Search

"Without a theory to go with it, it's impossible to see an artwork." This article intends to discuss the provocation posed by Tom Wolfe, investigating the relationship established between art and art criticism in modernity. In fact, we want to suggest this relationship accompanies the transition from a theory of autonomy to the autonomy of Theory and to precisely define what this autonomy consists of. Tom Wolfe's thesis simply put: art itself had become little more than a crutch for art theorists. Art's purpose had become to illustrate theories. It is our intent to argue that his statement is a symptom of a displacement that took place in early nineteenth-century German romanticism; in fact, this is where Theory conquers its own autonomy. Ever since, those who have occupied themselves of its practice--be they philosophers of art, theoreticians, or critics--seem to have strived for a sole purpose: to extend the privileges thus far granted to Theory. The excesses of the age of Theory would culminate, as we now know, in widespread theses stating the end of art. At last, Theory reveals its most ambitious project in the writings of contemporary analytical philosopher Arthur Danto: his philosophical work, a philosophical discourse about art, offers itself as an artwork in its own right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While landscape can be explored through the discourse of language and materiality, the enchantment of landscape remains ambiguous. In trying to unconceal the magic of landscape, this paper turns to the connection between Heidegger’s phenomenology and Chinese Daoism through the concept of landscape as the painted picture. Using the literal meaning of the Chinese landscape as the ‘scene of the wind’, or rather the scene of the invisible, I explore how landscape can be understood through the combination of Heideggerian hermeneutics and Chinese Daoism as the literal and metaphorical Void between mortality and divinity, earth and sky. Traditional Chinese landscape painting, as the Daoist philosophy in portraying the essence of truth in nature and life, is contrasted with Western Romanticism and Ruskin’s ideals of art as truth. Through the disturbance of what is subject and object, as well as what is visible and invisible in the perception of landscape, I conclude that the magic of landscape lies in the paradox: the between state where logic is inversed, where the Void is nothingness, where truth is sought and where belief is magical. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The notion of value is considered in this paper through various forms, methods, and modes of historical evaluation in the field of visual arts, with the presumption that all types of preference with regard to a particular artwork or artworks, as compared to others in a similar group, are specific procedures of evaluation. The most frequent among these are value assessment, attribution, institutionalization, and setting of priorities in terms of exhibition, conservation, acquisition, or restoration. As such, they are a practical consequence of the system of defining and establishing hierarchies, as well as of normatively defined dispositions or value-relativized concepts. Using a historical overview of cultural paradigms, especially those that are clearly discernible against the art-historical matrix of major stylistic periods, the author has identified their characteristic value-related characteristics. The formal features of artworks appear to indicate best the sources of preferences or the institutionalized criteria of the commissioner, and subsequently the opposed evaluation criteria of an artist or a critic - an intermediary since the late 18th century. The period of early Romanticism marks the borderline between the traditional and modern patterns of evaluation, or rather articulates the idea of evaluative pluralism, closely related to a change in the understanding of the nature of the visual medium. The conclusion shows that the modern evaluation conflicts are largely a consequence of an irreversible and entropic state of culture in the 21st century. We should therefore aim at a revision, not so much of the hithertho accepted and standardized values, but rather of the present systems of evaluation and the ensuing evaluative descriptions of art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses "Nummer veertien, home, (Number fourteen, home)," a production from artist, filmmaker and endurance enthusiast Guido van der Werve, which was conceived as van der Werve's homage to the Romantic composer and virtuoso pianist Frédéric Chopin. Topics mentioned include "Nummer veertien, home" as a requiem in three movements and twelve acts, the art of van der Werve, and "The King's Gambit," in which van der Werve characterizes nineteenth century Romanticism.

Copyright of Ars & Humanitas is the property of Ars & Humanitas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article reviews the art exhibition "The Critique of Reason: Romantic Art, 1760- 1860" at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut from March 2015 until July 2015, which featured works related to Romantic period in the visual arts by artists William Blake and Honore Daumier.

The article presents a biography of photographer Emil Otto Hoppé, focusing on his photography of Portland, Oregon as well as his training and upbringing in Germany. His travels across the U.S. in 1926 capturing images for his travel photography book "Romantic America" are discussed. Other topics include his stereotypical depiction of American minorities such as Native Americans in his work, themes of romanticism in his photographs, and his selection of commercial subjects for his work.

This article examines the particular form of documentary that the photographer Margaret Bourke-White employed in her images of sovietisation during the first Five-Year Plan in Russia. By her own admission she was more interested in machines than politics in producing the images that appeared in her 1931 book Eyes on Russia and in several magazine publications. Aiming to provide 'photographic records might have some historical value' by detailing the Five-Year Plan in action, the images present these epic transformations in atmospheric vignettes that convey, as Maurice Hindus notes in Eyes on Russia's preface, the 'romantic appeal' of industrialisation and agricultural collectivisation. I discuss the ideological considerations relating to the publication of these photographs in both Fortune and USSR in Construction, the capitalist and communist forums on industry, and as such reflect upon the continued importance of contexts of display and dissemination. Bourke-White was honest about the fabrication of the images, in contrast to Soviet worker photographers who fetishised facts and expressed antagonism towards artifice. The article situates Bourke-White within a discourse on photographic facticity in which few of the photographers were innocent of manipulating evidence for aesthetic or ideological purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late 1820s, the German romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich created a series of landscapes without human figures, in which trees are magnified and treated with the same attention to character as portraits. These landscapes have a formal affinity to popular anatomical illustrations of the nervous and vascular systems. This resemblance is explored in the context of contemporary developments in natural science and philosophy, particularly the search for universal forms and processes across the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Friedrich’s portraits of dendrites are interpreted as metaphors for the inner structure of the body and as a form of interiorized self-portraiture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Better known as a poet than as an art critic, Alfred de Musset (1810-1857) wrote several texts about aesthetics, among those the Salon de 1836. By comparing his critical approach with other theories elaborated by Diderot, Kant, Quatremère de Quincy, Stendhal or Baudelaire, this article clarifies the originality of Musset as an art critic, and illustrates his position in the quarrel between romanticism and neo-classicism in the early nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the work of the 19th-century American artist Alfred Jacob Miller. More specifically, the author focuses on drawings and paintings by Miller that feature dramatic hunting scenes set in the American West. The author argues that these scenes are depicted in a romantic and anti-documentary, anti-realist style. Also discussed is Miller's relationship with his patron, William Drummond Stewart. Specific works pictured and discussed include "Hunting the Argali in the Rocky Mountains," "Hunters in Search of Game" and "Chase of the Grizzly Bear, Black Hills."

Copyright of Studies on Art & Architecture / Kunstiteaduslikke Uurimusi is the property of Estonian Society of Art Historians and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses the influence the landscape of Alsace, France, on the work of German painter Christian Ernst Bernhard Morgenstern. Focusing both on Morgenstern's initial encounter with the upper Rhine River valley region in the 1830s and his subsequent oeuvre through the 1860s, the author examines both the details of Morgenstern's summer vacations near Ribeauvillé, France, in 1836-1839 and how these experiences affected the artist's rendition of heaths. Other aspects considered include the sublime in early realist painting, the representation of mountains in 19th-century art, and traces of Romanticism in Morgenstern's work.

George Stubbs's paintingThe Duke of Richmond's First Bull Moose(1770) offers a visual counterpart to an arresting account addressed to the naturalist Thomas Pennant in Gilbert White'sNatural History of Selborneof his 1768 visit to inspect the Duke of Richmond's recently deceased female “moose-deer.” The Duke was one of several aristocrats who acquired moose from Canada; his animals were studied by White, by Pennant, and by the physician and anatomist William Hunter who commissioned Stubbs's work. While Stubbs depicted the animal accurately, he had no knowledge of its natural habitat; the moose is incongruously placed in a mountainous lake landscape during an approaching storm. This romanticized landscape prospect offers a metaphor for the story of the moose in late eighteenth-century Britain. While looking forward and outward to understand the natural world, these depictions of the moose are equally subjective and imaginative and contributed to debates on extinction and the idea of species. The unsuccessful introduction of the moose to Britain defeated prospects for their domestication and cross-breeding. Close reading of Stubbs's painting, White's narrative, Pennant'sArctic Zoology, and Hunter's unpublished scientific paper on the moose suggest the kinds of wonder which mark the efforts on the part of science and the arts to understand this puzzling and mysterious animal. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

On 24 August 1824, a vaudeville entitled La St-Louis des artistes announced the opening of the most important artistic event in France during the Restoration, the Salon of 1824. This article analyses popular theatre in relation to French Romantic painting and emphasises the link between popular spectacle, high art and politics during the Restoration. The comparison of popular theatre and Romantic painting by artists like Eugène Delacroix and Charles-Emile Champmartin underscores the 'intermediality' of visual culture during the Restoration and suggests the importance of popular culture for the critical debate over Romanticism, for the innovative form of Romantic painting, and for state patronage of this controversial art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the holistic-spiritualistic movement in art and its education as well as the concepts of belief and doubt. The author raises several doubts concerning the secularization and sacralization of the United States, the increased interest in the spiritual and occult and spiritualism and holism as Romanticism in a postmodern form. The author goes on to address nature as both magical and uncanny.

Copyright of Art / Umění is the property of Institute of Art History of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses the difficult relationship between art and Christianity due to the modernization process in the 18th century, its impact on several art movements such as the German romanticism, Nazarenes, and Classicism, as well as its influence on modern Christian art. The philosophy of the enlightenment brought rationalism into the art and challenge Christian art and its believes. Several photographs of art works are presented. Other topics mentioned in this article include depiction of Christ in art, the concept of radical pluralism in art, and the religious function of art museums and exhibitions.

Copyright of Lituanistica is the property of Lithuanian Academy of Sciences Publishers and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses the relationship between human bodies and the landscape in art depicting the U.S. Civil War, with a particular focus on the stereograph "Wounded Trees at Gettysburg" by Mathew Brady. According to the author, Brady and other artists explored the connections between bullet-riddled trees and the wounded bodies of soldiers and drew on images and concepts from the art of the Romantic period in order to understand 19th-century warfare. Details on the symbolic relationship between trees and longevity are also presented. Other topics include anthropomorphism and sculptures and illustrations depicting the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg.

The Romantic physiologist William Lawrence once defined life as the relation between the functions of the parts of a living organism. Relationality is central to organic, or living, form, and this paper expands the consideration of organic form in Life: Organic Form and Romanticism to the practice of literary criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers a report from a November 23-26, 2011 conference in Greifswald, Germany on the state of research on the Romantic period in Germany. Topics of discussion included the philosophy of sociability of German author Friedrich Schlegel, national characteristics in Romantic literature, and Romantic painting in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.

This essay aims to establish that humour is not simply a style or an artistic genre among others, but is, rather, a core philosophical concept that permeates reflections on art from the end of the eighteenth century to the present day. Romantic philosophers were the first to contend that humour marked a new reign of artistic subjectivity Indeed, the philosophical aesthetics of Jean Paul (Johann Paul Friedrich Richter) and Hegel award humour a paramount role in the aesthetic revolution of the time. Whether they revel in it (Jean Paul) or deplore it (Hegel), they are the first to bring to light the observation that humour allows contradictory realities to coexist without friction and within a single artistic proposition. It is precisely this idea that reappears, roughly a century later in the techniques of Dadaist assemblage, in which Marcel Duchamp saw a manifestation of the "co-intelligence of the opposites." Recent writings by Jacques Ranciëre support the view that Schiller, Schelling, Hegel, among others, were the first philosophers to propose a new form of identification and of perception of art. This "aesthetic regime of art" was no longer based on the laws of mimetic representation, but rather on "the mixing of heterogeneous elements." Building on this theoretical framework, this essay demonstrates that Rancière nevertheless overlooks the key function that humour plays in romantic aesthetics and for the historical avant-gardes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the psychophantic relationship between psychoanalytic profession and art. It notes the role of psychoanalysis in providing scientific explanation on why scientific enjoyment benefits the well-being of humanity. Moreover, it cites the association of psychoanalysis with the concept of romantic idealism, citing the work of David Beres on the aesthetic aspect of analytic work.

As in many nation-states, Canadian modernity viewed nature through two seemingly opposed gazes: the extractive and the romantic. In many ways, the Romantic movement was a response to the de-humanizing effects of industrial extraction, a process that summarily stripped the natural world of spirit and meaning. For many working within this representational tradition, however, the search for ontological meaning was a question of developing techniques and technologies that will allow us to “see” the spiritual qualities of nature, to see that it can also be mined, assayed, and sold as a spiritual resource that will provide us with metaphysical comfort in the cold and meaningless universe created by the extractive gaze. In this essay, we examine the work of four contemporary Canadian artists who deploy postmodernist strategies of citation and parody to reveal the hidden connection between Canadian landscape art and extractive processes. In so doing, their work seeks to destroy the comforting and familiar pleasures of the extractive and romantic gazes and force Canadians to develop new ways of thinking about our relationship to nature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article examines two Romanticist paintings created for Indigenous audiences in the British colonies of Tasmania and Newfoundland. The paintings discussed are "Governor Arthur's Proclamation to the Tasmanian Peoples, 1830" by George Frankland and a lost, untitled painting by Amelia Curran. It is suggested that the paintings are examples of what the author calls alternative Romanticisms, which adapt global cultural forms for local purposes. Particular focus is given to the implications of the artists' acknowledgment of Indigenous presence in these colonies. Topics discussed include Aboriginal Australian peoples, the Beothuk people in Newfoundland, art as a means of communication, and symmetry.

The poetic parallels, figurative overlaps, and thematic frictions between the pages of William Blake's dynamic Songs of Innocence and of Experience establish a local area network architecture that is both complementary and antagonistic to the traditional pathways generated by/through bookspace. While this tension between connective paradigms contributes to the revolutionary vitality of Blake's work, its full implications have been stultified by generations of reproduction that privileged the organizational paradigms related to the printed book and its circulatory systems. However, flexible and fluid digital distribution, primarily via the William Blake Archive and its participation in NINES, extends the material bounds of Blake's printed work into a wide area network. This not only transcends Blake's distributive frustrations, but the sharing and communication functions engendered by network architectures encourage a more explicit recognition, re-imagining and extension of the networked features and applications of Blake's multimedia Songs. Unfortunately, as Blake's work has migrated to the digital arena, traditional doors of print-based perception have often been reinforced by unimaginative and anachronistic interfaces. NewRadial, a data visualization application, more fully illuminates the network architecture at the heart of Blake's Romantic creativity, and demonstrates the ways in which our current technological networks can extend interpretative possibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the political and historical contexts of women's bodies in France. The argument considering spirituality and sexual desire within the cultural discourse within operas is asserted. Romanticism's dominance in European arts with supernatural themes, knowledge, nature and individual's interior life is noted. Also pointed out is the church's encouragement to put emphasis on observable reality in the 19th century.

This essay examines Blake's visual aesthetics in the light of recent theories of the sublime. The latter, by seeing the sublime as a dynamic process located within creative activity itself, rather than as an experience that transcends the human, shed new light on Blake's practice and theory. In particular, they make it possible to view the high degree of medium reflexivity in the illuminated books, as well as the artist's original conception of linearism, as apt illustrations of such a sublime process. This essay shows how these well-known features of Blake's art reveal his heightened awareness of the incommensurability between material representation and the forms of his imagination, and of the necessity to sustain artistic production nevertheless. Such an experience of the terrifying and energetic struggle towards an ever-elusive formal perfection, we argue, is a forceful expression of the sublime dynamics of visual creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the work of German writer August Wilhelm von Schlegel, considered a leading proponent of German Romanticism, and describes the enthusiastic reception of his critical and theoretical ideas by Slavic cultures. Both Schlegel's theories of art and of the organic development of national cultures are said to have nurtured the ideas of independent nationhood, national ideals, and cultural identity among Slavic countries working toward political autonomy. The author contrasts August Schlegel's thinking with that of his brother, literary critic Friederich Schlegel.

Given their literary and philosophical achievements, German Romanticism and German Idealism enjoy a good reputation, covering up the political and ideological virulence that its main protagonists - such as Schlegel, Hegel and Heine - had to face. This article distinguishes between Romantic and Romanticism. Schlegel devised a typology of Romantic art. This European art form, which developed under the preserve of Christianity, gradually lost its sacred character as it became modern. Romanticism, well characterized by Heine's "Romantic School," is the conversion of this Romantic aesthethic into a medievalizing and conservative ideology in the context of a political culture hostile to German Enlightenment, which was criticized by Heine for historical, political and social reasons, and by Hegel for philosophical reasons. In terms of philosophy, the Romantic thought criticized by Hegel was not that of Schlegel but that of Schelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism of the book "J.M.W. Turner," edited by Ian Warrell, is presented. Topics include the romantic aspect of the work of British painter Joseph Mallord William Turner, the work of Turner considered as a whole, and an analysis of different exhibitions showing his work in terms of their emphasizing the different approaches to his painting.

A literary criticism is provided of five books including "Histoire de l'art dans l'antiquité," by Johann Joachim Winckelmann, "Abildgaard. 1743-1809," edited by Thomas Lederballe and Élisabeth Foucart-Walter, and "Mittelalter im Bild. Séroux d'Agincourt und die Kunsthistoriographie um 1800," by Daniela Mondini. In this comparative analysis, the author discusses the concepts of romanticism in art, of the romantic subject, and of the representation of images in art.

The article presents a reflection on the origins and significations of the adjective romantic in Europe. Topics include the history of the word romantic in England from the middle of the 17th century, the aesthetic meaning of the word along with its historical and cultural sense, and the controversial use of the noun romanticism in the 19th century.

Representations of Médéa were frequent in ceramic art from as early as 630 BC and changed radically around the 5th century BC. One of the most striking examples of this change is the lekythos dating from 530 BC (British Museum). This paper addresses the problem of the diverse significance of this and other subsequent representations, correlated, on the one hand, with the possible divine origin of Medea, and, on the other, with the stigma of violent emotion and brutality attached to her after the 5th century. The theme of infanticide, present from Euripide onwards, is examined in all its variations of image which served to stress the ethnic diversity of the figure of Medea. In the images central to the myth of the rejuvenation of Pelias, the problem remains the connection between the domestic sphere and the world of ritual. What we find is an overlap - through the use of food vessels and drink - between the domestic world and ritual sacrifice, between the family dining table and the secret wisdom of the temple. This has remained a recurrent theme in literature up to modern times (cf. Medea by Corrado Alvaro and the recent work by Adriano Guerrieri - 2003). With the fall of the Roman Empire, the figure of Medea disappears from the culture of the ancient world, to re-emerge in a variety of forms during the Renaissance. But it is not until the period of Romanticism and the new questions of conscience it raises, that we find images of Medea portrayed as a tragic figure torn by overwhelming emotions. Essential elements of the original theme are brought to light in the work of French painter Eugène Delacroix. The second part of this paper will be dedicated to an analysis of his painting, Médée Furieuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information concerning the historical relevance of sketchbooks by Austrian Romantic landscape painter Joseph Anton Koch. Descriptions are given of the use of Koch's sketchbooks by art students in Austria, Germany, and Italy. The topographic and geological details in Koch's sketches are discussed, and Koch's expertise in this area is attributed to his friendship with German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt. Further artistic and intellectual exchanges are described as occurring with Austrian painter Michael Wutky.

The article discusses the art criticism of nineteenth century French writer, critic, and poet Théophile Gautier. It examines his engagement with Romanticism and Realism, and comments on his association with the notion of "Art for Art's Sake." The author reflects on Gautier's writings on the Salon art exhibition in Paris, France and notes his open-mindedness and his focus on originality in art. Gautier's critiques of specific artists, including the French painter M. Adolphe Leleux, are also considered.