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Henri Matisse's images in Jazz, created during the disruption of the German Occupation of France, were embedded with symbols of cultural resistance, while his text, which he composed after the defeat of the Germans, reflected the transition to a post-Liberation France. The wartime symbols and allusions camouflaged within these images are readily revealed when consideration is given to two carefully devised interpretative filters that Matisse created. The first, a circus theme embodied in its original title Cirque, and the second, the intricate captions that Matisse accorded to each image. Enhancing the visual quality of his handwritten text with his richly drawn arabesques, he created a new text-image dynamic which gave primacy to the image. The paper reveals a congruency between the text in Jazz, which he declared had no relationship to the image, and the essay he wrote at the same time, "How I made my books", where he articulated a principle he adopted for his other books, the rapport between the image and the literary character of the text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The church of Ss. Faustino and Giovita in Rome was built by the Brescian confraternity in 1575, after they obtained the necessary papal permit for an intervention within the ruins of an unfinished palace of justice (palazzo dei Tribunali) by Donato Bramante. This space played an important role in Rome's public life, as during the sixteenth century theatrical productions were staged within its walls and one of the first Tiber traghetto dockings was situated nearby. The Brescian community also established a national hospice within the ruins, which was demolished, together with their church, during the late nineteenth-century rebuilding of the Tiber banks. This paper investigates the notion of identity of the Brescian "Nation" (the city of Brescia being ruled by the Republic of Venice, which itself was represented in Rome through different buildings and institutions). It focuses on the activity of Carlo Fontana, the official architect of both the Serenissima and the Brescian confraternity, who designed the new façade of the church of Ss. Faustino and Giovita, as well as many new features of the Venetian embassy in Rome, now known as Palazzo Venezia. Fontana also designed projects in Brescia and neighbouring towns such as Bergamo and Como, as well as different projects in the Veneto, which will be explored here from a comparative perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to define the role of the Bolognese 'nation' in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Rome. The church of Saints John the Evangelist and Petronius, built in 1576 under the Bolognese Pope Gregory XIII, represents the first instance of this congregation's architectural presence in the Eternal City. The community began defining its unique character through a specific figurative language, stimulated by the need to express its own spirituality and local culture as well as to celebrate the role played by a number of famous Bolognese citizens within the congregation and in the Roman Curia. A detailed analysis of the decorative and liturgical programme of this church, as well as archival research in various Bolognese and Roman institutions shed light on the religious, social and artistic practices through which this 'nation' aimed to express its identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1880s, Buenos Aires witnessed a boost in the project of founding a national art scene. Interestingly, the founding of such a scene implied, in the first place, the creation of a field of art criticism. Due to the lack of official institutes and public support for the arts, the process of imagining and creating a national art took place both on paper and in the studio. As a result, one specific topos that emerges in this period is the visit to the artist's studio. This new discursive art space is at first sight small and insignificant, yet as the present study shows, its discovery in art criticism was crucial for the elaboration of a new myth, i.e., that of a national art production to come, observable in its actual birth place. The concept of "the visit to the great artist" had a different meaning in Buenos Aires than, for instance, in Paris. Most of the painters or sculptors were not yet viewed as "great artists". They were precursors or national masters to be. The main focus of this article addresses the question of what this means for the representation of artistic practices and what it tells us about the dynamic of the early art scene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jean Dubuffet made his dramatic breakthrough into the art world in the spring of 1946 with what would become his signature innovation, the hautes pâtes (thick or high pastes). Experimenting with unorthodox materials and techniques, he loaded his canvases with materials so heavy and unstable that even before their public debut in the exhibition Mirobolus, Macadam et Cie., his unwieldy pastes began cracking, crumbling, and melting off the canvas and onto the floor. According to Dubuffet's apologists, he welcomed these 'modifications', delighting in mutable, mutant materials that succumbed to the forces of gravity and entropy. Revisiting the story of Dubuffet's meltdowns, this article highlights the uneasy double bind Dubuffet found himself in at the beginning of his career, as his theoretical interest in ephemerality gave way to his clients' and dealers' well-founded practical concerns over the longevity and material durability of his work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]