吴哥，从日出到日落

在吴哥,你可以把心底的秘密留下,把历史的光影带走。漫步于承载着太多记忆的一块块石板上,远处的神殿和颓壁,近处的壁画和残垣,无不令人有种时空交错的感觉。吴哥之美,谓之大美。登临大吴哥城,我期盼能与那高棉的微笑进行一场穿     

通景画与郎世宁遗产研究

通景画是乾隆朝中西艺术交流的顶峰,但直到近年才有人开始对其进行深入的研究。耶稣会士、意大利画家郎世宁在完善这些非同寻常的作品中起了至关重要的作用,尤其是将中国传统绘画母题、审美趣味与欧洲富有纪念性的奇幻绘画相结合。尽管郎世宁在通景画创作方面享有盛誉,但并非所有的通景画都是由其独立完成,其中许多是由他的学生创作,但这些人的生平却鲜为人知。     

The Paradigmatic City: Postindustrial Illusion and the Los Angeles School

In the 1980s a group of geographers known informally as the Los Angeles School proclaimed Los Angeles as the paradigmatic metropolis of the late-twentieth century. The postmodern/flexible specialization model Los Angeles School adherents developed to explain Los Angeles and validate its paradigmatic status is critiqued theoretically and empirically. The unfortunate timing of their claims of Los Angeles' suzerainty over the Pacific Rim is discussed, and the development and status of its propulsive industrial sectors, such as armaments, aerospace, entertainment, finance, and real estate, are examined. The armaments industry receives special attention because of its critical role in postwar Los Angeles' growth and subsequent decline and because the Los Angeles School devoted considerable research and even praise to this particular type of government "warfare" spending as a key constituent of the area's technopole. The entertainment industry is not sufficient to extract Los Angeles from its continuing crisis. At the moment, Los Angeles lacks any credible plan for overcoming the contemporary malaise. The difficulties in the Los Angeles School's analysis are held to stem from their theoretical synthesis of postmodernism and flexible specialization, a natural but unfortunate Ptolemaic perspective expressed in the belief that one's particular locale is paradigmatic and a lack of recognition of the malignant aspects of defense-spurred economic development.     

Art and Procreative Illusion in the Sepik: Comparing the Abelam and the Arapesh

This essay extends Anthony Forge's ideas about the ‘unspoken meanings’ of Abelam ritual art, by testing them against cognate forms among the neighboring Ilahita Arapesh, and by invoking L.R. Hiatt's insights into ‘pseudo-procreation rites’ among Australian Aborigines. It is argued that the meanings of Abelam visual art and Arapesh myth are comparably ineffable, and that in both cases this non-verbal quality conduces to the expression of ideas that are cognitively, socially, or emotionally unacceptable to consciousness. The conclusions are, first, that veiled, ritual and aesthetic expressions of ‘procreation’ permit the men to enact a fantasy of male parthenogenesis; and, secondly, that the cult-sponsored tricks and illusions surrounding these expressions have the effect of surreptitiously appropriating female procreative power to the concealed goals of male ritual.