Wonder has an established link to the history and philosophy of science. However, there is little acknowledgement of the relationship between the visual arts and wonder. This book presents a new perspective on this overlooked connection, allowing a unique insight into the role of wonder in contemporary visual practice. Artists, curators and art theorists give accounts of their approach to wonder through the use of materials, objects and ways of exhibiting. These accounts not only raise issues of a particular relevance to the way in which we encounter our reality today but ask to what extent artists utilize the function of wonder purposely in their work.
Natural Materials of the Holy Land and the Visual Translation of Place, 500-1500, focuses on the unique ways that natural materials carry the spirit of place. Since early Christianity, wood, earth, water and stone were taken from loca sancta to signify them elsewhere. Academic discourse has indiscriminately grouped material tokens from holy places and their containers with architectural and topographical emulations, two-dimensional images and bodily relics. However, unlike textual or visual representations, natural materials do not describe or interpret the Holy Land; they are part of it. Tangible and timeless, they realize the meaning of their place of origin in new locations. What makes earth, stones or bottled water transported from holy sites sacred? How do they become pars pro toto, signifying the whole from which they were taken? This book will examine natural media used for translating loca sancta, the processes of their sanctification and how, although inherently abstract, they become charged with meaning. It will address their metamorphosis, natural or induced; how they change the environment to which they are transported; their capacity to translate a static and distant site elsewhere; the effect of their relocation on users/viewers; and how their containers and staging are used to communicate their substance.
The Feminist Uncanny in Theory and Art Practice investigates the widely debated, deeply flawed yet influential concept of the uncanny through the lens of feminist theory and contemporary art practice. Not merely a subversive strategy but a cipher of the fraught but fertile dialogue between feminism and psychoanalysis, the uncanny makes an ideal vehicle for an arrangement marked by ambivalence and acts as a constant reminder that feminism and psychoanalysis are never quite at home with one another. The Feminist Uncanny begins by charting the uncanniness of femininity in foundational psychoanalytic texts by Ernst Jentsch, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and Mladen Dolar, and contextually introduces a range of feminist responses and appropriations by Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva and Sarah Kofman, among others. The book also offers thematically organised interpretations of famous artworks and practices informed by feminism, including Judy Chicago's Dinner Party, Faith Ringgold's story quilts and Susan Hiller's 'paraconceptualism', as well as less well-known practice, such as the Women's Postal Art Even (Feministo) and the photomontages of Maud Sulter. Dead (lexicalised) metaphors, unhomely domesticity, identity and (dis)identification, and the tension between family stories and art's histories are examined in and from the perspective of different artistic and critical practices, illustrating different aspects of the feminist uncanny. Through a 'partisan' yet comprehensive critical review of the fascinating concept of the uncanny, The Feminist Uncanny in Theory and Art Practice proposes a new concept, the feminist uncanny, which it upholds as one of the most enduring legacies of the Women's Liberation Movement in contemporary art theory and practice.
Focusing on our complex relationship with technology, The machine and the ghost explores our culture’s continued fascination with the spectral, the ghostly and the paranormal. Through a series of critical case studies and artists’ discussions, this lively new collection examines topics ranging from contemporary art to cultural theory. Produced with renowned specialists within the field, including the artist Susan Hiller and the writer Marina Warner, the book combines the historical with the contemporary in exploring how the visual culture of paranormal phenomena continues to haunt our imaginations. Informed by history and the visual tradition of spiritualism and psychical research, the collection is very much concerned to site that tradition within our contemporary concerns, such as landscape and environment, and recent technological developments. Aimed at a broad academic and cultural audience, the collection will appeal to all academic levels in addition to those interested in art and culture more widely.
Original essays offering fresh ideas and global perspectives on contemporary feminist art The term ‘feminist art’ is often misused when viewed as a codification within the discipline of Art History—a codification that includes restrictive definitions of geography, chronology, style, materials, influence, and other definitions inherent to Art Historical and museological classifications. Employing a different approach, A Companion to Feminist Art defines ‘art’ as a dynamic set of material and theoretical practices in the realm of culture, and ‘feminism’ as an equally dynamic set of activist and theoretical practices in the realm of politics. Feminist art, therefore, is not a simple classification of a type of art, but rather the space where feminist politics and the domain of art-making intersect. The Companion provides readers with an overview of the developments, concepts, trends, influences, and activities within the space of contemporary feminist art—in different locations, ways of making, and ways of thinking. Newly-commissioned essays focus on the recent history of and current discussions within feminist art. Diverse in scope and style, these contributions range from essays on the questions and challenges of large sectors of artists, such as configurations of feminism and gender in post-Cold War Europe, to more focused conversations with women artists on Afropean decoloniality. Ranging from discussions of essentialism and feminist aesthetics to examinations of political activism and curatorial practice, the Companion informs and questions readers, introduces new concepts and fresh perspectives, and illustrates just how much more there is to discover within the realm of feminist art. Addresses the intersection between feminist thinking and major theories that have influenced art theory Incorporates diverse voices from around the world to offer viewpoints on global feminisms from scholars who live and work in the regions about which they write Examines how feminist art intersects with considerations of collectivity, war, maternal relationships, desire, men, and relational aesthetics Explores the myriad ways in which the experience of inhabiting and perceiving aged, raced, and gendered bodies relates to feminist politics in the art world Discusses a range practices in feminism such as activism, language, education, and different ways of making art The intersection of feminist art-making and feminist politics are not merely components of a unified whole, they sometimes diverge and divide. A Companion to Feminist Art is an indispensable resource for artists, critics, scholars, curators, and anyone seeking greater strength on the subject through informed critique and debate.
A former anthropologist, Susan Hiller has, since the late 1970s, forged an interface between critical writing and a visual art practice in which feminist and postcolonial cultural politics are fused with idiosyncratic explorations of science, magic and the continuing lure of psychoanalysis. In a 2001 interview, she stated, "What I think art provides is something like an instigation or an enhanced awareness of how we are all collaboratively and creatively implicated in making a culture." This comprehensive volume compiles previously published essays, interviews, papers, lectures and other ephemera which document Hiller's incisive interventions into contemporary debates on the shifting roles of art and theory. Structured in three sections, the book--part of JRP-Ringier's Positions series--is simultaneously theoretical and deeply personal. Born in Tallahassee, Florida Susan Hiller has lived and worked in London since the early 1970s.
Fifty Key Texts in Art History is an anthology of critical commentaries selected from the classical period to the late modern. It explores some of the central and emerging themes, issues and debates within Art History as an increasingly expansive and globalised discipline. It features an international range of contributors , including art historians, artists, curators and gallerists. Arranged chronologically, each entry includes a bibliography for further reading and a key word index for easy reference. Text selections range across issues including artistic value, cultural identity, modernism, gender, psychoanalysis, photographic theory, poststructuralism and postcolonialism. Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock Old Mistresses, Women, Art & Ideology (1981) Victor Burgin’s The End of Art Theory: Criticism and Postmodernity (1986) Homi Bhabha The Location of Culture: Hybridity, Liminal Spaces and Borders (1994) Geeta Kapur When was Modernism in Indian Art? (1995) Judith Butler's Gender Trouble (1999) Georges Didi Huberman Confronting Images. Questioning the Ends of a Certain History of Art (2004)
Offering historical and theoretical positions from a variety of art historians, artists, curators, and writers, this groundbreaking collection is the first substantive sourcebook on abstraction in moving-image media. With a particular focus on art since 2000, Abstract Video addresses a longer history of experimentation in video, net art, installation, new media, expanded cinema, visual music, and experimental film. Editor Gabrielle Jennings—a video artist herself—reveals as never before how works of abstract video are not merely, as the renowned curator Kirk Varnedoe once put it, "pictures of nothing," but rather amorphous, ungovernable spaces that encourage contemplation and innovation. In explorations of the work of celebrated artists such as Jeremy Blake, Mona Hatoum, Pierre Huyghe, Ryoji Ikeda, Takeshi Murata, Diana Thater, and Jennifer West, alongside emerging artists, this volume presents fresh and vigorous perspectives on a burgeoning and ever-changing arena of contemporary art.
This book brings together a host of internationally recognised scholars to provide an interdisciplinary perspective on the representation of the child in cinema. Individual chapters examine how children appear across a broad range of films, including Badlands (1973), Ratcatcher (1999), Boyhood (2014), My Neighbour Totoro (1988), and Howl's Moving Castle (2004). They also consider the depiction of children in non-fiction and non-theatrical films, including the documentaries Être et Avoir (2002) and Capturing the Friedmans (2003), art installations and public information films. Through a close analysis of these films, contributors examine the spaces and places children inhabit and imagine; a concern for children's rights and agency; the affective power of the child as a locus for memory and history; and the complexity and ambiguity of the child figure itself. The essays also argue the global reach of cinema featuring children, including analyses of films from the former Yugoslavia, Brazil and India, as well as exploring the labour of the child both in front of and behind the camera as actors and filmmakers. In doing so, the book provides an in-depth look into the nature of child performance on screen, across a diverse range of cinemas and film-making practices.
The essays in this collection explore the extraordinarily rich networks of international artists and art practices that emerged in and around London during the 1960s and ’70s, a period that saw an explosion of new media and fresh attitudes and approaches to making and thinking about art. The contributors to London Art Worlds examine the many activities and movements that existed alongside more established institutions in this period, from the rise of cybernetics and the founding of alternative publications to the public protests and new pedagogical models in London’s art schools. The essays explore how international artists and the rise of alternative venues, publications, and exhibitions, along with a growing mobilization of artists around political and cultural issues ranging from feminism to democracy, pushed the boundaries of the London art scene beyond the West End’s familiar galleries and posed a radical challenge to established modes of making and understanding art. Engaging, wide-ranging, and original, London Art Worlds provides a necessary perspective on the visual culture of the London art scene in the 1960s and ’70s. Art historians and scholars of the era will find these essays especially valuable and thought provoking. In addition to the editors, contributors to this volume are Elena Crippa, Antony Hudek, Dominic Johnson, Carmen Juliá, Courtney J. Martin, Lucy Reynolds, Joy Sleeman, Isobel Whitelegg, and Andrew Wilson.
