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Reviving Ancient Egypt in the Renaissance Hieroglyph

Journal Description

Arts

Arts is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal promoting significant research on all aspects of the visual and performing arts, published bimonthly online by MDPI.

Open Access— free for readers, with article processing charges (APC) paid by authors or their institutions.
High Visibility: indexed within ESCI (Web of Science), and other databases.
Rapid Publication: manuscripts are peer-reviewed and a first decision is provided to authors approximately 35.5 days after submission; acceptance to publication is undertaken in 6.9 days (median values for papers published in this journal in the first half of 2024).
Recognition of Reviewers: reviewers who provide timely, thorough peer-review reports receive vouchers entitling them to a discount on the APC of their next publication in any MDPI journal, in appreciation of the work done.

Impact Factor: 0.3 (2023)

Imprint Information Journal Flyer Open Access ISSN: 2076-0752

Latest Articles

15 pages, 2561 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Machine Walks into an Exhibit: A Technical Analysis of Art Curation

by Thomas Şerban von Davier, Laura M. Herman and Caterina Moruzzi

Arts 2024, 13(5), 138; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13050138 - 31 Aug 2024

Contemporary art consumption is predominantly online, driven by algorithmic recommendation systems that dictate artwork visibility. Despite not being designed for curation, these algorithms’ machinic ways of seeing play a pivotal role in shaping visual culture, influencing artistic creation, visibility, and associated social and [...] Read more.

Contemporary art consumption is predominantly online, driven by algorithmic recommendation systems that dictate artwork visibility. Despite not being designed for curation, these algorithms’ machinic ways of seeing play a pivotal role in shaping visual culture, influencing artistic creation, visibility, and associated social and financial benefits. The Algorithmic Pedestal was a gallery, practice-based research project that reported gallerygoers’ perceptions of a human’s curation and curation achieved by Instagram’s algorithm. This paper presents a technical analysis of the same exhibit using computer vision code, offering insights into machines’ perception of visual art. The computer vision code assigned values on various metrics to each image, allowing statistical comparisons to identify differences between the collections of images selected by the human and the algorithmic system. The analysis reveals statistically significant differences between the exhibited images and the broader Metropolitan Museum of Art digital collection. However, the analysis found minimal distinctions between human-curated and Instagram-curated images. This study contributes insights into the perceived value of the curation process, shedding light on how audiences perceive artworks differently from machines using computer vision. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Artificial Intelligence and the Arts)

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27 pages, 445 KiB

Open AccessReview

Art Notions in the Age of (Mis)anthropic AI

by Dejan Grba

Arts 2024, 13(5), 137; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13050137 - 30 Aug 2024

In this paper, I take the cultural effects of generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) as a context for examining a broader perspective of AI’s impact on contemporary art notions. After the introductory overview of generative AI, I summarize the distinct but often confused [...] Read more.

In this paper, I take the cultural effects of generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) as a context for examining a broader perspective of AI’s impact on contemporary art notions. After the introductory overview of generative AI, I summarize the distinct but often confused aspects of art notions and review the principal lines in which AI influences them: the strategic normalization of AI through art, the representation of AI art in the artworld, academia, and AI research, and the mutual permeability of art and kitsch in the digital culture. I connect these notional factors with the conceptual and ideological substrate of the computer science and AI industry, which blends the machinic agency fetishism, the equalization of computers and humans, the sociotechnical blindness, and cyberlibertarianism. The overtones of alienation, sociopathy, and misanthropy in the disparate but somehow coalescing philosophical premises, technical ideas, and political views in this substrate remain underexposed in AI studies so, in the closing discussion, I outline their manifestations in generative AI and introduce several viewpoints for a further critique of AI’s cultural zeitgeist. They add a touch of skepticism to pondering how technological trends change our understanding of art and in which directions they stir its social, economic, and political roles. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Artificial Intelligence and the Arts)

22 pages, 5060 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Constructing British Selfhood through Depictions of China: The Art of the Macartney Embassy

by Yushu Chen and Bing Huang

Arts 2024, 13(5), 136; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13050136 - 23 Aug 2024

The Macartney Embassy, the first official British diplomatic mission to China, contributed to the visual record and understanding of China in Britain. The embassy artists were ambitious in their mission to deliver authentic visual knowledge of China to the British at the same [...] Read more.

The Macartney Embassy, the first official British diplomatic mission to China, contributed to the visual record and understanding of China in Britain. The embassy artists were ambitious in their mission to deliver authentic visual knowledge of China to the British at the same time that they were subconsciously influenced by both the old chinoiserie tradition, and the nascent British Enlightenment thought process. In contrast to contemporary Britain’s scientific and humanitarian advancements, the embassy’s portrayal of China was pastoral, barbaric, and autocratic, allowing the British to revel in the humanism and progressivism of their own values and social system. Full article

(This article belongs to the Section Visual Arts)

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26 pages, 11291 KiB

Open AccessArticle

‘A World of Knowledge’: Rock Art, Ritual, and Indigenous Belief at Serranía De La Lindosa in the Colombian Amazon

by Jamie Hampson, José Iriarte and Francisco Javier Aceituno

Arts 2024, 13(4), 135; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13040135 - 19 Aug 2024

There are tens of thousands of painted rock art motifs in the Serranía de la Lindosa in the Colombian Amazon, including humans, animals, therianthropes, geometrics, and flora. For most of the last 100 years, inaccessibility and political unrest has limited research activities in [...] Read more.

There are tens of thousands of painted rock art motifs in the Serranía de la Lindosa in the Colombian Amazon, including humans, animals, therianthropes, geometrics, and flora. For most of the last 100 years, inaccessibility and political unrest has limited research activities in the region. In this paper, we discuss findings from six years of field research and consider the role of rock art as a manifestation of Indigenous ontologies. By employing intertwining strands of evidence—a range of ethnographic sources, local Indigenous testimonies from 2021–2023, and the motifs themselves—we argue that the rock art here is connected to ritual specialists negotiating spiritual realms, somatic transformation, and the interdigitation of human and non-human worlds. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Rock Art Studies)

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27 pages, 8777 KiB

Open AccessArticle

‘No State, No Masters’: Café Lavandería in Tokyo, Music, and Anticapitalism in a Cultural Environment

by María José González Dávila and Federico Fco. Pérez Garrido

Arts 2024, 13(4), 134; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13040134 - 12 Aug 2024

This paper is part of a series of research that these authors are conducting to study the linguistic landscape of the Tokyo megacity. In this instance, our focus lies on Shinjuku city. However, our examination does not extend to the linguistic landscape of [...] Read more.

This paper is part of a series of research that these authors are conducting to study the linguistic landscape of the Tokyo megacity. In this instance, our focus lies on Shinjuku city. However, our examination does not extend to the linguistic landscape of the city itself; rather, it zeroes in on a café situated at its core, the Café Lavandería. How did Café Lavandería contribute to the development of the Hispanic linguistic, sociolinguistic, and subversive landscape in central Tokyo? The research unfolds in various segments. Initially, contextualization introduces the reader to Tokyo and Shinjuku; subsequently, the significance of Café Lavandería and the subversive social and political movements in Japan are elucidated. Following this, the study’s foundation, including the photographic evidence and corresponding data, is presented. Lastly, an analysis of these data is conducted, culminating in an evaluation of Café Lavandería’s impact in Japan. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Arts: Art and Urban Studies)

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26 pages, 8566 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Queer Latinx Bodies and AIDS: Joey Terrill’s “Still Here” and “Once Upon A Time”

by Alexis Salas

Arts 2024, 13(4), 133; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13040133 - 9 Aug 2024

Through two interviews conducted two years apart, the author and artist Joey Terrill offer an intimate historical trajectory rooted in the singular voice of the artist through the discussion of artworks in the exhibitions “Joey Terrill: Still Here” and “Joey Terrill: Once Upon [...] Read more.

Through two interviews conducted two years apart, the author and artist Joey Terrill offer an intimate historical trajectory rooted in the singular voice of the artist through the discussion of artworks in the exhibitions “Joey Terrill: Still Here” and “Joey Terrill: Once Upon A Time: Paintings, 1981–2015”. The method of storytelling, interview, and art representation chronicles the artist’s emotional, intellectual, and embodied experience of illness, queerness, and resistance as an HIV-positive queer Chicano. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Queer Latinx Artists and the Human Body)

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20 pages, 23235 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Soldiers and Prisoners in Motion in Mesopotamian Iconography during the Early Bronze Age

by Barbara Couturaud

Arts 2024, 13(4), 132; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13040132 - 6 Aug 2024

Military images of the ancient Near East during the Early Bronze Age are characterized by one of their main features: the serial reproduction of soldiers and prisoners, side by side, the former clearly identifiable by the visual signs of power they bear and [...] Read more.

Military images of the ancient Near East during the Early Bronze Age are characterized by one of their main features: the serial reproduction of soldiers and prisoners, side by side, the former clearly identifiable by the visual signs of power they bear and the latter by their humiliation. These images are usually and almost naturally conceived as the ideological prerogative of city-states in conflict for territorial domination or as signs of visual identity intended to reinforce the powers that be. However, the end of the Early Bronze Age is marked by the hegemony of the Akkadian dynasty and the iconographic changes that it generated. While strongly maintaining the military iconographic theme in its visual discourse, it broke with the motif of static parades of prisoners and introduced many details intended to clearly identify the protagonists, the enemies, or the environment of the battles. It could represent a transition from a discourse based on evocative repetition in order to present an ideal to one founded on detailed narration in order to assert the authenticity of an event. This paper investigates the phenomenon of repetition through soldiers and prisoners on images. Analyzing the message lying behind the series of hindered prisoners and battalions of soldiers also underlines the way the change of iconographic discourse during the Akkadian period can be understood, particularly given that the power of the Akkadian dynasty mainly rested on its military victories. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ancient Egyptian Art Studies: Art in Motion, a Social Tool of Power and Resistance)

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8 pages, 221 KiB

Open AccessEditorial

Nomadic Material Culture: Eurasian Archeology beyond Textual Traditions

by Caspar Meyer

Arts 2024, 13(4), 131; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13040131 - 2 Aug 2024

The term nomadic material culture refers to the tools, equipment, and other tangible items associated with communities that are characterized by a high degree of residential mobility [...] Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Situating Eurasia in Antiquity: Nomadic Material Culture in the First Millennium BCE)

4 pages, 131 KiB

Open AccessEditorial

“Modern and Contemporary Art: Topical Abstraction in Contemporary Sculpture” Special Issue Introduction

by Elyse Speaks and Susan Richmond

Arts 2024, 13(4), 130; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13040130 - 1 Aug 2024

The essays gathered in this Special Issue of Arts concern artists working in the United States and Europe since the 1960s who have leveraged sculptural abstraction to address topical issues without ceding to the classical framework of figuration [...] Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Modern and Contemporary Art: Topical Abstraction in Contemporary Sculpture)

10 pages, 254 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Revolutionary Art and the Creation of the Future: The Afrofuturist Texts of José Antonio Aponte and Martin R. Delany

by James J. Fisher

Arts 2024, 13(4), 129; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13040129 - 30 Jul 2024

Afrofuturism (an artistic perspective in which Black voices tell alternative narratives of culture, technology, and the future) and the Dark Fantastic (interrupting negative depictions of Black people through emancipatory interpretations of art) are two interrelated concepts used by Black artists in the Atlantic [...] Read more.

Afrofuturism (an artistic perspective in which Black voices tell alternative narratives of culture, technology, and the future) and the Dark Fantastic (interrupting negative depictions of Black people through emancipatory interpretations of art) are two interrelated concepts used by Black artists in the Atlantic World to counter negative images and emphasize a story from a Black perspective. Likewise, these concepts have been used to recreate and re-narrate history with an eye towards subverting white supremacist historical narratives. By using Afrofuturism and the Dark Fantastic as lenses through which texts by authors from the African Diaspora in the Atlantic World are examined, an alternative narrative of Black histories and futures concerned with revolution, liberation, and justice can be seen. The two texts that are the subject of this research include José Antonio Aponte’s descriptions of his book of paintings under interrogation in 1812–1813, and Martin Delany’s novel Blake; or the Huts of America (1859–1862), providing images of enslavement that run counter to a white supremacist telling of history. They both imagine alternative pasts and futures for Africa and the Afro-Diaspora involving revolution and magic. These works, though produced at different times and locations in the nineteenth century, offer new ways in which to discuss liberation and freedom in the context of the artistic production of the Atlantic World. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Black Artists in the Atlantic World)

13 pages, 10232 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Imperial Art: Duality on Tanwetamani’s Dream Stela

by Christopher Cox

Arts 2024, 13(4), 128; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13040128 - 29 Jul 2024

In the 7th century BCE, the Kushite king Tanwetamani commissioned his “Dream Stela”, which was to be erected in the Amun Temple of Jebel Barkal. The lunette of the stela features a dualistic artistic motif whose composition, meaning, and significance are understudied despite [...] Read more.

In the 7th century BCE, the Kushite king Tanwetamani commissioned his “Dream Stela”, which was to be erected in the Amun Temple of Jebel Barkal. The lunette of the stela features a dualistic artistic motif whose composition, meaning, and significance are understudied despite their potential to illuminate important aspects of royal Kushite ideology. On the lunette, there are two back-to-back offering scenes that appear at first glance to be nearly symmetrical, but that closer inspection reveals to differ in subtle but significant ways. Analysis of the iconographic and textual features of the motif reveals its rhetorical function in this royal context. The two strikingly similar but meaningfully different offering scenes represented the two halves of a Kushite “Double Kingdom” that considered Kush and Egypt together as a complementary geographic dual, with Tanwetamani presiding as king of both. This “Mirrored Motif” encapsulated the duality present in the Kushite ideology of kingship during the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty, which allowed Tanwetamani to reconcile the present imperial expansion of Kush with the history of Egyptian activity in Nubia. The lunette of the Dream Stela is therefore political art that serves to advance the Kushite imperial agenda. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ancient Egyptian Art Studies: Art in Motion, a Social Tool of Power and Resistance)

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16 pages, 962 KiB

Open AccessArticle

“Beyond Quantum Music”—A Pioneering Art and Science Project as a Platform for Building New Instruments and Creating a New Musical Genre

by Sonja Lončar and Andrija Pavlović

Arts 2024, 13(4), 127; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13040127 - 25 Jul 2024

In this text, we discuss the “Beyond Quantum Music” project, which inspired pianists, composers, researchers, and innovators Sonja Lončar and Andrija Pavlović (LP Duo) to go beyond the boundaries of classical and avant-garde practices to create a new style in composition and performance [...] Read more.

In this text, we discuss the “Beyond Quantum Music” project, which inspired pianists, composers, researchers, and innovators Sonja Lončar and Andrija Pavlović (LP Duo) to go beyond the boundaries of classical and avant-garde practices to create a new style in composition and performance on two unique DUALITY hybrid pianos that they invented and developed to create a new stage design for multimedia concert performances and establish a new musical genre as a platform for future musical expression. “Beyond Quantum Music” is a continuation of the groundbreaking art and science project “Quantum Music”, which began in 2015; we envisioned it as a long-term project. In order to build an experimental dialogue between music and quantum physics, we created the DUALITY Portable Hybrid Piano System. This innovative instrument was essential for expanding the current sound of the classical piano. As a result, new compositions and new piano sounds were produced using various synthesizers and sound samples derived from scientific experiments. The key place for this dialogue between music and science was the Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, where Andrija Pavlović, as a Kavli artist in residence, and Sonja Lončar, as an expert, spent several months in 2022 collaborating with scientists to compose new music. Later on, we collaborated with the visual artist “Incredible Bob” to develop the idea for the multimedia concert “LP Duo plays Beyond Quantum Music” to be performed at various locations, including the Scientific Institute MedILS Split (Croatia), the Theater Hall JDP Belgrade (Serbia), the Congress Hall TU Delft (the Netherlands), and open-air concerts at the Kaleidoskop Festival (Novi Sad, Serbia) and Ars Electronica Festival in Linz (Austria). Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Applied Musicology and Ethnomusicology)

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21 pages, 7074 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Visualizing Scale: Inducing Transformations in Perception through Art and Science

by Joshua DiCaglio and Meredith Tromble

Arts 2024, 13(4), 126; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13040126 - 23 Jul 2024

In order for scientists and technologists to describe many of their objects, they must observe at a scale that exceeds typical human experience. Atoms and ecologies, microbes and galaxies all exist at scales that require retroactively reconstructing a picture (whether rendered visually, through [...] Read more.

In order for scientists and technologists to describe many of their objects, they must observe at a scale that exceeds typical human experience. Atoms and ecologies, microbes and galaxies all exist at scales that require retroactively reconstructing a picture (whether rendered visually, through an alternative visualization, or simply pieced together as a description) of what human perceptual apparatus usually does not observe. Scale is also central to the production of artwork that uses changes in scale to help us examine the world differently, disorient our normalized ways of experiencing, and direct us to new objects and new relations. This article examines these problems of scale as they are shared between art and science, analyzing contemporary artists whose works highlight core aspects of scale. In examining these artworks together, we demonstrate that scale presents one way of clarifying when and how science runs us into basic questions at the core of many artistic practices. Full article

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14 pages, 16357 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Fragments of the Liturgical-Musical Codex from the Archdiocesan Archive of Gniezno (Poland): Source Analysis and Provenance Hypotheses

by Piotr Wiśniewski

Arts 2024, 13(4), 125; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13040125 - 22 Jul 2024

This paper discusses hitherto unidentified loose folios of a parchment liturgical and musical book held in the Archdiocesan Archive of Gniezno (Poland), containing the offertory and communion antiphons for the feasts De Trinitate and Corpus Christi. The author provides the codicological description of [...] Read more.

This paper discusses hitherto unidentified loose folios of a parchment liturgical and musical book held in the Archdiocesan Archive of Gniezno (Poland), containing the offertory and communion antiphons for the feasts De Trinitate and Corpus Christi. The author provides the codicological description of the leaves (analyzing Latin script, musical notation, ornamentation); identifies the time of their creation (15th century); indicates the type of the liturgical book to which they belong (graduale); seeks a melodic model for them and puts forward provenance hypotheses. He states that the melodics of the antiphons, although closest to the Cistercian tradition, are nevertheless variantly different from the melodic line preserved in foreign and Polish codices. It is possible to narrow down the dating of the leaves thanks to the type of Latin script, the calligraphic ornamentation of the initials and the spelling of certain letters. Full article

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16 pages, 270 KiB

Open AccessReview

Integrating NFTs into Feminist Art Practices: Actualizing the Disruptive Potential of Decentralized Technology

by Natalie Ponder

Arts 2024, 13(4), 124; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13040124 - 18 Jul 2024

The integration of NFT technology into the art market utilizes a two-pronged approach of decentralization and increased accessibility as an equalizing answer to rectify gender discrepancies in the contemporary art world. This is not the first time that technology as an art medium [...] Read more.

The integration of NFT technology into the art market utilizes a two-pronged approach of decentralization and increased accessibility as an equalizing answer to rectify gender discrepancies in the contemporary art world. This is not the first time that technology as an art medium has been used as a feminist tool to disrupt the previously established status quo. Through the exploration of the 1990’s Cyberfeminist Net Art Movement, this article will discuss how female-identifying artists employ technological characteristics such as anonymity and online gender masquerading to answer the exclusionary issues affecting their art practices. Furthermore, it will examine how NFTs work to build upon the previously established revolutionary movement of the 1990s to evolve the contemporary art practices of feminist artists. Additionally, this article will address the impacts of this new digital landscape, where anonymity is preferred and algorithmic ordering is non-existent, as a more pragmatic way of creating, selling, and buying art. Finally, this article will examine how the integration of blockchain technology—entirely machine-operated and free from human manipulation—aims to eliminate the human biases of identifying factors such as gender that can be concealed or fabricated when operating in an online sphere. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue NFTs, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Metaverse: The Web3 Revolution That Has Transformed the Art Market)

17 pages, 12904 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Associate/Dissociate: Allusive and Elusive Care in Veronica Ryan’s Sculpture

by Catherine Spencer

Arts 2024, 13(4), 123; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13040123 - 18 Jul 2024

Reflecting on the experience of curating Veronica Ryan’s work for the 2021 exhibition Life Support: Forms of Care in Art and Activism at Glasgow Women’s Library, this essay contextualizes the artist’s recent sculptures in relation to the theories, philosophies, and ethics of care [...] Read more.

Reflecting on the experience of curating Veronica Ryan’s work for the 2021 exhibition Life Support: Forms of Care in Art and Activism at Glasgow Women’s Library, this essay contextualizes the artist’s recent sculptures in relation to the theories, philosophies, and ethics of care that have recently gained increasing prominence in artistic and curatorial practice. Drawing on the philosopher Virginia Held’s understanding of care as inherently intersubjective, it proposes that Ryan’s sculptures model a comparable understanding of caring relations through their associative yet ultimately elusive operations. Ryan is recognized for her use of abstracted organic forms, particularly seeds, pods, husks, and fruits. Since moving to New York from Britain in 1990 and developing a career between the two countries, Ryan has engaged with industrial and mass-produced receptacles, molds, and packing materials, an interest which has expanded to include fishing wire, plastic bottles, and take-away food containers, alongside textiles. Yet, although many of these elements remain identifiable, the resulting works delight in category confusion between organic and prefabricated, instigating uncanny textural effects that engender perceptual uncertainty. Their chains of allusion resist singular, fixed meanings, generating a continual back and forth of association and dissociation that constitutes a sustained meditation on care’s relational complexity. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Modern and Contemporary Art: Topical Abstraction in Contemporary Sculpture)

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14 pages, 9230 KiB

Open AccessArticle

On Perceiving Molecular Time: Computational Chemical Simulations and the Moving Image

by Andrea Rassell

Arts 2024, 13(4), 122; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13040122 - 17 Jul 2024

The perception of time undergoes a radical shift between the human scale and the nanoscale. In an age of rapidly evolving media and scientific technologies, we need to understand how these impact human perception and visual culture. This essay explores computational molecular simulations [...] Read more.

The perception of time undergoes a radical shift between the human scale and the nanoscale. In an age of rapidly evolving media and scientific technologies, we need to understand how these impact human perception and visual culture. This essay explores computational molecular simulations through the lenses of temporal media theory and moving image practice. Emerging from a creative fellowship with a physical chemistry research group, I focus on two moving image works that depict crystalline structures. One is a nanoscale computational simulation of soot formation and the other is a durational video artwork showing the dissolution of sugar. Computational molecular simulations are shown to produce a feeling of time by smearing an extremely short duration across a longer perceptible duration. This analysis uncovers how the awareness of media as a construct troubles our chronoception (perception of time), while unexpectedly, the screen becomes complicit in scientists’ expert temporal understanding. The videos present vastly different spatial and temporal scales and have different chronoceptive effects: one gives a sense of being within time, the other across time. Ultimately, computational simulations emerge as isomorphic media that have explicit aesthetic properties that connect us to the implicit, abstract energetics of chemical reactivity. Full article

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27 pages, 25360 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Sublime Divinity: Erotic Affectivity in Renaissance Religious Art

by Maya Corry

Arts 2024, 13(4), 121; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13040121 - 17 Jul 2024

In the context of the Catholic Reformation serious concerns were expressed about the affective potency of naturalistic depictions of beautiful, sensuous figures in religious art. In theological discourse similar anxieties had long been articulated about potential contiguities between elevating, licit desire for an [...] Read more.

In the context of the Catholic Reformation serious concerns were expressed about the affective potency of naturalistic depictions of beautiful, sensuous figures in religious art. In theological discourse similar anxieties had long been articulated about potential contiguities between elevating, licit desire for an extraordinarily beautiful divinity and base, illicit feeling. In the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, in the decades preceding the Council of Trent, a handful of writers, thinkers and artists asserted a positive connection between spirituality and sexuality. Leonardo da Vinci, and a group of painters working under his aegis in Lombardy, were keenly aware of painting’s capacity to evoke feeling in a viewer. Pictures they produced for domestic devotion featured knowingly sensuous and unusually epicene beauties. This article suggests that this iconography daringly advocated the value of pleasurable sensation to religiosity. Its popularity allows us to envisage beholders who were neither mired in sin, nor seeking to divorce themselves from the physical realm, but engaging afresh with age-old dialectics of body and soul, sexuality and spirituality. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Affective Art)

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14 pages, 689 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Green Moment to Share: A Theatrical Laboratory to Explore Climate Crisis Possibilities within Single Moments

by Nic Bennett, Venese Alcantar, Tulasi Ravindran, Vanna Chen, River Terrell and Kathryn Dawson

Arts 2024, 13(4), 120; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13040120 - 16 Jul 2024

Many youth experience distress around the climate crisis. However, mainstream environmental messages ignore youth concerns, blame individuals, and suggest techno-fixes rather than addressing root causes. Young people need a way to productively process and collectively engage with their complex feelings about the climate [...] Read more.

Many youth experience distress around the climate crisis. However, mainstream environmental messages ignore youth concerns, blame individuals, and suggest techno-fixes rather than addressing root causes. Young people need a way to productively process and collectively engage with their complex feelings about the climate crisis. During the spring of 2023, a group of university students facilitated a Research-based Theatre project to explore their relationship to climate and environmental justice as part of a biannual performance festival of student new work. Specifically, we used Theatre of the Oppressed techniques to slow down and embody participants’ struggles with environmental action. We argue that this process allowed participants to explore how and why they made sense of mainstream environmental messaging about the climate crisis. This paper offers a case study exploring how the interwoven themes of power, positionality, and agency emerged through embodied investigations during the early development of our Research-based Theatre performance. The paper concludes by discussing how Research-based Theatre can embrace a post-activist lens that supports the complexity of sense-making and troubles the over-emphasis on solution as the only response to environmental/climate crisis. Further, we argue for the kin-making possibilities that crisis can teach us when engaged through embodied exploration. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Exploring Research-Based Theatre within Contemporary Theatre Education)

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12 pages, 267 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Postcards and Emotions: Modernist Architecture in the Films of Pedro Almodóvar and Woody Allen

by Rubén Romero Santos, Ana Mejón, Begoña Herrero Bernal and Carmen Ciller

Arts 2024, 13(4), 119; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13040119 - 14 Jul 2024

Modernism has emerged as the preeminent iconic representation of Barcelona. However, the process through which this peculiar style has attained its iconic status is an arduous and multifaceted endeavor. This paper examines the challenges inherent in the categorization and periodization of Modernisme, followed [...] Read more.

Modernism has emerged as the preeminent iconic representation of Barcelona. However, the process through which this peculiar style has attained its iconic status is an arduous and multifaceted endeavor. This paper examines the challenges inherent in the categorization and periodization of Modernisme, followed by a succinct review of its initial filmic representations, culminating in a comprehensive analysis of two films in which Modernisme assumes a pivotal role: All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar 1999) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen 2008). We conclude that Modernisme’s transformation into a cultural brand is largely attributable to the erosion of its ideological component in favor of a touristic and globalizing gaze. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Arts: Art and Urban Studies)

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