Visual ResourcesPub Date : 2018-09-03DOI: 10.1080/01973762.2018.1499472
Colleen O'Reilly
{"title":"Science, Politics, and Visual Design in Cold War America: Will Burtin’s “Cell”","authors":"Colleen O'Reilly","doi":"10.1080/01973762.2018.1499472","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01973762.2018.1499472","url":null,"abstract":"In 1958, graphic designer Will Burtin’s (1908–1972) large-scale model of a basic cell, made of plastic and flashing lights, opened at the annual convention of the American Medical Association. It had been commissioned by Upjohn Pharmaceuticals, and was received with great enthusiasm. It subsequently traveled internationally, appearing widely in print and on television, and then settling for permanent exhibit at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. This interactive, multimedia exhibition was an example of a specific approach to scientific visualization that manifested new attitudes toward the power of visual material for American social progress. In the context of the Cold War, certain ways of employing “the visual” were deemed to be conducive to securing individual agency and human mental freedom. In the realm of mid-century corporate science and technology display, where designers and businessmen worked closely together, these new design techniques helped to make corporate activity appear coherent with these democratic ideals. An analysis of the sensory experience of the Upjohn cell model and its circulation demonstrates the key role that visual technology played in defining American citizenship as a practice of viewing visual media. Burtin’s design projects helped to affirm relationships between progress, democracy, and Western capitalism during the Cold War period.","PeriodicalId":41894,"journal":{"name":"Visual Resources","volume":"36 1","pages":"175 - 194"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/01973762.2018.1499472","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47289438","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}
Visual ResourcesPub Date : 2018-08-23DOI: 10.1080/01973762.2018.1493561
Nava Sevilla-Sadeh
{"title":"Les Rites de Passage: Ritual, Initiation, and the State in Works by Sigalit Landau and Anisa Ashkar","authors":"Nava Sevilla-Sadeh","doi":"10.1080/01973762.2018.1493561","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01973762.2018.1493561","url":null,"abstract":"Initiation or rites of passage in the ancient world constituted a highly meaningful experience and were intended to delineate the transition from childhood to adult status, with the sacred initiation meant to promise a merging with the divine. The argument at the heart of this research is that features of initiation and of the ancient Dionysian rituals can be found in works by Sigalit Landau (b. 1969) and Anisa Ashkar (b. 1979), as metaphors of contemporary initiation in relation to the establishment of the Israeli nation and the fate of the Arab inhabitants following the Nakba (“disaster” in Arabic), the exodus of the Palestinian and Arab dwellers after the establishment of the Israeli State in 1948. This article employs ancient texts and visual references as well as contemporary thought.","PeriodicalId":41894,"journal":{"name":"Visual Resources","volume":"34 1","pages":"395 - 419"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/01973762.2018.1493561","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42354403","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}
Visual ResourcesPub Date : 2018-07-02DOI: 10.1080/01973762.2018.1483309
Nóra Veszprémi
{"title":"Displaying the Periphery: The Upper-Hungarian Museum and the Politics of Regional Museums in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy","authors":"Nóra Veszprémi","doi":"10.1080/01973762.2018.1483309","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01973762.2018.1483309","url":null,"abstract":"The Upper-Hungarian Museum of Kassa/Kaschau/Košice was established in 1872 as one of the many ambitious but severely underfunded regional museums coming into being in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. This article examines how the museum negotiated the delicate balance between maintaining good relations with the capital, necessary for the sake of survival, and following its own local agenda. It discusses the history of the institution in the context of the complex political and administrative structure of Austria-Hungary, as an example of the dynamics between the Monarchy’s “centers” and “peripheries.” After 1867, Hungary’s governments took the course of centralization, curtailing the political agency of the counties, while increasingly forcing non-Hungarian speakers in multi-ethnic regions such as Upper Hungary to adopt the Hungarian language. The article examines the museum’s place in these processes, arguing that, rather than simply disseminating the narratives of the center, the museum conceptualized its own role in a more autonomous and multi-faceted way. Finally, it seeks to use the museum as an example of the “periphery” as an autonomous entity, and to question the usefulness of a simple binary of center and periphery in researching Austro-Hungarian culture.","PeriodicalId":41894,"journal":{"name":"Visual Resources","volume":"35 1","pages":"266 - 294"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/01973762.2018.1483309","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42583817","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}
Visual ResourcesPub Date : 2018-07-02DOI: 10.1080/01973762.2018.1476013
Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel
{"title":"Peripheral Circulations, Transient Centralities: The International Geography of the Avant-Gardes in the Interwar Period (1918–1940)","authors":"Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel","doi":"10.1080/01973762.2018.1476013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01973762.2018.1476013","url":null,"abstract":"This article questions the common historiography about the avant-gardes in the interwar period, in which Paris is often considered the international avant-garde capital city, with surrealism as its perfect model. It starts with the idea that the history of the avant-gardes (artists and artists’ groups who considered themselves or who were considered innovative) could be studied as “a social field,” but also an international field structured by mobility. It focuses on the circulation of avant-garde artists and their works, as well as the social, economic, financial, geopolitical, and colonial bases of these circulations, to understand how some groups, artists, stories, and centers managed to establish themselves better than others. Contrary to the regular narrative based on Parisian domination, a circulatory approach highlights that Paris isolated itself from avant-gardes in the 1920s, unlike the opening of Germany and Central Europe, and that the surrealists themselves were not so international until 1929. Looking at social groups, at their movements and circulation, as well as the various strategies deployed and the underlying geopolitical positions taken by artists after 1929, it shows that from 1929, the Parisian scene, and the surrealist movement in particular, very slowly became a new focus for new artistic generations. Paris only became a global center of avant-garde circulation after 1934 and surrealism then gradually became the focus of international artists’ careers. In this process, artists coming from the peripheries of Europe and the Americas, cultural transfers, and resemanticization processes played a central role.","PeriodicalId":41894,"journal":{"name":"Visual Resources","volume":"35 1","pages":"295 - 322"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/01973762.2018.1476013","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47616910","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}
Visual ResourcesPub Date : 2018-06-22DOI: 10.1080/01973762.2018.1475887
Michael Yonan
{"title":"Materiality as Periphery","authors":"Michael Yonan","doi":"10.1080/01973762.2018.1475887","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01973762.2018.1475887","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines how the materiality of art operates as a periphery in art-historical interpretation. Taking as a case study the Palette of King Narmer (c. 3100 bc), a famous monument of Egyptian culture, the author explores how it has been interpreted while isolating the role of materiality in writings on it. It begins with a discussion of the palette found in a widely used art-historical survey text, Gardner’s History of Art, before turning to a methodological authority for much American art-historical writing, Erwin Panofsky (1892–1968). The article analyzes a sophisticated interpretation of the palette by Whitney Davis (b. 1958), which is both a complication of earlier approaches and a confirmation of their tenets when concerning materiality. It then treats recent archaeological approaches to the palette, arguing that they have done more to credit materiality as part of the object’s importance, before turning to the work of Alice Stevenson as an exemplification of how much an emphasis on materiality can bring to light. The article concludes by pondering disciplinary divisions and arguing for a layered, de-centralized critical approach to object analysis.","PeriodicalId":41894,"journal":{"name":"Visual Resources","volume":"35 1","pages":"200 - 216"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/01973762.2018.1475887","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46766936","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}
Visual ResourcesPub Date : 2018-06-12DOI: 10.1080/01973762.2018.1478556
Earnestine Jenkins
{"title":"Missionary Photography: The Liberian Archive of Doctor Georgia Patton","authors":"Earnestine Jenkins","doi":"10.1080/01973762.2018.1478556","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01973762.2018.1478556","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on the personal missionary experience of an African American woman physician, Dr Georgia Ester Lee Patton (1864–1900), later known as Georgia Washington. Patton worked in Liberia, a unique setting for missionary activities, being a colony established by former American slaves. The primary resource materials used here are missionary photographic archives, which comprise a distinct category of colonial cultural production. Photography assisted missions in promoting western achievements, disseminating Christianity, and advancing progress, by exposing Africans to western civilization. Such imagery was largely created by European photographers working within the social milieu of missionary organizations. Missionary photographs, therefore, functioned as an official public record of the missionary enterprise; today they are invaluable records of the histories of Christian missions around the globe. Missionary archives exist as both public and private archives. Private archives, as opposed to the images planned for a public audience, were compiled by individual missionaries and intended for private viewings. For this case study I use the private archive Patton compiled after she worked as a medical missionary in Liberia between 1893 and 1895. Patton later returned to Tennessee, where she became the first woman physician in the city of Memphis. This article seeks to determine how Patton’s perception of herself as an African American, as a woman, as a Christian, and as a physician influenced her unusual experience as a medical missionary in late nineteenth-century West Africa.","PeriodicalId":41894,"journal":{"name":"Visual Resources","volume":"34 1","pages":"293 - 314"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/01973762.2018.1478556","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47052583","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}
Visual ResourcesPub Date : 2018-04-18DOI: 10.1080/01973762.2018.1442069
C. Sheldon
{"title":"Art on the Move: Art Mobility in the Long Nineteenth Century","authors":"C. Sheldon","doi":"10.1080/01973762.2018.1442069","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01973762.2018.1442069","url":null,"abstract":"This two-day conference co-convened by Kate Nichols (University of Birmingham) and Barbara Pezzini (University of Manchester/National Gallery), aimed to initiate the mapping, examination and proble...","PeriodicalId":41894,"journal":{"name":"Visual Resources","volume":"34 1","pages":"436 - 439"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/01973762.2018.1442069","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42891224","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}
Visual ResourcesPub Date : 2018-04-11DOI: 10.1080/01973762.2018.1444129
F. Muzzarelli
{"title":"Women Photographers and Female Identities: Annemarie Schwarzenbach, New Dandy and Lesbian Chic Icon","authors":"F. Muzzarelli","doi":"10.1080/01973762.2018.1444129","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01973762.2018.1444129","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores how Swiss writer and photographer Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908–1942), used photography, both as author and subject, to define a new identity and build a new visibility for women. It begins by exploring the shared poetics that drew women’s artistic activities towards photography at the turn of the twentieth century. At that time, photography was a medium of choice for women seeking to reclaim their bodies and subtract them from the male gaze. It also provided women with an expression of identity, gender achievement and gendered negotiation. The article analyzes Schwarzenbach’s photographic practice as a distinctive and complex case study within this context. A well-educated and wealthy young woman, Schwarzenbach embodied the image of the emancipated and independent new woman, both in her life and professional choices, bravely embarking on dangerous and difficult journeys, writing articles and taking photographs of far-away, diverse and suffering people. Nevertheless, it was only when she moved to the other side of the camera and became the subject of portraits taken by her female friends and partners that Schwarzenbach became the first-hand witness and icon of a new search for gender visibility. Her fashion choices and her own body expressed and codified a sophisticated lesbian chic style.","PeriodicalId":41894,"journal":{"name":"Visual Resources","volume":"34 1","pages":"265 - 292"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/01973762.2018.1444129","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47740409","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}
Visual ResourcesPub Date : 2018-04-03DOI: 10.1080/01973762.2018.1437971
Marisa Lerer, C. McGarrigle
{"title":"Art Interventions and Disruptions in Financial Systems: An Interview with Paolo Cirio","authors":"Marisa Lerer, C. McGarrigle","doi":"10.1080/01973762.2018.1437971","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01973762.2018.1437971","url":null,"abstract":"Prior to the release of the 2016 Panama Papers and 2017 Paradise Papers – leaked documents that uncovered the movement of funds through offshore tax havens – conceptual artist Paolo Cirio’s (b. 1979) project Loophole for All (2013) revealed and documented the mechanics behind offshore financial centers. In this interview, Cirio expounds upon his investigations of offshore banking practices, describes his projects for instituting alternative financial models, and explains his hacktivist (i.e. Internet activist) strategies that engage with legal and economic systems. Defining the foundational movements that inform his work, Cirio in turn illuminates his methods of direct provocation and performance to reveal social and economic inequalities.","PeriodicalId":41894,"journal":{"name":"Visual Resources","volume":"34 1","pages":"157 - 167"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/01973762.2018.1437971","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42429461","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}
Visual ResourcesPub Date : 2018-04-03DOI: 10.1080/01973762.2018.1437976
LigoranoReese
{"title":"Main Street Meltdown: Economy","authors":"LigoranoReese","doi":"10.1080/01973762.2018.1437976","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01973762.2018.1437976","url":null,"abstract":"On October 29, 2008, the seventy-ninth anniversary of Black Tuesday, the stock market crash that caused the Great Depression in 1929, Nora Ligorano (b. 1956) and Marshall Reese (b. 1955) of the art collaborative LigoranoReese (formed 1986), installed a 15foot-long (4.35 metres) ice sculpture of the word Economy at Foley Square in Lower Manhattan in front of the New York State Supreme Court building, near the heart of the US financial district. Occurring less than two weeks after the Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy and Bear Stearns collapse, the ephemeral sculpture only lasted 16 hours before disappearing. Additional documentation of the project can be found at: Marshall Reese, ‘Main Street Meltdown,’ World Policy Journal Blog, October 28, 2013, http:// www.worldpolicy.org/blog/2013/10/28/main-street-meltdown.","PeriodicalId":41894,"journal":{"name":"Visual Resources","volume":"34 1","pages":"116 - 117"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/01973762.2018.1437976","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42411963","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}