Ben Quilty: the fog of war

ABSTRACT

This essay looks at the war paintings of Ben Quilty, who in October 2011 was stationed with Australian troops fighting against the Taliban in Afghanistan as part of Australia’s Official War Art Scheme. Quilty’s portraits, in fact made back at home in his studio after he returned, show soldiers naked, in pain, reliving traumatic episodes from their war experiences. They have been almost universally praised as providing a new and compelling image of war for those who have not experienced it themselves. We examine these portraits closely, arguing that they express a new post-modern ideology of “interpassivity”, allowing the spectator to exhibit signs of concern for soldiers, without actually doing anything to change their situation. In this we suggest that Quilty’s paintings contain a meaning that goes against the intentions of the artist and the understanding of their audience. Contrary to their dominant reading, they express something about our culture that our culture is unable to admit about itself.     

The Essential Body: Mesopotamian Conceptions of the Gendered Body

Linguistic, art historical, hermeneutic, gender and intercultural analyses clarify body and gender concepts in Sumerian and Akkadian mythology, literature and visual arts. The body was a fundamental point of reference in ancient Mesopotamia, metaphor for the total self, royal ideology, cities, humanity and deities. Humanity was created without gender; sex, gender and social status were subsequently inscribed on the body. Gender taxonomy tolerated ambiguity beyond the ‘normative’ masculine/feminine. Body and mind were an inseparable unity and denoted by the same Sumerian word. Mind/body and male/female dichotomy were unknown.     

The Burghal Hidage: The Establishment of a Text

EXCAVATION OF THE 500 sq. m. waterfront site at Trig Lane in the City of London revealed a well-preserved series of timber and stone revetments on the medieval foreshore. They survived to heights of up to 3 m. and had been erected during the piecemeal reclamation and subsequent consolidation of the riverfront between the mid 13th and late 15th century.

The structures are described in detail, and their form and function discussed. Ninety-four oak samples were submitted for dendrochronological analysis, the results of which enabled a relative chronology for part of the revetment sequence to be established and absolute dates postulated.     

语图关系视野下的《列女传》文本及其图像

西汉刘向的《列女传》以其传、颂、图三位一体的编撰方式在中国古代典籍中别具一格,正因为如此,《列女传》文本及其图像在后世流传过程中,必然涉及到其文本（语言文字）与图像的关系问题。不同时代,不同类型的《列女传》文本与图像中,其语图关系的紧密程度也有所区别。一方面,《列女传》中语象与图像在这种相互模仿、相互斗争的模式中共同发展、共同进步;另一方面,语象与图像结合程度的不同也带来了叙事强度上的区别。     

《千字文》里探乾坤——古籍普查里的天地

本文以《易》解《千字文》,把《千字文》分为两部分,揭示了原文作者谋篇布局时法《易经·乾》卦之理,据典索字,以字表经,以使既定千字杂而不乱、缀而成文的良苦用心,对于深入挖掘《千字文》中蕴涵的哲学思想,发扬其作为蒙训国学教材的价值具有重要意义。     

Text as Song: The Oral Aspirations of Anghelos Sikelianos

Abstract

These statements were made by Sikelianos in a talk entitled 'O <inline-graphic href="splitsection11_in1.tif"/>which he delivered in 1938, and in which he postulates a historical progression from text to voice, rather than the reverse process. They are the statements of a literate poet writing in a literate age, but delighting, at the same time, in the ability of radio to ‘reassert the spell of orality’ (Havelock 1986: 31). They subvert the idea of literacy as progress and propose, in its place, an ideal of post-textual orality. The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between such statements and the poetry of Sikelianos.