scholarly journals An Investigation on a Coptic Embroidered Panel from the 13th Century “Crucifixion with the Twelve Apostles” (Benaki Museum, Athens)

Heritage ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 4335-4343
Author(s):  
Lila de Chaves

The “Crucifixion with the twelve Apostles”, a unique Coptic embroidered panel, was on display at the Benaki Museum (Athens, Greece). The representation of the “Crucifixion” with Christ in the center and six Apostles on either side, standing next to each other in frontal poses, is quite a rare one. This rare iconographic image of the twelve Apostles could be linked to the Ascension or the Pentecost. This unique representation of the Crucifixion with the twelve Apostles, which also involves the Ascension, is a one-of-a-kind compositional formula representing Christ’s Death as a triumph over Death, emphasizing, along with the other factors, its non-Chalcedonic origin. Moreover, the interpretation of an inscription, written in at least three languages embroidered in black silk thread, is a matter which confuses the issue even more. In the present study, we will attempt a comprehensive investigation, a detailed description, and interpretation of this rare iconography, based on written and iconographic evidence traced in the history of art heritage objects.

1924 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 142-157
Author(s):  
Jocelyn Toynbee

The history of art in the Roman period is the history of the interplay of two opposite tendencies. On the one hand there is the Roman taste for realism and accurate representation, combining with the Italian love of naturalism; on the other, the fostering of the Greek tradition of idealism in art both by the Greek artists who worked at Rome and by the Greek enthusiasts among their Roman employers. After the culmination of Roman historical art under the Flavians and Trajan, the second century, as is well known, was marked by a great reaction in favour of things Hellenic, and it is with one small part of the Greek revival under Hadrian and the Antonines, when Greek art blossomed afresh for the last time during the history of the ancient world, that I propose to deal in this paper.


Sincronía ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol XXV (80) ◽  
pp. 314-334
Author(s):  
Ismael Antonio Borunda Magallanes ◽  

Gris, an independent Spanish video game, explores the expressive possibilities of this creative medium through a story that is, on one hand, a symbolic representation of the psychological process of the protagonist, and, on the other hand, a foundational narrative about the loss and recovery of identity. This title employs the expressive tools of the history of art to build its aesthetic proposal; in particular, it is categorically placed in the line of surrealism as an artistic current. The analysis of this elements is realized through fundamental notions of rhetoric and poetics, referencing authors such as Helena Beristáin and Carmen Bobes, and the narrative hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur, as well as theoretical perspectives that allow building bridges of analysis between literature and the visual arts.


ARTMargins ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 55-76
Author(s):  
Nikolas Drosos

Focusing on a series of exhibitions of modern art from the 1950s to the early 1970s, this article traces the frictions between two related, yet separate endeavors during the first postwar decades: on the one hand, the historicizing of modernism as a specifically European story; and on the other, the constitution of an all-encompassing concept of “World Art” that would integrate all periods and cultures into a single narrative. The strategies devised by exhibition organizers, analyzed here, sought to maintain the distance between World Art and modernism, and thus deferred the possibility of a more geographically expansive view of twentieth-century art. Realist art from the Soviet bloc and elsewhere occupied an uneasy position in such articulations between World Art and modernism, and its inclusion in exhibitions of modern art often led to the destabilizing of their narratives. Such approaches are contrasted here with the prominent place given to both realism and non-Euro-American art from the twentieth century in the Soviet Universal History of Art, published from 1956 to 1965. Against the context of current efforts at a “global” perspective on modern art, this article foregrounds the instances when the inner contradictions of late modernism's universalist claims were first exposed.


Author(s):  
Vadim Trepavlov ◽  
Anton Gorskiy

The letter by the emissary of Pope Innocent IV in the Mongol Empire, Franciscan votary, John of Plano Carpini, Ystoria Mongalorum — “History of the Mongols” is one of the most renowned written records of the European writing of the 13th century. The letter is a report of the mission between 1245 and 1247, when John of Plano Carpini et al visited Batu Khan bases on the Volga and bases of Güyük Khan (supreme khan) in Mongolia. The project provides for publishing an extensive version of the “History of the Mongols” based on two best list of works: Wolfenbüttel and Cambridge. Unlike the Italian edition of 1989, where the text is reconstructed based on both lists, this publication is prepared according to the Russian tradition of archeography: one of the lists serves as the basis, while the other one is used in versions. The book by John of Plano Carpini includes unique information on the Mongol Empire, its structure, mechanism of control, army, and law. The book offers extensive information on customs and lifestyle of the Mongols and the many Eurasian peoples they conquered. Ystoria Mongalorum is a precious source on the history of Rus’ in the first years following Batu Khan invasion. Unlike the previous editions of the paper, the new one will include detailed commentaries explaining the realia, figures, toponyms, ethnonyms, etc. that appear in the text.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia Bordini

The involvement of art in tv devices is examined from a double point of view: on the one hand, the use of tv as a divulgation tool that compares the history of art, entertainment and spectacularization; and on the other, the interpretation of tv as a tool for artistic experimentation. The hypothesis of a cultural use of the potential of audiovisual communication is elaborated in particular by numerous art historians, with different initiatives that reflect the variants of the very notion of art history and art criticism. The hypothesis of TV as a possible tool for making art according to unprecedented linguistic modulations starts from Lucio Fontana in the context of spatialist theories and then develops autonomously in the specific of new technological languages: the programs, the devices and the physicality of the television itself were in fact the first "material" that the artists used to elaborate what went down in history as "videoart". In the paths outlined in this short essay, television has taken on the significance of a strongly symbolic medium, in the alternation of different and often contrasting messages and models, linked to a variety of cultural and ideological positions.


Author(s):  
Pedro Mansilla Viedma

Como el título sugiere, el artículo pretende reflexionar sobre el punto de vista de la sociología sobre la moda, exagerando irónicamente lo específico de su punto de vista hasta elevarlo a “privilegiado”. Utilizo esa exageración para llamar la atención sobre la doble dimensión teórica de esa mirada. Una primera, fácil de entender, y quizás de aceptar, subraya la lectura sociológica de una moda ya pasada, como puede hacerlo la historia del arte, del traje o de la moda. Otra segunda, atreviéndose a reflexionar, o a invitarnos a reflexionar, sobre su otro punto de vista. Aquel que condicionaría el nacimiento mismo de la moda desde la sociología. La moda a posteriori es analizada, la moda a priori también, y aquí, donde la moda es efecto de una causa sociológica, y no al revés, es donde radicaría el verdadero interés de mi artículo. ¿Son antes los pantalones femeninos, el traje femenino, el smoking femenino –robados psicoanalíticamente al hombre durante el siglo XX– o la emancipación de la mujer? ¿Apareció siempre la minifalda después de la liberaciónsexual femenina o alguna vez, en algún país, fue al revés? ¿El movimiento hippie creó siempre una moda hippie o la imitación de la moda hippie invitó, en su onda expansiva mundial, a un estilo de vida consecuente con ese cambio de ropa? Estamos acostumbrados a que la moda sea un efecto, ¿puede ser una causa? Estamos acostumbrados a que la sociología explique un fenómeno, ¿aceptaríamos que a veces se pueda convertir en su causa?PALABRAS CLAVE: sociología, moda, causa, objeto de arte, contexto.ABSTRACTAs the title suggests, this article aims to reflect on the sociological viewpoint on fashion, ironically exaggerating the specifics of its point of view to elevate it to the point of “privilege”. I use this exaggeration to draw attention to the theoretical double dimension of that viewpoint. A first one, easy to understand and perhaps to accept, highlights the sociological reading of past fashion trends, as may History of Art, Costume or Fashion. A second one would dare to reflect, or to invite us to reflect, on this other point of view, one that would condition the very birth of Fashion from Sociology. Fashion is analyzed both a posteriori and a priori, and here, where Fashion is the effect of a sociological cause, and not the other way round, is where the true interest of my article would lie. Do women’s trousers, women’s tailored suits, women’s tuxedos –psychoanalytically robbed from men during the twentieth century– precede the emancipation of women or is it the other way around? Didthe miniskirt always appear after women’s sexual liberation, or was it the other way around in some countries? Did the hippie movement give rise to the hippie clothes style or did the hippie style, in its worldwide expansion, invite participation in a lifestyle consistent with that change in clothing? We are used to seeing Fashion as an effect. Could it be a cause? We are used to Sociology explaining a phenomenon, would we be willing to accept that it can at times be the cause of it?KEY WORDS: sociology, fashion, cause, art object, context.


Maska ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (200) ◽  
pp. 84-101
Author(s):  
Kaja Kraner

Since the 1990s, the common thread to artistic practices based on the collection, archiving and presentation of historical documents can be derived from what is happening with the space, time and the regimes of visibility and knowledge as part of digital reproductivity. Nevertheless, roughly two separate key approaches can be identified: construction approaches that are often designed as an intervention in the dominant historiographical practice, on the one hand, and approaches focusing on the study of infrastructural, epistemological and other conditions for the possibility of archiving and historicization in general, on the other. The latter approaches frequently question the standard treatment of documents that is most often based on the ability to trace their origin as well as on their presumptive expressive and narrative potentials. The article therefore analyses the approach to studying history adopted by Lebanese-American artist Walid Raad, drawing from the performance-lecture Les Louvres and/or Kicking the Dead, which is part of a broader project about “a history of art in the Arab world”. In the process of defining the specifics of Raad’s approach based on the concepts of “spaces of interrupted histories” and “self-historicization”, the article draws a comparison between artistic uses of documents in the context of former socialist countries and the Middle East or, more specifically, the Lebanese socio-political context. Instead of unifying both “spaces of interrupted histories” by focusing on narrativization and temporality in Raad’s work, I concentrate mostly on the differences.


1999 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 272-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecily Hilsdale

AbstractMedieval Spanish art posed a particular problem for art historians due to the difficulty in reconciling strcmg formal differences between perceived Classicism on the one hand and foreign "Mozarabic" elements on the other. The connotations of such formal designations reveal much about larger perceptions of historical development at the beginning of this century. The term "Mozarabic" in early essays by Meyer Schapiro among others attained its definition solely in opposition to other earlier and later styles. It was understood in a pejorative light as the inferior counterpart to other formal idioms such as the Romanesque.


Slavic Review ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald D. Egbert

The Arts of Bulgaria since World War II are of considerable interest for the history of art largely because they so directly demonstrate what happens to the arts of a previously non-Communist country under Soviet dominance. Since the Communist take-over, not only has Bulgarian art directly reflected the Soviet political line but it has done this even more thoroughly than the art of the Soviet Union itself. For beautiful Bulgaria is such a compact and homogeneous little country—about 325 miles long and 215 miles wide, with a population of only 8 million people, about 90 percent of whom are of specifically Bulgarian stock—that its Communist government can control the arts with far greater ease than can the regime of so enormous and racially diversified a nation as the Soviet Union. Even long before World War II, Slavic Bulgaria had closer cultural links with Slavic Russia than did any of the other countries that fell under Soviet political domination as a consequence of the war. As might therefore have been expected, its arts have reflected the influence of the Soviet aesthetic of “socialist realism”—and the distinct but related and highly relevant Stalinist formula of an art “national in form and socialist in content”—more directly than have those of the other “satellites.”


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