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Focused on modern and contemporary Iranian visual culture, this article traces the shifts from an institutionalised high art ethos under the Pahlavi dynasty to a hegemonic, yet, populist-amateur cultural environment after the Iranian Revolution of 1979. By raising questions about the (dis)position of populism, amateurism, and people-made art in the streets, cemeteries, and public parks of the Islamic Republic, it proposes that, however defined and labelled, contemporary Iranian art cannot be properly understood without addressing the art historical and dialectic co-dependence of street kitsch and closeted avant-garde. In Iran, subversive art can hardly be grasped without the beauty of fake flowers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rendered in paintings and sung in lyric poetry, birds and flowers asserted the mandate of the emperor and defined an imperial aesthetic in eighteenth-century China. Whether it was a peacock from the west or a peony flower from the south, each represented an object-subject relationship that attracted the covetous gaze of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) court. This study focuses on images of the peony, historically regarded as the "King of Flowers," to probe the tremendous marshaling of labor and resources that put them to work as possessions. Through words and images, imperial artists used peonies to map critical nodes of the Qing Empire and form a visuality of conquered subjects: from the cultural heartland of Han Chinese scholars to European missionaries in the capital of Beijing, and finally to Buddhist devotees in Tibet. Meanwhile, the peonies that began their journey as ephemeral objects of southern Chinese gardens ultimately faded from memory along with their messages of loyal and dissent. Thus, although court artists used peonies to construct a totalizing image of the Qing as a global power, the biographies of these objects instead challenge the relationship between the Qing court and the things it possessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the small paintings of French painter Edouard Manet and their meaning to loss and mourning. It explains that Manet's small flower paintings document the tension created by the impending loss of one's mortal world and entry into another. It mentions the 16 flower paintings completed in the last two years of Manet's life with repetition of everyday objects.

Reading beyond the visual surface, this paper examines the symbolic meaning of flowers, and of men wearing flowers in Chen Hongshou's (1598-1652) Sheng'an Wearing Flowers in His Hair. It explores the inner world of Chen Hongshou and attempts to understand the message the artist meant to convey to his intended audience. Looking into the subject matter of the artwork, the paper also investigates how the life experience of Yang Shen (1488-1559) echoed that of the artist. The paper argues that Sheng'an Wearing Flowers in His Hair reflects the artist's lament about Ming society and politics, and it symbolizes the contradictory aspects of Chen's life at the end of the Ming dynasty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the production of botanical illustrations by the Royal Botanical Expedition of Spain to the New Kingdom of Granada under the direction of Spanish physician, José Celestino Mutis. It seeks to explain the apparent oddity of the botanical expedition as a painting and the differences between the American-painted images and those created by the contemporary European botanical illustrators.

The article offers an overview of printers' flowers and the evolution of decorative designs. Printers' flowers are design flowers that appear in printed books. Its real origins could not be traced. Through the years, it has developed different designs and combinations. There were some controversies regarding the flower designs between Henry Denham and others. It allegedly also has some functions. It could give the readers ideas on what they will see inside the book. It could help in reading itself. It makes the letterpress more attractive. However, it can be claimed that these flowers do not have any use with Emmanuel Kant's "Critique of Judgment" as the basis. Through the years, other forms of decorative papers have come out. However, decorative designs may have evolved from printers' flowers.

Europe's burgeoning trade in the seventeenth century brought exciting new textiles from Asia to the west, at the same time as newly imported flora caused a frenzy among botanists, collectors, gardeners and speculators. Between 1600 and 1800, gardens were reconceived; at the same time, interior domestic spaces were also being redesigned. Imagined landscapes of exotic locales became the inspiration for a redesign of personal settings using the painted, printed textiles from India. The fervor tied to the romance, mystery and alien landscapes of Asia unleashed a decorative torrent in thread, silk and linen, to bedeck the walls and furnish the homes of elite and common citizens. Asian. inspired dress also held a particular fascination for men from the middling to elite ranks, who were beguiled by the decorative banyans or dressing gowns made of printed and painted silks and cottons. They chose to wear these loose flowered robes as they socialized with their most intimate friends and family. Over two centuries, calicos became domesticated, a permanent feature of English domestic furnishings and personal adornment, a symbol of genteel repose, of male informality and intimacy, evolving to become a constant component of western material culture and thereby refashioning the domestic world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the work of Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki. Although his work sexualises the female body, it has ironically been greeted with an uncritical reception in an era that is sensitive to gender relations. His erotic motifs are also intertwined with "incidental" motifs such as cityscapes and flowers.

The green pigments available before the nineteenth century were inadequate to produce the range of greens required in paintings; artists nevertheless made greens in a wide variety of hues and saturations using various pigment mixtures. This common practice is described in many contemporary artists' handbooks and other documentary sources. Examination of paintings from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries has revealed that most green passages have been rendered using such mixtures and that there is a strong correspondence between green mixtures found in paintings and those suggested in the sources. Although adding yellows to greens, blues or blacks greatly increased the range of hues that could be obtained, these mixtures have not always survived unchanged. Several seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sources indicate that greens were liable to alter for various reasons. Light-induced deterioration of typical mixed greens prepared in the laboratory has produced changes that mimic those seen in paintings. Comparison between test samples and paintings allows some tentative conclusions to be drawn about the nature of the changes that have taken place in the painting, when detailed examination of the painting is inconclusive or impossible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the meaning of the allegories in the painting 'Realm of Flora,' by Nicolas Poussin. Influence of the poems of Giambattista Marino in the making of the painting; Discussion on the flowers as symbols of vanity and early death; Use of moralization in the poem 'Metamorphoses' by Ovid.

The purpose of this paper is to examine DBAE issues for their origins, meanings, and implications. These issues are discussed within the four general categories of conceptual structure, curriculum selections, research foundations, and organizational affiliations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the use of rendering techniques such as trim contours, clean and copious detail and glossy finish in seventeenth-century northern paintings. It is said that although able to represent any object, these techniques were often used in rendering objects such as flowers, fruits, animals and insects. These paintings were often said to be called descriptive, because of its ability to appear faithful to natural objects. One example of a "fijnschilders" or "fine painter" who used these techniques is Dutch painter Jan van Eyck, who applied the smooth or finished manner on his worked panels.

An essay is presented on the examination of Robert Mapplethorpe's still-life paintings. It was stated that Janet Kardon calls Mapplethorpe's fruits and flowers as powerfully sensuous presences which seductively render barely and conceal the menacing undertones and threatening form. Furthermore, Mapplethorpe's flowers were described by Richard Howard as fetished objects which are perceived not only as sexual organs but as analogies for own.

The article discusses his activist art project in which he plants pansies at the site of homophobic attacks.

The article presents the author's views on Discipline Based Art Education (DBAE) curriculum related to the study and teaching of art. The author states flower paintings and supply of historical facts related to flower painting are analyzed through the study and teaching of art. The author advocates that educational instruction should be organized to demonstrate equal level of learning in each of the four disciplines of art education.

The article features the painting "Noontide in Late May," a watercolor painting by Charles Burchfield located at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. The author declares that all the colors in the painting are sunny and warm except for the black fence in the foreground and the black in the background that bring out the forms of the flowers. Moreover, the straight slats of the fence, the window, the grass and the house are in contrast with the shapes of the flower. The author suggests that the painting created a pattern that expresses the joy of life, of growth, and of the noon sunshine on a day in late May.