Arts

36 pages, 8704 KB

Open AccessArticle

For Memory and Decoration—Group Portraits as Placemakers in Early Modern Amsterdam

by Norbert E. Middelkoop

Arts 2026, 15(1), 1; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts15010001 - 22 Dec 2025

Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp, Nightwatch, and Syndics are rightfully considered masterpieces of seventeenth-century Dutch painting. Few museum visitors realize they are among over one hundred corporate group portraits commissioned in Amsterdam during that period by the civic guard, charitable institutions, [...] Read more.

Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp, Nightwatch, and Syndics are rightfully considered masterpieces of seventeenth-century Dutch painting. Few museum visitors realize they are among over one hundred corporate group portraits commissioned in Amsterdam during that period by the civic guard, charitable institutions, and the craft guilds. Such paintings were the result of the collective desire of a group of people to be represented and immortalized during their execution of the jointly shared responsibilities on which the urban society was built. Corporate group portraits were commissioned and produced to occupy wall spaces in semi-public buildings, reinforcing the missions of both the institutions and the sitters. Their meaning changed fundamentally after they started to leave their original locations and found their way into the direct custody of the city. Some of the paintings were acknowledged as masterpieces and, with the focus firmly on their artistic value, their historical function became neglected. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Renaissance Rhapsody: Miscellany and Multimodality in Early Modern Europe)

30 pages, 8638 KB

Open AccessArticle

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

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

Open AccessArticle

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

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

Open AccessArticle

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

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

Open AccessArticle

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

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

Open AccessArticle

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

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

Open AccessArticle

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

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

Open AccessArticle

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

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

Open AccessArticle

From Africa Palace to AfricaMuseum

by Karen Shelby

Arts 2025, 14(6), 168; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060168 - 8 Dec 2025

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

Open AccessEssay

Vestigial Unconscious and Oceanic Feelings

by Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli

Arts 2025, 14(6), 167; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060167 - 8 Dec 2025

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

Open AccessArticle

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

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

Open AccessArticle

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

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

Open AccessArticle

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

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

Open AccessArticle

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

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

Open AccessArticle

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

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

Open AccessArticle

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

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

Open AccessArticle

Art and Landscape: Modes of Interaction

by Olga Lavrenova

Arts 2025, 14(6), 160; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060160 - 1 Dec 2025

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

Open AccessArticle

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

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

Open AccessArticle

The Machined Human and the Digital Unconscious

by Guillaume Soulez

Arts 2025, 14(6), 158; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14060158 - 1 Dec 2025

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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