#Victor Stoichita

[marcogiovenale]

oggi, 20 novembre, a roma, al museo etrusco di valle giulia: dialogo con victor i. stoichita, a cura di andrea cortellessa e maria teresa carbone

al Museo Etrusco di Villa Giulia, Sala della Fortuna oggi, mercoledì 20 novembre – alle ore 17:00 VICTOR I. STOICHITA in conversazione con Maria Teresa Carbone e Andrea Cortellessa sul suo Ritorno a Bucarest, edizioni Bordeaux cliccare per ingrandire

[love-for-carnation]

Le Christ chez Marthe et Marie. 1552 Pieter Aertsen (1508-1575, Dutch)

Halfway between still life and religious image, this painting offers us a particularity: the carnation. Planted in a loaf of bread, it represents both originality and mystery. This carnation was analyzed by the art historian Victor Stoichita with a view to its double meaning: “The allusive reference to Christ is already present in the leg of lamb. The carnation, used by the painter as a link between the two levels of the image, is a second element. Considered etymologically, the carnation has a precise symbolism. Its Latin name is carnatio. It is the symbol of the incarnation of Jesus Christ (“word made flesh”). <…> The carnation in the leaven could therefore be considered as the incipit of a symbolic text, formed by the objects of the still life. (Victor I. Stoichita. The establishment of the painting: metapainting at the dawn of modern times) https://www.journaldespeintres.com/loeillet-peint-une-fleur-picturale-1ere-partie/

[thammit]

This text provides a new reading of Goya, concentrating on the closing years of the 18th century as a neglected milestone in his life. Goya waited until 1799 to publish his celebrated series of drawings, the "Caprichos", which offered a personal vision of the "world turned upside down". Victor Stoichita and Anna Coderch consider how themes of "Revolution" and "Carnival" (both seen as inversions of the established order) were obsessions in Spanish culture in this period, and make provocative connections between the close of the 1700s and the approaching of the Millennium. The authors deal with almost unknown or neglected literary sources concerning Goya's intellectual envirnoment. Particular emphasis is placed on the artist's links to the underground tradition of the grotesque, of the ugly and the violent. Goya's drawings, considered as a personal and secret laboratory, are foregrounded in a study that also reinterprets his paintings and engravings in the cultural context of his time.

[oacasodaspalavras]

Victor Stoichita, Breve História da Sombra, 2016 https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Stoichita

[supersonicart]

Genevieve Cohn's "Tracing Shadows."

Opening on Saturday, November 12th, 2022 at Hashimoto Contemporary in New York City is artist Genevieve Cohn's solo exhibition, "Tracing Shadows."

"Tracing Shadows" tells the story of a community of women that exist in an imagined world, in which they only live for one rotation of the earth on its axis. Building on this imagined mythology, the figures depicted in the paintings attempt to record a light that will only be experienced once before it slips away. Living in a world that has this unique experience of light, the women dedicate their life attempting to better understand their world and systems that structure it.

In many of the paintings, women are depicted referencing, tracing, or recording shadows. The shadow is ultimately transformed into an experience that is more solid and tangible than that of the sun, raising questions of truth vs. reality, contemplating the point where truth and reality come together and where they break apart.

Pulling from various sources, Cohn’s inspiration is rooted in the Women’s Land Army, the history and imagery of witches and witchcraft, and literary fiction. Plato's Allegory of the Cave, The Complete Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino, A Short History of the Shadow by Victor Stoichita and the short stories of Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman also shaped this body of work.

Tracing Shadows speaks to the shared experiences of groups of people, and the attempts to question, record and understand that shared experience. In this imagined universe, the women born at different times of day create shared knowledge and tradition, so that those born later in the light can begin where those before them left off, speaking to our human history of storytelling and interest in scientific experiments.

About her work, the artist states, “My paintings project possible communities of women by drawing from both a historical and imaginative past, present, and future. My paintings acknowledge and reflect a world where power is derived from collaboration, self-endowed agency and connection with the natural world. I consider ideas of collection, adornment, beauty, and choice as the figures within the worlds of my work construct spaces that engage ideas of ritual and practice.”

THE SUPERSONIC ART SHOP | FOLLOW ON INSTAGRAM

[lsmithart]

**Research: Phantom Bodies: The Human Aura in Art

An exhibition catalogue from an exhibition at Frist Art Museum in October 2015-February 2016. The exhibition was the third in a series that centred around the human body. It explored themes of trauma, loss, and transformation, while considering the possibility of an animating spirit that can exist independently of the body. The exhibition housed many artists whose works explore these themes, including Christian Boltanski and Doris Salcedo. The text that accompanies images of the works in the catalogue proved most helpful in divulging the concept of aura in relation to materiality, particularly in relation to themes that relate closely to empathy within my dissertation. The following quotes from the text are incredibly relevant to my evolving practice in terms of theorising the concept of paradoxes and the concept that I continuously jump back to as a host for many other relative concepts and ideas: presence and absence.

Page 1 - “Loss, remembrance and the hope for a residual force that transcends the body have been subjects of art throughout history. In his Natural History (77-79 CE), Pliny the Elder writes of the daughter of a potter in Corinth who traced the shadow of her departing lover onto the wall as a way of remembering him. Art historian Victor Stoichita notes that her purpose was to turn the shadow “into a mnemonic aid; of making the absent become present”. Symbolically, to depict the one who has gone keeps him home, if only in a soulless semblance. But the very emptiness of the image inspires yearning and pain, causing tears for the artist and for viewers who may re-enact their own experiences of loss through this image.”

Page 2 - “Painful absence – whether it is of God, or grace, or just presence itself – is a fundamental reason people cry in front of paintings. It is the negative and opposite of painful presence.” “A flow of emotions that merges the viewer and the viewed”. – Through empathy and an auratic energy.

Page 3 – Walter Benjamin’s essay: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction explores various dimensions and meanings of art’s aura. In Hal Foster’s book Compulsive Beauty (about Surrealism), he breaks down Benjamin’s considerations of aura into 3 principals: The natural aura - “an empathic moment of human connection to material things… the surrealists were sensitive to this aura of found natural objects, which they often exhibited”; the cultural and historical aura – “cultic works of art and artisanal objects where the traces of the practiced hand are still evident”; aura connected to the “memory of a primal relationship to the body” which is attributed to a longing for a return to the maternal body, but may indicate a broader desire to reclaim the sense of wellbeing once felt in the presence of a protective loved one.” - (Hal Foster, Compulsive Beauty, Cambridge Mass: MIT Press, 1993, pp. 195-96).

Page 3-4 “A number of the featured artists present or depict objects to posit, like the Surrealists, a special connection to an absent user. The sense of aura rises when we imagine the experience of the missing through knowledge of the artifact’s history. That sense is intensified when the history is traumatic. Hal Foster cites the French Surrealist Andre Breton, who linked aura to trauma in his discussion of Cezanne’s painting ‘The House of the Hanged Man (1873)’. For Breton, “aura is somehow involved in trauma, more precisely with the involuntary memory of a traumatic event or repressed condition. This often occurs through the agency of the haunted object or its stand-in.”- (Hal Foster, Compulsive Beauty, Cambridge Mass: MIT Press, 1993, pp. 199) E.g. Christian Boltanski – Untitled (Reserve) – images of lost children from the Holocaust with items of clothing folded beneath. Doris Salcedo – Atrabiliaros – shoes of victims of war behind animal membranes.

References:

Breton, A., (1937). cited in Foster, H., (1993) Compulsive Beauty. Cambridge Mass: MIT Press. p. 199.

Foster, H., (1993) cited in Scala, M. W., (2015). Phantom Bodies. The Human Aura in Art. Vanderbilt University Press. p.3.

Scala, M. W., (2015). Phantom Bodies. The Human Aura in Art. Vanderbilt University Press. pp.1-4.

[artidiss]

Marc teòric . La identitat

Referents 

Stoichita, Victor I, Coderch, Anna María (traductora) (2008) Breve historia de la sombra La Biblioteca Azul / Serie menor: Siruela ed.

La relación con el origen (la relación con la sombra) marca la historia de la representación occidental. El propósito de estas páginas es seguir el hilo y los hitos de ese recorrido. No debemos extrañarnos del retraso que, en relación con la historia de la luz, caracteriza a la historia de la sombra, su explicación reside seguramente en que en realidad es el estudio de una entidad negativa. Victor I. Stoichita Esta «breve» y prodigiosa historia de la sombra comienza con dos mitos de origen. El primero, referido por Plinio el Viejo, y que con los años se ha convertido en el mito de origen de la pintura, narra la historia de una legendaria muchacha de Corinto que, para conservar viva en la memoria la imagen de su enamorado, trazó una silueta a partir de su sombra. El segundo es la parábola de la caverna de Platón, en donde algunos hombres encadenados desde niños en una morada subterránea sólo alcanzan a ver las sombras de la realidad proyectadas sobre un muro. Partiendo de estos dos mitos del arte y del conocimiento, Victor I. Stoichita nos va desenredando el enmarañado itinerario de una metáfora tan amplia en sugerencias que se ha convertido en uno de los desafíos técnicos y simbólicos más perdurables en los artistas de Occidente: de Vasari y Cennini a los cuentos de hadas, de Poussin a Picasso, Warhol o Beuys, del cine expresionista y la fotografía a la psicología infantil, este apasionante recorrido con más de 100 ilustraciones nos llevará a desentrañar el sentido más primigenio del arte como representación. via Victor I. Stoichiță, Anna María Coderch (1999). Breve historia de la sombra (2ª edición). Siruela. ISBN 9788478444397.

[itinerariosdebiblioteca]

Hola Selina!

 ¿Cómo estás?

Te paso aquí bibliografía que estoy escogiendo y recopilando para el curso y las lecturas previas en la biblioteca.

Para la charla de Julio, voy a encargar el libro de Arte y Agencia de Alfred Gell y podríamos leer el capítulo que seleccionó la revista Concreta para el numero 07. Quizás, se me ocurre que podemos también leerlo directamente de la revista, ya que la selección de pasajes que hace creo que puede encajar bien con la propuesta de Julio. También me he acordado de que en El pensamiento salvaje, Levi-Strauss habla sobre tatuaje. Julio también me mencionó un grupo de mujeres que se reúnen para compartir saberes sobre el tatuaje, y un libro de finales del XIX del Doctor Francisco Martínez Baca que se títula Los tatuajes. Estudio psicológico y médico-legal en delincuentes y militares. El libro es de 1899 y no se volvió a publicar, por lo que solo lo he encontrado consultable en línea, digitalizado por una biblioteca en México.

Con Élan se me han ocurrido varias cosas de dónde tirar en el fondo de la biblioteca: lo primero en lo que he pensado era el Manifiesto de la zorra mutante de vns Matrix, Manifiesto Post-transexual de Sandy Stone… También pensé en el último libro de Donna Haraway, Camille stories, en el que hay una especie de relato-ensayo de ciencia ficción de “Los niños del compost”. El escrito trata sobre la idea de la simbiosis genética humano-animal. Por otro lado, Élan nos ha propuesto El último carnaval. Un ensayo sobre Goya de Victor Stoichita. Además me habló de unas revistas geniales que editaba el Museo de Artes y Tradiciones Populares de Madrid. Se titulan Narria, y aunque las distribuían en el museo, cuando fui a por ellas me dijeron que ya no se editan, pero están descargables aquí. El número 31-32 es el dedicado específicamente al carnaval.

Julián me sugirió como bibliografía Sociología de la imagen (Mirada Ch’ixi desde la historia andina) de Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui y Prácticas creativas de re-existencia de Adolfo Albán Achinte. Y una joya maravillosa: Borderlands/La frontera de Gloria Anzaldúa que estoy leyendo y disfrutando muchísimo. También me hará llegar Islas Atlánticas, una publicación que ha hecho él con Andrés Gualdrón. Es una caja preciosa, con dos fanzines y dos vinilos. Dos islas inventadas fantásticas.

Con Luisa y Amalia he hablado hace poco y están traduciendo un texto de Ursula K. Leguin “The Carrier bag Theory of Fiction” que va a ser muy emocionante leer juntas (te paso aquí la versión en inglés). También hemos pedido El artesano de Richard Sennett (que aún no lo tenemos y será genial que esté en el catálogo). Por otro lado hemos recuperado una publicación que nos dio Marc Larré para la biblioteca 1+1=3, que documenta y narra el trabajo realizado con un grupo de estudiantes registrando objetos y superficies mediante el barro.

De Venidadevenida he solicitado a INJUVE  la publicación del ciclo de actividades que comisariaron titulado Weird Space. Por otro lado ellas me han pasado muchos títulos y artículos, entre los que están el de Paul B. Preciado “Cartografías queer: el flâneur perverso, la lesbiana topofóbica y la puta multicartográfica, o como hacer una cartografía “zorra” con Annie Sprinkle”, que aparece en Cartografías Disidentes, un artículo que me ha gustado de Pablo Ríos Cullera “Crisis, identidad y espacios queer” o el libro de José Miguel García Cortés que se titula Arquitectura, Género y Control Social.

De Tonia seguro imprimiré el texto que tiene colgado de “El arte de andar por este y otros mundos” que me ha parecido muy bonito. También el de “footnotes”. Sobre caminar se me ocurre también Elogio del caminar de Le Breton, Caminar de Thoreau o Del caminar sobre el Hielo de Herzog. Tonia también me ha hablado de otros textos que ella dice que hacen un efecto de muñeca rusa, porque mencionan así mismo otros textos. Está el libro de Wonderlust. Una historia del caminar de Rebecca Solnit, o los textos completos de la internacional situacionista. También Wlakscapes. El caminar como práctica estética, que me han hablado mucho de él. Y el de Perejaume de Tres dibujos de Madrid.

Y para tu charla pues ya he localizado a Julieta Casariego, que nos va a prestar su fanzine 8 HORAS. También encargaré el de Pintar sin tener ni idea (que ya lo hemos usado muchas veces pero siempre artículos sueltos, y nos será muy útil tener esta compilación). En este libro es dónde aparece el ensayo “Evidentemente” del que me hablaste. Sobre el grupo de Mareatón de Bellas Artes tenemos el fanzine de extensión universitaria Media-Mareatón. Y quedo a la espera de que me traigas la publicación de Werker 10 que recoge  fragmentos del texto de Julia que me hiciste llegar. Efectivamente el texto de Jonathan Crary que menciona está traducido. Y también nos hemos hecho con un ejemplar de La utilidad de lo inútil. Por último, ya le he estado echando un vistazo al blog de Lila 2368km del que me hablase y creo que será precioso leer algunos fragmentos mientras seguimos andando.

 Y ahí va casi todo ¡aunque hay más! Espero que te pueda ser útil.

 ¡Un fuerte abrazo!

 M.

[marcogiovenale]

20 novembre, roma, museo etrusco di valle giulia: dialogo con victor i. stoichita, a cura di andrea cortellessa e maria teresa carbone

Museo Etrusco di Villa Giulia, Sala della Fortuna mercoledì 20 novembre – alle ore 17:00 VICTOR I. STOICHITA in conversazione con Maria Teresa Carbone e Andrea Cortellessa sul suo Ritorno a Bucarest, edizioni Bordeaux cliccare per ingrandire    

[smc-askalib]

Victor I. Stoichita's nuanced and detailed study examines images of racial otherness during a time of new encounters of the West with different cultures and peoples, such as those with dark skins: Muslims and Jews.

[telepathic-radio]

things i keep in mind/bibliography

Methods For a Modern Sculptor by Ronald D. Young

This book is more so technical in its approach and is something I specifically use for understanding the technicalities in sculpture, in which there are recipes for patinas.

A Short History on Shadow by Victor Stoichita

A series of essays relating to the shadow and its importance in culture and art; the basis of my work currently is on shadow and the thought of afterimage so this is very important to me

Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard

The book gives me insight on how philosophy interacts with architecture and memory and space, I think about this book constantly when working off the wall.

The Shape of Things; A Philosophy of Design by Vilém Flusser

The books I read are more connected to philosophy and the space in which things function in, I read this book in conjunction with Poetics of Space so that it would also just give me a strong backing in how to view architecture, design and just art in general.

Uses of The Erotic by Audre Lorde

An essay that I’ve held very dearly and have kept in the back of my thoughts for four years now, the essence of the essay is moreso about approaching and accomplishing things with full power, I relate this also to phenomenology and it is an essay I always work off of.

[frootypandas]

Readings/Books for Thesis

“Body Politics” by Linda Nochlin-Specific about how Seurat uses the bodies in relation to the surrounding they’re in. 

“Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity” By Griselda Pollack- How gender can dictate what type of space is considered feminine and masculine. Associations with how occupation and domestic chores can skew the the viewer on why a space is read as more female oriented and vice versa.

“Resisting Narrative: The Problem of Edgar Degas’s Interior” by Susan Sidlaukas - 

“Poetics of Space” by Gaston Bachelard- In depth discussion of how space can influence a viewer and how utilizing it can change the viewers can perceive it

“A Short History of the Shadow” By Victor I. Stoichita- discussion about shadows and the meanings they can potentially provoke in terms of concept and their view in reality.

[miriadonline]

CFP: 4 Sessions at Association for Art History Conference, London, 5-7 Apr 18

London, Courtauld Institute of Art and King’s College, April 5 – 07, 2018 Deadline: Nov 6, 2017

http://www.forarthistory.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/CONF2018_CALL_F OR_PAPERS.pdf

Association for Art History, 2018 Annual Conference Courtauld Institute of Art and King’s College London

[1] Dada Data: Contemporary Art Practice in the Era of Post-Truth Politics [2] Asia Through Exhibition Histories [3] Beyond Boundaries: Artistic Inquiries into Borders and their Meaning(s) [4] Lesbian Constellations: Feminism¹s Queer Art Histories

­

[1] Dada Data: Contemporary Art Practice in the Era of Post-Truth Politics

From: Sarah Hegenbart, sarah.hegenbart@tum.de Date: Sep 28, 2017 Deadline: 6 Nov 2017

Organizers: Sarah Hegenbart, Technische Universität München, sarah.hegenbart@tum.de Mara-Johanna Kölmel, Leuphana University Lüneburg, mara.koelmel@googlemail.com

The era of post-truth politics poses a new challenge for contemporary art practice. If populist politicians persuade the masses by simplified conceptions of reality, how can art highlight the neglected nuances and complexities of our contemporary moment? How can art foster critical discourse that is often abandoned when subscribing to simplified notions of reality? As part of the 100th anniversary of the Dada movement, the online anti-museum Dada-Data was established in 2016 to revive the ideas behind the revolutionary art movement. Mixing collages and hypertext, twitter and manifestoes, instagram and readymades, the online platform provides a space to explore Dada and connects its heritage with our everyday online life. Our session expands on the idea of Dada-Data.net. It asks how an engagement with the aesthetic tactics of Dada, can help develop critical vocabularies for confronting our era of post-truth politics mediated by information floods and ‘big data’.

Since it has been pivotal to the Dada movement to approach art and reality as inextricably linked, this session explores whether and how Dada strategies such as alienation, anti- aesthetics, collage, fragmentation and irony, may contribute to face the complexities of our time. While we are particularly interested in how strategies that emerged during the Dada movement could be applied today, we would also invite contributions exploring similar constellations in other periods. We are very keen on looking out to other disciplines: How does the speculative cross-reading of Dada and data benefit other fields of research?

Proposals of 250 words, accompanied by a short academic CV, should be sent to the two session organisers no later than 6 November 2017.

[2] Asia Through Exhibition Histories

From: Lucy Steeds, l.steeds@csm.arts.ac.uk Date: 26 Sep 2017 Deadline: 6 Nov 2017

Organizers: Afterall Art Research centre at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, is uniting with Asia Art Archive, the Paul Mellon Centre, and Tate Research Centre: Asia to host a session at the forthcoming annual conference for the UK¹s Association for Art History (AAH).

What does it mean to practise exhibition histories rather than art history? How are distinct disciplines drawn on, alongside or in contrast to art history when the focus lies on art gaining its public moment through the lens of ŒAsia¹ (or ŒEast Asia,¹ ¹Southeast Asia,¹ ‘South Asia, ‘Central Asia’ etc.)? This session invites reflection on the methodological issues and theoretical implications of both exhibiting ‘Asia’ and of analysing such past shows now. While regional showcase exhibitions ­ presented both in Asia and elsewhere across the globe ­ are an obvious topic for appraisal in this context, we also welcome papers considering initiatives that have not explicitly taken on that role but have instead emerged over time as regionally influential. To take two examples from the 1990s, ‘Cities on the Move’ would be one obvious case-study, while ‘Chiang Mai Social Installation’ might be significant in a different manner.

We will prioritise analysis of art made and shown in the last 75 years ­however, our understanding of what constitutes an exhibition is broad and diverse, to include any event of becoming-public for art. We encourage unconventional anchors for critical attention as well as the rethinking of more familiar examples ­ and indeed a case-studies model need not be adopted, with more purely theoretical, geopolitical, sociological, curatorial and artistic contributions anticipated.

Broad themes for presentation may include, but are not limited to: ­art history and the exhibition-form in or concerning Asia; ­ the critical role to be played by performance, literary or other cultural studies; ­ ‘landmark’ shows in the history of Asian art and challenges to exhibition-based canon formation and to art history in the singular; ­ self-organised and institutional public initiatives; ­ nationalism, regionalism and transnationalism in Asian exhibitionary practice; ­ and interdisciplinary and trandisciplinarity in exhibition histories with a focus on Asia.

In this session, we seek to question the stationary perspective and centre/periphery binary implied by ‘looking out,’ encouraging debate of past art exhibitions as a way to think about more mobile and contingent histories that also prompt us to look both inwards and sideways. In other words, we call for discussion of exhibition histories that encourage looking in multiple directions.

The call for papers follows and responses should be addressed to Lucy Steeds, l.steeds@afterall.org, arriving by midnight (GMT) on Monday 6 November 2017.

You need to provide a title and abstract (250 words maximum) for a 25-minute paper, also your name and institutional affiliation (if any).

We would also appreciate a biographical paragraph. Please make sure your title is concise and reflects the contents of the paper because this will appear online, in social media and in the printed programme.

Please note that AAH membership is required for participation and/or attendance (more on the conference and on membership here):

Association for Art History | 2018 Annual Conference, London, 5-7 April 2018

[3] Beyond Boundaries: Artistic Inquiries into Borders and their Meaning(s)

From: Lesley Shipley, lshipley@randolphcollege.edu Date: 26 Sep 2017 Deadline: 6 Nov 2017

Oragnizers: Mey-Yen Moriuchi, La Salle University, moriuchi@lasalle.edu Lesley Shipley, Randolph College, lshipley@randolphcollege.edu

Borders have played a critical role in the development and distribution of culture, often acting as frameworks that help or hinder our ability to look outwards. In The Location of Culture, Homi Bhabha calls attention to the value of interstitial spaces, where borders, frames, and other locations ‘in-between’ become ‘innovative sites of collaboration and contestation in the act of defining the idea of society itself.’ Other philosophical considerations of borders, such as Martin Heidegger’s concept of gestell, or enframing, Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of Enlightenment aesthetics vis-à-vis the parergon, and Victor Stoichita’s analysis of framing devices in early modern Œmeta-painting¹, have demonstrated the transformative power of edges, frames, borders, and boundaries in art.

This session will focus on works of art, artistic practices, and art historical perspectives that think critically and creatively about borders and their meaning(s). The goal is to expand our understanding of borders, whether physical or conceptual, historical or theoretical. In the spirit of pushing beyond boundaries of convention and ‘looking outwards,’ we welcome papers that focus on any medium, art historical period, or curatorial practice. Papers may address, though are not limited to: art that explores the significance of borders to migrants, immigrants, diasporic communities or other groups residing (both literally and figuratively) ‘in-between’; activist art that interrogates borders and their meaning(s); the role of public art, public space, and social media in thinking beyond boundaries; the metaphorical and/or literal framing of a work of art and its effects; the symbolic purpose or meaning of frames in various cultural contexts (for instance, the role of framing in religious spaces or objects, such as tabernacles, wall niches, icon paintings, and marginalia).

Please email your paper proposals directly to the session chairs. Proposals should include an abstract (250 words maximum) and CV.

[4] Lesbian Constellations: Feminism¹s Queer Art Histories

From: Catherine Grant, c.grant@gold.ac.uk Date: 26 Sep 2017 Deadline: 6 Nov 2017

Organizers: Catherine Grant, Goldsmiths, University of London, c.grant@gold.ac.uk Laura Guy, University of Edinburgh, laura.guy@ed.ac.uk

What is a lesbian? A lesbian is the rage of all women condensed to the point of explosion. ­ The Woman-Identified Woman Manifesto, 1970

What are the unrealised possibilities in a meeting between lesbian-identified visual culture and emergent perspectives in queer feminist art history? This panel will follow Catherine Lord’s contention that ‘feminism’ is a category I choose not to split from homosexual, from lesbian, or from the oppositional politics implied by the word ‘queer’ (2007). From this position, Lord traces a feminist art history that grapples with the instability and invisibility of the term lesbian, imagining it as a set of ideas, rather than a stable identity.

This panel asks how lesbian-identified visual culture might be a resource for feminist art history, allowing us to explore feminism’s always already queer dynamics. Working back from contemporary artists such as Zanele Muholi and Allyson Mitchell, and indebted to the groundbreaking work of artists and writers such as Laura Cottingham and Harmony Hammond, we propose that lesbian feminism touches wires (Heather Love) between the terms ‘queer’ and ‘feminist’ in ways that require exploding existing categories within the field.

We welcome papers on a range of topics relating to lesbian-identified visual culture including but not limited to: art and social reproduction; visual culture and activism; queer time and lesbian feminist creativity; collectivity and cultural production. Working with the widest possible definition of what constitutes a lesbian-identified visual culture, we are particularly interested in contributions that foreground trans and POC intersections within lesbian feminist culture.

To offer a paper: Please email your paper proposals direct to the session convenor(s). You need to provide a title and abstract (250 words maximum) for a 25-minute paper (unless otherwise specified), your name and institutional affiliation (if any). Please make sure the title is concise and reflects the contents of the paper because the title is what appears online, in social media and in the printed programme. You should receive an acknowledgement of receipt of your submission within two weeks.

Click here for the full call for AAH submissions: http://www.forarthistory.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/CONF2018_CALL_F OR_PAPERS.pdf

[objecteiespai]

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Festival del foc i de la llum | Olot. 💡 10, 11 i 12 de novembre.

www.lluernia.cat/programa-lluernia-2022

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[lsmithart]

‘Phantom Bodies: The Human Aura in Art’ by Mark Scala

An exhibition catalogue from an exhibition at Frist Art Museum in October 2015-February 2016. The exhibition was the third in a series that centred around the human body. It explored themes of trauma, loss, and transformation, while considering the possibility of an animating spirit that can exist independently of the body. The exhibition housed many artists whose works explore these themes, including Christian Boltanski and Doris Salcedo. The text that accompanies images of the works in the catalogue proved most helpful in divulging the concept of aura in relation to materiality, particularly in relation to themes that relate closely to empathy.

Notes:

Page 1 - “Loss, remembrance and the hope for a residual force that transcends the body have been subjects of art throughout history. In his Natural History (77-79 CE), Pliny the Elder writes of the daughter of a potter in Corinth who traced the shadow of her departing lover onto the wall as a way of remembering him. Art historian Victor Stoichita notes that her purpose was to turn the shadow “into a mnemonic aid; of making the absent become present”. Symbolically, to depict the one who has gone keeps him home, if only in a soulless semblance. But the very emptiness of the image inspires yearning and pain, causing tears for the artist and for viewers who may re-enact their own experiences of loss through this image.”

Page 2 - “Painful absence – whether it is of God, or grace, or just presence itself – is a fundamental reason people cry in front of paintings. It is the negative and opposite of painful presence.” “A flow of emotions that merges the viewer and the viewed”. – Through empathy and an auratic energy.

Page 3 – Walter Benjamin’s essay: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction explores various dimensions and meanings of art’s aura. In Hal Foster’s book Compulsive Beauty (about Surrealism), he breaks down Benjamin’s considerations of aura into 3 principals: The natural aura - “an empathic moment of human connection to material things… the surrealists were sensitive to this aura of found natural objects, which they often exhibited”; the cultural and historical aura – “cultic works of art and artisanal objects where the traces of the practiced hand are still evident”; aura connected to the “memory of a primal relationship to the body” which is attributed to a longing for a return to the maternal body, but may indicate a broader desire to reclaim the sense of wellbeing once felt in the presence of a protective loved one.” - (Foster, 1993: pp. 195-96).

Page 3-4 “A number of the featured artists present or depict objects to posit, like the Surrealists, a special connection to an absent user. The sense of aura rises when we imagine the experience of the missing through knowledge of the artifact’s history. That sense is intensified when the history is traumatic. Hal Foster cites the French Surrealist Andre Breton, who linked aura to trauma in his discussion of Cezanne’s painting ‘The House of the Hanged Man (1873)’. For Breton, “aura is somehow involved in trauma, more precisely with the involuntary memory of a traumatic event or repressed condition. This often occurs through the agency of the haunted object or its stand-in.”- (Breton, 1937, cited in Foster, 1993: p. 199). E.g. Christian Boltanski – Untitled (Reserve) – images of lost children from the Holocaust with items of clothing folded beneath. Doris Salcedo – Atrabiliaros – shoes of victims of war behind animal membranes.

REFERENCES:

Breton, A., (1937). cited in Foster, H., (1993) Compulsive Beauty. Cambridge Mass: MIT Press. p. 199.

Foster, H., (1993) cited in Scala, M. W., (2015). Phantom Bodies. The Human Aura in Art. Vanderbilt University Press. p.3.

Scala, M. W., (2015). Phantom Bodies. The Human Aura in Art. Vanderbilt University Press. pp.1-4.

[chiarabettazzi-blog]

Arrêts sur images

La différance est donc la formation de la forme. Ma elle est d’autre part l’être-imprimé de l’empreinte 

Jacques Derrida

Le opere proposte da Chiara Bettazzi ruotano attorno ai paradigmi indicali dell’impronta e dell’ombra. Sulla soglia della mostra Collection (2013), un singolare video che, come una sorta di diaporama, propone una sequenza di immagini statiche, ottenute posizionando degli oggetti di vetro o semitrasparenti, in gran parte di origine farmaceutica o chimica (ampolle, provette, bottiglie ecc.), appartenenti alla collezione dell’artista, sul vetro di una lavagna luminosa: ogni composizione è documentata tramite foto. L’azione resta ostinatamente confinata fuori campo, ad essere registrata dunque non è la performance o il farsi dell’immagine ma, ogni volta, unicamente, il risultato, immortalato nella sua fotografica static- ità. A rigore, dunque, non c’è alcun video: tutto ciò che è movimento/azione è posto fuori campo. A far film, per una durata di circa 40 minuti, è solo il susseguirsi di pose statiche, lo scivolare (il passaggio, il concatenamento) da un’immagine all’altra, che occasionalmente incorpora delle pause bianche. Il video che ne scaturisce non mostra gli oggetti sul vetro della lavagna luminosa ma unicamente la loro ombra proiettata su pa- rete. “Il risultato visivo -sottolinea Bettazzi- rimane nell’ambiguità, restando in bilico fra l’apparizione dell’oggetto e il suo fantasma... Partendo dall’ambiguità di un’immagine e riproiettandolo... sul muro, l’oggetto mi regalava una nuova immagine che non era né una mera radiografia né un puro rayogramma10, ma si manifestava davanti a me come se fosse un disegno tracciato sul muro. Questa nuova visione mi ha fatto riflettere sulla parola grafia, e sul suo significato... originario, portandomi a considerare quest’immagine luminosa e il suo legame diretto con la scrittura e quindi con l’incisione”. Scrittura di luce: photographia e scrittura d’ombra: skiagraphia, rimandano a Plinio ed al mito di Dibutade e all’origine mitica del disegno, inteso come sottolineatura dell’ombra e cattura di ciò che presto non sarà più presente.

Gli oggetti sono protagonisti anche della serie costituita da cinque impronte su vetro che, come le proiezioni, sono state ottenute in maniera indi- retta e, almeno nel primo caso, del tutto involontaria. Non si tratta infatti di oggetti toccati dal colore e poi depositati volontariamente su un sup- porto ma di oggetti che, utilizzati in origine per un altro scopo, sono stati appoggiati casualmente su un vetro, imprimendovi una leggera impronta, rivelatasi al momento della rimozione. L’artista ha cercato di catturare fotograficamente questa traccia oleosa, ma la sua trasparenza sommandosi a quella del supporto rendeva difficilmente percepibile la loro restituzione fotografica. Bettazzi ha aiutato quindi l’epifania di questa sorta di im- magine ready-made attraverso uno spolvero di carbone che, andando a depositarsi sulle parti umide e scivolando su quelle asciutte ha ‘rivelato’ l’immagine latente, permettendone così la cattura. Non sfuggirà il parallelo che si instaura tra questa procedura di rivelazione dell’immagine la- tente tramite spolvero e quella del bagno chimico della carta impressionata in camera oscura o in modo ancora più preciso, con quella della cattura delle impronte digitali. Sia nel ‘video’ Collection che in questa serie, il processo indiretto di cattura dell’immagine mostra l’interesse di Bettazzi non tanto per la qualità del risultato (la restituzione mimetica dell’oggetto, la sua somiglianza) quanto per l’evidenza del contatto, per la cattura dell’è stato, non tanto per impronta quanto per ciò che e-viene manifestandosi come impronta, il vestigio, la traccia di ciò che non c’è più: a questo riguardo torna quanto mai utile la precisazione di George Didi-Huberman tra processo e risultato dell’impronta: “Pour qu’une empreinte de pas se produise en tant que processus, il faut que le pied s’enfonce dans la sable, que le marcheur soit là, au lieu même de la marque à laisser. Mais pour que l’empreinte apparaisse en tant que résultat, il faut aussi que le pied se soulève, se sépare du sable et s’eloigne vers d’autre empreintes à produire ailleurs; de lors, bien sur, le marcheur n’est plus là”.

Accanto ad alcune restituzioni mimetiche inequivocabili, per quanto smangiate, un centro tavola o una borsa per l’acqua calda, una bottiglia di plastica, una tazzina, un ventaglio... sui vetri di Bettazzi sussistono numerose altre tracce incerte, che a causa della volumetria dell’oggetto di partenza che rende lacunare e discontinuo il contatto con la superficie del vetro finiscono per risultare irriconoscibili. Testimoniano comunque di un avvenuto contatto e fanno comunque immagine, anche se non sappiamo di cosa: tracce-di-un-non (più presente) segni di un passaggio fan- tasma.

Anche in questo caso all’impronta del contatto materiale fa riscontro il suo trasporto per mezzo della luce: l’opacità del segno e la trasparenza del supporto sono impliciti messaggeri di un ulteriore raddoppiamento, quello dell’ombra: la luce attraversando la trasparenza del vetro ma tro- vando un ostacolo nell’opacizzazione del segno del contatto finisce per ribadire a parete, attraverso una leggera sfasatura i profili opachi lasciati dall’oggetto che, pur assente continua dunque a ossessionare la scena con la sua letterale ob-scenità.11

I vetri e la presenza/assenza di qualcosa sono al centro anche di Still Life, 2014 complessa installazione che si presenta come una sorta di vani- tas, misurandosi, sia pur con altri mezzi, con un genere pittorico storicizzato qual è quello della natura morta, al quale rimandano innumerevoli riferimenti impliciti. L’opera è il risultato di una specie di stratigrafia che si compone di vari passaggi: 1)una composizione di vari oggetti vitrei, un libro ed un teschio animale che si stagliano da un fondo oscuro e riposano su un piano di marmo; 2) una foto digitale della composizione, di grande qualità pittorica, assimilabile ad una natura morta seicentesca; 3) una proiezione della foto sulla stessa composizione che l’ha originata con il conseguente gioco d’ombre portate che scaturiscono dalla sovrapposizione, introducendovi una leggera sfasatura e maggiorazione di scala. Il risultato dà vita a una sorta di palinsesto, in cui campeggia un’assenza:

il teschio animale che, presente in proiezione, manca al suo posto, sul tavolo accanto agli oggetti; 4) Un candeliere con tre candele accese, un vi- olino con il suo archetto e un’ulteriore ampolla in vetro, disposti a pavimento, ai piedi del tavolo che ospita la natura morta, fuori campo rispetto

ma non dello spazio dell’installazione, di cui indicano il limite, un’ulteriore soglia che separa e mette in comunicazione lo spazio dell’immagine e quello reale in cui si muove lo spettatore, configurandosi come una sorta di supplemento dell’immagine, o come un’ulteriore ipotesi di com- posizione in attesa di essere realizzata. Infine un’ultima immagine, costituita dal semplice gioco delle ombre portate dagli oggetti in vetro della natura morta, è proiettata sul retro della parete che ospita l’installazione, in cui continua ad essere assente il teschio: tanto è calda e avvolta dalle ombre la foto di partenza, tanto è secca e cristallina l’ultima a tal punto da configurarsi come il rovescio della sua pittoricità, il suo disegno, una sorta di rayogramma, l’ombra come scheletro della composizione. Possiamo pensare alla inusuale collocazione di quest’ultima proiezione come ad un rimando e un’allusione alla sofferta storia della nascita del genere natura morta che, come ci ricorda Victor Stoichita, si afferma appunto come rovescio di un quadro a carattere storico o religioso.

Offrendo inaspettatamente alla visione il “retro” di una proiezione bidimensionale, tradizionalmente priva di “verso”, mostrando le ombre di og- getti cristallini che in quanto trasparenti non dispongono di una parte celata allo sguardo. L’artista realizza una sorta di dittico implicito, che invece di essere formato da proiezioni accostate spazialmente, si offrono l’una come il rovescio dell’altra. Un dittico che pare dunque riposare su una di- mensione temporale più che spaziale, una temporalità che richiede una compresenza che tuttavia esclude la possibilità di una visione simultanea. E’ proprio questa impossibile contemplazione simultanea che risuona come un implicito invito allo spettatore a tornare sui propri passi per reit- erare la visione del recto dell’opera e verificare che si tratti proprio della stessa composizione, ma anche per suggerire la complessa stratificazione e l’infinità dei punti di vista che una stessa immagine può suscitare.

10\ Rayogramma secondo Man Ray o fotogramma, secondo Moholy-Nagy è un’impronta luminosa ottenuta per contatto, un’immagine fotochimica che non implica a priori né l’utilizzo di una macchina fotografica, né che l’immagine ottenuta somigli all’oggetto di cui essa è la traccia. Come sottolinea Rosalind Krauss “il fotogramma non fa che definire il limite o rendere esplicito ciò che è vero di ogni fotografia: ogni fotografia è il risultato di un’impronta fisica che è stata trasferita su una superficie sensibile mediante i riflessi della luce” 11\ Ob-sceno letteralmente significa fuori scena

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Arrêts sur images 

Saretto Cincinelli