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Volume 14
Issue 6
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Arts, Volume 14, Issue 6 (December 2025) – 50 articles

Cover Story (view full-size image): In eighteenth-century England, anyone attending an opera or oratorio would have been provided a printed ‘wordbook’ to read during the performance. These wordbooks contained the text to be sung (the libretto) and sometimes also included explanatory footnotes, prefaces, plot summaries, dramatis personae, and—when needed—translations. Through examination of several Handel oratorios, especially Saul and Theodora, this article considers how the wordbook influenced the drama of a performed work and to what extent this influence required an actively reading audience. It also explores the use of stage directions in oratorio wordbooks, arguing that they offer rich opportunities for the audience’s imagination by suggesting images that the performance alone could not convey, particularly given that English oratorio probably involved no stage action. View this paper
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30 pages, 8638 KB  
Article
Mediated Sound—Between Visual Art and Music: Three Case Study: Zbigniew Bargielski, Zygmunt Krauze, Bettina Skrzypczak
by Violetta Grażyna Przech
Arts 2025, 14(6), 175; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060175 - 16 Dec 2025
Viewed by 424
Abstract
The article focuses on demonstrating the connections between works of visual art and their musical representation—in the sense of a musical response to a work that served as a source of inspiration. The discussion focuses on works by outstanding composers: Zbigniew Bargielski (born [...] Read more.
The article focuses on demonstrating the connections between works of visual art and their musical representation—in the sense of a musical response to a work that served as a source of inspiration. The discussion focuses on works by outstanding composers: Zbigniew Bargielski (born 1937), Zygmunt Krauze (born 1938), and a younger composer, Bettina Skrzypczak (born 1961). Among the distinguished artists are also the authors of works of visual art that provided the “causative impulse” for musical compositions: Władysław Strzemiński (1893–1952), Tadeusz Mysłowski (born 1943), Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966). Their works, taken into account by the composers, belong to various genres of visual arts: Strzemiński’s unistic painting fascinated Z. Krauze (including Unistic Compositions for solo piano), Mysłowski’s multimedia objects inspired the musical imagination of Z. Bargielski (Shrine for Anonymous Victim, Light Cross, Towards Organic Geometry), while Giacometti’s sculptures prompted B. Skrzypczak to interpret them musically (Vier Figuren). The methodological basis for developing the topic was the concept of ekphrasis, introduced into the field of musical semiotics (as musical ekphrasis) by the German musicologist Siglind Bruhn, as well as the work by Jacek Szerszenowicz, Artistic Inspirations in Music (2008), whose author, in the Polish context, undertook research on capturing the nature of the relationship between the extra-musical source of inspiration (artistic works) and music. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sound, Space, and Creativity in Performing Arts)
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21 pages, 267 KB  
Article
Camera Movement, Reading, and Coloniality in Ichikawa Jun’s Film, Tony Takitani
by Timothy Iles
Arts 2025, 14(6), 174; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060174 - 16 Dec 2025
Viewed by 507
Abstract
The function of film grammar in the creation of narrative cinema is a central one when considering the realities of cinema as a global art. Since its birth from a confluence of European scientific and aesthetic principles, cinema has become a ubiquitous art [...] Read more.
The function of film grammar in the creation of narrative cinema is a central one when considering the realities of cinema as a global art. Since its birth from a confluence of European scientific and aesthetic principles, cinema has become a ubiquitous art form, but together with this growth has come the spread of those very principles from which cinema sprang. As an example, camera movement in Japanese film typically follows a grammatical pattern to privilege left-to-right, chronological movement as set by western cinema. That is, the camera will introduce information as a visual analogue to the process of reading a written, western text, with the lens operating very much as an eye in its trajectory across the ‘page’ of the screen. Building on work by Jean-Louis Baudry, Brian O’Leary and Jean Louis Comolli, this paper demonstrates this feature of Japanese cinema, using Ichikawa Jun’s 2004 film, Tony Takitani, as a case study. Through a close reading of the film and its pattern of movement, this paper proposes that we may discern a symptom of the persistent inscription of coloniality imposed in and through cinema—the movement of the camera parodies reading but also accepts as natural an ‘unnatural’, western pattern of movement. The act of adaptation, too, both anticipates and supports the conception of cinema as reading-parody, with Murakami Haruki’s short story “Tony Takitani” operating as a meaningful substratum to the process of vision-as-coloniality. Full article
17 pages, 3981 KB  
Article
Material History of Ethiopic Manuscripts: Original Repair, Damage, and Anthropogenic Impact
by Shimels Ayele Yalew, Natalia Ortega Saez, Tim De Kock, Tigab Bezie Biks, Blen Taye, Ayenew Sileshi Demssie and Abebe Dires Dinberu
Arts 2025, 14(6), 173; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060173 - 15 Dec 2025
Viewed by 1105
Abstract
Ethiopic manuscript studies have become a rapidly expanding field in recent decades. However, most research has focused on cataloging and textual analysis. This study examines the material traces of original addenda, patterns of deterioration, and desecration of indigenous conservation ethics. A combination of [...] Read more.
Ethiopic manuscript studies have become a rapidly expanding field in recent decades. However, most research has focused on cataloging and textual analysis. This study examines the material traces of original addenda, patterns of deterioration, and desecration of indigenous conservation ethics. A combination of codicological and paleographic methods was used. This approach is vital for documenting historical features, understanding the context of use, and informing conservation efforts. The research involved assessing twenty-eight physical manuscripts from two collections in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Additionally, twenty-seven digital copies from the Endangered Archives Program, the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, and the University of Cambridge Digital Library repositories were consulted. The findings revealed original features like holes, repairs, and scribal corrections. Damage such as tears, creases, dirt, fading, erasures, and recent writing was also identified. These results reveal the material history of the manuscripts. Furthermore, both domestic and international stakeholders have adversely affected these manuscripts through erasure, dispossession, and appropriation. This study proposes ethical guidelines for recent additions to the manuscripts and for preserving the original addendum. It also underscores the necessity for additional material research, enhancements in conservation practices, and efforts to raise awareness. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Visual Arts)
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27 pages, 34213 KB  
Article
Parliamentary Alchemists and Electric Colossi: The Scientific and the Nostalgic Past in Sir John Tenniel’s Punch Cartoons
by Grayson C. V. Van Beuren
Arts 2025, 14(6), 172; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060172 - 12 Dec 2025
Viewed by 663
Abstract
The modern world has had a long and uneasy relationship with the nostalgic past, with the line between the harmless and the harmful in this relationship often difficult to parse. This article looks at a particular microcosm of nostalgic medievalism in nineteenth century [...] Read more.
The modern world has had a long and uneasy relationship with the nostalgic past, with the line between the harmless and the harmful in this relationship often difficult to parse. This article looks at a particular microcosm of nostalgic medievalism in nineteenth century popular culture—selections from the work of prominent editorial cartoonist Sir John Tenniel in Punch that combine gothic imagery with depictions of modern science and technology—through the literary critical theoretical framework of nostalgia theory, connecting it with strong societal forces in his time. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Early Modern Global Materials, Materiality, and Material Culture)
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14 pages, 3096 KB  
Article
Reimagining Aesthetics and Labor in the Japanese Manga Industry: A Case Study of Arts-Based Research at Artist Village Aso 096k
by Anju Kinoshita
Arts 2025, 14(6), 171; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060171 - 10 Dec 2025
Viewed by 746
Abstract
This study examines how hand-drawn comics became a site of critical and creative resistance during fieldwork at Artist Village Aso 096k in rural Japan. The international artists in residence initially came to learn about the professional environment of the Japanese manga (comics) industry [...] Read more.
This study examines how hand-drawn comics became a site of critical and creative resistance during fieldwork at Artist Village Aso 096k in rural Japan. The international artists in residence initially came to learn about the professional environment of the Japanese manga (comics) industry and to publish original works. However, the corporate-led system revealed barriers that constrained their early careers. In response, I employed Arts-Based Research (ABR) to invite the artists to create comics by hand, in contrast to the digital tools central to their daily workflow. This shift from digital to material practice foregrounded the affective and epistemological potentials of slowness, irrevocability, and embodied storytelling. The analog process functioned not only as an introspective tool for artists but also as a form of care that resisted the restrictive logic of Japan’s immigration policy. I argue that reflective drawing, as a situated and material practice, provides new ways of navigating social precarity. By centering comics as a research method, this study calls for renewed attention to the ethics and politics of artistic labor—particularly for international artists whose social and economic stability is increasingly threatened by xenophobic discourse. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue From Craft to Code and Back Again: Rethinking Art, Materiality and Exhibition Practices in the 21st Century)
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36 pages, 5584 KB  
Article
Sweet Bags as Embodied Artifacts of Olfactory Heritage
by Olena Morenets
Arts 2025, 14(6), 170; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060170 - 9 Dec 2025
Viewed by 813
Abstract
Sweet bags were small, embroidered textile pouches used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to carry fragrant substances, money, books, sewing tools, mirrors, or other personal items. They were often exchanged as gifts, used to preserve clothing in wardrobes, or used to protect [...] Read more.
Sweet bags were small, embroidered textile pouches used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to carry fragrant substances, money, books, sewing tools, mirrors, or other personal items. They were often exchanged as gifts, used to preserve clothing in wardrobes, or used to protect against contaminated air. Beyond their material function, both their name and some of their uses suggest an olfactory dimension, as they were typically filled with aromatic herbs—combinations frequently recorded in recipe books, medical, and household manuals, including Countrey Contentments, or The English Husvvife, Praxis Medicinæ, or The Physitian’s Practise, and Exenterata, among others. Through close reading and literary analysis of such primary sources combined with a sensory approach, this article traces the possible ingredients of these pouches in Early Modern recipes and argues that their olfactory content positions them as objects of the “olfactory gaze” (Verbeek), thereby transforming them into elements of olfactory heritage. Ultimately, the article seeks to recreate the olfactory component of sweet bags within recipe-related practices, and broader domestic traditions of Early Modern England. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Early Modern Global Materials, Materiality, and Material Culture)
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27 pages, 5493 KB  
Article
Ceremonial, Architectural Theatricality, and the Multisensory Cityscape in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean
by Karen Rose Mathews
Arts 2025, 14(6), 169; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060169 - 9 Dec 2025
Viewed by 955
Abstract
Ceremonial deployed with the aim of displaying and perpetuating power was a shared practice across the medieval Mediterranean. Processions, ceremonies, and ritual acts created solidarity and consensus, naturalized dominion, and conveyed legitimacy while minimizing dissent and threats to social and political hierarchies. Such [...] Read more.
Ceremonial deployed with the aim of displaying and perpetuating power was a shared practice across the medieval Mediterranean. Processions, ceremonies, and ritual acts created solidarity and consensus, naturalized dominion, and conveyed legitimacy while minimizing dissent and threats to social and political hierarchies. Such ceremonial acts were carried out in the public spaces of Mediterranean cities, connecting people, objects, and places in multisensory displays. This paper will explore the relationship between urban spaces and ritual and focus on the architectural contexts where ceremonies and rituals were performed. Three cosmopolitan Mediterranean cities—Cairo, Constantinople, and Venice—will serve as case studies for analyzing how richly ornamented architectural structures were employed as the staging areas for spectacle. Their prominent placement and ornamentation highlighted the theatricality of ceremony and defined a multisensory cityscape that was meant to overwhelm the senses and impress participants and spectators alike. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Art from the Medieval Mediterranean: A Critical View)
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19 pages, 3748 KB  
Article
From Africa Palace to AfricaMuseum
by Karen Shelby
Arts 2025, 14(6), 168; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060168 - 8 Dec 2025
Viewed by 2782
Abstract
In 1897, King Leopold II of Belgium opened the Brussels International Exposition, which, in the Palace of the Colonies, showcased objects and people from the Congo Free State. They were displayed as the property of the King, who was the founder and sole [...] Read more.
In 1897, King Leopold II of Belgium opened the Brussels International Exposition, which, in the Palace of the Colonies, showcased objects and people from the Congo Free State. They were displayed as the property of the King, who was the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908. The Palace of the Colonies was a combination of classically inspired imperial architecture and references to the Congo. The exposition was a huge success. As a result, the King built Africa Palace, a permanent ethnographic museum dedicated to his idea of Congo. It was located adjacent to his palace in Tervuren, now a suburb outside of Brussels. In 2018, the museum reopened as AfricaMuseum. This paper examines the inherent colonial frame of AfricaMuseum, both physically and ideologically, that continue to limit a significant socio-political shift for the museum, and the contemporary art pieces by Congolese and Burundian artists that have been tasked with the heavy lifting in shifting the narrative. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Restitution Beyond Repatriation: Rethinking African Tangible Heritage in Twenty-First Century Museums)
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19 pages, 2631 KB  
Essay
Vestigial Unconscious and Oceanic Feelings
by Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli
Arts 2025, 14(6), 167; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060167 - 8 Dec 2025
Viewed by 581
Abstract
According to Sigmund Freud, the unconscious is full of contradictions (wild emotional impulses, baseless fears, and repressive forces) but it is also a control mechanism. It is no wonder that digital platforms—requiring uniformity, reliable protocols, secure transmissions and proprietary algorithms as well as [...] Read more.
According to Sigmund Freud, the unconscious is full of contradictions (wild emotional impulses, baseless fears, and repressive forces) but it is also a control mechanism. It is no wonder that digital platforms—requiring uniformity, reliable protocols, secure transmissions and proprietary algorithms as well as an enormous database about human desire and impulses—would gravitate toward a model of control, or more specifically, the ideal of automating impulsive actions and reactions. Similar to the Freudian unconscious, digital platforms and networks are infamously black-boxed, meaning their operations (inner workings) are made invisible to the average user, including information about them. Yet, the digital unconscious also seems to perfect and promote this as an automatic destructive force (a death drive fed by extraction, consumption and a will to endless profit) that is incommensurate with life on the planet. Using the recent pleas by the Tuvaluan Minister of Justice, Communication, and Foreign Affairs (Simon Kofe) to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change, this article will argue that denial has replaced repression as the key mechanism of the digital unconscious, allowing twenty-first century media to offer itself as pharmakon (both poison and a remedy or at least a distraction) to those twenty-first century crises that nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first-century media continue to advance. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Film and Visual Studies: The Digital Unconscious)
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19 pages, 3485 KB  
Article
A Breathing Space: Critical Reflections on the Rewilding of Middleton Tuberculosis Hospital 2016–2025
by Jim Brogden
Arts 2025, 14(6), 166; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060166 - 6 Dec 2025
Viewed by 473
Abstract
This article emerges from a researcher-generated longitudinal photography project conducted between 2016 and 2025 situated on the redundant site of the former Middleton Tuberculosis Hospital in North Yorkshire. The research project explored the site’s transformation through an unmanaged rewilding in the context of [...] Read more.
This article emerges from a researcher-generated longitudinal photography project conducted between 2016 and 2025 situated on the redundant site of the former Middleton Tuberculosis Hospital in North Yorkshire. The research project explored the site’s transformation through an unmanaged rewilding in the context of surrounding dairy farms within the Nidderdale ‘area of outstanding natural beauty’. The hospital site is reimagined as a bucolic ‘island’ stranded in the ideological socio-cultural notions embedded in “Nature”, the countryside, and agricultural landscape under increasing pressure to value biodiversity and nature’s restoration. Employing a reflexive lyrical critical lens informed by ‘resonance theory’, social semiotics, and expressive visual sociological practice, the article contributes to the debates surrounding landscape valorization, the contestation of the ‘countryside’ as a working, and recreational landscape. Researcher-generated photographic practice captures the duration of iterative site visits, the seasonal atmosphere and potential experience of resonance of the site, providing vivid sources for reflections, meaning-making, while proselytizing the axiom of Kress, that: ‘without frame no meaning’. The key research questions are: (1) Why is researcher-generated photography, amid AI image production, an effective epistemological method for re-presenting and understanding the significance of unmanaged landscape rewilding? (2) How do photographic re-presentations and lyrical reflexivity convey the lived resonance of being in places like the Middleton Hospital site? The text rejects illustrative photographic use in academic discourse, favoring an expressive, allusive, and lyrical interpretation of rewilding’s socio-cultural value. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Visual Arts and Environmental Regeneration in Britain)
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18 pages, 282 KB  
Article
Sounding Out the Femme Fatale-ness of Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction (1994)
by Stephen Andriano-Moore and Xinyu Guo
Arts 2025, 14(6), 165; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060165 - 5 Dec 2025
Viewed by 1176
Abstract
This article develops a theoretical framework for analyzing the roles of sound in character development in relation to issues of gender called the gendered character soundscape critique. This theoretical framework is applied to the character Mia Wallace from the film Pulp Fiction (1994) [...] Read more.
This article develops a theoretical framework for analyzing the roles of sound in character development in relation to issues of gender called the gendered character soundscape critique. This theoretical framework is applied to the character Mia Wallace from the film Pulp Fiction (1994) and illuminates the contrasting ways sound contributes to her characterization as a femme fatale. Mia Wallace is a significant character to examine because she is an iconic character, a pop culture sensation, the only female character that is predominately featured in the film, and has a dynamic character arc. The article argues that the music track, sound effects, and the absence of sound sexualize and objectify Mia Wallace within standards of hegemonic cinematic femininity, while the voice tracks work in two different ways. Mia Wallace’s voice opens a space for her to express her subjectivity and her point of view. Dialogue tracks shaped her as erotic, powerful and dangerous. However, in the final scene, the dialogue and absence of sound sexualize her and relegates her into an inferior subject position. This final scene concludes the femme fatale character arc of punishment for transgressing the hegemony and reestablishes the dominance of the patriarchal gender order over her. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Detailed Study of Films: Adjusting Attention)
21 pages, 959 KB  
Article
Music Festivals as Social Venues: Method Triangulation for Approaching the Impact of Self-Organised Rural Cultural Events
by Milena Kriegsmann-Rabe, Cathleen Müller and Ellen Junger
Arts 2025, 14(6), 164; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060164 - 3 Dec 2025
Viewed by 764
Abstract
The SIKUL research project examines the case of a self-organised music festival, which is understood as a social innovation in the field of arts and culture, in order to answer the following question: What effects do social innovations in arts and culture have [...] Read more.
The SIKUL research project examines the case of a self-organised music festival, which is understood as a social innovation in the field of arts and culture, in order to answer the following question: What effects do social innovations in arts and culture have on the members of the public involved in rural areas? How do they impact the region? To this end, a triangulation of methods has been used in conjunction with seven expert interviews that were analysed using focused interview analysis as well as a multimodal image analysis of the festival’s social media presence supplemented by a descriptive study of the festival’s cooperation, pictured on social media. The festival is a free space for the organisers. It promotes self-expression and learning. For decades and across several generations, a community of care has existed that extends beyond the festival experience into everyday life. Thus, the festival is a self-organised social space. Involvement in the festival allows participants to express and mutually reinforce their connection to the region. The festival primarily cooperates with regional stakeholders within a 10-km radius and is thus a creative driver in the region. Social innovations in arts and culture play a significant role in local cohesion and identity-building in rural regions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Art and Visual Culture—Social, Cultural and Environmental Impacts)
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11 pages, 227 KB  
Article
Flatness, Nostalgia, and the Digital Uncanny in Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla (2023)
by Abby H. Shepherd
Arts 2025, 14(6), 163; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060163 - 3 Dec 2025
Viewed by 932
Abstract
This article contends that Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla (2023) uses digital filmmaking to re-animate the commodified image of Priscilla Presley, privileging surface and affect over historical realism. Though Coppola predominantly shoots on film, her decision to film Priscilla digitally—an adaptation of Presley’s memoir—marks a [...] Read more.
This article contends that Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla (2023) uses digital filmmaking to re-animate the commodified image of Priscilla Presley, privileging surface and affect over historical realism. Though Coppola predominantly shoots on film, her decision to film Priscilla digitally—an adaptation of Presley’s memoir—marks a formal shift in her filmography aligned with her ongoing exploration of feminine interiority and aesthetic control. The film traces Priscilla’s life from her first encounter with Elvis Presley to their separation, presenting a visually stylized narrative that immerses viewers in what Walter Benjamin terms a phantasmagoria: a spectacle of commodification divorced from historical consciousness (The Arcades Project). Rather than striving for veracity, Coppola evokes a nostalgic atmosphere that re-members Priscilla through pre-circulated cultural images. This article examines Coppola’s often-criticized “flat” visual style in relation to the Freudian uncanny, i.e., the estrangement of the familiar through temporal and affective distortion. Coppola manipulates digital temporality—looping and flattening time—to produce an oneiric repetition that heightens the artifice of Presley’s image while emotionally distancing viewers. These formal strategies dissipate emotional depth but intensify aesthetic control. Finally, this article considers the political valences of Coppola’s digital aesthetics in a media landscape that both enables visibility and enacts erasure. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Film and Visual Studies: The Digital Unconscious)
13 pages, 245 KB  
Article
Inconvenient Missionary Legacies in the Contemporary World and Museums: An Inquiry into the Rise and Fall of the Wereldmuseum Berg en Dal
by Yang Hu
Arts 2025, 14(6), 162; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060162 - 3 Dec 2025
Viewed by 499
Abstract
This article addresses the recent conflict in the Netherlands between a national ethnographic museum, the Wereldmuseum Berg en Dal (formerly Afrika Museum), and a Catholic congregation, the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, both of which legally own half of the museum’s collection. The [...] Read more.
This article addresses the recent conflict in the Netherlands between a national ethnographic museum, the Wereldmuseum Berg en Dal (formerly Afrika Museum), and a Catholic congregation, the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, both of which legally own half of the museum’s collection. The case highlights the challenging situations faced by ethnographic museums with missionary legacies in the Netherlands over the past few decades. This article critically examines not only the handling of the conflict between the Wereldmuseum and the Spiritan fathers based on current legal frameworks and museum policies, but also the motives behind their initial collaboration. Finally, it proposes alternative practices for a more ethical approach to African heritage, contributing to debates about museum reconfiguration and ethical restitution. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Restitution Beyond Repatriation: Rethinking African Tangible Heritage in Twenty-First Century Museums)
12 pages, 2135 KB  
Article
Reimagining Saint Sebastian: Renaissance and Mannerist Influences in the Contemporary Photography of Krzysztof Marchlak
by Weronika Izabela Plińska
Arts 2025, 14(6), 161; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060161 - 1 Dec 2025
Viewed by 653
Abstract
This article explores how the photographic practice of Polish contemporary artist Krzysztof Marchlak draws on the visual language of early modern Italian painting. The main goal of the article is to highlight how historical iconography connected to the representations of St Sebastian is [...] Read more.
This article explores how the photographic practice of Polish contemporary artist Krzysztof Marchlak draws on the visual language of early modern Italian painting. The main goal of the article is to highlight how historical iconography connected to the representations of St Sebastian is reimagined today in a contemporary photographic context. Krzysztof Marchlak’s exploration of the male nude explicitly bridges contemporary queer art with the visual traditions of the Renaissance and antiquity. His photographs reinterpret canonical forms such as contrapposto poses, the central placement of the male figure, and decorative motifs echoing mythological and sacred iconography, offering a critical re-reading. Full article
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20 pages, 5410 KB  
Article
Art and Landscape: Modes of Interaction
by Olga Lavrenova
Arts 2025, 14(6), 160; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060160 - 1 Dec 2025
Viewed by 746
Abstract
This article examines the role of visual and plastic art as a key instrument for constructing and interpreting cultural space. The study synthesizes a corpus of diverse theoretical works on the interaction between art and landscape, systematizes the principal issues within the field, [...] Read more.
This article examines the role of visual and plastic art as a key instrument for constructing and interpreting cultural space. The study synthesizes a corpus of diverse theoretical works on the interaction between art and landscape, systematizes the principal issues within the field, and proposes avenues for further discussion. It investigates how art not only reflects but also physically, visually, and semantically transforms the landscape. Functioning as a mediator between spiritual, material, and symbolic realities, art creates distinctive forms of spatial experience. Through artistic practices, the aesthetics of a landscape are formed, along with visual and semantic codes, and new centers and loci that alter the perception of the environment. On a theoretical level, the research draws upon the semiotics of space, the philosophy of art, and the concept of landscape as text. The mechanisms through which landscape is endowed with meaning—via architecture, sculpture, painting, and literature—are examined, with a focus on narrative and symbolic modes of artistic interpretation. Particular attention is paid to art as a tool for shaping cultural memory, from memorial complexes to heritage museums, which become spaces of a different temporality and “reservations” of meaning. The cultural landscape is a site of interaction between the sacred and the profane, tradition and innovation, and elite and mass art. Art forms the codes for reading the landscape, translating visual characteristics—color, form, the vertical, the horizontal—into the realm of cultural significance. Thus, art is presented as a form of world reconstruction: an instrument for the spiritual and semantic appropriation of space, one that transforms the landscape into a text perpetually rewritten by culture. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Art and Visual Culture—Social, Cultural and Environmental Impacts)
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18 pages, 5486 KB  
Article
Constructing Wang Wei and the Southern School with the Snowy Stream: A Financial and Rhetorical Story of Dong Qichang
by Yi Zhao
Arts 2025, 14(6), 159; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060159 - 1 Dec 2025
Viewed by 759
Abstract
This study deals with the painting Snowy Stream, which is often used to represent the style of the poet painter Wang Wei (699–761). This album leaf, with several colophons by Dong Qichang, was long believed to have been in his collection. It [...] Read more.
This study deals with the painting Snowy Stream, which is often used to represent the style of the poet painter Wang Wei (699–761). This album leaf, with several colophons by Dong Qichang, was long believed to have been in his collection. It played a significant role in giving form to “painter Wang Wei” as the founding patriarch of the Southern School and thereby helped Dong shape his theoretical reorientation of Chinese landscape painting. First, the paper examines the social life of this painting during the time of Dong Qichang and argues that it underwent major remodeling and renovation that significantly changed its format and appearance before being acquired by Cheng Jibai. Dong’s unreserved approval of this painting was largely motivated by financial concerns for the benefit of Cheng. Second, the paper explores the rationale behind the warm reception of this image despite its dubious provenance and severe condition. The author argues that the remodeled image echoes the pastoral theme and level perspective that is a signature of Wang’s poetry, embodies the key doctrines and aesthetics of Chan Buddhism, and demonstrates the visual effect of using a pure ink wash to replace linear outlines and patternized texture strokes. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Visual Arts)
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9 pages, 2704 KB  
Article
The Machined Human and the Digital Unconscious
by Guillaume Soulez
Arts 2025, 14(6), 158; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060158 - 1 Dec 2025
Viewed by 460
Abstract
Reflecting on the digital unconscious may mean proposing a reflection on non-mastery in a field—digital creation of images and sounds, or the use of the digital in audiovisual creation—where resides the idea that digital machinery gives immense power to the artist who can [...] Read more.
Reflecting on the digital unconscious may mean proposing a reflection on non-mastery in a field—digital creation of images and sounds, or the use of the digital in audiovisual creation—where resides the idea that digital machinery gives immense power to the artist who can now, thanks to calculation and data storage, surpass the usual limitations that human capacities have otherwise imposed on creation. On the contrary, we should take into account not only what digital machines reveal about us or from which unconscious patterns our work with them emerges, but how we deal with them as machines. Are we so aware of what we expect from technologies, or of what we project onto them? Pierre Schaeffer (the inventor of musique concrète but also a media theorist in his own right), who wrote on that topic 50 years ago can be of help here. This paper mainly relies on his text “Le machinisme artistique” (“Artistic Machinism”), published as a chapter at the beginning of Machines à communiquer in 1970 (his book on media theory and practice, not yet translated into English) and proposes, with this approach in mind, an examination of several uses and conceptions of the digital image today, with particular reference to the movie Oppenheimer. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Film and Visual Studies: The Digital Unconscious)
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18 pages, 275 KB  
Article
Praxis–Body–Text: Revisiting Histories of Travel and Colonial Encounters Through Performative Practices
by Eduardo Abrantes
Arts 2025, 14(6), 157; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060157 - 29 Nov 2025
Viewed by 446
Abstract
The article provides a field report on some of the artistic approaches deployed in the transdisciplinary Praxis of Social Imaginaries (2023–2025) research project. The project emphasizes performative, site-specific, and embodied methods to enhance engagement with historical texts, viewing them as knowledge addressing present [...] Read more.
The article provides a field report on some of the artistic approaches deployed in the transdisciplinary Praxis of Social Imaginaries (2023–2025) research project. The project emphasizes performative, site-specific, and embodied methods to enhance engagement with historical texts, viewing them as knowledge addressing present and future issues. It highlights the medieval and early colonial past’s rich performative culture, advocating for texts to be experienced as participatory events. The article describes two performative events: a mourning ritual inspired by colonial genocide accounts presented in Bartolomé de las Casas’s A short account of the destruction of the Indies (1550) and a performance-lecture using the 1513 Requerimiento text. These events illustrate the project’s approach to creating transformational learning environments through collective, participatory experiences that challenge traditional academic rituals. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Artistic Imagination and Social Imaginaries–Polysemous Readings of Historical Travelling Accounts)
14 pages, 228 KB  
Article
Performance on the Margins: Collaborative Art Practices in the Late-Soviet Underground
by Mary A. Nicholas
Arts 2025, 14(6), 156; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060156 - 29 Nov 2025
Viewed by 554
Abstract
The so-called social turn toward collaborative art practices in the West has a curious but rarely discussed parallel in unofficial art in the late Soviet Union where collaborative performance art served as a significant catalyst for artistic innovation, particularly during the watershed period [...] Read more.
The so-called social turn toward collaborative art practices in the West has a curious but rarely discussed parallel in unofficial art in the late Soviet Union where collaborative performance art served as a significant catalyst for artistic innovation, particularly during the watershed period between 1975 and 1985. Pathbreaking performances by the Nest, SZ, and others, as well as the important collaborative art movement AptArt between 1982 and 1984, suggest interesting parallels to developments in the West and underappreciated precedents for Moscow Actionism in the 1990s and protest and street art in the 21st century. This article expands the picture we have of collaborative performance in the late-Soviet underground and highlights its role as precursor to participatory practices today. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue In the Center and on the Periphery: Russian and Soviet Art and Visual Culture)
33 pages, 5303 KB  
Article
Generative Artifacts: Chinatown and an Ornamental Architecture of the Future
by Jessica Hanzelkova
Arts 2025, 14(6), 155; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060155 - 28 Nov 2025
Viewed by 824
Abstract
This article proposes the term ‘generative artifact’ to define a new method of imagining the future, one derived from artistic and architectural interpretations of non-linear time, material exploration, and relationship building. This contrasts the imagining that happened in the past by European and [...] Read more.
This article proposes the term ‘generative artifact’ to define a new method of imagining the future, one derived from artistic and architectural interpretations of non-linear time, material exploration, and relationship building. This contrasts the imagining that happened in the past by European and North American dominant culture, born out of fears of a declining Western hegemony and resulting in socially constructed hierarchies based on race. To investigate this historic and outdated imagining of culture, we trace the history of Chinatown and the ornamented feminine body as a physical example of hypervisibility in the North American city. First, we examine the current discourse on Chinatowns’ Orientalist aesthetics, legitimacy through institutionalized nonspecificity, and architectural/artifactual heritage, which serve as a mirror and moor for the Chinese diaspora today. Here, we find clues on how to navigate and leverage the spectacle of the racial image, the continuous merging of person and thing, and the tropes that the racialized body might find itself answering for. To illustrate the potential of the generative process and through the lenses of Anne Anlin Cheng’s theory of ornamentalism and Legacy Russell’s glitch feminism, this article places Chinatown adjacent to the worldbuilding and artistic practices of seven contemporary artists and architects. This includes Astria Suparak (performance critique), Curry J. Hackett (AI, installation), Shellie Zhang (sculpture), Lan “Florence” Yee (textile), Debra Sparrow (weaving, murals), Thomas Cannell (sculpture), and the author (performance). All are from varied cultural backgrounds who create ‘generative artifacts’ in their creative practices—works that playfully slip between sign/icon, high/low tech, and authentic/invented culture to point towards a path to imagining more expansive futures. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Impact of the Visual Arts on Technology)
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34 pages, 9110 KB  
Article
Rock Images at La Casa de las Golondrinas and the Kaqchikel Maya Context in Guatemala
by Eugenia Jane Robinson and Luis Paulino Puc Rucal
Arts 2025, 14(6), 154; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060154 - 27 Nov 2025
Viewed by 871
Abstract
This paper places La Casa de las Golondrinas, a Pre-Columbian rock image site, in its Kaqchikel Maya cultural context. This is an exploration of both the cultural situation of the paintings and the meaning of a selection of the images. A comparison of [...] Read more.
This paper places La Casa de las Golondrinas, a Pre-Columbian rock image site, in its Kaqchikel Maya cultural context. This is an exploration of both the cultural situation of the paintings and the meaning of a selection of the images. A comparison of sacred locations in contemporary use in the Kaqchikel highlands to the prehistoric locations of La Casa de las Golondrinas reveals that the same features are present in both the contemporary and Pre-Columbian milieu. Further comparisons show that there is a concordance of themes in the Pre-Columbian rock art with those found in the Kaqchikel ethnographic studies. Some of the matters covered are portals to the spiritual world, mythological deities and other spiritual beings, sacrifice and ritual celebrations, and the quincunx, which defines the sacred world’s four corners and center. This paper discusses a variety of single images and image clusters pertaining to seasonal rituals and creation using ethnographic information by Kaqchikel Maya archaeological and cultural scholars, the Popul Vuh, and sources on Maya cosmology and art. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Rock Art Studies)
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28 pages, 2842 KB  
Essay
Weaving the Spirit of Indigenous Feminism
by Emma Göransson Almroth
Arts 2025, 14(6), 153; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060153 - 27 Nov 2025
Viewed by 788
Abstract
Vuoiŋŋalaš Eanadat/Spirit Land is a transdisciplinary practice-based artistic research project around Sámi cosmology and the act of giving voice to indigenous reclamation of sacred spaces. The Sámi are the indigenous people of Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia. Vuoiŋŋalaš Eanadat/Spirit Land is [...] Read more.
Vuoiŋŋalaš Eanadat/Spirit Land is a transdisciplinary practice-based artistic research project around Sámi cosmology and the act of giving voice to indigenous reclamation of sacred spaces. The Sámi are the indigenous people of Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia. Vuoiŋŋalaš Eanadat/Spirit Land is a hybrid fusion between textile art, music, poetry and theology, aiming at taking part in the decolonizing processes of indigenous people’s lands and cultures in Scandinavia. Practice-based artistic research is characterized by the fact that the research process proceeds by and through the act of artistic making. The artistic process is the core, and research methodologies and theoretical perspectives are built around it, functioning as a supporting framework. Reflective writing is used as means to get access to transpersonal depths of the creative process. Reflections upon different aspects of the artwork are developed and, simultaneously, on how it can be a seen as a vehicle for indigenous voices in order to be heard in sacred spaces of our time. Vuoiŋŋalaš Eanadat/Spirit Land is an artistic performance that functions as a ceremonial act of giving voice, a liberation from the silence of the colonized past. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Artistic Imagination and Social Imaginaries–Polysemous Readings of Historical Travelling Accounts)
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13 pages, 449 KB  
Article
Entangled Networks: Metaphor as Method, Matter, and Media
by Alis Oldfield
Arts 2025, 14(6), 152; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060152 - 26 Nov 2025
Viewed by 569
Abstract
This article examines how metaphors operate in digital media not as descriptive analogies but as structuring forces that shape how technologies are designed, understood, and inhabited. Building on Marianne van den Boomen’s theory of digital material metaphors, it argues that metaphors such as [...] Read more.
This article examines how metaphors operate in digital media not as descriptive analogies but as structuring forces that shape how technologies are designed, understood, and inhabited. Building on Marianne van den Boomen’s theory of digital material metaphors, it argues that metaphors such as the “desktop,” “cloud,” and “frontier” encode social and ideological assumptions into the infrastructures of computation. These metaphors render digital systems legible while concealing not just the procedural computation that van den Boomen terms depresentation, but the material, ecological, and labour conditions that sustain them. Using my practice-based work c(o)racle, 2025, as a case study, the internet is explored as a metaphorical and material terrain that connects networks of data, water, and craft, interrogating the dominant metaphor of cyberspace as immaterial and untethered, in dialogue with Tim Ingold, Lakoff and Johnson, Henri Lefebvre, and Yuk Hui. Drawing on S. J. Tambiah, Bruno Latour, and Elizabeth Wayland Barber, the essay situates metaphor within broader histories of making and mediation. By activating metaphor as both method and medium, the study proposes a critical reorientation toward digital space as an entangled, situated, and contested environment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Impact of the Visual Arts on Technology)
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23 pages, 7000 KB  
Article
The Material Culture of Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Dutch Dollhouses: Replication, Reproduction & Imitation
by Michelle Moseley-Christian
Arts 2025, 14(6), 151; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060151 - 25 Nov 2025
Viewed by 959
Abstract
A number of collector’s cabinets known as pronk or luxury dollhouses were formed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by women in the Netherlands. The present study examines the dollhouse cabinets as exemplars of material culture collections assembled by female collectors. Primary sources [...] Read more.
A number of collector’s cabinets known as pronk or luxury dollhouses were formed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by women in the Netherlands. The present study examines the dollhouse cabinets as exemplars of material culture collections assembled by female collectors. Primary sources give outsized attention to the materiality of these structures, often noting types of substance, quality, and craft. Despite what appears to be a straightforward transcription of the domestic world in miniature, the dollhouses are a multifaceted intersection of authentic materials as well as clever imitations or substitutions. The dollhouse collections are themselves predicated on the notion of reproduction as they replicate the home in small scale. Documents from the period provide a rich source from which to probe the meanings invested in the materiality of these dollhouses as sources of wonder. Economic theory from the period sheds new light on the dollhouses as forums for imitation and novelty, concepts that inform the innovative nature of these collections as it intertwined with issues of multiples and miniaturization. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Early Modern Global Materials, Materiality, and Material Culture)
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15 pages, 1965 KB  
Article
“Face” as Method: Aesthetic Experiment and Era Reflections in Jia Zhangke’s Caught by the Tides
by Hanbin Wang
Arts 2025, 14(6), 150; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060150 - 20 Nov 2025
Viewed by 1520
Abstract
In Jia Zhangke’s Caught by the Tides, the “face” serves not only as a visual subject but also as a methodology. Continuing the previous realistic shooting style, this film utilizes the faces of ordinary individuals as a poignant commentary on the era. [...] Read more.
In Jia Zhangke’s Caught by the Tides, the “face” serves not only as a visual subject but also as a methodology. Continuing the previous realistic shooting style, this film utilizes the faces of ordinary individuals as a poignant commentary on the era. Simultaneously, by leveraging the proper noun “Zhao Tao’s face,” it achieves nonverbal emotional expression while sketching the evolution of Chinese independent film aesthetics. Compared to faces captured in moving images, the faces of lifelike “quasi-human” sculpture resist being fixed as mere images through their vivid presence, autonomously generating narrative momentum by being viewed across different times and spaces. Moreover, in this media age of breakneck technological advancement, the “crisis of the face” has also transformed into a broader “existential crisis.” How to preserve the warmth and vitality of the human face may be the most profound and provocative question the film leaves its audience. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Detailed Study of Films: Adjusting Attention)
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15 pages, 236 KB  
Article
The Anti-Testament of Ozu Time, Finitude and Repetition in An Autumn Afternoon
by Patrícia Castello Branco
Arts 2025, 14(6), 149; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060149 - 19 Nov 2025
Viewed by 725
Abstract
This article reconsiders Yasujiro Ozu’s An Autumn Afternoon (1962) as a cinematic “anti-testament”, a final film that eschews resolution, culmination, or closure in favour of subtle continuity, repetition, and quiet disappearance. Situated between the Japanese aesthetic of mono no aware and Western existential [...] Read more.
This article reconsiders Yasujiro Ozu’s An Autumn Afternoon (1962) as a cinematic “anti-testament”, a final film that eschews resolution, culmination, or closure in favour of subtle continuity, repetition, and quiet disappearance. Situated between the Japanese aesthetic of mono no aware and Western existential philosophy, Ozu’s final work embodies an ethics of impermanence and restraint, where cinema becomes a contemplative practice rather than a narrative of finality. Through formal strategies such as the low “tatami shot,” fixed camera, and elliptical editing, the film materialises time as presence, not progression. Drawing on Heidegger’s conception of aletheia, Cavell’s ethics of acknowledgment, and Tarkovsky’s reflections on haiku, this study argues that Ozu develops a philosophy of parting grounded in repetition, care, and relationality. Rather than a monument to his oeuvre, An Autumn Afternoon offers a visual ritual of transmission, where the invisible dwells within the visible, and the act of letting go becomes cinema’s most philosophical gesture. In doing so, Ozu dissolves the notion of the cinematic testament, transforming it into a meditative cadence of impermanence. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Swan Songs: Philosophical Reflections on Death, Time, and Memory in Testament Films)
30 pages, 13946 KB  
Article
Connecting to Antiquity Through Touch: Gem Impressions in the Long Eighteenth Century
by Lauren Kellogg DiSalvo
Arts 2025, 14(6), 148; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060148 - 19 Nov 2025
Viewed by 806
Abstract
This article seeks to understand what an approach grounded in materiality and tactile engagement can offer to our understanding of why collectors might have been drawn to gem impressions in the long eighteenth century. Instead of looking to a specific collector or producer [...] Read more.
This article seeks to understand what an approach grounded in materiality and tactile engagement can offer to our understanding of why collectors might have been drawn to gem impressions in the long eighteenth century. Instead of looking to a specific collector or producer of gem impressions, this study examines interactions with gem impressions from a more general perspective. I speculate how, through touch, antiquarians may have used gem impressions as an aide-mémoire to bridge connections between eighteenth-century gem impressions and Greco-Roman gem traditions through shared function, materiality, production techniques, and signatures. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Early Modern Global Materials, Materiality, and Material Culture)
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24 pages, 27704 KB  
Article
From Gem to Glass: Liuli’s Long Transformation and the Remaking of Chinese Decorative Arts
by Yanyan Zheng and Guikun Guo
Arts 2025, 14(6), 147; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060147 - 18 Nov 2025
Viewed by 1554
Abstract
This article traces the long transformation of liuli 琉璃 (Sanskrit vaiḍūrya) in China—from imported blue-green gemstones (typified by beryl) to man-made glass and, after the Song, to glazed architectural ceramics. Combining archaeological finds, textual and Buddhist sources, and mineralogical data, it argues [...] Read more.
This article traces the long transformation of liuli 琉璃 (Sanskrit vaiḍūrya) in China—from imported blue-green gemstones (typified by beryl) to man-made glass and, after the Song, to glazed architectural ceramics. Combining archaeological finds, textual and Buddhist sources, and mineralogical data, it argues that: (1) the wide circulation of Roman–South Asian glass imitations drove a dual shift in China, moving liuli from a natural gem to artificial glass; (2) Buddhist ritual and donation practices “sacralized” glass, integrating it into jewelry, vessels, and sacred spaces; and (3) this shift profoundly reshaped Chinese decorative arts, recasting color-and-light aesthetics and the material toolkit—from Han–Jin beadwork and containers, through Sui–Tang elite display, to the post-Song architectural palette epitomized by liuli tiles. The millennial journey of liuli shows how materials acquire new meanings through global exchange and local reinterpretation, and how man-made glass helped redefine Chinese decorative practice over the course of two thousand years. Full article
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26 pages, 333 KB  
Article
The Politics of Laughter: The Afterlives of Clowns Joseph Grimaldi and Jean-Gaspard Deburau in 1920s Cinema
by Joana Jacob Ramalho
Arts 2025, 14(6), 146; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060146 - 18 Nov 2025
Viewed by 1178
Abstract
The world of laughter is often deemed frivolous. Clowns have taught us otherwise. This paper investigates the convoluted politics of laughter in relation to clowning, arguing that clowns (and the laughter they elicit) blur humour and horror and, in doing so, offer a [...] Read more.
The world of laughter is often deemed frivolous. Clowns have taught us otherwise. This paper investigates the convoluted politics of laughter in relation to clowning, arguing that clowns (and the laughter they elicit) blur humour and horror and, in doing so, offer a corrective to officialdom. I analyse laughter as a social phenomenon (following Bergson, Benjamin, and Bakhtin) and as a mediating form, bound up in power structures and political concerns that are both local and transhistorical. To contextualise the (d)evolution of the clown, I first discuss ambiguity, misfitness, and failure, and then consider the English Clown Joseph Grimaldi and the French Pierrot Jean-Gaspard Deburau. These performers, I suggest, represent the two main strands of clowns in popular culture: the melancholy outcast and the murderous deviant. I explore each strand via 1920s silent films, including Sjöström’s He Who Gets Slapped (1924), Chaplin’s The Circus (1928), Leni’s The Man Who Laughs (1928), and Brenon’s Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928). These are works of social indictment that debunk monolithic depictions of clowns and laughter, critiquing conformity, social asymmetries, vices, and industrial growth. Clowning is more than playing an artistic, sociocultural role: it hinges on radical resistance and carries a political valence. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Film and New Media)
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