Capital Imagery and the Traces of the Living (original) (raw)
Artistic Detritus, the Circulation of Power, and Intervening in the Historic Record at The 8th Floor
Sedimentations: Assemblage as Social Repair is the most recent exhibition at The 8th Floor, an alternative art space affiliated with the Rubin Foundation and dedicated to expanding artistic and cultural accessibility in New York City. The title of the exhibition drums up images of geological striations, the historic record, and the trajectory of civilizations, to only name a few reference points. As curator Sara Reisman, Executive and Artistic Director of the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, explains in the opening exhibition statement, the title comes from a 1968 essay written by the influential land artist Robert Smithson. In his text, Smithson broadly explores how humans relate to the earth in every sense. The critical writings and socio-environmental practices of Smithson serve as an important conduit for understanding the cogent narrative of this exhibition and its larger themes. At the same time, I would argue that the essays of the French postmodernist thinker Michel Foucault equally provide an appropriate and useful framework for seeing how the installations on display are linked. Reisman has judiciously brought together a formidable cadre of artists, including El Anatsui, Maren Hassinger, Elana Herzog, Samuel Levi Jones, Mary Mattingly, Lina Puerta, Michael Rakowitz, Jean Shin, Shinique Smith, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Roberto Visani, and Michael Kelly Williams. These twelve artists of varying art historical moments, media, and motivations are part of an intellectual journey about material usage, objecthood, and artistic intervention/re-purposing in the life of discarded items. Concurrently, the objects and installations in one way or another comment on the visible and invisible systems that operate in our daily lives. The myriad assemblages pulsate a Foucaultian energy and speak to social ills/systems in desperate need of repair, such as waste collection and management; gun regulation; urban planning; emergency response efforts; the fashion industry; museum acquisition policies and cultural patrimony; and the military-industrial complex. The show does much more than raise questions about these systems though; it offers potential remedies to some of the most deleterious socio-political ails of our time. As Reisman explains in the catalogue essay, each “artist offers a methodology that speaks to a crisis, from the personal and intimate to the global and collectively consequent.” I have divided my analysis and assessment of the exhibition into two broad categories, attempting to elaborate on the major themes and issues as one would encounter them while progressing through the gallery space. In the first section, I consider works and themes dealing with the history of civilizations; cultural heritage; gun violence; natural disasters; the circulation of power; natural resources and the U.S. military; and the American judicial system. The latter half is concerned with the fashion industry; the geo-politics of the developing and developed worlds; nature, architecture, and culture; and shared public places and urban social theory.
Capital architecture : situating symbolism parallel to architecture and technology
The author has granted a non exclusive license allowing Library and Archives Canada to reproduce, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, communicate to the public by telecommunication or on the Internet, loan, distrbute and sell theses worldwide, for commercial or non commercial purposes, in microform, paper, electronic and/or any other formats. AVIS: L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou autres formats. PARALLEL TO ARCHITECTURAL METHODS AND TECHNOLOGY Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Architecture M.ARCH (Professional)
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . The President and Fellows of Harvard College and Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics. Logos in Byzantine culture has multiple meanings; it can signify a word, writing, divine utterance, commandment, law, sermon, and literature.1 In theological terms, Christ is the divine Logos who descends and receives flesh in the womb of the Virgin.2 This article sets out to explore how both the theological and philological meanings of Logos are engaged in the frontispiece of the mid-twelfth-century manuscript of the liturgical edition of the sermons of Gregory of Nazianzos, Sinai Cod. Gr. 339, fol. 4v.3 Seated in a space of glittering gold, Gregory lifts his stylus to start the writing of his orations (fig. 1). In the upper right corner, Christ the Logos offers divine inspiration and blesses the beginning of the writing. The enthroned Virgin and Child appear directly above Gregory. The spaces of gold are enclosed by an elaborate architectural frame, extraordinary in its balanced asymmetrical arrangement of forms.4 The opening lines of Gregory's First Logos (sermon) for Easter introduced by an image of the Anastasis appear on the facing folio 5 (fig. 2).5 Placed in the center of an enamel-like carpet frame, the narrative scene shows Christ striding over the broken gates of Hades and pulling Adam from the tomb. Locked in action, the two figures form the shape of the letter A. The same pair, but flipped, appears as a decorated initial, marking the first letter of the word "Anastasis" at the start of the homily.6 The Sinai 339 was commissioned by Joseph Hagioglykerites some time between 1136 when he became the first abbot of the Rantokrator monastery in Constantinople and his death in ca. 1155. He offered the book as a gift to the sanctuary of the Theotokos Pcintanassa on the nearby island of Hagia Glykeria.7 His Acknowledgments: I thank Herbert Kessler, Ranayiotis Agapitos, Georgia Frank, Henry Maguire, Jeffrey Hamburger, and the generous anonymous reviewers of Res for their insightful comments, criticism, and suggestions.
Lies, Damned Lies and Iconography
, Making Histories (Proceedings of the Sixth International Insular Art Conference – York 2011), Jane Hawkes ed., Donnington, 2013, 291-302., 2013
It is now 20 years since the publication of Iconography at the Crossroads, the proceedings of the Colloquium at Princeton University sponsored by the Index of Christian Art. 1 Since then, art historians have taken heed of the criticism expressed: Insular Studies in particular have addressed wider audiences and themes, explored new avenues, many 'isms' and 'fragments', often with enriching results.
A Visual Pun at Vézelay: Gesture and Meaning on a Capital Representing the Fall of Man
Traditio, 2000
In a description of a trip through the Midi of France in 1835, Prosper Merimée devotes a lengthy paragraph to the analysis of the Christ in Vézelay's Pentecost tympanum (fig. 1). He marvels at the carving of the figure's feet and “blessing” hands, as well as the placement of the thighs in relation to the torso. Later in his treatment of the abbey church and its sculpture, the author notes that figures on the nave capitals convey a “savage zeal” (zèle farouche) by means of posture and facial expressions. Gestures, in the widely construed, medieval sense of the word, clearly struck the celebrated French author as a salient feature of Vézelay's sculpture. Merimée sympathized with Romantic visions of the Middle Ages as a period less tainted by the stifling effects of civilization, and perhaps his fascination with the dramatic body movement carved throughout the abbey church reflects the belief that these were unfettered by the artistic or social constraints of the early nine...
Fragments presents one hundred and ten entries – from Acheiropoieton to Zwischenraum – that explore new insights and observations for research and criticism in art history, iconology and cultural anthropology. It offers a unique anthology of Barbara Baert's oeuvre. Each lemma bears the stamp of the author’s personality and work, sometimes in the form of an encompassing explanation, sometimes a brief experimental musing, illustrated by iconic artefacts. This extraordinary glossary leverages the power of interdisciplinary research in art and human sciences, and invites the reader to consider the beauty of these disciplines by embracing multiple genres. Fragments is Barbara Baert’s response to her being awarded the Belgian Francqui Prize Human Sciences 2016. This celebration book within the series Studies in Iconology is a token of gratitude and a sign of encouragement towards the desire of a deeper understanding of our artistic environments.