Issue 20 (2015, 4) Summary

ARTICULT #20 (4-2015) December

SUMMARY

THEORY OF ART

FROM ARTEFACT TO ART-ACT: READY-MADE AS AN AGENT OF SOCIAL ACTION
UDC 7.01
Author: Osminkin Roman, Ph.D. Student at the Russian Institute of Art History (Moscow, Russia), e-mail: osminkin@gmail.com
Summary: This article aims to analyze in detail the paradigm shift in art from the unique “arte-fact” to the (performative) artistic gesture. Marcel Duchamp’s ready-made is taken as the starting point of this shift. The article examines the ready-made as a performative act – exhibiting what Thierry de Duve’s calls “nominalist ontology”. The article attempts a re-conceptualization of the ready-made (“reverse ready-made”), which is often mistakenly re-objectified as a unique arte-fact, by giving full consideration to the conditions and the possibilities of a completely different, new type of artistic expression: the “arte-act” performs an active role of the agent of social action.
Keywords: ready-made, artefact, performative act, a thing, a medium of art, media-space, arte-act

read online / download pdf

IN SEARCH OF AN “IMPOSSIBLE PLACE” OF WALTER BENJAMIN
UDC 7.067
Author: Komarova Veronika, first-year student of master program “Art History and Curatorship”, Faculty of the History of Art, Russian State University for the Humanities (Moscow, Russia), e-mail: verona.v.k@gmail.com
Summary: In his 1934 article, “The Author as Producer,” the German philosopher Walter Benjamin explores the phenomenon of Soviet “Proletarian Culture,” and questions the need to include European intellectuals in the battle for the working class. In 1995, more than half a century later, the American art critic Hal Foster returns to that topic in his essay, “The Artist as Ethnographer,” in which he replaces the roles played by revolutionary writers with contemporary artists, and the proletariat with the idea of so-called “social other” – which includes not only the oppressed social classes, but also sexual or ethnic minorities, HIV-positive people and any other marginalized minority, with whom the artists were interested in working. The two texts mentioned above have inspired me to draw an analogy with my own professional experience as a journalist. I, too, work within milieu that can be referred to as the “social other,” since I mostly write about Russian artists involved in political and activist art. This work requires deep ethnographic immersion and close, direct contact. As a journalist, I also have to form my own opinion concerning the subjects of my study. How should I narrate their stories? Should I take part in their actions? Does my communication with them make me an activist?
Keywords: Walter Benjamin, Hal Foster, art, modern art, literature, journalism, social other, marginality, Proletkult, solidarity, opposition, activism, actionism, Moscow conceptualism, performance, photography, Petr Pavlensky, Pussy Riot

read online / download pdf

THE ART HISTORICAL PREMISES OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY BY BISHOP PORFIRY USPENSKY
UDC 7.01
Author: Markov Alexander, Dr.Habil. in philology, assistant professor, Chair of the Cinema and Contemporary Art Studies, Russian State University for the Humanities (Moscow, Russia), e-mail: markovius@gmail.com
ORCID ID: 0000-0001-6874-1073
Summary: Bishop Porfiry (Porphyrius) Uspensky (1804-1885) is usually understood as representative of traditional spirituality and official religion; in this article it is proved that his writing should be referred to the history of radical romantic thoughts. Romantic influence was adopted by him through aesthetic perception of art in the way of 19 c. art-criticism. Porfiry Uspensky, perceiving fragmentary historical and art-historical data conceived eccentric philosophy of history. He reconceptualize radical traditionalism as aesthetic criticism, and so he should be considered on a par with Nietzsche, Konstantin Leontiev and other critics of morality.
Keywords: philosophy of history, history of art history, iconography, romance, spirituality

read online / download pdf

NEW FLESH: TOWARDS THE QUESTION OF BODY MODIFICATION IN “EMPIRE”
UDC 7.01
Author: Shalaginov Denis, postgraduate student at the Faculty of Humanities. School of Philosophy. National Research University Higher School of Economics (Moscow, Russia), e-mail: deterritorisation@yandex.ru
Summary: The article is focused on the question of possibility of body modification as an emancipatory practice, the idea of which we meet in “Empire” – a book by Negri and Hardt. The authors claim that the blurring of transgender and sexual relations become the symptom of postmodernity. As a result, human bodies acquire some posthuman characteristics. The theorists consider these modifications to be the first sign of the anthropological exodus – such transformation of human subjectivity, that deliver it from the capitalist exploitation. To problematize this idea we appeal to the body motives in Cronenberg’s works.
Keywords: body, modification, Empire, Negri, Hardt, commodification, Cronenberg

read online / download pdf

HISTORY OF ART

THE IMAGE OF DAVID IN THE WORKS OF GIACOMO MANZU
UDC 73(03+04)
Author: Krauze Diana, senior research fellow of the Moscow museum of modern art (Moscow, Russia), e-mail: diana_krause@mmoma.ru
ORCID ID: 0000-0002-8043-3812
Summary: The article is devoted to creative progress of the eminent sculptor of the 20 c. Giacomo Manzu. We analyze the general way to transform the image of David in the artwork of Manzu, from the mid 1930s. Particular attention is paid to the key work in this development of the image, “David” of 1938, in conceptual and artistic frameworks.
Keywords: Italian sculpture, tradition, new interpretation, realism, humanism

read online / download pdf

RECOVERY OF THE STORYTELLER IN CONTEMPORARY EXHIBITION PRACTICE
UDC 069.152+7(036+091.8)
Author: Kozlovskaya Anna, second-year student of master program “Art History and Curatorship”, Faculty of the History of Art, Russian State University for the Humanities (Moscow, Russia), email: kozlovska.ann@gmail.com
ORCID ID: 0000-0002-9655-8265
Summary: The article analyzes the new strategies of exhibition practice using the Sixth Moscow Biennale of contemporary art as an example. It is based on oral form of narration focusing on personal, performativе and open work, where the figure of the Storyteller plays the main role in the perception of Walter Benjamin.
Keywords: Exhibition Strategy, Storyteller, Walter Benjamin, performativity, process, open work, Moscow Biennale of contemporary art

read online / download pdf

CINEMA

DISCRECITY AND REEDITING IN IVAN ZULUETA`S FILMS
UDC 791(43-2+44.071.1)
Author: Klimov Eugeniy, Ph.D. Student in the Saint-Petersburg State University of Cinema and Television (Saint-Petersburg, Russia), e-mail: martini-rock@yandex.ru
Summary: The article covers the analysis of the earliest short films of the Spanish Director Ivan Zulueta and particularization of the author's world, the basic structural elements of that world are contradictory visual rhythmic accentuation and rhythmic reediting. In the article special attention is given to the definition of the «enciphering» technique which turns the historical form into the full-fledged visual image. This technique is peculiar to the Spanish cinema avant-garde of the late Francoist Spain period.
Keywords: discrecity, supernatural time, cinegraphic of desity, reediting

read online / download pdf

CONSTRUCTION OF THE IMAGE OF CRIMINAL AUTHORITY IN CONTEMPORARY MEDIACULTURE
UDC 343.9.02+791.43.04
Author: Zvereva Natalia, PhD, e-mail: zvereva.natalie@gmail.com
Summary: In this paper we consider the image of criminal authority constructed in russian serials and TV reportages. We compare russian serials with some American films which also show an organized crime. Critical analysis of the images of criminal authority shows some characteristics of society in which these images was constructed.
Keywords: mediaculture, popular culture, serials, criminal authority, reportages, organized crime, society

read online / download pdf

HISTORY AND THEORY OF CULTURE

FRANCIGENA PILGRIMAGE: ELIMINATING THE HISTORICAL MOOD
UDC 338.48-6:(2+7/8)
Author: Ivanova Julia, Phd., leading research fellow at Poletayev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities and associate professor at the Faculty of History, Higher School of Economics (Russia, Moscow), e-mail: juliaivanova@list.ru
ORCID ID: 0000-0002-6847-2595
Summary: Τhe paper analyzes models of space in contemporary pilgrimage, impacted with media images and mass representations of the past. Francigena way (Italy) is species of renovated pilgrimage as channel of medieval interest, so we clarify particular place of the pilgrimage in the field of historical reconstructions. We prove, that Francigena discourse combines in unusual way pilgrimage and sainthood narratives, adapted to mass imaginary and stratifying as structure the augmented tourist experience. The point of argumentation is augmentation of discourse traps with visual programs, compiling tourist, media and personal history imagery.
Keywords: pilgrimage, Francigena, visual narrative, media, tourism, devotional art

read online / download pdf

WESTERNIZED HADJI: PARADOXES OF HISTORICAL CULTURE
UDC 338.48-6:(2+7/8)
Author: Sokolov Pavel, PhD, research assistant at Poletayev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities and lecturer at the Faculty of History, Higher School of Economics (Moscow, Russia), e-mail: alharizi@rambler.ru
Summary: The paper analyzes narratives by Western-educated hadji and proves the deep character of their Westernized view on the nature of political power, history and historical monuments, sources of cultural norms, social character of historical knowledge, apart of their personal religious beliefs. This under construction system of civilized representations influences on their structural view on Mecca, through introduction of such categories as archaic, old, modern and contemporary, artistic value and other marks of Western touristic experience, oddly transformed. Urban reconstructions in Saudi Arabia attempted to win over history, making alternative to Western historicist policy.
Keywords: hadj, Western Islam, tourist worldview, monuments as part of memory, politics of memory, common collective memory

read online / download pdf

METHODOLOGY

PLESSNER'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: REVISITING FINE ARTS
UDC 7.01
Author: Ishchenko Natalia, PhD in History of Philosophy, Associate Professor, Faculty of Humanities, School of Philosophy, National Research University Higher School of Economics (Moscow, Russia), e-mail: natalie.ishchenko@gmail.com
ORCID ID: 0000-0002-3239-6148
Summary: This article is concerned with how Helmuth Plessner's anthropology interprets fine art, both philosophically and historically. This article reviews the essential notions of Plessner's philosophy of art, these are philosophy of style, a pattern of oeuvre, and a piece of art; also supports Plessner's thesis about a death of artistic consciousness from the spirit of music as part of criticism of expressionism; and concludes that Helmuth Plessner states that the modern painting disrates thingness and denies all traditions forms and ways of vision, considering this denial as a symptom of a modern drama in a consciousness of a human being who has lost his/her anthological place and founds himself/herself in front of open emptiness of Nothing created by his/her freedom.
Keywords: philosophy of history, philosophical anthropology, fine arts, aesthetics, style, oeuvre, expressionism, Plessner

read online / download pdf

ACADEMIC WORK AS AN EDUCATIONAL DISCIPLINE
UDC 167+168.522+378+7.01
Author: Schtein Sergey, PhD in Art, assistant professor, Chair of the Cinema and Contemporary Art Studies, Russian State University for the Humanities (Moscow, Russia), e-mail: sergey@schtein.ru
ORCID ID: 0000-0002-4419-1369
Summary: Article is devoted to substantiation of need of unification of an educational discipline “The academic writing” with a number of aspects of such an educational disciplines as “Philosophy and methodology of science”, “Actual problems of methodology...” and “Interdisciplinary approaches...” of subject field on which there is a preparation in a specific educational program, and to their separation in independent an educational discipline “The academic work” which will be devoted to the principles of rate setting of research activity and expression of its results in the conditions of a certain discipline of objectivity.
Keywords: academic work, academic writing, methodology, rate setting of activity

read online / download pdf