Looter of the Dreamings: Xavier Herbert and the Taking of Kaijek's Newsong Story

In his novels and stories of the Australian frontier, Xavier Herbert distances himself from anthropologists whom he resents because they have professional licence to act as looters of the Dreamings. Yet, as ‘artist’, Herbert is unable to admit the extent to which his own story‐forms are taken from Aboriginal productions. In those writings completed after Capricornia and before he finally turns to compose Poorfella my Country, he keeps much of his borrowing secret and his deceptions lead both to a guilty preoccupation with looting as a theme and to the production of stories with missing middles. (Interventions of the Dreamings are left out of the printed versions.) While he acts as cultural broker, honest broking is impeded by Herbert's Romantic self‐vision (portrait of the ‘creative artist’ as a young dog) and by the universalisation that denies cultural difference spuriously to assert the unity of human artistic experience in its stead. I show how Herbert's authorial practise makes him the very semblance of the anthropologist. He, likewise, is a looter of the Dreamings.     

李流芳生平交游考略

李流芳为明未著名的文人画家,他不仅在绘画上取得了很大的成就,且诗文、书法、印章均擅,是一位具有多方面才能的艺术家。李流芳早年热心干科举,曾六次进京会试,但均铩羽而归。他晚年醉心于山水,和一些志同道合的友人浪迹江湖,创作了不少山水画佳作。由于李本人无画学专著,且诗文书画又散佚较多,故本文试图通过著录文献及其诗友的文集大致梳理出其生平及交游的情况。     

论谷崎润一郎短篇小说的艺术特色

谷崎润一郎是日本唯关派文学大师。当前国内学者对其研究主要集中于其长篇小说方面,对其短篇小说尤其是其艺术特色研究甚少。本文欲从细腻的心理描写、精巧的奇妙构思、新颖的题材选取和独特的艺术视角等方面,解读其短篇小说集所呈现的艺术特色。     

Yeats,Samhain, and the aesthetics of cultural nationalism: ‘a supreme moment in the life of a nation’

Together, in the plays and essays published in the 1903 issue of Samhain, William Butler Yeats assembled writings that endorse his vision of cultural nationalism in that they stress the possibilities of an artistic regeneration that that has the power to reconcile perceived exclusive strata within Irish society and also to herald a new age not only for Irish culture but for the Irish nation. Yeats, in his cultural nationalism, ultimately vested faith in an Ascendancy tradition, defined not by birth as much as by a willingness to surrender not just political ambitions but all ambition to that of the artist.     

“Art is a Sincere Martyrdom”: Circumventing Censorship by Encryption in the Work of Alireza Espahbod

This paper focuses on various aspects of Alireza Espahbod’s style of painting that encrypt his work. The period considered is from the just after the Iranian revolution until the artist’s death in 2007: in these years censorship had become severe, resulting in banning prohibition on his work being exhibited. Apart from the striking symbols that recur throughout his work, it is noticeable that he favors certain visual metaphors for encryption of humanitarian and satirical meanings. The discussion also focuses on the ways in which sequences of his individual paintings create narratives, like scenes in a play or a film. Unlike some preceding modernists, Espahbod is firmly rooted in his Iranian cultural milieu, and is in a line of artists who have used surrealism, beginning with Sadegh Hedayat in the modern literary world. He also follows a much older tradition that goes back to classical poetry and miniature art, in which image and word coalesce and are interchangeable, and where literature and visual art reflect one another. He uses these older techniques to comment allusively on the dramatic events and conditions of his own time. It is argued that his work amounts to more than that of an artist who merely fought against censorship, as his art rises above it and responds to it with a positive message for his audience.     

A Florida Fiddler: The Life and Times of Richard Seaman

In A Florida Fiddler, Gregory Hansen has done a masterful jobof bringing to life a portrait of a traditional artist, placinghim in the context of his geography, time, and community. Throughthe use of interviews, transcribed public performances, andobservation, the author lets Richard Seaman speak for himself,in his own voice, to tell his own     

Designing a brave new world: eugenics, politics, and fiction

Aldous Huxley composed Brave New World in the context of the Depression and the eugenics movement in Britain. Today his novel is best known as satirical and predictive, but an additional interpretation emerges from Huxley's nonfiction writings in which the liberal hurmanist expressed some surprising opinions about eugenics, citizenship, and meritocracy. He felt that his role as an artist and public intellectual was to formulate an evolving outlook on urgent social, scientific, and moral issues. His brave new world can therefore be understood as a serious design for social reform, as well as a commentary about the social uses of scientific knowledge.     

讽刺与宣传——记傅抱石的三幅时事宣传画

1959年1月,傅抱石在一篇创作随感中写道：自觉改造思想,争取政治挂帅,不但提高了思想水平,更提高了业务水平。真是政治挂了帅,笔墨就不同。在党的教育下,画家们的思想认识提高了,心情舒畅了,政治热情高涨,干劲冲天。     

复见新人忆旧友

Mr. Fu Youxin is a famous artist of Jiangsu Province. His works is poetic and full of freshness. The landscape in his painting is meaningful and vigorous, while the flower and bird in his painting are full of life and elegance. Nowadays, by learning widely from others, Mr. Fu has accumulated a wealth of life experience and his painting skill is approaching perfection day by day.     

元代画家李士行简论

作者通过整理元代画家李士行的传世作品及生平资料,对画家的生平经历有了一个简括的认识,并归纳出画家作品的两种风貌,即古木竹石类继承北方王庭筠和李成、郭熙传统;山水类则师承董源、巨然。李士行于不同题材师法不同大师的现象,一方面是由于元初名家赵孟(兆页)的“提醒品格”,另一方面与其生存环境的艺术传统和造化熏染密不可分。     

Tradition and the individual talent: remarks on the poetry of Michalis Ganas

Abstract

No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. (T.S. Eliot)     

“Twitter Bodhisattva”: Ai Weiwei’s Media Politics

Abstract

This article investigates artist and activist Ai Weiwei’s media politics. In 1997 Ai Weiwei imagined a modernist movement that would practise a “non-compromising vigilance on society and power” and since 2005 he has embraced blogging and micro-blogging to enact such intent. We argue that his “communication activism” is part of a broader artistic and political program that long predates his online presence. The study examines how the artist has experimented with blogging and micro-blogging to spread his message of “awakening” in defiance of censorship and surveillance. It shows how Ai Weiwei’s communication strategy combines an international celebrity status, criticism, irony and a round-the-clock interaction with his netizen audience and the media. It also critiques the effectiveness and coherence of this mode of activism from two perspectives – namely, Jean Baudrillard’s analysis of “private telematics” and Jodi Dean’s “blog theory” – and finally assesses its impact. The study aims to enhance our understanding of the web-based communication strategies of Chinese activists, shedding light on cultural production and consumption in Chinese cyberspace as a socio-political barometer.     

Norsey Wood

Abstract

A Tudor portrait in Hull was for many years wrongly identified as John Smith, mayor of Hull, but is in fact of John Smythson, Master Cook to Elizabeth I. Smythson was a man of some substance, reasonable wealth and social standing. He lived in Eltham in Kent and several details of his career can be uncovered. The portrait, which is the first surviving picture of a Royal Master Cook, was painted by an accomplished artist who was probably associated with the Court.     

THE STUCCO TECHNIQUE OF THE MAGISTRI COMACINI: THE CASE STUDY OF SANTA MARIA DEI GHIRLI IN CAMPIONE D'ITALIA (COMO,ITALY)

This paper is aimed at defining the artistic technique performed by the outstanding artist Isidoro Bianchi for the Baroque stucco decorations in the church of Santa Maria dei Ghirli (Campione d'Italia, Italy). Samples of stucco were examined by means of optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy with a microprobe, X‐ray powder diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, gas chromatography–mass spectrometry and laser ablation mass spectrometry equipped with plasma source spectrometry. On the basis of the results obtained, art historians have made new hypotheses on the biography of the artist and on the historical location of his birthplace.     

Alternative notions of sexuality and personhood: the case of Bal Gandharva

This article examines the meteoric rise and enormous popularity of a Marathi stage actor and singer, Bal Gandharva, in early twentieth-century western India. Gandharva was distinctive because he was a male artist who dressed and acted as a woman on stage and was adulated by both women and men for his powerful female roles. The article argues that Gandharva embodied ‘fuzzy’ boundaries between man and woman, drawing from indigenous traditions of gender fluidity. While maintaining strict boundaries between being a man in his personal life and a woman on stage, Gandharva tapped into alternative notions of masculinity. I argue that the adulation he experienced for his acting and singing as a woman points to transgressive possibilities in the otherwise conservative middle-class imagination and challenges what are colonial constructions of hyper-masculinity.     

吴伟的个性特征及其艺术成就

本文梳理了吴伟的生平及其艺术成就,强调了其才华出众、放纵不羁的个性。进而探讨其作为宫廷画家倍受成化、弘治帝宠遇的原因,特别指出围绕吴伟一生的好运及其个人的魅力与浙派兴衰的息息相关。最后提示吴伟粗放纵肆的画风与古代文献记载是相符合的。     

The ‘Monster of Troy’ Vase: The Earliest Artistic Record of a Vertbrate Fossil Discovery?

This note proposes a new interpretation of a scene on a well-known Corinthian vase illustrating the Homeric legend of Herakles rescuing Hesione from the Monster of Troy. Commentators have assumed that the artist intended to depict the monster as a ketos, an imaginary sea monster, but the features of the beast do not conform to the traditional imagery of sea monsters in Greek art. I suggest that instead of creating a typical hybrid sea monster by mixing the features of various living creatures, this artist used for his model the large fossil skull of a prehistoric mammal. The vase was painted in the midst of widespread interest in large fossil remains, which the ancient Greeks identified as relics of giants and monsters of the mythological age. The features of the odd head on the vase match the basic skull anatomy of a large mammal of the Tertiary age, such as the Samotherium, a giant giraffe of the Miocene epoch. Numerous literary accounts describe exposures of these and similar large mammal fossils in antiquity along the Turkish coast, on Aegean islands, and on the Greek mainland. I conclude that this vase painting is the earliest artistic record of such a discovery.     

'Tout cela,je ne voulais pas le laisser perdre': Colonial lieux de me´moire in the comic books of Jacques Ferrandez

A comic-book series by French artist Jacques Ferrandez serves as a case study of how Pied-noir memories of Algeria are given expression in popular culture. Ferrandez recreated French Algeria as a virtual place of memory in his five-volume Carnets d'Orient , by borrowing images from colonial postcards and orientalist paintings, as well as stories from sources including his own family history and French travel writings about the 'Orient'. Although he provides a useful critical perspective on the colonial period, he is limited in this effort by his identification with the Pied-noir community, and his desire to memorialise French Algeria.