scholarly journals The Shape of Humidity: Performing Black Atlantic Theory Making

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 434-451
Author(s):  
Genevieve Hyacinthe
Keyword(s):  
Gulf Stream ◽  
Art History ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
Black Body ◽  
Black Atlantic ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Bell Hooks ◽  
Cultural Discourses ◽  
Metropolitan Museum Of Art ◽  
Kara Walker

Following bell hooks’ submission that theory making is “a location for healing” (2017, 59) “The Shape of Humidity: Performing Black Atlantic Theory Making” riffs upon the historically critical and widely circulated subject of the black body politic and Atlantic waters informing but non-exclusive to performance, art history, and visual cultural discourses. The theory making performed here alternatively frames the black Atlantic body in relation to humidity, illustrating what Deleuze and Guattari might call the “possibles” evoked  through “a contraction of earth and humidity” (Deleuze 1994, 76–78). The theory is shaped upon a discussion of Winslow Homer’s The Gulf Stream (1899), included in Kara Walker’s cultural-political opus, Kara Walker: After The Deluge (2006), mounted at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Theory making confronts the painting’s adherence to the hegemonic tradition of rendering the black Atlantic body as a perennial form in peril, whose destiny in this instance is as matter consumed by the thermodynamic sublimity of the waters. Alternatively, the action of theory making here collapses space-time separations among black Atlantic flora, the healing processes of artists Lygia Clark and Wangechi Mutu, and modes of breath activation, to access states of limitlessness actualized through bodily openness to humidity’s grace. 

Jan van Gool als kunstcriticus

1983 ◽  
Vol 97 (4) ◽  
pp. 266-283
Author(s):  
Lyckle De Vries
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
The Other ◽  
Reliable Information ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Dutch Art ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
History Of ◽  
Expression Of Emotions

AbstractIn 1750 and 1751 Jan van Gool published two volumes of artists' biographies entitled De Nieuwe Schouburg (Note 2). This sequel to Houbraken's Groote Schouburgh (.Note I) is an important source for Dutch art history of the period around 1700. The author's opinions are not strictly governed by the rules of art theory, nor is he a convinced Classicist. His main aim is to give complete and reliable information on the lives and works of artists. In so doing he cannot refrain from giving personal opinions. These characterize him as a competent art critic, who seems to have had an eye for style and quality. He despises work by contemporaries who still adhere to the Leiden tradition of fijnschilderen (small-scale, highly-finished painting). In his view the composition of a painting is of prime importance in assessing its quality, for it is mostly there that an artist's inventiveness, or lack of it, is revealed. Another aspect of great importance is the expression of emotions in painted figures through their glances, gestures and attitudes. Van Gool praises not only history painters who prove to have abilities in this field, but also painters of genre scenes and portraits. He pays far more attention to a painter's brushwork than his style of drawing, his predilection being for masters with a 'courageous' brush. Relatively little attention is given to colour and light and to the plasticity of painted figures. Van Gool's ideals seem to be summed up in the word natural. The essential qualities of the subjects painted must be made visible in the work of art. A painstaking realism in the Leiden tradition would endanger this ideal as much as a severe Classicism. The observation of reality should not be carried so far that details become more important than totalities, but on the other hand the overall form should not be idealized to such an extent that reality is forgotten.

Modern art history as a human science in a situation of cultural turn

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 94-106
Author(s):  
Nikolai A. Khrenov
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Art History ◽  
Art Criticism ◽  
Normal Science ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
Self Protection ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Intensive Development ◽  
Cultural Turn

Intensive development of knowledge in the 20th century, including the emergence of new sciences and humanities, constantly creates a problematic situation in the sphere of art, shifting arts designation to what in the philosophy of science is known as normal science. This is associated with the idea of art as a science that has reached a stage of maturity and consistency and, therefore, complies with its norms. The concept of art as normal science is characterized by a certain degree of conservatism, as it presupposes arts self-protection against deviations from the established methodology. However, sometimes the artistic processes of modernity require different approaches. In addition, the emergence of new humanities shifts the already established methodology of art. This happened in the first decades of the 20th century, in the era of a linguistic turn in the humanities, indicating the invasion of natural sciences in the humanities; and this is happening today, at the turn of the 21st century, in a situation of a cultural turn, the emergence and intensive development of the science of culture. The current turn requires a deeper understanding of the structure and components of art history, i.e., its sub-disciplines: art history, art theory and art criticism. The essay argues that in the situation of cultural turn the theory of art can carry out functions which the other two sub-disciplines cannot. It propounds that art theory is able to make a decisive contribution to the elucidation of two problems: the relationship between art and cultural studies and the problem of historical time, which is important both for contemporary art and for art history.

Modern art history as a human science in a situation of cultural turn

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-98
Author(s):  
Nicolai A. Khrenov
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Art History ◽  
Art Criticism ◽  
Normal Science ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
Self Protection ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Intensive Development ◽  
Cultural Turn

Intensive development of knowledge in the 20th century, including the emergence of new sciences and humanities, constantly creates a problematic situation in the sphere of art, shifting arts designation to what in the philosophy of science is known as normal science. This is associated with the idea of art as a science that has reached a stage of maturity and consistency and, therefore, complies with its norms. The concept of art as normal science is characterized by a certain degree of conservatism, as it presupposes arts self-protection against deviations from the established methodology. However, sometimes the artistic processes of modernity require different approaches. In addition, the emergence of new humanities shifts the already established methodology of art. This happened in the first decades of the 20th century, in the era of a linguistic turn in the humanities, indicating the invasion of natural sciences in the humanities; and this is happening today, at the turn of the 21st century, in a situation of a cultural turn, the emergence and intensive development of the science of culture. The current turn requires a deeper understanding of the structure and components of art history, i.e., its sub-disciplines: art history, art theory and art criticism. The essay argues that in the situation of cultural turn the theory of art can carry out functions which the other two sub-disciplines cannot. It propounds that art theory is able to make a decisive contribution to the elucidation of two problems: the relationship between art and cultural studies and the problem of historical time, which is important both for contemporary art and for art history.

Williams, Walker, and Shine: Blackbody Blackface, or the Importance of Being Surface

2015 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 83-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tina Post
Keyword(s):  
Visual Art ◽  
Black Body ◽  
Black Skin ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Object Status ◽  
Kara Walker

At the turn of the last century, Bert Williams and George Walker performed as a minstrel duo in which only Williams wore burnt cork. By mixing the surfaces of blacking and their own black skin, Williams and Walker offered an aesthetic critique of the subject/object status of the black body—animating the inanimate substance of burnt cork while objectifying animate black skin. Examples from portrait photography and the visual art of Whitfield Lovell and Kara Walker support arguments about the agency of surface.

scholarly journals WILLI DROST: THE LAST DIRECTOR OF THE STADTMUSEUM (CITY MUSEUM) IN GDAŃSK

Muzealnictwo ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 108-120
Author(s):  
Iwona Kramer-Galińska
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
100Th Anniversary ◽  
Scholarly Activity ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Ww Ii ◽  
Art Works ◽  
History Of ◽  
German Nationality ◽  
Free City Of Danzig ◽  
The City

As much as the history of the Free City of Danzig (1920–1939) has been dedicated numerous academic studies, the activity of its institutions and people, particularly Gdańsk residents of German nationality who played a significant role in the city’s political, cultural, scientific, educational, and spiritual life until 1945 has been hardly investigated. One of such individuals is Willi Drost born in Gdańsk in 1892. Following his studies and academic work in Leipzig, Marburg, Cologne, and Konigsberg, in 1930 he returned to Gdańsk, where he was offered the position of a custodian and later conservator of monuments of the Free City of Gdańsk; furthermore, as of 1938 he was appointed Director of the City Museum, which he remained uninterruptedly until 1945. Beginning from 1930, he was also professor of art history at the Technischer Hochschule, engineering university, as well as curator of Museum Collections for the whole region of Gdańsk – Western Prussia. His scholarly activity yielded numerous publications in art theory, North European modern painting, and Gdańsk art. Furthermore, Drost takes credit for the inventory of Gdańsk historic churches conducted from 1934 onwards. Resorting to the preserved materials, in 1957–1964, Drost published a 5-volume series titled Art Monuments of the City of Gdańsk (Kunstdenkmäler der Stadt Danzig). During WW II, together with Prof. Erich Volmar, he supervised the action of protecting and evacuating art works from the City Museum, Town Hall’s Red Room, Artus Manor, Uphagen’s House, as well as from churches and other historic facilities. Directly following the end of WW II, Drost stayed on in Gdańsk, helping Polish art historians to recover art works hidden in the city and its vicinity. Having left for Germany in the spring of 1946, he was professor at Hamburg and Tubingen universities. Until his last days he continued to promote the cultural heritage of Gdańsk. In recognition of his merits, Drost was honoured with numerous awards in Germany, while in 1992, on the 100th anniversary of his Birthday, a plaque commemorating him was unveiled in front of the building of the former City Museum (Stadtmuseum), today housing the National Museum in Gdańsk. The paper’s goal is to popularize Drost’s endeavours as a museologist, and to recall all he did for Gdańsk.

scholarly journals Disciplinary crisis in valorisation of art

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-152
Author(s):  
Nataša Lah
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Dynamic System ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Art History ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Short Account ◽  
Actual Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
As If

Generally speaking, values among objects - as well as among art valuables - are defined based on the especially significant properties and qualificatives differentiating i.e. privileging that artwork within a family of congenial phenomena/objects; first in the time of its origination and then in present time. The history of aesthetics and that of cultures both mirror the unstable status of the qualificatives of art value i.e. conditions for the historical transformations of valorisation. Objects or phenomena which pretended to be what we today call the valuable artworks, have acquired the required qualification within a hierarchised framework of their own time's cultural demand1 . A dynamic system of changes in equalising artwork's value with its social status brought about the disciplinary crisis of art theory, which failed to adapt axiologically to the new receptions of art and the standards of actual time.2 I'll derive a short account of crisis from the fundamental questions concerning the meaning of beauty, value and valorisation within culture and art, through history. The crisis arises during the period from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, when art history became disciplinary articulated, incorporating the valorisation mechanisms of that time into its own methodological matrix, as if it was supratemporal and ahistorical.

Bodily Ways of Knowing: Anthropological and Historical Approaches to Affect and the Senses

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Linn Geurts
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Black Body ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
American Imperialism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Possession Trance ◽  
European Colonialism

For centuries, European and Global North observers of non-Western societies have been fascinated by African bodily expressivity and power. Artistic and ritual displays of bodily ways of knowing have captivated explorers, traders, missionaries, anthropologists, historians, and tourists, and this engagement has spawned a robust industry of representational accounts of African affect and sensibilities. Both European colonialism and American imperialism created and produced voluminous documentation of “the black body” through study of folklore, proverbs, myth, sculpture, masks, adornment objects such as beads, tunics, hair combs, and so forth. In addition, film and still photography have been used to capture vivid portrayals of bodily powers revealed in dance and possession trance. A history of such documentation and collection reveals shifts over more than a century in the way body, affect, and sensing have been understood and studied. Anthropology and psychology took the lead in attending to affect and the senses, but by the late 20th century additional fields such as music, art history, archaeology, and history joined in the sensory turn.

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