The Aesthetics of the Between: Space and Beauty (original) (raw)
Related papers
Space Between – Between Spaces: On the Relation between Visitor and Museum
2019
An exhibition is more than just objects placed in space; the visit to a museum is more than just looking at objects. Before an actual exhibition can be placed, a space must be found or created, the interior defined. Then the potential visitors must be addressed. Which image of the museum should be created, which story-if there is one-is going to be told to the visitor and how?
2022
Mythologies of the modern museum: Collector-philanthropists, the first influencers in history? Aluminé Rosso IIEAC (National University of Arts, Buenos Aires) aluminerosso@gmail.com Abstract: The history of the art museum is built on the mythology of the revolution and its eagerness to make available to the people those sacred objects that had previously been in the hands of the authoritarian monarchy. Under the emblem of the common good, the museum laid the foundations of an ideological program aimed at strengthening the identity of the nascent nation states. In opposition to the desire to erase the private origin of the collections of the fine arts museums, the 20th century established in the origins of the modern museum a similar mythology of the revolution, but this time based in the individual and private character through the exaltation of philanthropists, collectors, architects, and artists who encouraged their foundation. Although their ideological programs were founded on the establishment of civic institutions capable of abolishing the old museum, personalism gained more and more ground and is used in the 21st century as a basic value for the repositioning of western modern art museums. In the age of influencers, the figure of the collector-philanthropist who realized his dream would seem to be the perfect insight to connect with audiences. Following this hypothesis, we studied the cases of Malba, Moma, Tate Modern, and Centre Pompidou by concentrating on the storytelling presented on their websites and social media (Instagram, YouTube and Spotify) and on the intermediary architectural discourses (Traversa, 2017), i.e. the esplanade and the entrance hall. We focus mainly on the following points: the origin of its collections, the history of its founders, the construction of its buildings. The aim of our work is to observe how these mythologies contribute to the construction of bounds with visitors, to the configuration of local identity and to the positioning not only of museums but also of the cities in which they are located. Keywords: modern art museums - museums communication - semiotics of space - visitor experience - mythologies - social media - museum audiences - user experience
Arts are permeable. The current museographical approach seems to go towards a form of interdisciplinarity which leverages the encounter between arts. From the MAXXI in Rome to the Louvre of Paris, to the National Gallery in London, this interaction between different art fields (dance, theatre, music, etc.), gives rise to new aesthetic proposals. Choreographed exposition and exhibited choreography are the rendition of this kind of negotiation between visual art, museum spaces, and performing arts, which sets up the spectatorship dialectic between temporal and spatial dynamics. Within a migration process, from the black box to the white cube, the theatrical body becomes a work of art, through a process of objectivation. Likewise, spectators participation is choreographed, as well as the very act of observation. The exhibition space loses its structural and statutory hierarchies, becoming a hybrid place, a meta-theatre and simultaneously a meta-museum. Points of view change; the frontal perspective of the theatrical or cinematographic architectures, and the Renaissance monocular gaze disappear. That is a contemporary dynamic of creolization for which, within an exhibition context, the spectator’s enjoyment meets with a theatrical approach, becoming a critical device of transcultural mediation.
Evental Aesthetics Vol. 1 No. 3 (2012) - Art and the City
2012
For now, you are nothing more or less than a flâneur. t's tempting to offer such luxurious counsel to readers of this issue, the third issue of Evental Aesthetics and our last for 2012. A flâneur is a sort of person that we are perhaps most likely to associate with Walter Benjamin. Benjamin's work does not explicitly feature in the pages that follow, but the approach to urban realms that he deemed characteristic of flâneurs might indeed be useful to those readers who journey from the heart of Manhattan to Singapore and Brazilian shantytowns, via Paris, the suburbs of Los Angeles, and Lagos, guided by our contributors. It might even seem that some wish for a bit of flânerie guided the editors to this theme, Art and the City. It might seem that our aim is to entice city-dwellers and visitors to take the time to wander urban spaces in search of nothing in particular, except perhaps the insightenlightening, disturbing, or both -that sometimes attends the experience of art, in this case art inspired or on offer by the city.
The Flâneur, the Tourist, the Global Flâneur, and Magazine Reading as Flânerie
The flâneur and the tourist were both characterized foremost by movement and curiosity. A range of meanings and resonances were associated with both figures, underlining the tensions between the ideas of the insider and the outsider, the Parisian and the foreigner, travel within Paris and without, mechanical versus purposeful seeing, and compulsive versus meaningful mobility. While the sense of vision was emphasized, literary representations often evoked the idea that vacuous and passive seeing, stimulated by trivial goings-on and merchandise, lets the flâneur neglect the other senses, whereas an inner preparation and discernment lead to a more balanced way of flânerie. The projection of flânerie onto world travel paralleled the mode of reading illustrated magazines, which elicited imaginary flânerie. The re-reading of Baudelaire's 'Le Peintre de la vie moderne' in this light provides some new insights regarding the concept of the artist as the 'man of the world'. What are the connections between the flâneur and the tourist in the nineteenth century? The figures of the tourist and the flâneur have been compared as tropes of modernity in sociological theory. However, little historical analysis exists on the association between the two figures. The flâneur was strongly associated with travel from early on, as the very etymology and definition of the flâneur had to do with the idea of walking, movement. A range of meanings and resonances, including contradictory ones, were associated with both figures especially in the early decades, characterized foremost by movement and curiosity, underlining the tensions between the ideas of the insider and the outsider, the Parisian and the foreigner, travel within Paris and without, mechanical versus purposeful seeing, and compulsive versus meaningful mobility.
Other Spaces/Other Selves: Museum Encounters & Foucault’s Heterotopia
The Ruined Archive, 2014
This essay explores the bodily nature of Michel Foucault’s heterotopias as a means of delving into the complexities of access to and representation in museums today. Informed by contemporary debates around postcoloniality and museum histories and practices, this essay is situated at the ambiguous intersection of embodied experience, spatial theory, and physical museum spaces. Predominately considered in relation to spatial difference up until now, adding a corporeal element to the analysis of the heterotopia both connects the theory to Foucault’s accompanying lecture, “The Utopian Body,” and provides a bridge between this concept and pertinent issues of memory, identity, agency, and the plurality of voices that orbit museum collections. In this respect heterotopia is a space of possibility as well as a reminder of boundaries, borders, and limitations. To get to the intimate vantage point of the mobile and multifaceted individual, this essay proposes viewing the heterotopia via distinct, yet simultaneous and intertwined levels of scale. Providing a flexible structure, these levels enable the analysis of spatial difference as emerging from and embedded within broad social landscapes, internal spatial ordering, and individual encounters. Within this frame, material, conceptual, and interactive discourse is made manifest in the “other space” of the museum. Neither structure nor static archive, the museum is a potential forum or nexus, a threshold, and the starting point for conversations that expand far beyond its doors.