticated technologies used to produce them—played a major role in attracting new adherents. These materials came to be viewed as “art” only with Japan’s participation in international exhibitions and the domestic development of museums during the 19th century. Today it is primarily art historians who study Buddhist art and architecture, but as buddhologists take an interest in social history and material culture, cross- and inter-disciplinary research is becoming more common. Disciplinary stereotypes do persist, however. They would have it that art historians are preoccupied with formalism, while buddhologists are so sunk in a textual mindset that they are unable to assess material objects critically. The Japanese-language literature on Buddhist art and architecture is voluminous, and is not covered in any significant detail here. Non-art historians should also understand that exhibition catalogs have been and continue to be a major publishing genre in both Japanese- and English-language art history. Catalogs do have their limitations, but they can be tremendously useful and anyone interested in a specific topic would do well to search out relevant exhibition materials. Happily for those who do not read Japanese, since the 1990s it has become common practice for Japanese catalogs to include English captions and even translations and synopses of essays.

Baroque and the Political Language of Formalism (1845–1945): Burckhardt, Wölfflin, Gurlitt, Brinckmann, Sedlmayr

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evonne Levy
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Art History ◽  
Architectural History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
Political Views ◽  
The World ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
Central Argument

<P>This study in intellectual history places the art historical concept of the Baroque amidst world events, political thought, and the political views of art historians themselves. Exploring the political biographies and writings on the Baroque (primarily its architecture) of five prominent Germanophone figures, Levy gives a face to art history, showing its concepts arising in the world. From Jacob Burckhardt’s still debated "Jesuit style" to Hans Sedlmayr’s <I>Reichsstil</I>, the Baroque concepts of these German, Swiss and Austrian art historians, all politically conservative, and two of whom joined the Nazi party, were all took shape in reaction to immediate social and political circumstances. </P> <P>A central argument of the book is that basic terms of architectural history drew from a long established language of political thought. This vocabulary, applied in the formalisms of Wölfflin and Gurlitt, has endured as art history’s unacknowledged political substrate for generations. Classic works, like Wölfflin’s <I>Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe</I> are interpreted anew here, supported by new documents from the papers of each figure.</P>

Hans Sedlmayr (1896–1984): Structural Approach and Pre-Modern Values

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Angel Angelov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Structural Approach ◽  
Sacred Text ◽  
Modern Conception ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
History Of

The prevailing part of art historians, critics and theoreticians from the mid-1950s even until today feels related to the means of expression of the modernist art trends from the last decade of 19th c. until the end of 1960-s. Modernism has become a sacred text, whose complexity should be interpreted, but not criticized. Sedlmayr’s conception of art is built on moral, religious, aesthetic and political grounds, which are the very reason for the actuality of his works – both in the specialized sphere of art history and in the wider public debate on values. That is why I will analyse his structural approach mainly in relation to his anti-modern conception of art. This is the task of this study. Sedlmayr’s effort to turn art history into a “strict science” is an independent part of his scientific pursuit; it is in relation, but is not subordinate to his conception of modern art. Those publications of his are discussed but only in the specialized literature on history of the methods in humanities, while his conception against modern art acquires an exceptional popularity. Because of that reason his theoretic contribution to the study of art remains in a penumbra. I argue that Sedlmayr’s conception has the following coinciding points with the official understanding of art in the time of socialism: – A denial to estimate art with aesthetic criteria, which the ideologists of socialist realism define as formalism, and Sedlmayr as aesthetism; – In socialism art should represent a positive ideal; Sedlmayr calls this ideal “human measure”; – Art should habituate to morals; – A conviction that the modern art from the end of 19th c. on is decadent; – A criticism against the “dehumanization” of art.

The Sacrality of Things: An Inquiry into Divine Materiality in the Christian Middle Ages

2013 ◽  
Vol 78 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Walker Bynum
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Comparative Religion ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Important Material ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
Western European

Students of comparative religion, cognitive scientists, art historians, and historians sometimes use paradigms from non-western religions to raise questions about the role of material objects in Christianity. Recently, such discussion has focused on images and controversies about them. This article argues that the most important material manifestation of the holy in the western European Middle Ages was the Eucharist and suggests both that understanding it is enhanced by the use of comparative material and that considering it as a case study of divine materiality leads to a more sophisticated formulation of comparative paradigms.

scholarly journals Temptation, Resistance, and Art Objects: On the Lack of Material Theory within Art History before the Material Turn

2019 ◽  
pp. 5-23
Author(s):  
Charolotta Krispinsson
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Art History ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Simple Fact ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Visual Culture Studies ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
History Of ◽  
Material Turn

Niccolò di Pietro Gerini's painting “The Temptation of Saint Anthony” (1390-1400) serves as a point of departure for this essay. It depicts Saint Anthony during a lapse of self-control as he attempts to resist an alluring mound of gold. Since the mound is in fact made of genuine gold leaves applied to the painting's surface, it works both as a representation of temptation as well as an object of desire affecting the beholder. The aim of this essay is to explore different approaches to materiality before the material turn within the art history discipline by examining two opposing directions within the writing and practice of art history:  the tradition of connoisseurship; and the critique of the fetish within the theoretical apparatus of new art history and visual culture studies of the 1980s and 90s. As an expression of positivism within art history, it is argued that connoisseurship be considered within the context of its empirical practices dealing with objects. What is commonly described as the connoisseur's “taste” or “love for art” would then be just another way to describe the intimate relationship formed between art historians and the very objects under their scrutiny. More than other humanist disciplines, art history is, with the possible exception of archaeology, an object-based discipline. It is empirically anchored in the unruly, deep sea of objects commonly known as the history of art. Still, there has been a lack of in-depth theoretical reflection on the materiality of artworks in the writings of art historians before the material turn. The question however, is not ifthis is so, but rather, why?In this essay, it is suggested that the art history discipline has been marked by a complicated love-hate relationship with the materiality of which the very objects of study, more often than not, are made of; like Saint Anthony who is both attracted to and repelled by the shapeless mass of gold that Lucifer tempts him with. While connoisseurship represents attraction, resistance to the allure of objects can be traced to the habitual critique of fetishism of the first generations of visual culture studies and new art history. It reflects a negative stance towards objects and the material aspect of artworks, which enhanced a conceived dichotomy between thinking critically and analytically in contrast to managing documents and objects in archives and museum depositories. However, juxtaposing the act of thinking with the practice of manual labour has a long tradition in Western intellectual history. Furthermore, it is argued that art history cannot easily be compared to the history of other disciplines because of the simple fact that artworks are typically quite expensive and unique commodities, and as such, they provoke not just aesthetic but also fetishist responses. Thus, this desire to separate art history as a scientific discipline from the fetishism of the art market has had the paradoxical effect of causing art historians to shy away from developing methodologies and theory about materiality as an act of resistance. 

Reynolds-number dependence of line and surface stretching in turbulence: folding effects

2007 ◽  
Vol 586 ◽  
pp. 59-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
SUSUMU GOTO ◽  
SHIGEO KIDA
Keyword(s):  
Reynolds Number ◽  
Time Scale ◽  
Isotropic Turbulence ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Turnover Time ◽  
Material Object ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Short Time Scale ◽  
Kolmogorov Scale ◽  
Reynolds Number Dependence

The stretching rate, normalized by the reciprocal of the Kolmogorov time, of sufficiently extended material lines and surfaces in statistically stationary homogeneous isotropic turbulence depends on the Reynolds number, in contrast to the conventional picture that the statistics of material object deformation are determined solely by the Kolmogorov-scale eddies. This Reynolds-number dependence of the stretching rate of sufficiently extended material objects is numerically verified both in two- and three-dimensional turbulence, although the normalized stretching rate of infinitesimal material objects is confirmed to be independent of the Reynolds number. These numerical results can be understood from the following three facts. First, the exponentially rapid stretching brings about rapid multiple folding of finite-sized material objects, but no folding takes place for infinitesimal objects. Secondly, since the local degree of folding is positively correlated with the local stretching rate and it is non-uniformly distributed over finite-sized objects, the folding enhances the stretching rate of the finite-sized objects. Thirdly, the stretching of infinitesimal fractions of material objects is governed by the Kolmogorov-scale eddies, whereas the folding of a finite-sized material object is governed by all eddies smaller than the spatial extent of the objects. In other words, the time scale of stretching of infinitesimal fractions of material objects is proportional to the Kolmogorov time, whereas that of folding of sufficiently extended material objects can be as long as the turnover time of the largest eddies. The combination of the short time scale of stretching of infinitesimal fractions and the long time scale of folding of the whole object yields the Reynolds-number dependence. Movies are available with the online version of the paper.

Inca Aesthetics and Scholarly Inquiry

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Herring
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Art History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
Scholarly Inquiry ◽  
Andean Culture

This chapter discusses the interpretive challenges that art historians and anthropologists have faced in approaching Inca intellectual and artistic achievements, which do not fit comfortably in Western categories. George Kubler took up the question of Inca art in the mid-twentieth century, creating a space in art history for studying the Incas. This development occurred at a time when archaeologists such as John Rowe worked to place the Incas within the broader context of Andean civilizations, and structuralists like Tom Zuidema were beginning to challenge historical narratives in search of underlying elements of Andean culture. The scholarly interest in Inca art, material culture, and intellect was but one aspect of the Inca focus of that time, as artists found inspiration in Inca ruins and museum galleries in the United States, and other countries began to exhibit Inca artifacts as an art to be approached on its own terms.

Objects of transgenerational memory: challenging hegemonic historical narratives of war in Lebanon

2021 ◽  
Vol 9s3 ◽  
pp. 29-50
Author(s):  
Lynn Hodeib
Keyword(s):  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Material Object ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Subsequent Generation ◽  
Domestic Life ◽  
Political Class ◽  
Lebanese Civil War ◽  
The Third ◽  
Alternative Spaces

This article examines how objects embedded in the domestic life of the generation of the Lebanese civil war and the subsequent generations evoke stories that disrupt the state�s hegemonic production of history. The article explores stories surrounding two objects that survived the war, and took on residues of memory later heard and retold by the subsequent generation. These objects illuminate ways in which the legacy of intergenerational memory is produced and transmitted�and how these alternative spaces and stories emerge in present struggles, including the October 2019 revolution. In the first section, the article examines how material objects operate as intergenerational symbols of the experiences of war and as media for the process of narrativisation. In the second section, the argument explores the role of the material as a witness to what resists language and as a locus to memory�s temporality. In the third section, the article looks into the affective dimension of the material object as it provokes an opening to narration and challenges linear understandings of history. This search through material and domestic objects seeks stories that resist closure, and is essential to understanding today�s struggle against the Lebanese political class.

About benefits and harms of rewriting history. One of the topics of contemporary historical discourses: philosophical analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol - (2) ◽  
pp. 142-164
Author(s):  
Roman Zimovets
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Identity Transformation ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Rewriting History ◽  
Historical Discourses ◽  
Global Communications

When we talk about historical revisionism, negative connotations as a rule are prevailing. Prohibition of revision of certain historical interpretation and assessment is one of the tasks of historical policy which is carried out by adopting so-called «memorial laws». Taking care of the formation of the desired representations of the past (narratives) is directly related to the interests of institutionalized power in its own stabilization and strengthening. Power is a function of the community, whose identity is formed historically. Consolidation of collective identity through the support and reproduction of common representations of the past is one of the tools to strengthen power. At the same time, the very nature of human experience acquisition which is permanent mediation of the horizon of the past and the present, presuppose a reinterpretation of this past. Major shifts in the experience of generations, which occur as a result of certain social changes, lead to a new look at the past of the community. In this sense, rethinking and rewriting history becomes necessary to clarify, update, rationalize the collective identity, which is problematized by new experience. Historical policy can both respond to this need for identity transformation through re- thinking representations of one’s own past and come into conflict with it. In the latter case, the narratives transferring by institutional power begin to conflict with the communicative memory of the generation experiencing a shift. One of the tools of self-preservation of power in this situation is blocking of living historical experience, which can take various forms. The culmination of such a blockade is «hermetization» of historical time that take place in totalitarian state. The living historicity of experience, which requires a constant rethinking of one’s own historically inherited identity, is replaced by an artificial, time-frozen identity, which, precisely because of this nature, becomes fragile and doomed to destruction. On the other hand, the rewriting of history initiated by the authorities within the framework of historical policy may face resistance to the representations of the past rooted in the communicative and cultural memory. The resistance of historical narratives indicates that the collective memory and the identity founded in it are not only a power construct, but also a spontaneous layering of sediments of historical experience. In today’s world of global communications and unified everyday practices, historical narratives are beginning to play an increasing role, as they remain the only seat of identity. At the same time, this process reinforces the conflict potential of communities, which can be observed in many examples of the revival of historically motivated political ambitions. In this situation, a critical clarification of various interpretations of the past becomes a means of rationalizing the historically inherited identity of communities as a necessary condition for intercultural dialogue.

„Sok szíves üdvözlettel régi barátos…”. Colegamenti di amicizia di Coriolan Petranu con storici magiari

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-126
Author(s):  
Nicolae Sabău
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Vernacular Architecture ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fine Art ◽  
General Category ◽  
Access To Higher Education ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
The University

"„Sok szíves üdvözlettel régi barátos...” (“With kind regards, your old friend...”). Coriolan Petranu’s Friendly Connections to the Hungarian Historians. Coriolan Petranu is the founder of modern art history education and scientific research in Transylvania. He had received special education in this field of study that is relatively new in the region. He started his studies in 1911 at the University of Budapest, attending courses in law and art history. During the 1912-1913 academic year he joined the class of Professor Adolph Goldschmiedt (1863-1944) at the Friedrich-Wilhelm University in Berlin. The professor was an illustrious personality from the same generation as art historians Emil Mâle, Wilhelm Vögte, Bernard Berenson, Roger Fry, Aby Warburg, and Heinrich Wölfflin, specialists who had provided a decisive impetus to art historical research during the twentieth century. In the end of 1913, Coriolan Petranu favored Vienna, with its prestigious art historical school attached to the university from the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. There he completed and perfected his education under the supervision of Professor Josef Strzygowski (1862-1941). The latter scholar was highly appreciated for his contributions to the field of universal art history by including the cultures of Asia Minor (Syria, Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Persia), revealing the influence that this area had on proto-Christian art, as well as by researching ancient art in Northern Europe. In March 1920 the young art historian successfully defended his doctoral dissertation entitled Inhaltsproblem und Kunstgeschichte (”Content and art history”). He thus earned his doctor in philosophy title that opened him access to higher education teaching and art history research. His debut was positively marked by his activity as museographer at the Fine Art Museum in Budapest (Szepműveszeti Muzeum) in 1917-1918. Coriolan Petranu has researched Romanian vernacular architecture (creating a topography of wooden churches in Transylvania) and his publications were appreciated, published in the era’s specialized periodicals and volumes or presented during international congresses (such as those held in Stockholm in 1933, Warsaw in 1933, Sofia in 1934, Basel in 1936 and Paris in 1937). The Transylvanian art historian under analysis has exchanged numerous letters with specialists in the field. The valuable lot of correspondence, comprising several thousands of letters that he has received from the United States of America, Great Britain, Spain, France, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Poland, the USSR, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Egypt represents a true history of the stage and development of art history as a field of study during the Interwar Period. The archive of the Art History Seminary of the University in Cluj preserves one section dedicated to Hungarian letters that he has send to Hungarian specialists, art historians, ethnographers, ethnologists or colleagues passionate about fine art (Prof. Gerevich Tibor, Prof. Takács Zoltán, Dr. Viski Károly, Count Dr. Teleki Domokos). His correspondence with Fritz Valjavec, editor of the “Südostdeutsche Forschungen” periodical printed in München, is also significant and revealing. The letters in question reveal C. Petranu’s significant contribution through his reviews of books published by Hungarian art historians and ethnographers. Beyond the theoretical debates during which Prof. Petranu has criticized the theories formulated by Prof. Gerevich’s school that envisaged the globalization of Hungarian art between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period and that also included in this general category the works of German masters and artists with other ethnic backgrounds, he has also displayed a friendly attitude and appreciation for the activity/works of his Hungarian colleagues (Viski Károly and Takács Zoltán). The previously unpublished Romanian-Hungarian and Hungarian-Romanian set of letters discussed here attest to this. Keywords: Transylvania, correspondence, vernacular architecture, reviews, photographs, Gerevich Tibor, Dr. Viski Károly "

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