Search

The aim of this study is to examine the reflection of today's art practices related to migration according to Barthes' semiotic analysis. In the study, the literature review was used to form a theoretical basis for the phenomenon of migration. In addition, the semiotic analysis method was used in the analysis of visual art practices related to migration. The practices of Halil Altındere (Meatball Airlines), Ai Wewei (The Law of Travel), Tammam Azzam (Bon Voyage: New York, Bon Voyage: Suria) and Bruno Catalano (Parçalar, Venice) were examined with the purposeful sampling method. In all practices, there are indicators such as migrations, exclusion, poverty, being the other, culture, identity, stigma perception and marginalization, as well as the destructive and damaging physical images of the war and conflicts that are experienced today. The phenomenon of migration, the difficulties of migration on social life and the reflections of changes in sociological practices on the individual and society were strongly emphasized. As a result, in these studies, the problems that arise with migration, which have social, cultural and psychological dimensions, have been tried to be made visible from an artistic point of view. It has been revealed that the stakeholders have not developed effective solutions to the problems that arise with migration, and it has been requested to develop the necessary sensitivity regarding migration in the world public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the neglect of animation in film criticism and theory, focusing on the 1960s and 1970s. Contrary to popular belief, it was the rise of modernism that was primarily responsible for that neglect, not scholars’ excessive focus on realism. Unlike the prewar modernists who celebrated animation, the postwar avant-garde sought to distance itself from it. This was due to two historic changes: a new animation culture concerned with visual education and social messages and high modernism’s disenchantment with collectivist politics. In order to unearth this conflict of sensibilities, this article examines the work of avant-garde critic Annette Michelson. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examines the postmodern philosophy and its reflection on the visual arts in order to reach its different, various, contradictory and shocking shapes and expressions in many cases, the study found that it's a reflection for the development that happened through the formation of human though, the postmodern philosophy defined the art out comes and its manners, and whereas the postmodern community is not real, the postmodern arts are expression for negativity and nonexistence. As well, it is an expression of domination will and power therein, therefore, the art forming was in postmodern phase as radical-criticism for the community, and a criticism for rational and self-modernity, in addition that it's a method to detect the power of production forces and its contradiction which hidden behind modern technologies and ideologist, and this what artist have undermined through liberating him from Illusions of the cultural industry. This study aimed to expose the postmodern philosophy in order to resolve the problems which concerned in understanding art and its philosophical references, and a problematic as such important as this, it was necessary to examine it and define it methodically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article contains the conceptual vision of socialist realism as one of the key characteristics of art, transformed in the postmodern cultural era. Social realism is a cultural manifestation of the historical development of Soviet republics, including the Ukrainian SSR. The essence of socialist realism is seen as a manifestation of ideology in the Soviet conditions. Besides, the article considers the phenomenon in the context of postmodernism, relying on the findings of various scholars, and describes the interaction between postmodernism and socialist realism. Despite the general view that postmodernism (literally “coming after modernism”) emerged in the United States and Western Europe in the 1960s-1970s, there could be another way this movement evolved in fine art and architecture. The fact that the artists from the post-Soviet space managed to adapt to the global cultural field of postmodernism so swiftly proves that the totalitarian system failed to eliminate the plurality of opinions. A post-Soviet variant of postmodernism was largely defined by the influence of socialist realism. The recently proclaimed era of post-truth that allegedly started after the new millennium produced fascinating political and artistic experiments in the post-Soviet space. Hence, it would be logical to assume that some previously developed mechanisms were activated there. Post-truth as an instrument of politics in that sense resonates with the socialist realism used as an instrument of class struggle. Research methods include description, synthesis and analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The design ideas of the postmodern era reflect the general trends of socio-cultural reality, namely the loss of traditional moral guidelines, disharmony and destructiveness combined with absurdity, a sense of crisis, abyss and uncertainty conveyed in signs and in spatial coordinates. Design products become installations in which the viewer is a direct participant, sometimes even the creator. Postmodern design denies finitude, noting the plurality, uncertainty and fluidity of the world. The paradox of postmodern design culture is expressed in a combination of diametrically opposite things, sometimes even mutually exclusive. The era of postmodern design culture has recorded the fusion of "high" and "low" art, the emergence of new trends - neo-conceptual art, art installation, lowbrow art, performance art, digital art, telematic art - has affected. It should be noted the immersion in virtual reality in particular, as a result of the perception of the concept of postmodernism. After all, the purpose of designer items and their perception has already been changed in accordance with the needs of a person in the postmodern world. A striking example is the coronavirus epidemic, which has become the central theme of successful design projects. After all, a protective mask as a medical device becomes the object of design solutions that transform it into a means of selfexpression (fabric masks, masks with pictures), or the manifestation of social characteristics (inscriptions about social distancing, calls for certain actions), or the result of digital achievements. (the ability to measure temperature and monitor body indicators). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Williams is one of the poets Altieri identifies with "a Modernist Constructivist aesthetics sharply opposed to the idealized immediacy that impressionism shared with imagism" (115). Modernist Poetry and the Limitations of Materialist Theory: The Importance of Constructivist Values. [Extracted from the article]

The question of whether design is art has been asked for generations. Many of the answers can be found in the study of visual communication from its earliest forms to the present day. We know from historical sources that the beginnings of visual communication are in fact images. In the beginning, images carried communication until the creation of the alphabet where written language became the primary carrier of the transmission of ideas. It can be said that the signs used for the written language are the earliest forms of design. What we know as art and the earliest forms of design have long functioned separately. Art is a form of beauty and we see design in written forms. With the occurrence of the first illuminated books in the Middle Ages, images and text merged into a single entity for conveying ideas. Much later in the time of the industrial revolution the written word and the image were used together for a single purpose and that is marketing, while the main tool is design. Design is gaining momentum and is becoming part of everyday human life. At the same time, art as a strong medium of conveying ideas separates itself from its previous primary goal of being beautiful and gives itself a new goal to convey a strong message. With the development of modern and postmodern movements, the classical understanding of art is changing. Throughout this period, design keeps pace with art and they develop together. Throughout this development, both art and design share many similarities, so it is natural to ask whether design is art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by what literary scholar Lisa Lowe calls "the past conditional temporality"--or the "what could have been"--this paper examines how the work of 20th-century Cuban American performance artist Ana Mendieta challenges modernist ontologies that separate the human from the non-human, simultaneously calling on older ways of being and demonstrating that they never disappeared. Many argue that the ecological crises of the Anthropocene are in large part due to the proliferation of modernist worldviews that set humans apart from the non-human world. The rise of European rationalist philosophies in the early modern period played a central role in the proliferation of instrumentalist relationships between humans and the non-human world. This paper explores how Mendieta's Silueta and Rupestrian Sculptures series (from the 1970s and 1980s) resist the logic of European capitalism and colonialism, revealing that the relationships that rationalism sought to subdue have always existed, will continue to exist, and can proliferate. Symbolic communication is a key means of mediating and actualizing relationships between subjects, and so, if a non-instrumental relationship is possible between the human and non-human, visual art ought to be a possible means of enactment. Through Mendieta's work, this paper considers the mechanisms by which this is possible. By considering meaning-making as a basis for life, the co-constitution of human/nonhuman subjectivities, and the inherent permeability of the category of the individual, this paper highlights counter-modernist visual art practices that are of special urgency in the age of the Anthropocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay examines the reception of a state-organized Soviet art exhibition that traveled to Ankara and Istanbul in Turkey in 1934-1935 among modernist Turkish artists who were trained in Western Europe, considering Turkish painter Nurullah Berk's argument for statism in fine arts. It analyzes the portrayal of Soviet citizens in paintings by Aleksandr Deineka, Sergei Gerasimov and Samokhvalov and its influence on Berk's modernist idioms to paint social collectivist subjects for the public.

The article offers information on aesthetic reflection that only come when the practice of art has drifted away from meanings that had been intuitively felt and practically embraced. Topics include considered that as evidenced by the myriad prefaces, defenses, manifestos, and reviews that, from Romanticism to high Modernism, seek to frame works of art for an increasingly disoriented and distracted public, philosophical aesthetics.

While numerous studies have shown diverse effects of rankings, rather little is known about their production. This article contributes to a broader understanding of rankings in society, and does so by focusing on underlying worldviews. I argue that the existence of a ranking and its concrete methodology can be explained by the producer's paradigmatic assumptions about a world-to-be-ranked. Referring to the sociology of knowledge and studies on commensuration, comparisons, quantification and valuation, I provide a general heuristic to analyze this relation between underlying worldviews and observational regimes through which order is constructed systematically. Presenting empirical results on a ranking for the most famous artists in the world, I show how the review device's initial problem and its construction of order derive from consistent assumptions about contemporary art, its symbolic structures and its social embeddedness. These findings have implications for both research on rankings and sociology of the arts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, Superstroke and Superblur art movements, which continue to actively continue their art activities, but are not known and pronounced much, are mentioned. These art movements, influenced by past trends and understandings, but showing their existence with a different stance, published their declarations stating their goals. Especially the reactive art movements inspired by art movements such as Cubism, Expressionism and Pointillism are interesting in the history of art with the productions they create using different techniques and symbols. These responses; It is about the fact that unique new styles can be created without adhering to Western understandings and based on existing painting traditions. Because, some countries have entered into a change of direction in the art styles continuing with these approaches. With these insights, Superstroke and Superblur art movements have been evaluated both between each other and with other movements, and with examples from artists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of cultural criticism and sterile aesthetic across the world. Topics include critique with a book-length inquiry into minimalism as a modern self-help gospel in the visual arts, architecture, music, and philosophy; subsumed minimalism in modernism to a greater modern orientation toward extremes; and anticapitalist, concerning technologies that encourage a capitalist perception of time, place, self, and community.

This article reflects on the implications of historical change for art, in particular on the relation between the paradigm change from industrial to post-industrial societies, and the change from late modern art to postmodern art. The central narrative of this article is provided by the rise and fall of the international art movement and network New Tendencies which emerged in Zagreb, Croatia in 1961 and lasted till 1978. The background is provided by the unique conditions of postwar Yugoslavia, the gap between the ideology of self-management and its reality, and the increasing fossilisation of the system. Rather than providing a linear history, the article traces relationships between historical processes of different kinds: first, between Yugoslavia in a catch-up process of modernisation and innovative practices in art, such as New Tendencies, and in philosophy, such as the Praxis group, and Korčula Summer school; secondly, after the implications of 1968, Yugoslavia in a state of slow decline, at first invisible, and the rise of new artforms, such as the new art practices. As the social base for a modernist, utopian project such as New Tendencies was slipping away, new art practices emerged which were better capable of reflecting changing times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the distinction between high and popular culture through the elaboration of the craftsmanship, or what is in the ancient Greek named téchnê (is/vy). The paper will argue that téchnê remains the ultimate element of the distinction between high and popular culture. The concept of remediation inaugurated by David Bolter and Richard Grusin (2000) serves to lighten a material aspect of an artefact, especially remediation as a ground for distinguishing the immediacy from the hypermediacy as two representational strategies. The model is demonstrated on the example of the computer games were the immediacy is a common technique that aims at "seamless bond" between the narrative and the algorithm. On the other hand, art forms often follow modernist tradition with the affinity toward non-transparent hypermediacy. The article discusses modernism as a specific turn in representational strategies that can be described through the concept of immediacy/hypermediacy. Further, the paper questions political aspects of such affinity. In order to define authentic political art, the paper reads Benjamin's essay "The Author as Producer". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

B Mor Presiado b is a lecturer in the Department of Jewish Art at Bar-Ilan University, Israel, where she teaches modern and post-modern art. B Rinat Podissuk Reisner b is an artist, art therapist and lecturer in the programme for art therapy at the Department of Jewish Art at Bar-Ilan University. Prior to this, Jaye worked as a Lecturer/Tutor at the Critical and Theoretical Studies department within The School of Art at The Victorian College of the Arts, The University of Melbourne. [Extracted from the article]

What returns and recurs across Samuel Beckett's art in different media-prose, theater, television, radio, and film-is resistance to representation. Beckett's work diverges from art that points outside itself to some facet of the familiar world, but neither does it favor abstraction, which is, according to Beckett's commentary in letters and essays, too far removed, sealed against 'what is.' How, then, is art to relate to the perceptual and emotional material of 'what is'? What techniques, what vision might ensure adequate attention to the complexity of experiential material while protecting its possibilities for remaking itself, perhaps prompted by aesthetic experience? The term Beckett chooses to describe this positioning is 'non-relation,' and the essays in The Edinburgh Companion to Samuel Beckett and the Artssuggest a Beckettian art beyond-or better, between-representation and abstraction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between the 1920s and early 1980s an increasing number of African art exhibitions opened to the public in Western Europe and North America. In these exhibitions African religious objects such as masks and wooden figurines were reframed as modernist art. Focusing on the illustrative case of the National Ethnology Museum in Lisbon, Portugal, this article shows that these African art exhibitions offered a powerful alternative to the colonial, religious concept of the fetish. Early scholars of comparative religion claimed that the primitive fetish worshippers were unable to grasp the idea of transcendence. By elevating African religious objects (the so-called fetishes) to the transcendental realm of modernist art, curators of African art helped dispel the colonial concept of the fetish, and change mindsets and worldviews. In their struggle against the notion of the fetish, these curators also engaged with the concepts of art, culture and religion. Mounted on pedestals and bathed by light, the African religious objects became modernist cult objects: cultural artifacts elevated to a higher plane of religious and aesthetic spirituality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the exhibition dubbed the "Red Show" at Charles Egan Gallery in New York City in December 1954. The exhibition showed the works of painter Robert Rauschenberg, and a group of friends including musician John Cage, choreographer Merce Cunningham, and dancer Carolyn Brown. It notes the argument of Michael Fried in his essay "Art and Objecthood" on the dangerous influence of the theater upon modernist art, claiming it constituted an abrogation of medium specificity.

In the early 1960s two editions of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart were published with competing sets of illustrations. The first, by Dennis Carabine, illustrates a realist novel, the second, by Uche Okeke, a modernist one. Reading Achebe's iconic novel through its early publication history and for its visual images shows how the famous ending of Things Fall Apart turns, stylistically, to the impenetrable flatness of the modernist surface. At mid-century, modernist style could be made to serve realist imperatives, and Achebe's flat style challenges colonial modes of literary representation and the myth of modernist primitivism in the visual arts. This essay stresses the importance of the visual image to mid-century anglophone literature and the importance of modernist style to the poetics of decolonization [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the late 19th century to the beginnings of the 21th century, the female figure in the painting art occupies an important political role. In the case of Turkish experience, the feminist art and the female figure experience an enormous development in spite of some difficulties to affront. This paper seeks to apprehend the evolution of female figure together with the rise of woman artists. It can be argued that both social and political messages of "the women" in Turkish painting art reflect widely the problems of the modern society in Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author analyzes art and modernism and proposes a parallel account of visual modernism. Topics discussed include modernism as an expression of social modernity and modernity as an enduring social state, intensification of mobility in light modernity, and functions of the providential faith of heavy-modern life.

In the article author examined the emergence of the concept of "postmodernism", his art and theoretical-practical-art semantic features. Carried out an analysis of the classical approaches to the definition of the category of "postmodernism", its semantic characteristics, which are the most stable basis for the theory of postmodernism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines various conceptions of autonomy in relation to recent artistic practices. Starting from the apparent opposition between modernist notions of the autonomy of art and theorizations of political autonomy, the text problematizes the notion of the autonomy of art by using Jacques Rancière’s notion of the aesthetic regime. Focusing on the importance of the act and performance in the art of the last decades, it is argued that while political and artistic autonomy may never quite converge, aesthetic acts can under certain circumstances function in both the political and the artistic register, simultaneously or successively. The aesthetic act thus stages a passage from the artistic to the political, and vice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the realism debate (riarizumu ronsō) that took place between 1946 and 1950 as a forum in which ideas on artistic form, the role of the artist in society, and the social relevance of art come into focus in a way that allows us to see how questions such as Japan's modernity, the recent experience of fascism, and the challenges of rebuilding culture during the early cold war were taken up by leading cultural figures in the field of the visual arts. Occurring alongside discussions of how the art world could be reformed to avoid the failures of fascism, the debate served as an occasion to re-examine the history of modern art in Europe and Japan and to consider the question of artistic representation in a way that opened the most fundamental question of art's relationship to the world and promised to begin the process of envisioning it anew. The debate involved three camps which I label social realism (represented by Hayashi Fumio and Nagai Kiyoshi), modernist realism (Hijikata Tei’ichi), and avant-garde realism (Uemura Takachiyo, Okamoto Tarō, and Hanada Kiyoteru). While assessing their points of agreement and disagreement, I argue that the debate set the stage for debates in the 1950s and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses what is termed the gas mask aesthetic in Japanese modern art during the 20th century. It references the photograph "Gas Mask Parade, Tokyo" and other images by photographer Horino Masao, discusses the gas mask as a symbol of anonymous Japanese citizens and weapons technology, and examines the Japanese civil air defense policy of the 1930s.

Why is the urge to lose the iconic image relevant to reformation and modernism? A question so central in a society built more than ever on visual media dependency. Is that relevant to sceptical questioning of the essence of reality, and if the image is a reflection of reality in the era of new technology of image creating and manipulating? As iconoclasts began deliberately destroying images at the alter as a sign of reformation, modern art was no longer bound by truthful representations of iconic reality; from shift in colour as a medium to a scientific light reflection, to pushing colour boundaries in reality, to losing the object for the absolute representation of abstract and supermatist visual, to deliberate losing of intended visual representation to materials, then to the empty frame, and to the empty gallery ... on goes the iconoclastic gesture of modern art. Followed by a transitional shift from iconic representation all the way to resonance in visual communications, exploring with the possibilities of different referential functions of signs, and thru to minimalism and replacing visual by verbal referential codes. This article studies actions and motives of deliberate loss of iconic image, examining the factors associated with the development and process, criss-crossing the boundaries of two image dependant yet very different domains; art and visual communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photography has partaken in the art with different ways and forms since its invention. Photography which was used as a supplementary material previously put itself in appearance in the art world in post modernism and therefore it strengthened its place in the indispensable elements of the art. During the postmodern era, witness function of an event was not valid anymore. During this era, as the originality of the photographic product was corrupted, the view that the art was only focusing on the repeated activity was dominant. Photograph products show themselves especially with recreation of the reality. Postmodernists use the photograph as the most important tool to translate their expressions. Artists preferred the photograph since it is a new discipline and open to many fields; it is easy to access; it is fast, consumption-oriented and reproductive. Cindy Sherman, Sherrie Levine, Barbara Kruger, Richard Prince are among the artists, who used the photograph as a translation tool in appropriation action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent, premature death of art critic Robert Hughes registered significant celebrity attention, but little for the extent and depth of his intellectual achievement. Hughes called himself a writer, or else a journalist. He had at least two especial qualifications, in this capacity. He had an Eye, but he also had a Voice. He was a brilliant, if sometimes prolix, writer and presenter. He was a performer, and his work should be seen as performance. This essay, offered as a promissory note, seeks to place Robert Hughes in terms of style and substance but also in terms of centre and periphery, in terms of the cultural traffic between them. It touches on three aspects of his reception. First, on the obituaries, which sought largely to reclaim his body as Australian, even after 50 years of absence. Second, on The Fatal Shore and its reception, itself indicative of the difficulty in neatly placing Hughes in terms of nationalist conceptions. Third, it discusses leading critical interpretations, asking for more, please, and promising to help contribute to the appreciation of Hughes as Tory radical stylist and contrarian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on documenta 13, which is the art world's equivalent of the Olympic Games that is held in Kassel, Germany every five years. Started in 1955, documenta was seen as a way to repair the damage done by Nazi cultural wreckage and during its first show, it displayed works of classical modernism. A massive parade of scrap metal in one of the railway station's marshalling yards by Lara Favaretto is one of the works at display at the event. According to the author, documenta allows viewers to see the deep contradictions between the ethos of the art world and its business model.

This article seeks to study the artistic aesthetic and communication of the Russian constructivist avant-garde, identifying the persuasive characterization and noting the proximity of the social artwork's with the function of the graphic design works. The constructivist poster served not only as a work of art, but also as a communication object, serving as an activator of the masses and uniting artistic principles to graphic design concepts. This article intends to observe these similarities between art and communication, taking the scenario of the Russian avant-garde as an analysis field and noting the presence of the persuasion and social dialogue, as well as the significance of their visual messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to the general belief that modernist art and architecture reflect the technological society, Jacques Ellul maintains in his L’empire du non-sens that they are justifications for the integration of humankind into what he called the technicist complex. Modernism in art and architecture meant that every product must be qualified by a technological character. This unassailable belief exerted some far-reaching influences on symbolic thought, on artistic expression, on architectural character. If imitation and invention were the two inseparable concepts through which art and architecture were produced and symbolized, it is because they operate on a certain transparency between an exemplar and a work of art. By contrast, in the mentality of technique, artistic production operates based on a certain opacity to meanings outside of itself. Imitation and invention were separated. Thus, one of the principal beliefs in modernism, that art and architecture symbolize the technological society is actually one of its weakest. In considering technology as both the symbol and the product, the artistic idea and its representation collapsed into each other. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the interpretation of African sculpture as part of the genre of primitive art in France between World War I and World War II. Particular focus is given to how French colonialism and the dominance of Paris, France as the center of the global art world during this period influenced French perceptions regarding the significance of African sculpture. Other topics explored include definitions of aesthetic modernism, art critiques regarding the concept of primitivism, and literature on material culture studies.

The article discusses Germans' perceived enthusiasm for American pop art in the 1960s and 1970s, with emphasis given to the work of such artists as Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol. The author relies on the theories of cultural history and culture transfers. The author beings by charting the development of German modernism and abstract expressionism, which influenced this love of U.S. pop art. The influence of U.S. economic conditions on the rise of pop art is then explained. Other topics discussed include the opening of German art galleries, German art collectors, and German economic conditions.

The author discusses the consequences of the academicisation of the social history of art, the way in which a project that was initially a response to pressing issues both inside and outside the academy has become increasingly institutionalised. To restore a wider relevance, he argues the need to open art history to the requirements of a contemporary ‘global imperative’, to play its part in the study of a global field of visual culture. But this is not simply a question of expanding the remit of existing art history. The focus is on the consequences for emergent world art studies of a critical engagement with the legacy of both modernism and conceptual art. The author considers four aspects of this: the impact of the decline of modernist binaries of ‘high/low’, and of ‘mainstream/provincial’, the idea of the autonomy of art, and contrasting definitions of the nature of ‘art’ itself. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Today Art advances at a dizzying pace and hosts many subject and tecnique. In our era very favorable rapid consumption of this environment, the arts also inevitably affected. Movement from the fact that another type of technology emerging with every last day occupied all our lives, art is oblivious to these influences. These changes are changing our visual style, senses and aesthetic understanding at the same time. Period, understandings and ways of life change as a result of this change also keeps up with art. In the first quarter of 20th century at the time of plastic arts expanding its boundaries, effects of technology starting with dizzying world of photograph formed by cameras, printing methods, video and computer tecniques and today whole known memorizes are started re-edited. Now, rejecting the speed of technology or stay in the old tecniques pressure on the artist. Artist who applies oil painting or other classical tecniques, technology help artist at any step of work. Today, art don't expect staying behind like everything, it is hard to keep time and staying behind limits artists and following modern art built on the concept of modern artist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented in which the author discusses the relationship the artists and collectors Charles and Ray Eames had with India during the 1950s and 1960s. Topics include an account of post-World War II modernism that incorporates the agenda of the post-colonial nation state, the book "Orientalism," by Edward Said, and the Eameses' 1955 exhibition "Textile and Ornamental Arts of India" at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City.

In this article I introduce a self-taught Chicana artist, Caroline Martinez, and highlight her work's religious significance. I offer a brief account of her life and a preliminary interpretation of her art. The art that adorns her Texas home and yard, I argue, is a visual testimony to the intercessory power of Jesus and Mary to heal the sick, feed the body, and protect the vulnerable. I then consider the implications of this case study for scholars in religious studies, Chicana studies, Catholic studies, and art history. Martinez's art evokes three important themes--religion, identity, and modernity--and offers reminders about three concomitant issues that face everyone who thinks about religion and art, especially self-taught artists and Chicana art: (1) What is the function of religion--and religious visual culture? (2) How do we talk about artists' religious identity, especially when there are multiple converging influences? (3) To what extent and in which sense can the work of self-taught artists like Martinez be understood as "modern" and to what extent are the artist and her work shaped by the social forces of "modernity"? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the last Congress of the GDR's Artists' Association in 1988, the term 'Socialist Realism' was officially replaced by the phrase 'Art in Socialism'. The Congress's participants thus tried not only to do justice to the variety of art, but also to bid farewell to Socialist Realism as an aesthetic concept. But how were these two goals to be accomplished, without changes in the GDR's institutions and power structures? A solution was possible, because the generation of leftist artists, recruited after 1945 to hold office in the new system and build a new socialist art, had been educated or otherwise active in the 1920s. They wanted to re-appropriate the left's modernist traditions, assuming thereby a position opposed to official cultural policy, which required strict accommodation to the Soviet model. This conflict concerning the proper attitude to modern art became the central discourse for the development of art in the GDR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of queer culture dating back to the 1960s when the convergence of queer art and modernism began. The growing population of Latinos on the historic lower east side along with New York avant-garde assimilated ethnic and folk culture to modernist and avant-garde formations. The iconic and eclectic plays such as "Flaming Creatures" and "The Life of Juanita Castro" show the reception of Latino cultures to society despite having a queer and pervasive sexual context.

The article examines the relationship between writer Pío Baroja and impressionism. The interactions between Baroja and Impressionism are deemed significant because they contradict his reputation as a writer of economic prose and place him alongside other contemporary figures who both demonstrate interesting connections with the plastic arts and engage in contemporary debate about the importance of the impression. In the novel "César o nada," a particular notion of impressionism in Baroja's writing is apparent. The visual effects created by the painterly landscapes of the novel are conspicuous, as is the impressionist focus on atmospheric effects, light and colour.

The article explores the integration of the literary's historical accounts and visual arts through the paintings of Salvador Dali. The author proposed that amidst the existence of multiple modernisms within the field of visual arts, there also exists a hegemonic mainstream of modernist production which cannot be decentered by any historical revision without having the occurred events essentially misrepresented. And this hegemonic mainstream brings out a centripetal force on the contemporaneous practices' plurality, suggesting that, through having a direct or oblique link to the mainstream, alternative modernisms can be best understood.