2024-03-29T13:03:08Z
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/oai
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/5
2020-02-26T19:52:07Z
contemporaneity:ART
Transcultured Architecture: Mudéjar’s Epic Journey Reinterpreted
Sheren, Ila Nicole
Spain
Latin America
Moorish Architecture
Transculturation
The Mudéjar phenomenon is unparalleled in the history of architecture. This style of architecture and ornamentation originated with Arab craftsmen living in reconquered medieval Spain. Embraced by Spanish Christians, Mudéjar traveled over the course of the next four centuries, becoming part of the architectural history of Latin America, especially present-day Mexico and Peru. The style’s transmission across different religions and cultures attests to its ability to unify disparate groups of people under a common visual language. How, then, did mudejar managto gain popularity across reconquered Spain, so much so that it spread to the New World colonies? In this article, I argue that art and architecture move more fluidly than ideologies across boundaries, physical and political. The theory of transculturation makes it possible to understand how an architectural style such as Mudéjar can be generated from a cultural clash and move to an entirely different context. Developed in 1947 by Cuban scholar and theorist Fernando Ortíz, transculturation posited means by which cultures mix to create something entirely new. This process is often violent, the result of intense conflict and persecution, and one culture is almost always defeated in the process. The contributions of both societies, however, coexist in the final product, whether technological, artistic, or even agricultural. I argue that mudejar in Latin America is a product of two separate transculturations: the adoption of Arab design and ornamentation by Spanish Christians, and the subsequent transference of these forms to the New World through the work of indigenous laborers.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2011-06-01
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/5
10.5195/contemp.2011.5
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 1 (2011); 137-151
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/5/7
Copyright (c) 2011 Ila Nicole Sheren
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/13
2020-02-26T19:51:46Z
contemporaneity:ART
Re-Composing the Digital Present
Barker, Timothy
Digital Aesthetics
Time
Technology and Art
This paper investigates the temporality that is produced in some recent and historical examples of media art. In exploring works by Janet Cardiff, Dennis Del Favero, and Omer Fast, I use the philosophy of Michel Serres and Gilles Deleuze to understand the convergence of temporalities that are composed in the digital present, as one moment in time overlays another moment. Developing Serres' concept of multi-temporality and Deleuze's philosophy of time and memory into a means to understand the non-linear time presented in these works, I argue that the different compositional strategies enacted by these artists provide the aesthetic grounding to experience “temporal thickness.” From here I investigate the interactive digital artworks Frames by Grahame Weinbren and Can You See Me Now? by the artist group Blast Theory. In this investigation, I understand interaction with technology, and the way that it shapes our sensory and processual experience, as a specifically temporal and temporalizing transaction, where human movements in the present are overlayed by technological processes.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2011-06-01
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/13
10.5195/contemp.2011.13
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 1 (2011); 88-104
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/13/8
Copyright (c) 2011 Timothy Barker
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/20
2020-02-26T19:51:26Z
contemporaneity:ART
Waiting for Art: The Experience of Real Time in Sculpture
Buhe, Elizabeth
time
waiting
temporality
duration
sculpture
Bergson
anxiety
perception
temporal
catharsis
Signer
Sailstorfer
Kapoor
Whitelaw
Why and how does some contemporary art make us wait, and why does the beholder choose to stay? This study seeks to answer this question by exploring what happens to the viewer while waiting in front of a “time sculpture,” a term coined here to mean a three-dimensional artwork that is dynamic over a set period of time. Through an analysis of select works by artists Anish Kapoor, Amelia Whitelaw, Michael Sailstorfer, and Roman Signer, the article posits that while in front of these time sculptures, the viewer experiences an anxiety of waiting and temporal confusion that glues him to the spot. Ultimately, by drawing upon Henri Bergson’s concept of duration, the essay suggests that the viewership of time sculpture allows for a heightened state of perception.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2011-06-01
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/20
10.5195/contemp.2011.20
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 1 (2011); 117-136
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/20/9
Copyright (c) 2011 Elizabeth Buhe
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/22
2020-02-26T19:51:06Z
contemporaneity:ART
Cinema as Archeology: The Acousmêtre and the Multiple Layering of Temporality and Spatiality
Chung, Hye Jean
acousmetre
archaeology
sound theory in cinema
Michel Chion’s concept of the “acousmêtre” is useful when exploring the spectator’s cinematic experience in regard to the juxtaposition of sound and image, as the acousmatic presence troubles the false sense of unity that is created by the synchronization of sound and image by its invocation of off-screen space through sound. The acousmêtre neither prioritizes sound nor image but calls attention to the disjunction between them. Also, the acousmêtre leaves the source of the sound open to imagination and interpretation. Thus the presence of the acousmêtre destabilizes the seemingly unified, contained realm of the film by expanding the temporal and spatial boundaries of the diegesis. In this essay I explore how the power of this ghostly voice of the acousmêtre is manifested in cinema, and the significance of its power to the spectators in their relationship to the film, by asking questions regarding the function and effect of the disembodied voice and spectral presence of the acousmêtre, the scope of the acousmêtre’s power, and what can be created from the disequilibrium that is provoked by this power. I explore possible answers by analyzing the use of the acousmatic voice in Y Tu Mama Tambien (dir. Alfonso Cuaron, 2001) and Calendar (dir. Atom Egoyan, 1993).
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2011-06-01
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/22
10.5195/contemp.2011.22
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 1 (2011); 105-116
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/22/10
Copyright (c) 2011 Hye Jean Chung
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/27
2020-02-26T19:50:46Z
contemporaneity:ART
"The Man of these Infinite Possibilities": Max Ernst’s Cinematic Collages
Susik, Abigail
Max Ernst
Georges Méliès
Collage
Cinema
Film
Outmoded
Obsolesence
Surrealism
Dadaism
Dada
Modernism
On more than one occasion in his critical writings of the 1920’s, surrealist leader André Breton compared Max Ernst’s collages to cinema. In his first essay on the artist in 1921, Breton aligned Ernst’s collages with cinematic special effects such as slow and accelerated motion, and spoke of the illusionistic ‘transformation from within’ that characterized Ernst’s constructed scenes. For Breton, Ernst’s collages employing found commercial, scientific and journalistic images approximated the naturalistic movement of film, and thereby contributed to the radical obsolescence of traditional two-dimensional media such as painting and drawing, which remained frozen in stillness. Thus, Ernst’s images were provocative witnesses to the way in which modern technology fundamentally altered the perspectivally-ordered picture plane. But at the same time that Ernst’s collages rendered painting obsolete, they likewise depended upon fragments of outmoded popular culture themselves. For Breton, Ernst was a magician, “the man of these infinite possibilities,” comparable to cinematic prestidigators like turn-of-the-century filmmaker Georges Méliès. By drawing on the influence of recently outmoded popular culture such as early trick films, Ernst provides a crucial early example of the post-war fixation on counter-temporalities and anti-production. At once technologically advanced and culturally archeological, Ernst’s collages cannily defy strict categorization as “Modernist.”
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2011-06-01
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/27
10.5195/contemp.2011.27
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 1 (2011); 61-87
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/27/11
Copyright (c) 2011 Abigail Susik
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/38
2020-02-26T19:48:47Z
contemporaneity:ART
Mirror of Time: Temporality and Contemporaneity in the work of Jorge Luis Borges
Donnelly, Jennifer
Borges
contemporaneity
theories of time
Borges recognized the cracking facade of modernity and the fragility of its monist absolutisms, its commitment to linearity, and its faith in historical progress. By disavowing the ability of time to be contained within any collective structure of representation, Borges both refutes modernist conceptions of time and offers insight into recent theories of contemporaneity. A contemporaneous reading of Borges opens lucid temporal relationships, challenges assumptions about the affinities between the self and time, allows for the existence of multiple temporal antimonies, and ultimately reveals the contemporaneous relationship between individual sensations of time of the collective structural composition of temporality.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2012-07-11
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/38
10.5195/contemp.2012.38
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 2 (2012); 75-87
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/38/19
Copyright (c) 2012 Jennifer Donnelly
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/43
2020-02-26T19:48:27Z
contemporaneity:ART
Marking Time: Women and Nazi Propaganda Art during World War II
McCloskey, Barbara
"Marking Time" considers the relative scarcity of woman's image in Nazi propaganda posters during World War II. This scarcity departs from the ubiquity of women in paintings and sculptures of the same period. In the fine arts, woman served to solidify the "Nazi myth" and its claim to the timeless time of an Aryan order simultaneously achieved and yet to come. Looking at poster art and using Ernst Bloch's notion of the nonsynchronous, this essay explores the extent to which women as signifiers of the modern – and thus as markers of time – threatened to expose the limits of this Nazi myth especially as the regime's war effort ground to its catastrophic end.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2012-07-11
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/43
10.5195/contemp.2012.43
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 2 (2012); 1-17
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/43/14
Copyright (c) 2012 Barbara McCloskey
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/44
2020-02-26T19:48:06Z
contemporaneity:ART
Real Men Wear Uniforms: Photomontage, Postcards, and Military Visual Culture in Early Twentieth-Century Germany
Otto, Elizabeth
This essay examines early twentieth-century German representations of men and women in uniform to consider how mass culture allowed individuals to participate in aspects of gender construction. It also reveals how masculinity was increasingly linked to military ideals. The pictures under scrutiny here were made in two significant but as yet under-researched types of pictures: pre-avant-garde photomontaged soldier portraits and popular postcards. Both of these visual forms originated in the 1870s, the decade that Germany was itself founded, and they both were in wide circulation by the early twentieth century. Individualized soldier portraits and postcards offered a glorious vision of a man’s military service, and they performed what Theodor Lessing has called Vergemütlichung, the rendering harmless of history. These idealized images of soldierly life were available to a broad swath of the public, but their democratization only extended so far. Representations of women in uniform served to reinforce—through stereotyping and humor—the unquestionably male nature of military institutions and, by extension, of public space. At the same time, by making apparent their own constructed nature, these portraits and postcards offered viewers a glimpse behind the masquerade of masculinity. This essay thus also identifies these images’ links to the subsequent work of avant-garde artists and to the National Socialists’ return to the ideal of uniformed masculinity.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2012-07-11
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/44
10.5195/contemp.2012.44
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 2 (2012); 18-44
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/44/15
Copyright (c) 2012 Elizabeth Otto
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/45
2020-02-26T19:47:46Z
contemporaneity:ART
Denying Difference to the Post-Socialist Other: Bernhard Heisig and the Changing Reception of an East German Artist
Eisman, April A.
This article traces the reception of East German artist Bernhard Heisig’s life and art—first in East Germany and then in the Federal Republic of Germany before and after the Wall. Drawing on post-colonial and post-socialist scholarship, it argues that Heisig’s reception exemplifies a western tendency to deny cultural and ideological difference in what the post-socialist scholar Piotr Piotrowski calls the “close Other.” This denial of difference to artists from the eastern bloc has shaped western understandings of Heisig’s life and art since reunification. Once perceived as an intellectually engaged, political artist, both in East and West Germany, after the fall of the Wall and German unification, Heisig was reinterpreted as a traumatized victim of two dictatorships, distorting not only our understanding of the artist and his work, but also of the nature of art and the role of the artist in East Germany.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2012-07-11
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/45
10.5195/contemp.2012.45
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 2 (2012); 45-74
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/45/25
Copyright (c) 2012 April A. Eisman
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/57
2020-02-26T19:45:24Z
contemporaneity:ART
Kinetic Systems: Jack Burnham and Hans Haacke
Chau, Christina
Jack Burnham
Kinetic Art
Hans Haacke
Systems Aesthetics
The following paper argues that Jack Burnham’s antipathy for kineticism in “Systems Esthetics” and Beyond Modern Sculpture has contributed to an assumption that kineticism is an obsolete practice “rooted in another age.” Contrary to Burnham, I argue that a focus on the kinetic movement in Hans Haacke’s sculptures is productive for establishing key understandings of systems theory in art. My interpretation of Haacke’s art emphasizes that movement in time is a key aspect of the artist’s approach to sytems theory, and is useful for making viewers conscious of the systems of perception at play when confronted with ontologically unstable works of art.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2014-06-05
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/57
10.5195/contemp.2014.57
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 3 (2014); 62-76
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/57/102
Copyright (c) 2014 Christina Chau
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/73
2020-02-26T19:38:20Z
contemporaneity:ART
"Enlivening and - Dividing": An Aporia of Illumination
Hönes, Hans Christian
Antiquarianism
Artificial Illumination
Art Appreciation
Historism
In 1798, Karl August Böttiger paid a nocturnal visit to the Gallery of Antiques in Dresden, illuminating the statues with a torch. At first glance, this seems to be yet another example of a popular practice for visiting galleries c.1800. Illuminating the sculptures by torchlight was a popular means of enlivening the objects, set in motion by the light flickering on their surfaces. The collections were thus meant to become a place where cold, white stone comes to life, and where the beholder becomes part of a revived antiquity.This was precisely what Böttiger intended, too. But to him, the effect of the torchlight appeared to be, as he wrote, “enlivening and – dividing!” The torchlight highlighted not only the beauty of the sculptures but also their modern restorations. Böttiger apparently failed to experience the living presence of the antique celebrated by many of his contemporaries (e.g. Goethe, Moritz).This essay focuses on the consequence of such a perception of sculptures as historically multi-layered objects. Böttiger’s experience resulted in a problematic situation. In trying to view the sculptures as contemporaries, he hoped to become ancient himself. But this operation failed in the moment when the sculptures themselves appeared to be anachronistic, impure palimpsests. In consequence, galleries may not only be the place were art history as chronological Stilgeschichte was born. They may also be the site where this perception changed into the experience of a more chaotic shape of time.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2015-08-03
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/73
10.5195/contemp.2015.73
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 4 (2015); 1-23
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/73/144
Copyright (c) 2015 Hans Christian Hönes
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/80
2020-02-26T19:44:19Z
contemporaneity:ART
Unfolding the In-between Image: The Emergence of an Incipient Image at the Intersection of Still and Moving Images
Kondo, Masaki
Adad Hannah
James Nares
tableaux vivants
photography
video art
moving image
As digital technology has transformed various aspects of our screen culture over the past few decades, we have been witnessing a disappearing boundary between photographic still images and cinematic moving images. An emerging in-between image has become increasingly prominent in this new image culture, which attempts to negotiate the grey area between stillness and movement. This in-between image, manifest in a variety of formats and media, points to an increasingly solid middle ground between the traditional divisions of still and moving images. This paper builds a conceptual framework for analysing this new type of image and explores both the roots of this emergent category before focusing on its contemporary trajectory as exemplified by the work of Adad Hannah, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Jeff Wall, and James Nares.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2014-06-05
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/80
10.5195/contemp.2014.80
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 3 (2014); 50-61
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/80/100
Copyright (c) 2014 Masaki Kondo
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/81
2020-02-26T19:43:58Z
contemporaneity:ART
What to do with the “Most Modern” Artworks? Erwin Panofsky and the Art History of Contemporary Art
Lysen, Flora
contemporaneity
history
historiography
panofsky
barr
exil-geschichte
In the 1930s, when the world-renowned Medieval and Renaissance art scholar Erwin Panofsky became acquainted with the New York contemporary art scene, he was challenged with the most difficult dilemma for art historians. How could Panofsky, who was firmly entrenched in the kunstwissenschaftliche study of art, use his historical methods for the scholarly research of contemporary art? Can art historians deal with the art objects of their own time? This urgent and still current question of how to think about “contemporaneity” in relation to art history is the main topic of this paper, which departs from Panofsky’s 1934 review of a book on modern art. In his review of James Johnson Sweeny’s book Plastic Redirections in 20th Century Painting, Panofsky’s praise for Sweeney’s scholarly “distance” from contemporary art developments in Europe is backed by a claim for America’s cultural distance, rather than a (historical) removal in time. Taking a closer look at Panofsky’s conflation of historical/temporal distance with geographical/cultural distance, this paper demonstrates a politically situated discourse on contemporaneity, in which Panofsky proposes the act of writing about the contemporary as a redemptive act, albeit, as this paper will demonstrate, without being able to follow his own scientific method.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2014-06-05
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/81
10.5195/contemp.2014.81
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 3 (2014); 38-49
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/81/99
Copyright (c) 2014 Flora Lysen
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/96
2020-02-26T19:43:18Z
contemporaneity:ART
Culture v. Capital: The Rebecca Belmore Case
Young, India
Rebecca Belmore
First Nations
Pari Nadimi Gallery
Performance Art
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
United Nations
This paper considers a civil suit between an artist and her former gallery dealer. In the case of Nadimi v. Belmore, the plaintiff and the defendant exemplify two opposing ideologies, which in turn reflect two possibilities for understanding art. This paper considers the case, and Belmore’s artworks as representative of both systems. Through a strategic defense of her art and her practice, Belmore upholds a complex understanding of the value of art. The current legal system, however, only ascribes art value as commodity product. This paper demonstrates how Belmore’s actions and artworks related to the case supersede simple categorization. Her works cannot be corralled into any one classification; they are not only fine art, nor simply First Nations art. The article exposes how her works deploy multiple socio-cultural systems simultaneously: from an Anishnabe worldview, to European-Canadian art history, from the public museum, to the commercial gallery, to the Toronto bound freeway. I contend that this strategic employment of multiple systems is recognized in newly established international law, and articulated in the United Nations Declaration of Indigenous Peoples as traditional knowledge. The Belmore case illustrates the immediate need for governmental systems to acknowledge and employ such international law to redress systemic misconceptions of Indigenous arts practices.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2014-06-05
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/96
10.5195/contemp.2014.96
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 3 (2014); 77-95
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/96/103
Copyright (c) 2014 India Young
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/98
2020-02-26T19:42:57Z
contemporaneity:ART
Trying to Live Now: Chronotopic Figures in Jenny Watson’s A Painted Page Series
McAuliffe, Chris
Jenny Watson
Paul Taylor
Postmodernism
Bakhtin
Popism
Australian Art
punk
chronotype
Between late 1979 and early 1980, Australian artist Jenny Watson painted a sequence of six works, each with the title A Painted Page. Combining gridded, painted reproductions of photographs, newspapers and department store catalogues with roughly painted fields of color, the series brought together a range of recent styles and painterly idioms: pop, photorealism, and non-objective abstraction. Watson’s evocation of styles considered dated, corrupted or redundant by contemporary critics was read as a sign of the decline of modernism and the emergence of a postmodernism inflected with irony and a cool, “new wave” sensibility. An examination of the Painted Pages in the context of Watson’s interest in autobiography and her association with the women’s art movement, however, reveals the works to be subjective, highly personal reflections on memory, self and artistic aspiration. Drawing on Bahktin’s model of the chronotope, this paper argues for a spatio-temporal reading of Watson’s Painted Pages rather than the crude model of stylistic redundancy and succession. Watson’s source images register temporal orders ranging across the daily, the seasonal and the epochal. Her paintings transpose Bahktin’s typology of quotidian, provincial and “adventuristic” time into autobiographical paintings of teenage memories, the vicissitudes of the art world and punk subcultures. Collectively, the Painted Pages established a chronotopic field; neither an aggregation of moments nor a collaged evocation of a period but a point at which Watson closed off one kind of time (an art critical time of currency and succession) and opened up another (of subjectivity and affective experience).
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2014-06-05
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/98
10.5195/contemp.2014.98
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 3 (2014); 1-20
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/98/120
Copyright (c) 2014 Chris McAuliffe
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/106
2020-02-26T19:42:18Z
contemporaneity:ART
Counter-Memory, Heterochronia, and “History Painting” (After Géricault): Dierk Schmidt’s SIEV-X—On a Case of Intensified Refugee Politics
Tello, Veronica
history painting
counter-memory
heterochronia
Dierk Schmidt
refugees
This essay examines the disruption of linear time in experimental forms of “history painting” as represented by Dierk Schmidt’s SIEV-X—On a Case of Intensified Refugee Politics (2001-2005). It analyses how the aesthetics of heterochronoia—multiple temporalities—play a crucial role in the development of a new understanding of the politics of “history painting.” As Schmidt’s work reveals, a radical conception of history exists outside the “singular moment,” and in dialogue with heterogenous visual cultures (news media, art history, advertising). In attempting to understand the import of Schmidt’s work, this essay considers his methodologies for creating a heterochronous mode of history painting, particularly his anachronistic engagement with the work of Theodore Géricault and the iconic history painting, The Raft of the Medusa. Unlike previous critical responses to Schmidt’s work, this paper argues that (after Géricault) the artist’s use of investigative “journalistic” methodologies for SIEV-X—On a Case of Intensified Refugee Politics do not generate an aesthetics of exposé but rather an aesthetics of “fictionalization.” This aesthetic is defined by the recalibration of documentary and speculative data as a means to reconceive the landscape of the perceptual. The findings of this research demonstrate that the use of disparate fragments—or data—to visualize otherwise diminishing historical events underpins contemporary history painting’s capacity for advancing a distinct economy of affect that circumvents the limitations of the news media and its “monopoly on reality.”
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2014-06-05
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/106
10.5195/contemp.2014.106
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 3 (2014); 21-37
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/106/38
Copyright (c) 2014 Veronica Tello
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/130
2020-02-26T17:51:38Z
contemporaneity:ART
Architectural Ruins and Urban Imaginaries: Carlos Garaicoa’s Images of Havana
Kovach, Jodi
Contemporary Art
Architectural Studies
Cuba
photography
Walter Benjamin
Severo Sarduy
Neo-baroque
ruins
Contemporary Cuban artist Carlos Garaicoa juxtaposes photographic images of Havana’s architectural ruins with timidly articulated drawings that trace the outlines of the dilapidated buildings in empty urbanscapes. Each of these fragile drawings, often composed of delicate threads adhered to a photograph of a site after demolition, serves as a vestige of the sagging structure that the artist photographed prior to destruction. The dialogue that emerges from these photograph/drawing diptychs implies the unmooring of the radical utopian underpinnings of revolutionary ideology that persisted in the policies of Cuba’s Período especial (Special Period) of the 1990s, and suggests a more complicated narrative of Cuba’s modernity, in which the ambiguous drawings—which could indicate construction plans or function as mnemonic images—represent empty promises of economic growth that must negotiate the real socio-economic crises of the present. This article proposes that Garaicoa’s critique of the goals and outcomes of the Special Period through Havana’s ruins suggests a new articulation of the baroque expression— one that calls to mind the anti-authoritative strategies of twentieth-century Neo-Baroque literature and criticism. The artist historically grounds the legacy of the Cuban Revolution’s modernizing project in the country’s real economic decline in the post-Soviet era, but he also takes this approach to representing cities beyond Cuba’s borders, thereby posing broader questions about the architectural symbolism of the 21st-century city in the ideological construction of modern globalizing society.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2016-11-30
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/130
10.5195/contemp.2016.130
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 5 (2016): Agency in Motion: Agency and Reenactment in Visual Culture; 72-84
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/130/165
Copyright (c) 2016 Jodi Kovach
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/131
2020-02-26T19:38:00Z
contemporaneity:ART
"We Never Did Return": Migration, Materiality and Time in Penny Siopis' Post-Apartheid Art
Young, Allison K.
South Africa
postapartheid
This article explores “migration” as both theme and operation in two works by the South African artist Penny Siopis, each created in the year 1997: the artist’s first film, My Lovely Day, and a related object installation entitled Reconnaissance (1900-1997). In each work, Siopis traces the course of her grandmother’s emigration from Europe to Africa through a variety of found, collected, or inherited components that bore witness to the longue durée of imperialism and Apartheid. Mediating between national, cultural, and familial narratives, these works are inherently archaeological in nature, and allowed viewers at the time to reflect on the multiple entangled histories that comprised the post-Apartheid condition. The late nineties in South Africa were defined by the conclusion of Apartheid, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and two major biennale exhibitions of contemporary art. The decade thusly saw a stream of collective efforts to both unearth the past and envision the future, marking a time of great cultural, artistic, political, and discursive transition. Mapping questions of medium-specificity and affect over this larger context, I investigate Siopis’ use and manipulation of historical traces as well as notions of contemporaneity and temporality in her art.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2015-08-03
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/131
10.5195/contemp.2015.131
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 4 (2015); 45-70
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/131/146
Copyright (c) 2015 Allison Young
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/132
2020-02-26T19:37:41Z
contemporaneity:ART
Nostalgia and La Jetée
Huebner, Karla
film
cinema
Chris Marker
memory
nostalgia
trauma
lived experience
repetition
This essay contemplates Chris Marker’s film La Jetée (1962) via Svetlana Boym’s conceptualization of “restorative” versus “reflective” nostalgia. It looks in part at the film’s presentation of the protagonist’s restorative nostalgia, but unlike previous examinations of nostalgia’s role in La Jetée, this essay foregrounds the viewer’s own experience of a reflective nostalgia for the film. The author considers her personal and subjective, and historically specific, encounters with La Jetée in relation to how the film may produce a similar nostalgia in others through its storytelling and unusual combination of photographic and cinematic form. Drawing also on Réda Bensmaïa’s semiotic and psychoanalytic analysis of the film’s “pictogrammatic” quality, the essay further considers the possible roles of trauma and masochism in the film and for its viewers, and relates the experience of watching La Jetée to that of watching An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (also 1962). The essay therefore situates both films in the context of historically situated yet ever-changing lived experience.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2015-08-03
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/132
10.5195/contemp.2015.132
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 4 (2015); 95-107
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/132/148
Copyright (c) 2015 Karla Huebner
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/141
2020-02-26T19:37:21Z
contemporaneity:ART
Taboo Icons: The Bodily Photography of Andres Serrano
Shine, Tyler
photography
icon
Culture Wars
medieval
Christianity
Andres Serrano’s photography is often dismissed as being shocking for the sake of being shocking. His infamous photograph Piss Christ (1987) is the oft-cited example at the center of the National Endowment for the Arts controversies during the Culture Wars of the 1980s and 1990s. I return to Piss Christ as a way to expand the interpretative scope of Serrano’s early photographs, which I call “taboo icons” because of their ambiguity and ability to crisscross symbolic boundaries in the unstable space between sacred and profane, thus making his images both powerful and potentially dangerous. Building upon previous scholarship that draws connections between modern and early modern aesthetic practices, I look to the material practices of Christianity in medieval Europe characterized by a sophisticated visual culture that mixed both the physical and the spiritual. The intensifying rejection and reverence of matter resulted in divergent responses, yet the contradictory nature of matter remained central to the ideological beliefs of Christianity where the doctrines of Creation, Incarnation, and Resurrection are at its core. Serrano’s visceral photographs are emphatically material and can productively be read vis-à-vis medieval visual culture. In doing so, this reading changes the narrow perception of Serrano’s early photographs and provides an alternative understanding of his artistic project that reinserts religion into contemporary American art discourse.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2015-08-03
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/141
10.5195/contemp.2015.141
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 4 (2015); 24-44
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/141/145
Copyright (c) 2015 Tyler Shine
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/144
2020-02-26T19:36:22Z
contemporaneity:ART
Spinifex People as Cold War Moderns
Castillo, Greg
Spinifex people
Spinifex Arts Project
Aboriginal art
Cold War
Pila Nguru
Aboriginal Australian contemporary artists create works that express indigenous traditions as well as the unprecedented conditions of global modernity. This is especially true for the founders of the Spinifex Arts Project, a collective established in 1997 to create so-called “government paintings”: the large-scale canvases produced as documents of land tenure used in negotiations with the government of Western Australia to reclaim expropriated desert homelands. British and Australian nuclear testing in the 1950s displaced the Anangu juta pila nguru, now known to us as the Spinifex people, from their nomadic lifeworld. Exodus and the subsequent struggle to regain lost homelands through paintings created as corroborating evidence for native title claims make Spinifex canvases not simply expressions of Tjukurpa, or “Dreamings,” but also artifacts of the atomic age and its impact on a culture seemingly far from the front lines of cold war conflict.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2015-08-03
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/144
10.5195/contemp.2015.144
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 4 (2015); 71-94
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/144/147
Copyright (c) 2015 Greg Castillo
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/149
2020-02-26T17:51:18Z
contemporaneity:ART
Photographs of the “Dust of the Highway”: Georgiana Goddard King’s Way of Saint James
Iker, Annemarie
Spain
medieval art and architecture
photography
historiography
agency
Georgiana Goddard King
Arthur Kingsley Porter
Santiago de Compostela
This article explores the use of photography in American art historian Georgiana Goddard King’s Way of Saint James (1920), a genre-defying book on the Camino de Santiago that intertwines art history with anthropology, literature, history, geography, and narrative. Despite King's groundbreaking scholarship on medieval Spain her legacy has been overshadowed by subsequent art historians, chief among them Arthur Kingsley Porter. Here, it is suggested that King’s emphasis on personal experiences of the pilgrimage—both historical and contemporary—diminished the value of her work, especially when compared with Porter’s supposedly ‘objective,’ ‘scientific’ studies. These methodological differences, visually manifest in King and Porter’s respective approaches to photographic evidence, have implications for medieval, historiographic, and feminist art historical inquiries.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2016-11-30
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/149
10.5195/contemp.2016.149
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 5 (2016): Agency in Motion: Agency and Reenactment in Visual Culture; 27-52
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/149/166
Copyright (c) 2016 Annemarie Iker
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/161
2020-02-26T17:50:59Z
contemporaneity:ART
Documenting the Invisible: Political Agency in Trevor Paglen’s Limit Telephotography
Kafer, Gary
Trevor Paglen
Limit Telephotography
Documentary
Surveillance
Relational Aesthetics
Experimental Geography
Taken from up to forty miles away, Trevor Paglen's limit telephotography images of covert military bases in the American Southwest are blurred by dense atmopshere, dust and debris. In effect, his photographs are highly illegible, and thus the military bases escape any sort of revelation. Following this logic, if one cannot see these top secret locations, then these images are in fact not politically effective at disclosing confidential federal information. Rather, Paglen asserts that the political agency of his can be located not in the image, but in the practice of performing limit telephotography - standing on public land and excercising the right to photograph. In turn, Paglen relocates the documentarian potential of his images into an agency formulated by a relational aesthetic, one in which the communal effects of creating the image and interpreting it generate the possibilities of enacting further practices of political resistance.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2016-11-30
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/161
10.5195/contemp.2016.161
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 5 (2016): Agency in Motion: Agency and Reenactment in Visual Culture; 53-71
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/161/167
Copyright (c) 2016 Gary Kafer
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/170
2020-02-26T17:50:39Z
contemporaneity:ART
James Luna and the Paradoxically Present Vanishing Indian
Hawley, Elizabeth S
Native American
Performance Art
Agency
Vanishing Indian
Reenactment
Photography
Pose
James Luna’s performances interrogate how representations of Native Americans have been made to fit western assumptions about the “real Indian.” Using his recognizably Native body as a marker of both presence and endangered existence, Luna links Peggy Phelan’s conception of performance as the presence of loss with the centuries-old stereotype of Native Americans as the “vanishing race”—a stereotype that continues to exert influence. In Take a Picture with a Real Indian (performed in 1992, 2001, and 2010), he invites viewers to have their photograph taken with him wearing one of three options: war dance regalia, a loincloth, or khakis and a polo shirt. Few people choose the third option. The performance foregrounds what has become a tradition of Native Americans performing/posing their native -ness as Otherness for the camera, strategically employing imagery that plays to nostalgic Western views of Native peoples as perpetually vanishing. I argue that Luna’s performances comment not only upon western preconceptions of Native Americans, but also upon the ways that Native Americans have historically reasserted their agency by manipulating such expectations, staging themselves to fit the stereotype.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2016-11-30
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/170
10.5195/contemp.2016.170
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 5 (2016): Agency in Motion: Agency and Reenactment in Visual Culture; 5-26
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/170/168
Copyright (c) 2016 Elizabeth Scott Hawley
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/184
2020-02-26T17:49:02Z
contemporaneity:ART
Documenting/Performing the Vulnerable Body: Pain and Agency in Works by Boris Mikhailov and Petr Pavlensky
Nordgaard, Ingrid
Performance Art
Eastern European Art
Pain
Body
Agency
Activism
Vulnerability
This article explores the concepts of pain and agency in the photography series Case History (1997–1998) by the Ukrainian photographer Boris Mikhailov, and in four performance-actions (2012–2014) by the Russian performance-activist Petr Pavlensky. Although they represent different generations and respond to different historical contexts, Mikhailov and Pavlensky share a focus on the wounded body. Taking both the documentary and performative aspects of these artworks into account, Nordgaard argues that the wounded body stands forth as a body of agency which also reflects the social, political, and historical settings in which it exists. The relational consideration of the two artists therefore offers important insights for understanding post-Soviet Ukraine and present-day Russia, and reflects on the correlation between the private and the public body. By placing Mikhailov and Pavlensky in dialogue with a broader discussion on spectatorship and the role and significance of “shock imagery” and spectacle in contemporary media, the article further suggests why artworks depicting the body in pain have both an ethical and political function.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2016-11-30
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/184
10.5195/contemp.2016.184
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 5 (2016): Agency in Motion: Agency and Reenactment in Visual Culture; 85-107
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/184/173
Copyright (c) 2016 Ingrid Nordgaard
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/186
2021-02-23T16:16:03Z
contemporaneity:ART
The Internal Frontier: How Art at Once Problematizes Borders and Draws us Closer to Them
Ozga, Kasia
border transgression
contemporary art
x-rays
French immigrants
immaterial borders
This study combines first-person storytelling, visual interpretation, and linguistic investigation to analyze how a mixed-media artwork that Kasia Ozga produced in 2011, The Internal Frontier, represents immigrant journeys on an autobiographic, social, and discursive level. In the context of an increasingly polarized political climate, Ozga examines borders as individual experiences and geopolitical phenomena to explain how art conditions conflictual aspects of the self to coexist, promoting social consciousness and community engagement.Those in power use borders to naturalize and separate what is familiar from what is strange. As an artist, Ozga explores how our personalities are partitioned, enforced, and made from external boundaries that define our movements, and by the internal borders that we impose on ourselves. Here, reproductions of different “frontiers” around the world are literally cut from the fabric of human chest x-rays collected from immigrant long-term visa applicants, highlighting physical removal and absence. To produce these modified artifacts, shown in light-boxes in various exhibitions in France and the United States, Ozga researched the border-as-process of inclusion and exclusion linked to regulative authority in social relations, nation-building, political sovereignty, as well as personal identity formation.In the artworks, migration is transformed from an isolated act to a shared human experience. The images, at once precise and indeterminate, maintain the dual symbolism of the border as barrier and as springboard, simultaneously inhibiting and enabling interactions between individuals and select geographic locations. Just as migrants lead us to re-evaluate our physical and mental borders, critical cultural production can contest the impact and staying power of borders by underscoring how establishing and overriding boundaries enable us to claim and reclaim who we are.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2017-11-30
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/186
10.5195/contemp.2017.186
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 6 (2017): Boundless; 1-18
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/186/175
Copyright (c) 2017 Kasia Ozga
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/206
2021-02-23T16:16:03Z
contemporaneity:ART
Historical Contemporaneity and Contemporaneous Historicity: Creation of Meaning and Identity in Postwar Trauma Narratives
Wilhelm, Thorsten
Holocaust
trauma
Jewish-American fiction
This paper contends that traumatic memories are not inherently memories of an experienced trauma. It explores a new perspective on post-1945 Jewish-American fiction. Analyzing Jewish-American novels from three generations—survivors, their children, and their grandchildren—the author traces the trajectories and changing perspectives in the narrative productions of these three generations. The analysis uses Jeffrey Alexander’s theory of cultural trauma to analyze generational trajectories in identity formations.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2017-11-30
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/206
10.5195/contemp.2017.206
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 6 (2017): Boundless; 19-35
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/206/176
Copyright (c) 2017 Thorsten Wilhelm
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/220
2021-02-23T16:16:03Z
contemporaneity:ART
Data (after)Lives at the University of Pittsburgh: A Constellations Exhibition in the University Art Gallery
Langmead, Alison
Pardo Gaviria, Paulina
Digital Humanities
curatorial
exhibition
data
This brief essay presents the exhibition Data (after)Lives, which was held in the University Art Gallery at the University of Pittsburgh from September 8 to October 14, 2016. This show was the culmination of a year’s work between the Department of History of Art and Architecture (HAA) and several outside collaborators. It was produced within the Constellations model of research and teaching that is fundamental to the workings of the HAA department as well as to the Visual Media Workshop, the digital humanities lab directed by Alison Langmead (https://haa.pitt.edu/visual-media-workshop), the lead curator of Data (after)Lives. This essay gathers together a few texts produced for the exhibition and presents the experience of working on the show, which was produced by an exceptional group of people, all of whom brought fantastic insight and energy to the project. The online exhibition of Data (after)Lives: The Persistence of Encoded Identity is currently on view at the University Art Gallery website (http://uag.pitt.edu).
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2017-11-30
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/220
10.5195/contemp.2017.220
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 6 (2017): Boundless; 36-42
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/220/178
Copyright (c) 2017 Alison Langmead, Paulina Pardo Gaviria
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/221
2021-02-23T16:16:03Z
contemporaneity:ART
Éxodo a la “tierra prometida”: Del demonio y otros monstruos en la obra de Juan de Dios Mora
Miramontes Olivas, Adriana
de Dios Mora, Juan
Caplow, Deborah
grabado
México
inmigración
Juan de Dios Mora es grabador y docente en la Universidad de Texas en San Antonio, donde comenzó a enseñar pintura, dibujo y grabado en 2010. Mora es un artista prolífico cuyos grabados han sido publicados en numerosos sitios incluyendo los catálogos New Arte Nuevo: San Antonio 2010 y New Art/Arte Nuevo San Antonio 2012. Este año su obra se exhibió en distintos lugares incluyendo el Museo de Arte McNay en San Antonio, Texas en Juan Mora: Cultural Clash (Juan Mora: Choque Cultural, junio 8 a agosto 13 de 2017) y en el Centro de Arte the Cole en la Galería Reavley en Nacogdoches, Texas, en Juan de Dios Mora. En 2016, Mora participó en la exhibición colectiva Los de abajo: Garbage as an Artistic Source (Los de abajo: la basura como una fuente artística) en el Centro Cultural Guadalupe en San Antonio (de junio 10 a julio 29 de 2016). Mora también ha sido curador de la exhibición Print It Up por varios años, organizada por el artista en el área del centro de San Antonio dándoles una visibilidad sin precedentes a numerosos artistas. Para esta exhibición Mora guía y aconseja tanto a estudiantes como a exalumnos sobre el proceso de exhibición, desde cómo crear un portafolio, enmarcar e instalar obras, hasta realizar contratos con galeristas y vender las obras al público. Adriana Miramontes Olivas es estudiante de doctorado en el Departamento de Historia del Arte y Arquitectura en la Universidad de Pittsburgh. Completó su licenciatura en la Universidad de Texas de El Paso y la maestría en la Universidad de Texas de San Antonio. Sus intereses en materia de investigación incluyen arte moderno y contemporáneo global con un enfoque en Latinoamérica, estudios de género, sexualidad e identidad nacional. La Dra. Deborah Caplow es historiadora del arte, curadora y autora del libro sobre el ilustrador Mexicano Leopoldo Méndez (Leopoldo Méndez: arte revolucionario y el grabado mexicano, publicado por la Universidad de Texas). Ella enseña historia del arte en la Universidad de Washington, Bothell. Sus áreas de investigación incluyen arte Mexicano del siglo XX, las intersecciones entre arte y política, y la historia de la fotografía. Actualmente hace investigación de grabados contemporáneos en Oaxaca, México.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2017-11-30
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/221
10.5195/contemp.2017.221
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 6 (2017): Boundless; 43-57
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/221/205
Copyright (c) 2017 Adriana Miramontes Olivas, Juan de Dios Mora, Deborah Caplow
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/222
2021-02-23T16:16:03Z
contemporaneity:ART
Exodus to the “Promised Land:” Of the Devil and Other Monsters in Juan de Dios Mora’s Artworks
Miramontes Olivas, Adriana
de Dios Mora, Juan
Caplow, Deborah
printmaking
Mexico
immigration
Juan de Dios Mora is a printmaker and a senior lecturer at The University of Texas at San Antonio, where he began teaching painting, drawing, and printmaking in 2010. Mora is a prolific artist whose prints have been published in numerous venues including the catalogs New Arte Nuevo: San Antonio 2010 and New Art/Arte Nuevo San Antonio 2012. In 2017, his work was exhibited at several venues, including the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas in Juan Mora: Culture Clash (June 8–August 13, 2017) and at The Cole Art Center, Reavley Gallery in Nacogdoches, Texas, in Juan de Dios Mora (organized by the Art Department at the Stephen F. Austin State University School of Art, January 26–March 10, 2017). In 2016, Mora participated in the group show Los de Abajo: Garbage as an Artistic Source (From the Bottom: Garbage as an Artistic Source) at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio (June 10–July 29, 2016). Mora also curates the show Print It Up, which he organizes in the downtown area of San Antonio, thereby granting unprecedented exposure to numerous artists. For this exhibition, Mora mentors both students and alumni, guiding them through the exhibition process—from how to create a portfolio, frame and install artworks, to contracting with gallery owners, and selling artworks to the public. Adriana Miramontes Olivas is a doctoral student in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh. She earned her BA at the University of Texas at El Paso and her MA at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Her research is in modern and contemporary global art with a focus on Latin America, gender studies, sexuality, and national identity.Dr. Deborah Caplow is an art historian and curator, and the author of a book about the Mexican printmaker, Leopoldo Méndez (Leopoldo Méndez: Revolutionary Art and the Mexican Print, University of Texas Press). She teaches art history at the University of Washington, Bothell. Areas of scholarship include twentieth-century Mexican art, the intersections between art and politics, and the history of photography. Currently, she is researching contemporary printmaking in Oaxaca, Mexico.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2017-11-30
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/222
10.5195/contemp.2017.222
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 6 (2017): Boundless; 58-72
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/222/206
Copyright (c) 2017 Adriana Miramontes Olivas, Juan de Dios Mora, Deborah Caplow
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/236
2020-02-26T17:43:27Z
contemporaneity:ART
Hemispheric Conversations: Exploring Links between Past and Present, Industrial and Post-Industrial through Site-Specific Graffitti Practice at the Carrie Furnaces
Bruce, Caitlin Frances
Graffiti
Industrial History
Public Memory
Pittsburgh
In this article, I briefly discuss a project I co-organized this year in collaboration with Oreen Cohen, Shane Pilster, Rivers of Steel, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts, and the American Studies Association. Named “Hemispheric Conversations: Urban Art Project” we used international collaboration between artists in Chicago, Pittsburgh, and León Guanajuato Mexico as a platform for conversation about how to reimagine our shared urban spaces. In a political moment that might be a cause for despair, collaborative art practice in urban space can serve as one vehicle to reignite our shared sense of possibility and energy.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2018-10-30
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
image/jpeg
image/jpeg
image/jpeg
image/jpeg
image/jpeg
image/jpeg
application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/236
10.5195/contemp.2018.236
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 7 (2018): Presenting Race: Institutional Contexts and Critiques; 17-26
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/236/243
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/236/283
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/236/284
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/236/285
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/236/286
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/236/287
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/236/288
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/236/298
Copyright (c) 2018 Caitlin Frances Bruce
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/239
2020-02-26T17:41:49Z
contemporaneity:ART
Gregg Deal's White Indian (2016): The Decolonial Possibilities of Museum Performance
Molldrem Harkulich, Christiana
Indigenous
Performance Art
NAGPRA
Decolonization
Gregg Deal (Pyramid Lake Paiute) is a performance and visual artist whose work deals explicitly in decolonizing the contemporary experience of Indigenous peoples. An analysis of his performance ofWhite Indian in 2016 at the Denver Art Museum opens up the possibilities of performance as a method for museums to decolonize their spaces and curation.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2018-10-30
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/239
10.5195/contemp.2018.239
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 7 (2018): Presenting Race: Institutional Contexts and Critiques; 45-52
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/239/254
Copyright (c) 2018 Christiana Molldrem Harkulich
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/240
2020-02-26T17:41:30Z
contemporaneity:ART
Kanaka '?iwi Critical Race Theory: Historical and Cultural Ecological Understanding of Kanaka '?iwi Education
Cristobal, Nik
Kanaka 'Ōiwi
KanakaCrit
'ŌiwiCrit
Hawaiian
education
Indigenous
Critical Race Theory
Decolonization
The effects of colonization on Kanaka '?iwi, the Indigenous people of Hawai'i, have led to the systematic distancing of Kanaka '?iwi from their cultural ways of knowing, replacing it, instead with eurocentric standards of education that adversely impact Kanaka '?iwi wellbeing. In this article, I provide an overview of the history of colonization of Kanaka '?iwi through a critical race lens. Critical Race Theory and TribalCrit are reviewed in relation to their theoretical relevance to Kanaka '?iwi epistemologies. A synthesis model of an adapted CRT and TribalCrit framework called, Kanaka'?iwiCrit is presented and discussed within the context of education as a space for resistance.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2018-10-30
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/240
10.5195/contemp.2018.240
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 7 (2018): Presenting Race: Institutional Contexts and Critiques; 27-44
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/240/245
Copyright (c) 2018 Nik Cristobal
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/243
2020-02-26T17:41:10Z
contemporaneity:ART
OjO Latino: A Photovoice Project in Recognition of the Latino Presence in Pittsburgh, PA
Ruiz Sánchez, Héctor Camilo
Pardo Gaviria, Paulina
De Ferrari, Rosa
Savage, Kirk
Documet, Patricia
PhotoVoice
Community Art Project
Latino Immigrants
In recent years, the Latino population has increased rapidly in areas with traditionally low concentration of Latinos. In these emerging communities, Latinos often live scattered, confronting social isolation and social services not tailored to serve their cultural and linguistic needs. Latinos’ invisibility in Pittsburgh is evidenced by the absence of records of the Latino presence in the city’s museums and public archives. OjO Latino, a community engaged project, sought to advance the inclusion of the Latino community in Pittsburgh through Photovoice. This participatory expression methodology enables individuals to share their stories with the larger public through cultural and artistic expression. The intentional organization of the project as a group activity facilitated the transfer of power over the project to participants, creating solidarity and fomenting trust. During four meetings participants took part in a short photography training, discussed their photographs addressing the meaning of being Latino in Pittsburgh, and selected 34 photographs for exhibition organizing them in four themes: Work, Costumes, Family and Landscape and climate. OjO Latino held one exhibit in a community venue and another one at the university. In addition, the photographs are available in an electronic public repository. OjO Latino served a dual purpose of expanding the visibility of Latinos in and educating the larger community. The OjO Latino team got closer to the ways Latino immigrants see and experience the city. Their gaze challenged our own views and experiences and also spoke the saliency of nostalgia and social networks in their lives. The open discussion of what it means to be Latino in an emerging community and the opportunity to produce a visual account of it, along with the acknowledgment of the presence of this diverse population promote human rights, ethnic identity as well as mental and social health.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2018-10-30
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
image/jpeg
image/jpeg
image/jpeg
image/jpeg
image/jpeg
image/jpeg
image/jpeg
image/jpeg
image/jpeg
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/243
10.5195/contemp.2018.243
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 7 (2018): Presenting Race: Institutional Contexts and Critiques; 53-71
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/243/267
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/243/289
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/243/290
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/243/291
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/243/292
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/243/293
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/243/294
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/243/295
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/243/296
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/243/297
Copyright (c) 2018 Hector Camilo Ruiz, Paulina Pardo, Rosa DeFerrari, Kirk Savage, Patricia Documet
oai:contemporaneity.pitt.edu:article/272
2022-05-16T20:36:17Z
contemporaneity:ART
Timelessness and Precarity in Orientalist Temporality: Mehdi-Georges Lahlou’s Aesthetics of Disorientation
Moynihan, Conor
The Hourglasses (2015), by French-Moroccan artist Mehdi-Georges Lahlou, features five large hourglasses displayed artifact-like upon a table. As one would expect of an hourglass, these glass sculptures can be inverted to measure out time. This, though, is where convention ends, as these are filled with couscous, not sand. Unlike sand, couscous cannot measure time consistently and the inversion of any one of these five hourglasses results in a different measurement of time. In effect, they disorient any linear notion of temporality, raising the specter of Orientalism and its fantasy of a timeless East. Mehdi-Georges works in a diverse range of media including performance, sculpture, installation, and self-portraiture. Dealing with race, gender, sexuality, colonialism, identity, and representations of Islam and Catholicism, his work performs the instability in all these categories by critically complicating fantasies of “East” and “West” without relying on a mere binary reversal of meaning. Contextualizing his work within a larger history of Orientalism, my argument begins first with Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias,” composed in 1817, followed by an analysis of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Orientalist paintings before leading to a concise discussion of contemporary Orientalism in art and art discourse. My analysis then circles back to the artist’s work to insist that Orientalism’s fantastical invocation of the East remains a disabling presence in the contemporary imaginary. Orientalism’s temporality, as glimpsed obliquely from Mehdi-Georges Lahlou’s hyphenated identity, is likewise rendered unstable in his work. As seen in The Hourglasses, his work produces what I call “an aesthetic of disorientation,” predicated on the artist’s embodied cultural hyphenation, which renders the Orientalist fantasy of the East absurd through its own tropes of representation. By bringing queer theory and disability studies to bear on his work, I show how his practice engages with Orientalism’s temporality to open up new possibilities of perceiving the world.
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
2019-10-30
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
application/pdf
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/272
10.5195/contemp.2019.272
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Vol. 8 (2019): Yesterday's Contemporaneity: Finding Temporality in the Past; 1-22
2153-5914
eng
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/contemporaneity/article/view/272/299
Copyright (c) 2019 Conor Moynihan