World ArtPub Date : 2020-01-02DOI: 10.1080/21500894.2020.1725103
D. S. Farrer, Mohammad Din, Mohammad divulged, Iain Edgar calls ‘dreamwork
{"title":"Dreamwork, art worlds and miracles in Malaysia","authors":"D. S. Farrer, Mohammad Din, Mohammad divulged, Iain Edgar calls ‘dreamwork","doi":"10.1080/21500894.2020.1725103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21500894.2020.1725103","url":null,"abstract":"Dreamwork recorded in the Malay art world questions the occult power of artistic agency. As I did participant observation in Malaysia and Singapore, the artist Mohammad Din Mohammad divulged knowledge of Sufi lore, shamanic healing, and Malay martial arts (silat). On a quest to comprehend, discover, create and articulate esoteric skills, secret knowledge and mysterious artifacts, the artist produced fine art paintings, talismanic jewelry and assemblage sculptures. These were to be used in psychic defence, dream incubation, for inspiration, and as medicine. A field site discussion as to whether a reported vision of a mysterious shadow warrior is a true, false, or meaningless dream forms the kernel of a dreamwork dialogue regarding miraculous agency. The artwork raises questions pertaining to sorcery, Islam, agency, and power in Southeast Asia, revealing a political battle of Sufi versus Wahhabi notions in the constitution of Malay modernity.","PeriodicalId":412489,"journal":{"name":"World Art","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122656317","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
World ArtPub Date : 2020-01-02DOI: 10.1080/21500894.2020.1722962
Constantius Tri Handoko, Geff Green
{"title":"Dreams, legends, spirituality and miracles: understanding tattoo narratives among contemporary urban men in Java Island, Indonesia","authors":"Constantius Tri Handoko, Geff Green","doi":"10.1080/21500894.2020.1722962","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21500894.2020.1722962","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the relationship between dreams and tattooing in the context of the spiritual beliefs in Indonesia. Based on interviews and ethnographic study in the Island of Java, we highlight the importance of dreams, their perceived meanings and significance for male individuals, who have tattooed their bodies with dreamed imagery. Interviews revealed narratives which arise from the tattoos themselves and we relate them to myth, belief and legends familiar to the Javanese; these draw upon religious faith and also more atavistic mystical beliefs. An important source is the Javanese legend of Nyai Roro Kidul, a narrative often seen to legitimise political, royal and magical power. Dream expressions also draw upon popular visual culture as part of a dynamic and ongoing evolution of an embodied discourse of belief. Our case studies reveal that tattooing can be part of the broader mediation of belief in the supernatural where older beliefs can intervene in new domains and contexts for expression.","PeriodicalId":412489,"journal":{"name":"World Art","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127527239","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
World ArtPub Date : 2019-12-11DOI: 10.1080/21500894.2019.1694063
Marie Geissler
{"title":"Bark painting of Arnhem Land, Australia: the Western reception 1960–1990","authors":"Marie Geissler","doi":"10.1080/21500894.2019.1694063","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21500894.2019.1694063","url":null,"abstract":"This article brings together existing research as well as new data to examine the shift in the reception of Arnhem Land (Australia) bark painting, from being understood initially as a form of ethnographic art, to one of contemporary art. It investigates the historical and conceptual nature of this process of recognition, especially its institutional basis. Despite key studies, this overall process is not well known or always considered. Although the reception of Aboriginal art has been increasingly researched, the focus has tended to be on Western Desert acrylic paintings. This article aims to more fully integrate the Arnhem Land bark painting into this history. My account follows the general patterns of reception, both within Australia and internationally. Interviews with key institutional protagonists provide new and critical reflections on one of the key moments in the globalisation of art in the late twentieth century.","PeriodicalId":412489,"journal":{"name":"World Art","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116284352","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
World ArtPub Date : 2019-07-09DOI: 10.1080/21500894.2019.1637639
Diana Bularca
{"title":"Rebecca Horn: devising intersubjective connections","authors":"Diana Bularca","doi":"10.1080/21500894.2019.1637639","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21500894.2019.1637639","url":null,"abstract":"German artist Rebecca Horn (b. 1944) produced some of her most innovative and consequential work during the 1970s, yet the body sculptures she designed have not received the attention they deserve, especially when compared with her later feature films, installations, and machine-like pieces. Horn created her works during the seventies while recovering from a severe lung poisoning that isolated her in a hospital for a long time. Looking closely at the works themselves, Horn’s own statements, and existing art-historical and theoretical commentaries, this study argues that her artistic production of this time articulated a longing for communication that followed her isolation, and considers her pieces to have the potential to transcend one’s own subjectivity in order to explore that of the other and create intersubjective connections between the performers. Her sculptural costumes will thus be interpreted as enabling their wearers to reconsider the perception of their surroundings in a less rational and more intersubjective way. In this paper, Horn’s work makes powerful contact with that of her teacher Franz Erhard Walther, Joseph Beuys, and artist and therapist Lygia Clark.","PeriodicalId":412489,"journal":{"name":"World Art","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121812711","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
World ArtPub Date : 2019-07-04DOI: 10.1080/21500894.2019.1637373
M. Carbonara
{"title":"Border paradox: crossing, experiencing and representing borders between Bologna and Modena in the early modern period","authors":"M. Carbonara","doi":"10.1080/21500894.2019.1637373","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21500894.2019.1637373","url":null,"abstract":"This essay considers how image-makers tackled the paradox of a border marked by water, the instability of which escaped definitive representation. Based on unpublished manuscript material – maps, official reports, drawing, and texts – from the State Archives of Bologna and Modena, the article demonstrates the potential of borders themselves to subvert official definitions of authority as well as geographical constraints, introducing concepts of mobility and instability.","PeriodicalId":412489,"journal":{"name":"World Art","volume":"69 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116780142","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
World ArtPub Date : 2019-06-19DOI: 10.1080/21500894.2019.1631211
Yunchang Yang
{"title":"‘Roots-searching’ and contemporary landscape photography in China","authors":"Yunchang Yang","doi":"10.1080/21500894.2019.1631211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21500894.2019.1631211","url":null,"abstract":"This article aims to discuss a discursive turn of Chinese visual arts, using landscape representations from old and contemporary photographs of China, as well as painting and film materials. The discussion starts from showing the differences of defining the term landscape between Western and Chinese painters, arguing that they point to two types of realism underpinned by two kinds of cultures of seeing. It then moves on to the anthropological analysis of the landscape and how this analytical framework is useful in terms of understanding the ‘emotive reality’ in traditional Chinese landscape paintings. Lastly, the essay attempts to point out that this legacy has been inherited by contemporary Chinese visual arts in form of a ‘roots-searching’ sentimentality, either in explicit or implicit ways, participating in the construction of the new reality and identity recognised by and shapes contemporary Chinese artists.","PeriodicalId":412489,"journal":{"name":"World Art","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131196091","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
World ArtPub Date : 2019-06-18DOI: 10.1080/21500894.2019.1618909
Scott Nethersole
{"title":"The value of contrast: ‘Beyond Compare’ at the Bode Museum","authors":"Scott Nethersole","doi":"10.1080/21500894.2019.1618909","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21500894.2019.1618909","url":null,"abstract":"The current exhibition at the Bode Museum – Beyond Compare: Art from Africa in the Bode Museum – juxtaposes African and European objects, ordinarily housed in separate collections. As such, it prompts questions about the value of comparison in art history, when two objects are divided by culture, time and space. This short provocation will suggest that its significance lies in the ability to make the familiar strange through contrast.","PeriodicalId":412489,"journal":{"name":"World Art","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114975828","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
World ArtPub Date : 2019-06-17DOI: 10.1080/21500894.2019.1627405
Andrés David Montenegro Rosero
{"title":"Galería Alcuadrado (Bogotá, Colombia): a partial history in three exhibitions","authors":"Andrés David Montenegro Rosero","doi":"10.1080/21500894.2019.1627405","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21500894.2019.1627405","url":null,"abstract":"During its brief life span, the Alcuadrado art gallery (Bogotá, 2003–2009) represented an entire cohort of important contemporary artists from Colombia including Miguel Ángel Rojas, Oscar Muñoz, María Teresa Hincapié, María Elvira Escallón, Juan Fernando Herrán, François Bucher, and Jaime Ávila. Unlike most of the galleries operating in the country at the time, Alcuadrado did not have a permanent space for the display of artworks. Instead, it opted for experimental, temporary interventions in public spaces throughout the city. All of their shows created dialogues between works produced by the artists represented by the gallery, while at the same time engaging with the contexts where they were displayed. This paper provides the first chronicle of the history of this pivotal Colombian gallery by focusing on three of their exhibitions: Tres Artistas Alcuadrado, held in Bogotá in 2004 at an industrial warehouse in disuse, Campos Latinoamericanos, installed 2005 within the ruins of an unfinished Hilton Hotel building in downtown Bogotá, and Sin Remedio mounted in 2008 in a former hospital building in disuse. It studies the nomadic display model pioneered by the gallery’s directors and how it incorporated artworks into the physical and historical characteristics of several sites.","PeriodicalId":412489,"journal":{"name":"World Art","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115504986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
World ArtPub Date : 2019-05-04DOI: 10.1080/21500894.2019.1610789
Chelsea M. Herr
{"title":"Visual essay 2","authors":"Chelsea M. Herr","doi":"10.1080/21500894.2019.1610789","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21500894.2019.1610789","url":null,"abstract":"Foregrounding language and storytelling as an integral component of Indigenous futures, Scott Benesiinaabandan’s (Obishikokaang Anishinaabe First Nation) virtual reality project Blueberry Pie under a Martian Sky invites viewers to accompany a young boy on his journey to his peoples’ origin place. Set in the year 2167, the boy’s voyage evokes the Anishinaabe cultural narrative in which Spider Woman spun a thread from the Pleiades to Earth, leading the Anishinaabeg to their current North American homelands. In Blueberry Pie, Benesiinaabandan posits a potential fulfillment of that narrative, in which the boy returns to the Pleiades using Spider Woman’s web, effectively blurring the distinctions between a web and a wormhole. The project’s title refers to Benesiinaabandan’s observation that the Anishinaabemowin term for ‘blueberry pie’ is a recent addition to their lexicon – though ‘blueberry’ is not – emphasizing the versatility of the living Anishinaabe language. The artist speculates about the future of the language and its crucial role in the continuance of its people, imagining the ongoing introduction of new terms and the adaptation of existing words to express an Anishinaabe relationship to other cosmological elements 150 years in the future.","PeriodicalId":412489,"journal":{"name":"World Art","volume":"68 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130781811","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}