A short encyclopedia article focused on drawing, stressing facture, the physicality of three media.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Propaedeutic to Walter BenjaminDavid Socher (bio)I took the picture—the Marines took Iwo Jima.—Joe Rosenthal (1912-2006)The Emerson College Web site on Walter Benjamin's essay The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction1 nicely animates some ideas of the essay. One such idea is the following: To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. When Benjamin wrote this (...) essay and this maxim, Norman Rockwell had been illustrating magazine covers for both Boy's Life and the Saturday Evening Post for several years. Rockwell, who also made paintings for advertisements, said he didn't "want to paint for the few who can see a canvas in a museum." He wanted his "pictures to be published," exemplifying Benjamin's point.2 Wood engravings have been around for a thousand years and coins with portraits for two thousand. I don't mention these old examples to dispute Benjamin's point—certainly to an ever-greater degree the modern age designs for reproducibility. And Benjamin himself at the outset mentions the stampings, coins, and terra cottas of the Greeks as ancient cases of reproduction of a work of art. I merely intend to highlight the distinction between creating a print and painting a painting or drawing a drawing. In the latter cases the artist's goal is to produce one particular physical surface. We often imbue this surface with what Benjamin called an aura.3 Collectors of Rockwell Post covers don't have Rockwell's auras,4 and even less so those who have and hang reproductions of such covers. The making of prints has its own cachet, however. Although he is far from a typical printmaker, M. C. Escher here expresses a thought applicable to all printmakers: "The printmaker has [End Page 1] something of the minstrel spirit; he sings, and in every print … he repeats his song over and over again."5As is usual with such illustrations, Rockwell's paintings were put on magazine covers by photographic processes. Rockwell, of course, is not a photographer. His name will not be included in the history of photography. Why is it even worth stating such more-than-obvious observations? Because Benjamin seems to me to be mixed up about photography and the mix-up pervades his essay, even including his very title. Getting clear about exactly what photography is will help untangle things. Therefore, before turning to Benjamin's text, allow me a few words on photography.It is hard to overstate the importance of photography. About his own parents, whom he had never seen, Dickens's Pip says, he "never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs)."6 Many school textbooks feature photos of children in a classroom, but often these are staged photos not actually taken in a classroom. At least one textbook publisher keeps props, including a wheelchair to take photos of "Able bodied children selected through modeling agencies [posing] in the wheelchair."7 Well, it's hard to get disabled children to serve as models, and in this way the publisher meets his disability quota. In such a case the photo is not doctored. It does picture the event in front of the camera, although unknown to the student, the picture is staged and the pictured student is neither in a classroom, nor disabled. This is a small deception; it is, however, a greater deception than is normal for, say, clothing catalogues. In such a catalogue all know that the model photographed is not actually skiing or chopping wood, although the model is so pictured. In the textbook an able-bodied child is presented as a disabled one, however, no direct falsehoods are being taught and no picture is falsely captioned. On the other hand, when a news agency doctors, falsely captions, or stages a picture, the deception is great.Newspapermen and newspaperwomen know well that photo-ops and managed news are cases where the tail wags the dog inasmuch as the event itself was only created for the sake of the picture. Somewhat similarly, staged wedding photos and other... (shrink)

There are as many meanings to drawing and painting as there are cultural contexts for them to exist in. But this is not the end of the story. Drawings and paintings are made, and in their making embody unique meanings that transform our perception of space-time and sense of finitude. These meanings have not been addressed by art history or visual studies hitherto, and have only been considered indirectly by philosophers. If these intrinsic meanings are explained and further developed, (...) then the philosophy of art practice is significantly enhanced. The present work, accordingly, is a phenomenology of how the gestural and digital creation of visual imagery generates self-transformation through aesthetic space. (shrink)

Art museums are built to elicit a wide variety of feelings, emotions, and moods from their visitors. While these effects are primarily achieved through the artworks on display, museums commonly deploy numerous other affect-inducing resources as well, including architectural solutions, audio guides, lighting fixtures, and informational texts. Art museums can thus be regarded as spaces that are designed to influence affective experiencing through multiple structures and mechanisms. At face value, this may seem like a somewhat self-evident and trivial statement to (...) make. However, in this article, I argue that niche construction theory enables us to make several illuminating observations about the ways in which art museums are engineered to influence our feelings. To expound on this claim, I single out for discussion the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, which for its entire lifespan (1939–52)—and prior to its evolution into the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum—was expressly organized to kindle in its visitors a special, spiritual form of aesthetic experience: a liberating feeling of cosmic rhythm and order, no less. -/- The argument will proceed as follows: In Part 1, I introduce the basics of niche construction theory and specify the sense in which I apply it to museums and aesthetic affective experiencing. In Part 2, I outline the origins and ethos of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, after which I pin down the type of affective experience it fostered by drawing from visitors’ self-reported reactions to the artworks on display. Then, in Part 3, I use niche construction theory to explain how the Museum consciously fashioned itself, by means of various mutually supportive resources and technologies, into a fertile setting for the specified feelings. Finally, in Part 4, I extend beyond the discussed case to assess the implications of niche construction theory for a broader understanding of how art museums make us feel. In other words, by tracing the early steps of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting towards the present-day Guggenheim, I call attention to the general variation in affective niches as regards their structure, technologies, and affective aims. Overall, the article elucidates the functioning of art museums as affective niches and furthers the conceptual development of niche construction theory in aesthetics. (shrink)

This thoughtful, learned, well-written, extensively illustrated, and heavily documented study deserves to be regarded as a landmark in art history. Traditional art history has dealt for the most part with the “fine arts” (chiefly painting, drawing, sculpture, and architecture), whereas other human creations that take physical form (such as furniture, ceramics, textiles, and metal and glass items), whether utilitarian or decorative (or both at once), are considered “craft” or “applied art” and are studied by folklorists, anthropologists, and archaeologists and (...) often displayed in different museums. Cooke wishes to break down this “hierarchical taxonomy,” this “fragmented, hierarchical field,” that emerged from Western Europe's “misunderstanding of art,” which valued “the cerebral over the manual.” His goal, in other words, is to outline “a more inclusive human history of art”— “a connected art history.” This phrase from his subtitle refers not simply to connecting “fine art” with “applied art” but also to crossing temporal and regional boundaries. Still another act of connecting is to examine all parts of an object's life history, and thus the three main divisions of the book deal with the making of objects, their circulation from one person and place to another (and “their ability to transmit ideas” in the process), and their meaning for the persons who possessed or encountered them.Over the years I have repeatedly said that all objects made by human beings are worthy of preservation and study because they bring us into direct contact with the past and, as part of our surroundings, affect our thoughts in the present. Every object, I have argued, including copies of a single printed edition of a book (so-called duplicates), is an independent witness to the past. I am particularly pleased, therefore, to welcome a major book that explores in detail, with a wealth of examples from many centuries and cultures, the place of objects in human history. Cooke's pursuit is “object-driven,” beginning with the nature of the materials and finally coming to “the inherent power of the object itself to influence human thought and action.” (Compare the subtitle of Sherry Turkle's 2007 anthology Evocative Objects: Things We Think With.) Cooke's refusal to separate “materials” from “people,” or “technologies” from “values,” reminds me of John Szarkowski's approach to photographs. In Photography until Now (1989), Szarkowski points out that histories of photography generally treat technical matters separately from artistic ones—a split between the “empirical” and the “intuitive” that he finds indefensible, for “these two ways of knowing meet in the process of making things.” He adds, “The meeting can be cordially symbiotic or aggressively competitive, but its resolution defines the character and meaning of the thing that is made.” This statement has been a favorite of mine as an elegant characterization of the nature of art, and it is one that Cooke would clearly agree with.Cooke does not discuss photography, but he makes clear that he is not attempting a “comprehensive history that charts the complete ebb and flow of objects over time.” Rather, his book is meant to be a “suggestive guide” to the “principles of material literacy,” a “kit of tools for future complex constructions of history.” Even so, I find some of the omissions puzzling. Why, for example, are glass objects not taken up, when he so thoroughly deals with other common materials? More serious, in my opinion, is the exclusion of the fine arts. (Of the 215 illustrations, five are of oil paintings and one is of a Japanese print, but they are present only as the sources for information drawn from their pictorial content; one Hogarth engraving is shown because its image was often reproduced on punch bowls; and there is a very brief passage on the “uneasy relationship” between sculpture and material culture, but no sculptures are illustrated or used as examples for discussion.) Presumably Cooke felt it was unnecessary for his book to encompass the fine arts after demonstrating that functional objects are just as sophisticated artistically and culturally as products of the fine arts are. Yet those products also belong to the universe of “entangled objects” (How could they not?), and it would have been illuminating to see them adduced among the examples Cooke cites. One could argue that by excluding them—and by referring to the makers of the objects he does discuss as “artisans” and “craftspeople”—he comes close to reinforcing the division he wishes to eliminate.Less easy to explain is Cooke's omission of books, for they have been one of the largest and most widely circulated classes of utilitarian objects. Most people never think about books as objects, treating them only as disposable receptacles for transmitting verbal texts in tangible form (which is why so many books are destroyed when their texts supposedly become available in another form). Such people do not realize that texts have connections with their physical embodiments. (For example, books, whether manuscript or printed, often contain clues revealing how their texts were affected by the production process; and readers’ attitudes toward texts can be influenced by their presentation.) Cooke, however, with his deep understanding of the way objects function and his impressive knowledge of the scholarship, cannot be one of these uninformed people. He would obviously be aware of the vast literature devoted to leather and cloth bookbindings and their decoration, as well as to the myriad styles of letters and the varieties of paper and parchment; he would also know how letterforms and binding designs reflect a complex interplay of social, political, and artistic forces. Bibliographers have long studied books as Cooke advocates studying other objects: “working from the inside out,” beginning with the evidence in books themselves for reconstructing the routines that were followed in their creation. And book historians are recognizing the necessity for an international approach like Cooke's, since many of the books circulating in one country originated in other countries. Books would have been a prolific additional source for illustrating Cooke's analyses.My admiration for Cooke's book is not altered by these few disappointments. Even without discussions of paintings, sculptures, and books, it is still exhilarating in its scope and depth. One hopes that art and material-culture historians will pay attention to it. But it ought to have a wider audience, for the daily lives of all of us would be enriched by a greater appreciation of the objects that make up a significant part of our environment. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ideas in the Brain: The Localization of Memory Traces in the Eighteenth CenturyTimo KaitaroPlato suggests in the Theaetetus that we imagine a piece of wax in our soul, a gift from the goddess of Memory. We are able to remember things when our perceptions or thoughts imprint a trace upon this piece of wax, in the same manner as a seal is stamped on wax. Plato uses this metaphor (...) to explain the errors which arise when we mistake something for something else: we connect the perception of an object with the trace belonging to another. The metaphor can also be used in explaining differences in people’s mnestic capacities: rapid learning and forgetting correspond to soft wax, impure wax results in muddled traces, etc.1 If we locate the traces in the brain instead of in the soul, Plato’s metaphor gains consistency and turns into a testable hypothesis. This move was already made by Quintilian.2So, the metaphor of memory as traces in the brain is evidently not a modern invention. This is easy to understand. To frame the hypothesis one needs only to reflect on how we use objects outside our brains for mnemonic purposes. We conserve ideas by tracing or printing letters and words on paper. We are also able to conserve images in drawings, paintings and prints. What could be more natural than to think of memory as the formation of traces in the brain? The development of even better information storage techniques in the form of pictures, symbols, and signs provides the metaphor extra plausibility. Plato’s seal allows us to imagine the imprint of a person’s likeness, but modern techniques of information storage and retrieval make it even easier to imagine memory in general as the formation of material traces.Explaining memory in terms of material traces could, of course, be taken [End Page 301] to mean that the formation of material traces in the brain is merely a necessary condition of memory. But one could also take a more reductionistic stance which identifies memory with the formation of material traces. Furthermore, one could identify specific mental items (sensations, ideas, memories) with specific physiological events or anatomical entities in the brain. This seems especially plausible if we imagine that the traces in the brain are as discrete and separate as ideas or memories are in our minds. Since the traces we form or print on paper consist of discrete letters and words, the thought that the traces in the brain are equally discrete and separate comes easily. Plato, in fact, made separateness a condition for the memory to work properly: it is not easy to read signs printed on one another.3 Of course, no traces are actually visible in the brain. But they are easy to imagine, as it is to imagine explanations of psychological phenomena, such as association, based on these traces.At the end of the seventeenth century, explanations of mental phenomena referring to material traces in the brain were used by writers, from Platonists to materialists, who supported widely different theories about the nature of the human mind.4 In fact, as I will show later in this paper, the question of the possible identity of mental entities, like ideas or sensations, with material entities or traces in the brain is relatively independent of the question of the existence of an immaterial soul. Or rather, if there is a systematic connection between the answers proposed to these two questions in the eighteenth century, it is not the connection one would expect. Nowadays we often tend to think of a prototypical materialist as someone who makes radical reductionistic claims about the identity of mental phenomena with brain states. We also tend to think of the eighteenth-century French materialists as “mechanistic.”5 In view of this reputation, it may come as a surprise to find that some eighteenth-century materialists, notably Denis Diderot, were in fact consistent anti-reductionists and opposed to mechanical or mechanistic explanations of the mental.6 In fact, the epithet “mechanistic” is misleading even when applied to the philosopher who is traditionally presented as the paradigmatic example of a “mechanistic materialist,” Julien Offray... (shrink)

The greatest intensity of “live” life is captured from as close as possible in order to be borne as far as possible away. Jacques Derrida. Echographies of Television . Rainer Ganahl has made a study of studying. As part of his extensive autobiographical art practice, he documents and presents many of the ambitious educational activities he undertakes. For example, he has been videotaping hundreds of hours of solitary study that show him struggling to learn Chinese, Arabic and a host of (...) other languages. The stacked boxes of tapes are then presented like minimalist monoliths, dense archives of effort. About fifteen years ago, Ganahl began photographing the lectures that he attends. At the time, he hadn’t seen anyone else doing it, so besides his spare selection of images of the speaker and the audience, much of the time the lectures would just pass into memory, undocumented, or recorded in writing alone. Since then, he has felt the transition to digital cause a significant shift in his process. At the same time, he has seen the habit become ubiquitous as others photograph, record, and videotape the lectures all around him. In keeping with the theme of this inaugural issue of continent. , can we propose each small grouping of photographs that result an isthmus stretching between two disparate bodies of mind? The first being the body of the lecture as spelled out in the title of each work – the experience of the event in all its constituent parts. The second is the body of the recipient, the listener, in this case an artist, who plays a minimal role just beyond the prescripted behavior of sitting and listening. He uses a gesture of documentation to draw a line between himself and the event, creating an artwork. Františka + Tim Gilman: As we mentioned before, the theme of the magazine for this issue is "isthmus." It seems like a very good way into your work, and it leads us to ask what connection you see between your photographs of the lecture and the lecture itself? Rainer Ganahl: The relationship is of course a concrete, pictorial one, or if you want a mimetic one but also an abstract one because the photographs carry the title of the lecture, the names of the lecturers, the site, the institution and the time of the lecture. Photos are fixed moments of time and can reproduce images displayed and reproduce visuals presented at a moment but they don’t come with time based recordings that video or sound takes are offering. What remains of a lecture is usually just the memory, some notes and all the announcements of it. In my case I end up with a visual product I declare as my artwork. It might not differ from any snapshot taken by any other student or member of the audience but I do this in a semi-systematic way with certain rules and procedures I have set up. While I am at a lecture I am mainly focusing on the lecture itself. Last night I went to one of Slavoj Žižek which demanded quite some concentration. I even was asking him a question at the end. I took photos as well but still didn’t lose track of the lecture. I didn’t walk around, I was not preoccupied by where I was sitting and what light I was having like some of the other photographing and filming people in the room who came and left, moved around and tried to capture him from this and that angle, from close and far. I just sat there and concentrated on the lecture and yet managed to take about 30 or so images of him, the public around me and of the film clips he presented. Once the lecture is over the story changes: it all becomes a question of the images, their selection, their visual qualities, their labeling and archiving. The function of the images also change: not only do they stand for an intellectual event in a row of lectures that become part of my intellectual history within many possible such histories but they also have to function as art, something not everybody else with images of lecturers demands of their images. This is my specific claim as an artist to impose them as artworks. And as with all artistic propositions the offer can be accepted or rejected. I basically spend my life trying to do exactly that: making what I declare as art, offering something to anybody interested in it as my art, an offer that is not and will never be accepted as such by all people. F+T: What are your criteria for selection, i.e. how do you choose which lectures to photograph, by lecturer, by topic, or do you photograph any and every lecture you can? RG: As everything in my life, I go by my interest which is the result of many factors. If I am aware of a lecturer, read his books or appreciate his works my interest of attending his much higher than if I am not aware of it. I usually don’t go to lecturers simply based on their subjects—something that can happen of course, if the subject, the title of the lecture is promising or at the heart of my interest. Sometimes I also wait for years to get a change to photograph certain people but I do that in a very low-level “keep your ears up” mentality and not in a systematic scanning of all channels and possibilities. I do not go into philosophy departments and photograph everybody teaching there. I go with the flow—and unfortunately a great deal of great talks I also miss because I hear too late of them. Often, I also stumble into them by traveling, by getting emails from friends and by simply being in the right spot at the right time. Somehow you could look at my lecture par cours as some kind of loose intellectual flâneurism . If you know of interesting lectures and events, please, let me know. F+T: Is your selection of images more of a production or post-production method? That is, do you take a lot of photos and select only a few images from each lecture, or do you take them very selectively? Do you have a particular methodology for the selection of images? RG: This all changed a bit with the arrival of digital photography. In the beginning I had to pay a lot of money for film developing. Hence, I was taking either one role - 36 images - or half a role - 13 images - depending on who talked and whether they projected images. With the unlimited capacity of digital imaging I easily end up between 30 and 150 images of one event still depending of whether images are presented or not. In the first years of that project when I wasn’t fully aware yet of what I was doing, I printed at least 2 images of any lecture and sometimes three or even four, a choice that was also constrained by costs. But again, since I have a web site and since images can easily be selected and presented on my web site without generating remarkable costs I have now more and more pain to reduce them to less than ten or eight images for an event. Now, before I have them printed which really is expensive, I can present them already as artwork on my web site without any immediate costs. Thus the economic factor is at the end of the chain which enables me to be more ‘generous’ and include more images. Over the last years I have been mostly selecting at least four photographs for a lecture unit but recently also as many as ten. But so far only one set above four images has been actually printed and sold. What might sound even more shocking is the likely fact that if a curator or a collector demands me to reduce the number of images due to costs, I might compromise at this current stage if the images have not been yet printed or published outside my own web site. This means that to a certain degree any selection that has only seen publication on my web site and not yet been produced runs the risk to change in numbers of images included. Needless to say, I am the last one that finally makes a decision and I do honor all given earlier decision if those were final. F+T: How do you feel the act of photographing the lecture affects your reception of the contents of the lecture? And your recollection afterwards, do you remember the lecture more having photographed it, or just having sat and listened? RG: As mentioned above, I get very little distraction from photographing since I can multitask well and do not obsess about the quality of the image: I photograph from where I am and listen with my ears and not my eyes. I am not sure whether the images serve as a mnemonic devise to the content of the lecture if there are no images involved but they at least remind me that the lecture existed, the title of the lecture and the name of the people and institutions involved. The titles of the hundreds of lectures I took during the past 15 years can also be read as an essay of theoretical life in that period. This will be come more and more visible as time passes by. These images age much better than I do. F+T: You mentioned at the outset of our discussions that you started this practice some time ago and have seen the practice of photographing lecturers become more commonplace. Why do you think that this shift has taken place? RG: The answer is very simple. Photographing is now free of any charge and hence omnipresent. You buy a phone or any other personal digital assistant and it has a camera integrated in it whether you want it or not. There is no need to develop images and there is no hassle to keep images, to distribute images, to organize images and save them. It is all virtual, not creating any costs and doesn’t require any efforts. You don’t spend twenty dollars for photo-developing anymore, you don’t need to walk anymore to your pharmacy or your photo shop to drop off and return to pick up and pay. You don’t need to go to the post office to send somebody a picture. You have a program like Photoshop already built into your camera. Photographing is now a thing for everybody—with functioning cameras made for two year olds. It is technically now nearly impossible to make bad images. The image quality is virtually guaranteed by cheap, high performing, mini-computers packed into miniscule cameras. With all these technological changes, we are undergoing now a cultural paradigm shift that includes permanent recording (not only still image taking) of everything. I wonder even whether babies are just born to be photographed—at least a process where the first photograph is right there. What is interesting now, is how the law is trying to catch up. I am experiencing and expecting more restrictions on photographing and recording—something already in place in many museums and in certain galleries—as the recording devices become more and more invisible and undetectable. It is an interesting cat and mouse play and will end up with some of us that are photographing the world around us in court. The world has become very transparent and everybody is contributing to it with social networking technologies—like twitter and Facebook—that are designed to monitor and communicate every step we make in our lives. F+T: Why did you start the practice? As a way to remember, or to capture the experience of the lecture and the environment there? RG: A couple of years earlier I started to photograph my own reading seminars as part of my art work with results that surprised me positively. I really liked these images of students and people discussing heavy non-fiction with me. The reading seminars justified this kind of pictorialism. Then in 1995 I had the chance to attend an entire seminar by Edward Said entitled “The Representation of Intellectuals at Columbia University,” which really gave me the idea to start this series. Why not also photograph these lectures I visit all the time since this really is a way of representing intellectuals? F+T: The constellation of images and the title seem like a kind of portrait, do you agree? If so, is it a portrait of the speaker, of yourself, or of the event? RG: Well, to follow up on the previous question the lectures are more than just portraits of lecturers since I include not only the speakers but also the audience, an audience that is not named or specifically highlighted as is the speaker. So if we stick with the metaphor of the portrait we would have to extend it also to the environment, the class room, the lecture hall, the arrangements of seats or benches, tables, lecture stands and other stuff typically seen on my images. Often the walls are decorated or even tagged with graffiti or posters and other stuff. There is a big difference between a small seminar room at the English Department of Columbia University, full with books and cabinets and a lecture room at a Paris or Frankfurt university that accommodates 50 to 150 people. We should, maybe, also distinguish between lectures that are one time events—mostly open to the public, free of charge or paid—and events that are weekly, closed to the public and held mostly in universities that can cost fortunes or be paid by the State as it is still predominantly the case in continental Europe. All this, of course, is not necessarily announced in the title of the lecture and is subject to information that isn’t visible on the images. To a certain degree we see also portraits of a general privilege when it comes to the public of certain institutions that are highly selective and extremely costly without forgetting that most of the lectures are dealing with theory, art, philosophy and other highbrow subjects. In general, I would say we see very little if we don’t know already what’s going on, who the lecturer, the institutions, the context are in which we subsequently can zoom into variants like sexual, racial, or age-related make-up without ignoring clothing fashions, hair styling, body mannerisms, gadgets and stuff. F+T: Do you see a relation between this body of work and your other work, for example your language studies? RG: Everything I do is “unfortunately” related. I say unfortunately because this makes my work not so easy to grasp. The relationship to the language studies is relatively clear since both are originally grounded in the domain of education and knowledge production. Nearly all my work comes across that nexus where knowledge and power are addressed. I was at one point wondering what the relationship was to some of my earlier indexical work where I was happy alone with footnotes from books painted on the walls: I came to understand that both are just different manifestations of knowledge and information. F+T: Do you foresee continuing the series indefinitely, or is there an end to it? RG: I think that I will continue this series indefinitely or to be more precise, as long as I go listen to lectures and want to learn something which brings me to your previous question: What do the reading seminars, language studies, historical research and lecture hopping have in common: I learn something. Further Reading Rainer Ganahl’s website William Kaizen. “ Vulgar Politics .” art&education . April 2009. Web. Smith, Roberta. “ Rainer Ganahl: ‘Language of Emigration & Pictures of Emigration .’” New York Times April 23 2010. Web. (shrink)

Located in Kleinbasel close to the Rhine, the Kaskadenkondensator is a place of mediation and experimental, research-and process-based art production with a focus on performance and performative expression. The gallery, founded in 1994, and located on the third floor of the former Sudhaus Warteck Brewery (hence cascade condenser), seeks to develop interactions between artists, theorists and audiences. Eight, maybe, nine or ten 40 litre bags of potting compost lie strewn about the floor of a high-ceilinged white washed hall. Dumped, split (...) open, the soil mixed with iridescent specks of green, blue and red glitter. On the walls hang large black and white photographic images—negative and positive prints barely clean, hardly sharp, scavenged from the world and presented half processed. On a third wall, hangs a framed golden and charcoal surface. Finally, a huge stain of black dye runs down a wall that descends into a sunken quarter of the Kaskadenkondensator gallery space. The results of a collaboration between Oliver Minder and Walter Derungs reflect on themes addressed in the recent Aesthetics in the 21st Century conference held by the department of English, University of Basel. In particular, the joint show questions how an aesthetic experience may be other than a human-world interaction, hinting at the withdrawal and veiling that objects perform, while demanding that different works engage with each other and play out this game under the non-supervisory eyes of a human audience. Things here are becoming—sometimes it’s a movement towards a more complete ontic whole in a projection of finality, other times it’s a dispersal, an atrophy to rather disarrayed entities. Yet, in the moment and place in which the objects are, we take them as here and now. Let’s get to the material of the stuff that Minder and Derungs have assembled. Oliver Minder employs organic materials—potting earth, cuttlefish ink secretion, rice, and insects; yet his works hardly seem natural in the sense of a harmonic relation between material and the form they are constrained into, the objects they are compelled to occupy. For the substrates on, through, or within which these natural materials are mediated are harshly inorganic substances—Plexiglas, safety glass, acrylic resin, boat varnish, spray paint. Minder, thus, generates a conflict within the materiality of his work between two polar opposites—from the human perspective—in the contiguity of materials engaging with each other in a thrown together formation that nonetheless appears to keep the materials and the objects they make in happy accidental relation to each other. Let me expand a little: on the one hand, the things Minder makes query our belief in substance as belonging in a particular domain, an environment suited to precisely that stuff. We are focused on thinking categorically where things belong, both in terms of natural place and natural relations they might extend to each other. Hence, we are driven to think of environment and order. On the other hand, while extracting things from their conventional place and arranging them within awkward constellations that we as observers feel isn’t quite right, Minder manages to persuade the viewer that the materials are nonetheless “doing alright.” So, simultaneous to our awareness of the appropriateness of the world according to our global notions of accord and uniformity, we are forced to accept the local discrepancies of disassociation, inappropriateness and misplacement. The tension between these two vectors generates a vacillation that intensifies Minder’s work. In the Kaskadenkondensator works, then, it is vital to first consider the material of Minder’s works: potting compost—what is it doing here in the first place?—seems to enjoy being “polluted” by sparkly glitter. Glitter has a long history, used in cosmetics by the Egyptians, and in cave paintings, too, earlier made of beetle shells and mica, nowadays glitter is made of plastic cut to minute sizes down to 50 microns. So what’s the point here? Well shiny bits of dust-like material are actually generated from ultra-thin plastic sheets and are normally cut into shapes that fit contiguously on a two-dimensional surface: squares, triangles, hexagons etc. What then appears to be totally random, chaotic decoration, is actually an array of extremely regular identifiable objects. 1 Of course scale has a role to play here. The minuteness of the dimensions means the regularity is beyond our recognition—all we see are the twinkling surfaces of the multi-coloured grains of plastic. In contrast, potting compost, which appears to be unary in its dull unresponsive lumpen disposition, is in fact an amalgam of a variety of organic and inorganic materials: peat, bark, mushroom compost, and sand and perlite, and should perhaps be more proactively exciting to the viewer because of this complexity. Yes; we can (if we care to) identify different textures, different sizes in the mixture of the medium, but I claim that we tend to treat this organic/inorganic assemblage as just a simple substance. Further and crucially important to our consideration here is that the medium is partially contained, but also partially spilling from the split plastic bags in which it is sold in garden centres. That the compost spills out gives it a movement suggesting life; that the bags are cast here and there in a random fashion by Oliver Minder, lying like discarded carcasses, hacked torsos, dismembered bodies, suggests a horrific murder scene, a Tatort. 2 The glitter flourishes in the medium, lies happy and decorative; that is simply what it does, how it is—always already broken, made-for-scattering, designed to be incomplete; the taken-to-be-natural compost, in contrast, cannot rest content but is forced to speak to us metaphorically in its abject overflowing of violence and rupture. While Oliver Minder’s elements in the installation direct our attention to material, Walter Derungs’ works raise questions around seeing and making in photography. There is a simultaneous flicker between the materials and their use in the production of a sense making representation, on the one hand, and on the other the very notion of what is worthy of picturing, framing, representing on the other. Derungs' images are of non-places. Ranging from archaic decaying monster buildings, buildings that have gone far beyond the ravages of a time that we can safely associate with the genteel preservation of a Bernd and Hill Belcher post-industrial decline, to the background “noise” of an urban world that is falling apart, and to which we most of the time seem to pay little attention, and habitually just pass by. In this respect, their non-ness differs somewhat from the conventional association of the term with Marc Augé 3 , where emphasis is on the specifics (if we do care to examine them for their non-placedness) of the spatial or place containment in which movement between multimodal coordinates occurs in supermodern late capitalist post-urban spaces. In other words, we might be in an Augéian non-place and (not) experience—be impervious to—that environment, or we might in Derungs’ manner look out from such a position at the “scenery” around us. I claim scenery, as this is what Derungs seems to do with his partial photography—construct a very purposefully articulated, symmetric, flat world of image. Mostly depopulated, his images construct a space in which the direction of time is uncertain: are these partial structures falling apart, or perhaps terminated in a never-to-be-completed state, or are they a few steps from final completion? Temporal and spatial dimensions figure large in Derungs’ image-making: his world, and perhaps this is in fact the only way for it to be registered photographically, is already image before it is photographed. A key combination of images in this show is a matrix of six black and white negative prints measuring 300 x 215 cm that form the image of a semi-derelict (or is it yet incomplete) church, and adjacent on a perpendicular wall, a single black and white positive print 150 x 250 cm of two bricked-up windows of a late-Victorian industrial building. What are we led to believe that we see here? In the negative print, the conditions of perception 4 are sufficiently reproduced for us to recognise the structure of the building, to distinguish ground and form, to relate some partial elements of narrative, and to recognize symbols such as the alter cross and figure of Christ, a looming crane, a traffic cone, and banks of tiered seating. We piece the image together both from the individual forms which we recognize despite the tonal reversal, and we piece the six prints together as a whole, the matrix of lines between them emphasizing our purview onto the world. While we recognise the forms at work in the image and might possibly relate the negative reversals to other figurations such as Vera Lutter’s camera obscura exposures, we cannot but avoid seeing the partialness of the image in the sponge marks of the developer that was spread by hand across the prints. 5 Derungs’ thus intervenes with our usual conception of photography as the mimetic realist vehicle sine qua non , by exposing the viewer to tonal reversal and incomplete or over developed areas of the print. We thus confront both the idiom of such image making and its raw (chemical) materiality at once in the simultaneity of the recognition of what the image pictures and the recognition that it is in the act of picturing. The church image, taken from the series “BW Negativs 2011,” thus orients us towards how we see things in the world via photographs. The single image of the bricked-up wall presents us with a completely different visuality that relates to a faciality 6 which we cannot easily escape from. We look, or rather try to look with no success, through the face of the windows, through the classic Albertian screen 7 which has already been given to us in the church matrix beside. Yet although we should be able to make more of these concealed windows because they are a positive print, because they are complete, because they approach us on a more realistic scale, reproduced at life size, we cannot. The objects pictured here withdraw from us; furthermore, they merely mock our blindness at not seeing how we look. Blocked up with quite a hint of paned glass behind, one window is blanked out with a white blind, the other simply blankly dark. The apertures look like eyes with teeth in them, or a Dogon mask, or even Man Ray’s Noire et Blanche (1926) if we want to get really perverse. The height of elegant modernist chauvinist beauty thrown against the vacuity of post-industrial decline. Derungs thus catapults us consciously into a world enfolded with and through images, but in such a way that the images themselves become objects that stand resistant to us, impervious to our gaze, indifferent. We—and indeed they—do not attempt to reach out to a real that is beyond, rather the images play in a world that is just theirs, and we can only enter that world if we too submit to their regime: tonal reversal, segmented, partial, inadequate, still, wrenched out of time. In contemplation, in the flood of the image “falling” off the wall, we too become image-object. Perhaps enough has now been said about the works, yet enough can never really be said, we know the image will always exceed the word—let’s accelerate the critique: Derungs’ work continues in a second space partially partitioned from this first room. Opposing three more “BW Negativs” which figure yet more quotidian aspects of the world is Minder’s gold spray paint and cuttlefish secretion mix: things that just shouldn’t work together do in the dialogue between stuff that Derungs and Minder have constructed. Minder makes things; Derungs makes images; together they make objects which inhabit their own world which we can approach and sensually engage with and come to grips with only on those objects’ own terms. This is best summarised by a final work made by Oliver Minder which on a third wall faces these two semi-partitioned spaces. A deep black stain about 100 X 200 cm with streak marks running down a further 2 metres hovers positioned to observe the whole work, and also to be part of this installation, too. This liminal flat suzerain lies in/out of the whole work. The stain of cuttlefish secretion resonates with Derungs’ sponge strokes on the church image; it mirrors the iris of an all-seeing eye; it combines material in situ with the situation itself. Where Minder’s other works have material and medium or substrate upon which the material is exercised, this single black hole is image which sucks everything up into itself. It draws the viewer, who must otherwise look away attentively at the floor work, and imagine horror, or smile at the ironic play of glitter. Look away at the image constructions that suggest how it is we too look to our world. See the play of thing and image in a third area. Or, finally return to the base of the pyramid that triangulates, to realise the stuff-image that unlocks it all for us. Black on white, organic on inorganic, material to substrate, that which in the falling out of one on the other, in its running down the wall simply gives form to both content and expression in one direction, and content and expression to form in another. NOTES In fact, glitter is used as associative forensic evidence: the 20,000 or so varieties are all uniquely identifiable. Joel Sternfeld, Tatorte: Bilder gegen das Vergessen (München: Schirmer/Mosel, 1996). Marc Augé, Non­places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity trans. John Howe (London: Verso, 2006). An echo of the uneven paint strokes of light­sensitive chemicals in the paper preparations made by Henry Talbot some 170 years ago in the first sun drawings that also often pictured architectural forms. It was Talbot’s surprising discovery that where a weaker chemical solution was more thinly spread, greater light sensitivity was actualized, yet this virtual image had then to be chemically developed in a second step. Thus, Derungs unevenly finished spongings suggestively trace back to this originary technology (although his sweeps are the stains of uneven development and not those of the initial preparation of light–sensitive material). Umberto Eco, “Critique of the Image” in “Articulations of Cinematic Code” Cinematics 1, 1970. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007). Geoffrey Batchen, Burning With Desire: the Conception of Photography (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1999). (shrink)

Don't tell terrible stories—everyone here has enough of their own. Everyone here has a whole bloody sack of terrible stories, and at the bottom of the sack is a hammer the narrator uses to pound you on the skull the instant you dare not believe your ears. Or to pound you when you do believe. Not long ago I saw a tomboyish girl on Khreshchatyk Street demand money of an elderly woman, threatening to bite her and infect her with syphilis. (...) Don't stroll through Volodymyr Hill Park, don't stroll around the botanical garden, and especially don't stroll on Kontraktova Square. Don't stroll anywhere. Don't go to the pavilion with the Golgotha panorama near St. Alexander's Church. Not even the twelve-meter-tall crucified Christ will save you. Don't go outside when it's dark and people turn into shadows a shade darker than dark. Also don't go where you can be seen from far away. Not to imply that people used to be like a bunch of lilies, but now they stink like a cellar of cabbage.The city, which earlier might have had some fun, is now going crazy. It's like a fish in warm water: it doesn't react to anything, swims slowly like it doesn't care if it swallows a hook or not. The excitement and exaltation pass into oppression, just as our necks have sunk into our shoulders, our shoulders into our lumbars, our lumbars into our nether regions. The holiday turns into a funeral, the parades into explosions, depression into mania. Winter passes into summer, people turn into beasts, the hours into ages, and the ages into hours. It's worth simply walking around the city to see a soldier from an unknown army taking a piss near the opera. Farther on is a row of identical old widows selling ball gowns and candelabra. Then there are the aristocrats and manufacturers who throw so much at the prostitutes that they'll soon be richer than their wives.I returned late through the Kyryliv Wood, not heeding all the warnings that I myself have given here. It really is dangerous—the place is famous for it. There's a madhouse nearby, caves where criminals and the sick can hide out. Also, once upon a time, as they say in fairy tales, the great dragon Zmei Gorynich lived here beside the Puchai River. The stench in these places drives away the most committed misanthropes and even one type of philanthrope—that is, perverts. It sounds dumb, but the stench is cleansing. I don't know where it comes from. After the operating theaters and the rooms with amputees, the stench no longer repelled or attracted me; it just was. And this was a great place to think. As I walked, I considered an incident with our patient.The patient, a respectable individual whose name carries too much weight for me to state it directly, one day began to assault people. He nearly strangled a merchant who he believed asked too much for a beaver coat. He likewise wanted to kill his business partner when he didn't say hello loudly enough. But the worst was, he lost all shame of his own nakedness. At first it was the police who took care of it. When our future patient slipped off his pants and undergarments, he was taken to Kyrylivska, which has had means for dealing with such cases dating back to the day when unhinged Cossacks and composers from Kyiv Mohyla Academy were taken there.During the examination we determined that the patient was experiencing a severe breakdown. His wife added that lately, more than once, he had allowed himself strong words in front of the children and often suffered from ennui. Furthermore, she said, the patient had been undergoing treatment for “the French disease” for some years—which was, obviously, where we needed to start.“Syphilis!” Skorsky spat out the matchstick he was chewing on. He was a specialist on the psychological aspects of diseases related to the venereal. “Tertiary syphilis! When poorly treated, over time ‘the French disease’ can destroy the central nervous system. Hence the patient's chicanery. Such theater!”Skorsky and I had not spoken since the incident at Bilinsky's. Meanwhile, something significant had happened to him. The most boring person on earth, Skorsky had simply caught fire. He said hello and kibitzed. I even heard the doctor got drunk alone in his office, then wandered through the forest. Could he be using narcotic substances?“Cocaine!” was the doctor's second proclamation. It was his favorite treatment for the psychological complications of syphilis. Skorsky himself never took what he called “the universal drug”—good for alcoholism and toothaches, neuroses and morphine dependency—though he had read in an article by a respectable Viennese physician, who used cocaine as a panacea, that it was not addictive. That doctor subsequently recanted, but Skorsky paid no attention. He believed the retraction was made under pressure from pharmacologists who had no incentive to cease production of the medications that cocaine might supplant. Their representatives either paid or threatened the Viennese to repent.As the patient was escorted to his room, he assaulted the orderly, Alevtyna. They tried pulling him off her, but, though he released his fingers from her neck, he buried his teeth in her leg. The poor orderly, who had not until then been attacked by a psychotic, nearly died of fear. Later, panic set in over Skorsky's diagnosis. He told her about the consequences of syphilis: grotesque patterns on one's face due to infection of the skin, mucous membranes, cartilage, and bones. He went on about the devastation to the central nervous system, which they had just observed in real life: “The face starts to look like lace some mangy dogs fought over before rolling in the mud.”Alevtyna, who had not yet regained her faculty of speech, straightened up. Ignoring the slavering male orderlies, she bared her leg to get a better look at the wound. She then ran down the hall and out into the garden, where she fell on the ground to rip up grass and small bunches of daisies. Alevtyna ate them along with the soil in their roots.“Minor hysteria. She needs fifteen milligrams of cocaine.”Skorsky took a snuff box out of his pocket and scooped up some white powder with a toothpick made from a goose feather. He gave the order to close Alevtyna's mouth and one of her nostrils, forcing her to snort the medication.We fretted over her so long that evening fell. I decided to walk down, along the ravine, behind the church.It was unlikely there were any large beasts there, but something was rustling. The pits and mounds, ravines, paths, graves of witches whose living sisters flew in the treetops from time to time, the whispers of the forest spirits, the spirits of the nutcases who died in the hospital, the spirits of the monks from the St. Cyril Monastery, Zmei Gorynich and the bogatyrs who wanted to defeat him. The city would be calmer without this forest. I saw the gaps between the trees and went off in the direction of the tram tracks.As I was coming out of the forest, there was a patch of Amanita muscaria that had been trampled into porridge. A bit farther on, the body of Professor Bilinsky lay killed in the blackberry bushes. The way he was lying it looked as though he had not struggled before death. I quickly examined his body but saw nothing out of the ordinary. There were no wounds, no dirt under the fingernails. Animals had not yet smelled the carrion, but swarms of various insects covered him. Oh, why did I have to find the putrid body?The best thing would be to take the tram to his house to inform his relatives. The doors closed, and I noticed my own calm. This death had not evoked any emotions in me other than a feeling of responsibility, the need to tell the family. But also—some alarm at the thought of who the murderer could be. I knew that it was murder.“Your nose is bleeding.” A woman as round as an onion, carrying two baskets full of strawberries, offered me an ironed and starched handkerchief.“Have I dirtied my shirt?”“No, it's as neat as a pin. It's just your nose that's dirty. Wipe it now before you spray blood on my strawberries.”“No one will see the red on red.”“Ah, but it's salty!”“You know why it's not sweet? We'd drink it like syrup.”“Those with Christ in their heart do not talk that way.”“Are your strawberries expensive?”“Why? What?”“I'm checking to see if you have God in your heart.”“Child, if you knew how I have to work for this berry! I have to weed it a hundred times. In a week, the quitch grass grows as high as a horse. And I water it with water I carry from the stream, it kills my arms... ”“How much are the berries?”“They're not for sale. Anyway, soon money won't mean a thing. Soon all money, all these papers made from the skins of sinners on their satanic presses will be annulled. What matters is how we treat each other.”“So if I try your strawberries for free, my ‘thank you’ will be enough?”“Hands off!” she said and thwacked my fingers.I heard loud laughter behind me—same laughter as from the café near the Continental. There was no one sitting near Alina. (This is what fate looks like, remember.) Without asking, I sat next to her, away from the old lady.“Excuse me, but the night before last didn't you, yes, didn't you intrude on my privacy?” She started right away.“I saw it a little differently. Who was that young man with the mustache who paid me for you?”“Are you checking to see if you can flirt?”The tram stopped. People got on and off.“Are you coming back from the hospital?” she asked. “Don't be shocked. My uncle works there. He's told me all about you.”“An uncle by the name of Skorsky?”(Remember: this is what fate looks like.)“Yes. Skorsky's been strange recently—says things that make me wonder if he hasn't lost his mind. Have you noticed anything?”“I don't know.”“You know perfectly well.”“Where are you going?” I tried to change the subject.“I have to send something to my theater friends in Odesa. By the way, they'll be putting on Oedipus Rex soon in Kyiv—in Ukrainian.”“Greek tragedy in Ukrainian! That's a first.”“Exactly. The troupe is rehearsing now in Odesa. The theater where they will perform this fall is being remodeled.”“Wait. Now I remember where I've seen you before—it was at a performance! Vynnychenko's Black Panther and White Bear, at the Bergonier on Fundukleivska.“The same director is doing the Oedipus. He's my friend.”“He's your friend in what sense?”“Again with that tired subject. By the way, I've been thinking about you.”“And I about you.”“That's good. I was thinking not about you, to be precise, but about that elevator you invited me on.”“Who was that man with you?”“Like a broken record! Even if he had been my fiancé, I'm not bought or inherited. I'm not a brooch or a hundred acres of land, and I'm not a house in Kaniv!... Who was with you when you saw Black Panther?“Ah, so.”“Answer!”“That was my mother. She looks very young. She is coming to Kyiv the day after tomorrow. I can introduce you.”“Oh, this is my stop.”I looked out the window and realized that I had long since passed the stop for Bilinsky's.“Can we see each other again?”“We can. But you have only one chance.”Alina the anarchist wrote something on a scrap of paper and handed it to me.Morning, not morning but a thick porridge (I hate porridge). Dew, thick spit, crushed fruits, urine, all on the sparkling cobblestones. The sun, just barely having made its appearance, is already scorching. The human masses scurry and grumble like poorly digested food inside a stomach.I walked diagonally across St. Sofia's Square, then along the perimeter, then one edge, then again diagonally across. I went underground. The basement café of the Continental Hotel was practically empty. I again asked the server to bring the cloth with the embroidered portrait, but I couldn't remember the musician's last name, only that it ended with -sky. The server said that -sky was currently in the southern cities of Yalta and Odesa. I added that Kurbas, the director, Alina's friend, was also in Odesa, rehearsing Oedipus Rex, and that he'd previously put on Black Panther.I was bored, so I walked along Khreshchatyk and then headed down, calling to mind all the Kyiv churches of Podil: there's Birth of Christ, St. Nicholas on the Shore, Intercession, Pyrohoshcha, Holy Presentation, St. Dymytrii Rostovsky, St. Illia's. And also the Epiphany Brotherhood Monastery, Ascension Convent, and St. Katherine's, all these whipped-cream churches on the waffles of our streets. A few of them reminded me of themselves by appearing suddenly out of nowhere.The smells on Kontraktova Plaza where commerce buzzed were like multicolored light bulbs turning on one after another. Here you could catch the aroma of Balabukha jam, which blended with the next smell, English shoe polish at the Raiskys’ shop. Then the crunchy-smelling cabbage from old women standing in a row like herons and spitting out the shells of sunflower seeds. Farther on, the stench of a good-sized rat that crawled under Mrs. Shevchuk's shop where she sells broadcloth. Oh, she can't scream: no, she'll quietly dig that rat out herself so as to not scare off her clients.I bought a paper and two pairs of underwear. I asked two laughing young chambermaids who were secretly puffing in a grape-filled yard for a smoke. I wandered around Podil until evening when I came across a sawmill near the Dnipro that surprisingly smelled pleasantly of mazut fuel oil. The weather was dry, yet in the middle of the road was an enormous puddle, a deep dark black. A forty-year-old woman in a pale pink dress stood near it. The theatricality of it all provoked me to pose her a question,“Ma'am, what should I do?”But she paid me no attention. I shouted,“What should I do?”“What to do, what to do?” she said in Polish. “Jump in the water and swim so far away that you cannot return.”I quickly crossed a section of the forest. The wind brought a mixture of unpleasant air, like a stinky handkerchief held under one's nose. Passing the trees, I saw light in the spaces between them and exited at the hospital.Outside the windows, two orderlies lay in chairs with their heads thrown back. Two others—fools—ran around the yard in different directions, peering out at... something. The lights on the first floor of the hospital were on, and the staff milled about.“You're just in time!” said Ivan, a tall, young orderly.“For what?”“Your patient ran away! We went into his room and he wasn't there.”“What patient?”“The one who bit Alevtyna,” said Danylo, the other orderly, short and middle-aged.“That's Skorsky's patient, not mine.”I had no intention of helping them. This was all history—like my family, Kyiv, and my previous life. I had no intention of thinking about it. I wanted to go to my office, pack up my field surgery kit, and get out. So what? Their psychotic syphilitic ran away—it happened.Of course, that patient could have something to do with Bilinsky's murder. But that was no longer my problem.“What a strange coincidence!” the doctor on duty said. “Comrade doctor, the other one responsible for this patient was just here.”“And where is he now?”“He took off toward the church to look for the patient.”“Didn't the patient escape earlier?”“Don't know.”“How do you not know? You had better call the police, moron, before he kills someone. And get those sleeping orderlies to look for him.”“They can't... ”“Why not? Should I go wake them?”“They're on morphine.”“And you, I can see, have lost your mind. Go, catch your psycho! If it turns out that he killed Bilinsky—and on your watch—you can't imagine what's in store for you.”I adjusted my homburg and set off in the direction of St. Cyril's, that unwelcoming monolithic cube. I glanced around—what if our escaped syphilitic were to jump out of the bushes and bite or strangle me. I looked around because I wasn't sure of my actions, wasn't sure of my choices. Tripping over a clump of clover, I reached the open doors of the church. I couldn't stop myself from going in.The walls and ceiling were covered with frescoes. There was what used to be an angel rolling up the sky on the southern column of the narthex. But also graffiti: people scratched their names on it so as not to be forgotten—their idea of eternity. Prince Volodymyr the Great compared this activity to the desecration of graves. The vandals paid a fine and were beaten with canes. During the raids of Batu Khan, the church was deserted and cracks appeared all over it. Wild martens and feral dogs sought shelter here; insects swarmed under the ceiling with its red mosaics. Birches grew in its midst. Water seeped in the cracks, the water became ice, the ice widened the cracks, more water seeped in the cracks, becoming more ice that further widened the cracks, the wall split and nearly fell over, and then the wall fell over. Yet the angel is still rolling up the sky... When I reached the exit, I heard a rustling behind me. I turned after I stepped outside: in the depths of the church, like a stick in a pot of tar, stood a man with a large bag thrown over his shoulder and a revolver pointed right at me.“Is that you, Doctor?“Don't move!”“What's... Skorsky, what's with you?”“Don't move, I say!”“What are you doing here?”And finally I understood... Skorsky was himself the psycho! (Really, I had known for a while.)“You are the murderer! I knew it! But—why?”“Shut up.”“It was you. You! The stolen cigarettes, the strange behavior, Bilinsky. If I shout, everybody will come running. They've already called the police!”There was heavy breathing behind me. And then a gun rang out.The city is overgrown with new buildings. They encircle everything that was once on the periphery. Kyiv has become an old lady that can no longer restrain herself in the face of pastries. The city climbs farther. It steps over the swamps, turns the old rivers into a series of lakes; the other bodies of water it drives into canals. The grain that falls from the wild wheat is black. When the sun heats it, the grain melts and trickles into the earth. St. Cyril's stands indestructible. No one spackles the small cracks in its walls with either expensive putty or glues, nor with cheap cement and whitewash. One day a small fox appears in the doorway. It runs inside and along the floor of simple gray tiles. The gods watch from the walls, watch and fall into ruin. The fox runs to the iconostasis. Before it is a time-darkened Virgin Mother and Child in oil on sheets of zinc. The fox runs the metal steps that wind up to the second floor. The fox runs past all the vaults, naves, all the frescoes. A buckthorn seed flies in through a broken window. It will be the first. Soon the buckthorn will grow everywhere. A dumb hare will make its nest in the buckthorn bushes and nightingales will settle in the upper branches to sing until the end of the world. The fox runs between the thick rays that penetrate the windows. It catches one of the rays, squints its eyes, and warms itself in the sun.The shot rang out, but I did not fall. I looked around—and on the church threshold was our syphilis patient bearing a rod. His head lay on the rocks by the doorway.“If only he'd been at the stage of nose deformity! Just imagine: a hole instead of a nose plus a hole from the bullet—like an extra pair of eyes!” Skorsky laughed at the corpse.“We need to call the orderlies.”“They heard the shot. They'll run here on their own. You see, Professor Bilinsky believed it would take two or three years to wrap up this patient's case,” Skorsky told me. “But I took care of it much faster!”“Excuse me, but I'm going crazy in this city. I thought that you were Bilinsky's murderer.”“Just so. Why not? I am Bilinsky's murderer.”“Don't tease. You've changed a lot recently, so... ”“Yes, I've started killing people. You might term such a change significant.”“You have the right to irony.”“I am not being ironic.”“Let's call it sarcasm.”“It's the honest-to-God truth.”“And yes, you have the right to mock me.”“Well then, let's be done. To the horses!”“What horses?”“Alina's waiting!”Alina, her uncle Skorsky, a few others I didn't know, and I rode like the wind that ripped off my homburg and carried it back to Kyiv.“There's a fresco in the choir loft at St. Cyril's where Vrubel painted himself and patients from the hospital as the apostles. When I came across it by accident, I really believed they were saints,” Alina said.“I've never been up there. I've only seen the church from below.”“Remember the way back so you can see it sometime.”“The Puchai River used to flow here. You shouldn't trust the landscape,” Skorsky said, reaching for something, perhaps his bag, just when we left the darkness of the trees and saw the endless steppe ahead of us.We rode all night without stopping. Though no one was chasing us. Though we had nowhere to be. We rode like beasts released from a cage. The promises of the horizon turned what we'd left behind into a cage fit for those from whom freedom had been severed, like an anomaly, at birth.The pre-morning sky looked at first like a sack of turnips—filled with something heavy. But with each verst, the sky became lighter. When it was finally light enough to see clearly, we arrived at a knoll at the foot of a stone wall that from a distance had appeared to be a gigantic piece of halva. The exterior ruins of the castle gave no hint of how it was when all was fine here, when people defended themselves successfully from the nomads’ raids. From far off, the wreckage looked like a natural agglomeration of stones—a rocky elevation, no more: a cluster of cliffs. It would rain a few hundred more times, a few hundred more winds from a few hundred directions would blow on this heap, and it would collapse as though nothing had ever been here.A few stalks of wheat grew from one of the rocks. Someone had probably cast a handful of grain here for some birds that forgot to eat it.“Who could this castle belong to?” I asked Skorsky.“I reckon the Swan Princess,” the doctor rejoined, hoping to sound knowledgeable.From behind one of the piles of gray sandstone emerged a young man in a black reptilian coat and a white papakha as lush, bright, and out of place as a dahlia. His name was Artem. The heat was melting our brains, but he was dressed like that, in rooster fashion, which was popular among the otamans. Artem helped Alina dismount her horse and tried to kiss her on the lips, but she offered him a cheek instead.Had she been racing to see this clown?We entered the yard—the ruins had fashioned an internal space that was more or less protected, at least from strangers’ eyes. It turned out that there were even places where it was possible to hide from the rain, and from there the ruins didn't look half bad.In the center of the court was a table, and on it a wooden bucket with pink gladiolas. How romantic! It all looked like it came from outer space. Where on earth, in the middle of the steppe, far from any village or town, did this table, this simple table, come from? And the gladiolas? The steppe hadn't been plowed in so long that any cultivars would have gone wild, degenerated, dried up completely.A campfire crackled nearby—a little preview of what we would soon do to the houses, villages, and cities. Artem the otaman brought over a cezve from the fire and poured the first portion into a small, copper cup for Alina. He also got out a porcelain cup with images of rosy cherubim—but how...?“Who else would like coffee?”Only Skorsky and I responded. The question excited me, even distracted me from the thought of the kiss I had recently witnessed and the Kyiv I had recently left.“It's obvious who the professors here are; cultured people drink coffee. Are you both doctors?”“Uh-huh.”“For wolves of the steppe, like us, doctors are gold, even more precious than gold. Actually, a Hippocrates like you should eat more, because those in your profession will soon be worth your weight in gold. Work on your figures, both of you.”“Who will take pity on the horses that have to carry us?”“We'll find the horses. And very large doctors can be transported on machine-gun carts. We'll need to seat the otamans near you. Only a fool would shoot at a doctor.”“I think we'll find quite enough fools here.”“With your beard, Doctor, you look like Tsar Nicholas II. But even so you won't be shot. You might even be canonized!”“We've only just arrived and you're going on about executions,” Skorsky grumbled and checked to make sure that he still had his bag.“Apologies, apologies, pardonnez-moi. But you are not merely a doctor. A venereologist! Skorsky, you're a specialist! A venereologist is the most important person in wartime. The most valuable! You are the botanists of war. You can't imagine what varieties of flowers grow here, and these beds have long awaited a proper gardener. Or even just a man with a scythe!”“Bite your tongue,” Alina said. “I don't need to listen to this.”“Yes, yes, of course. Excuse me, my r—. ” He almost said “rose.”We rested all day. We went down to a surprisingly close river overgrown with lilies. We rowed the boats left by fishermen. I talked to Skorsky. He took his bag everywhere, refusing even to swim so he wouldn't have to part with it. I asked him what he had in it, but he said it wasn't my damned business.Alina rowed with the otaman to the middle of the river. They were having a loud discussion. She was waving her hands. The current carried their boat downstream slowly and smoothly. What a nuisance, that current!I tried to meet with Alina one-on-one, but she was avoiding me. In the morning I was confused, by lunch I was sad, and after lunch I got angry.In the evening, I lay on the hot grass and drank another cup (I have no idea where they got such good coffee), which had no effect at all on my sleep. I watched the Perseids. Every year, the Earth passes through the tail of Comet Swift-Tuttle. People can see the meteor shower and make a wish. I wished. I counted forty-seven falling stars. All forty-seven of my wishes were for the same thing.Around the campfire, they were sitting, talking. I saw how he tickled her face with a piece of grass and she brushed him off in annoyance. Then they were screaming at each other. Later they again spoke kindly, after which they again quarreled. My joy grew after each tiny mistake that Artem made. I wanted him to show the worst he was capable of.They were screaming at each other, but all I could hear was beautiful opera singing. The stars fell to the sound of their screaming. The stars blessed my joy.Then this happened: Alina kicked the fire, scattered burnt kindling, and burned some of the grass. Artem grabbed her by the arm, but she broke away from him and ran off to the horses.“Go then! I guarantee you'll get to Katerynoslav and return with your tail between your legs.”“I'm going to Huliai-Pole! To Father Makhno!”I jumped up and ran after her.“Where do you think you're going?” Artem shouted.Really—where was I going? I was going after her: to Huliai-Pole, to Katerynoslav, to Rome, to Washington, to Istanbul, to Montevideo... “Go to sleep,” he said. “Come morning, this coquette will be here, right as rain. We've already been through this show. Tomorrow she'll be right here next to my boot!”... No, she won't.In some sort of shape we entered some town. There were some buildings that were some colors, some trees, some streets, some roads, and some signs. Posts, flustered birds’ nests, echoes, colors, shapes—each of some kind. A wedding procession was coming toward us. If you want to make orange, you need to add yellow to red, and then bam—it's black. If you want to salt the soup, shake in a little, and then bam—two handfuls. You want to say a kind word, and then bam—a punch in the face. I was rocked around like a watermelon on a boat and threw up my breakfast straight into the horse's fluffy mane. Sanko found this hilarious, but I said I'd pulverize him. So Sanko sped ahead.No one knew anything about Alina. The daytime sky was like a poorly washed bowl. The sun was a squashed, rotten apricot. The night sky looked like the sole of a boot to me. The moon was a dirty cheap copper coin that had gotten stuck to the sole. Everything seemed spoiled to me, irrelevant, unnecessary. Without her, this journey was a waste of time.“You'd better stay away from everyone,” Artem said. “You'll infect us with your pining, and pining is worse than the clap.”The wedding procession was before us. The young couple, still utter children, walked so calmly it was as if they didn't see us. As if we were made of a light breeze—our bodies, clothes, our horses and their iron shoes—of the lightest gasses. As if we were visible only to ourselves and the coal-black dog that barked, panting and gasping.The wedding was headed straight for us. We were in the middle of the road, and so were they. We approached each other slowly, a wave going toward a wave. Some ten meters before their indifferent faces, I noticed the color of the bride's eyes. And the coral-colored tulips that fell on the road before her. Round goose eggs on meaty stems, the flowers were falling and falling before her. The bride's eyes were almond shaped.“Hey there,” Artem shouted at me. “Wake up!”I came to and saw the whole village, everyone there, not realizing my group had turned left onto a side street away from the procession. The tulips disappeared—where'd they get tulips in the fall? I was sitting alone on my horse in the middle of the road, and the entire wedding procession came to a stop. I moved to the side, and the throng marched on, cutting off our escape route. We rode a few more meters and came across the synagogue.“You know what, you're right,” said the otaman.“Who is?”“Oleksii is the only one here who's right.”“About what?”Artem turned his horse and raced back. Everyone stood still while he ran his horse into the crowd and began firing his revolver. People scattered in all directions. Artem trotted, cackling like an imbecile. The horse kicked an old guy in the mouth. The man fell, spitting out his gold teeth. We rode up to the commotion and formed ranks, but none of us wanted to join the otaman.The bride stopped in the middle of the street. On both sides were buildings and trees, as well as dust, sky, and sun. She stood still, beautiful, as if nothing had happened. Then she adjusted her garland and walked calmly on.“Well, should we get some sugar now?” Artem laughed, looking at the bride, and off he went toward the sugar factory.It was then I noticed that all of the houses had shutters—fuchsia, blue, ocher—and that all the shutters were closed.We flew toward the dirty building, whistling and shouting. If there had been aesthetes among the otamans, they would certainly have razed the abomination in this field after seizing it. They would have spread soil on top and sown buckwheat. Long live buckwheat!, that wonderful crop. Like hunting dogs hot on the trail, we raced to our defenseless victim, with the baying of hundreds of hounds behind us. The field shook beneath us. We became an artist's canvas, evolving from Realism to Romanticism, Romanticism to Expressionism, Expressionism to Suprematism. If we had been painted in black and white, we would have been splotches (until the ink ran, annihilating all remaining patches of white).Two men stood near the gate—unarmed and undressed, in nothing but their undershirts and boots. Our fervor, our kinship with the elements, our entirety, were all for naught.“Jesus Christ! What bores!” Artem exclaimed. “How boring you are!”“Maybe boring for us, but fireworks for them,” Sanko said, dismounting his horse.“The fear of death engenders creativity,” our otaman—a distinguished philosopher of the early twentieth century, that demonic breed—prophesied.He went on, “Excuse me, but with all due respect, we are not going to search you. Just show us right away where the money is. Why are there so few of you? Don't say there's not much money. I want piles and piles of money! If you don't show it to us, we'll print our own on your skin. Believe me, we will.”We entered the factory grounds. There were no workers, only an enormous mountain of sugar beets that looked like a pile of coal from a distance and a pile of dead rats from up close.“So, did you have a good year?” Artem asked a man in an undershirt.“Not really—too dry.”“Nah, that's fine. You wouldn't have been able to gather most of the harvest this year anyway. There's a fire burning across all of Ukraine, all of Russia. The whole world!”While Artem tossed thoughts like well-chewed sunflower seeds into the crowd, the two men quietly stepped aside and then ran fast ahead to the factory's main hall. The gigantic door slammed shut. The gate was locked behind us! The windows were smashed! The factory roared from inside like a cumbersome machine starting up. Bullets whirred through every window.“Bastards! It's a trap! Quick, after me!”Still on horseback, Artem bounded over to a vast window, low to the ground, and smashed it mercilessly. He broke the frame and jumped inside on his horse. I and a few others followed. We broke into their lair, threw open the doors, and let the other warriors inside.Iron vats of hot sugar were steaming, pipes were clattering; machinery groaned.“Parasites!” Artem gritted his teeth. “I'll get you. I'll get you red sons of bitches. Painted whores!”At the word “painted,” his horse fell to the ground. Lying prone, Artem continued fighting, but the red soldiers wouldn't let him stand. Fighting nearby, I rode over to assist but did not know where to aim. Artem got up, ran forward, and brought his sword down on the head of the closest soldier, all the way to the middle of his skull, to the bridge of his nose. It was like butchering a pig. Artem thrust the sword into the buttock of another who was fleeing and cut off his leg at the bend in the knee.“I'll cut off every last one of your asses! Cut off your asses!” Artem bellowed.A half hour later, the dead were lying, the captured sitting, and the victors doing anything they pleased.“Skorsky, are there a lot of casualties?” I asked the doctor, whose hour it was. I hoped not, because I was too tired to help him.“Just a few. The dead are already dead, and the wounded are not ours.”Though Skorsky rarely asked my help, and though I'd become an ordinary soldier, the doctor in me was still present in the most unpleasant attribute—knowledge. Others saw an eviscerated man, pieces of dusty flesh smeared with clay, soil, sand, and straw. I saw a perfectly formed kidney hanging perfectly from the rest of its body like a child's mitten from its coat. You could try this death on for size. Wear it like a sanbenito of the Inquisition.Artem counted the money and then lay on the floor alongside the gigantic sugar mountain in the middle of the room. From time to time, the crystals rustled as they fell.“I didn't think you'd be such a fighter!” the otaman said without turning toward me. “I thought you'd be healing us. You'd keep to the rear and we'd hide you like a girl. But here you are, in the vanguard, like a lion!”“I got excited,” I told him, choosing not to react to the “girl” part.“’Cause Alina said there was no sense counting on you to fight.”“Really?”“Does that sting?”“Why would it? I'm a doctor—not everyone is. It requires a brain. Unlike waving a sword.”“Yeah, yeah. I gave her gladiolas. We were lying in the boat near that castle, doing all manner of things, and she told me all about you. How you met.”“You were lying in that boat talking about me?”“It was the day before you left Kyiv. You agreed to go with the anarchists so quickly!”“Were you surprised? Doctors make fast decisions.”“But you probably had great prospects. Your parents are rich, right?”“And who are your parents?”“Probably all your relatives fled abroad—bourgeois. Why did you stay?”“What the hell's your point?”“Alina, by the way, died a while ago. Probably.”“Don't jinx her.”“Listen here,” he said, staring at the ceiling. “And listen good. If you have designs on her—dead or alive—it's best you castrate yourself now.”“After you.”“If I want to kill somebody, you know, I just do it.”At last he looked at me. I was lying on the floor nearby and looking in his direction, sweaty and relaxed, my appearance complemented by my disdain for his opinion, his authority, his stupid hat. His everything.Artem raised his arm above his head, stuck a finger in the sugar mountain, and licked it. We both got up. Had I anticipated this turn of events, I would have readied a gift for him. Artem held his revolver. Under my hand I found a knife the workers used for gathering beets: it was a deliberately sharpened arc they sank into the swollen brassicas. I jumped up and quickly stepped around the sugar mountain.Artem's bullet hit a pane and broke the glass.“Not man enough for hand-to-hand?”The otaman shot again.“You should've challenged me to a duel, you romantic!”Encrusted with white crystals, I charged Artem from the sugar mountain. We fell in, and the sugar stuck in our hair, mustaches, nostrils, armpits.The gang ran in to get us apart, then backed off because it had nothing to do with them. By now the sugar mountain had burst its banks. Of the once perfect pyramid, a deformed mound remained.Wounded, Artem fell on the sugar mound, turning the white red.I stood before the gang sugar-coated and holding a bloody hook. The old otaman was drawing his last breath. Blood trickled from the corner of Artem's mouth and streamed from the left side of his breast.“What's the commotion?” Old Roman had just come in.“Be quiet,” the boys told him. And a good thing they did.“You killed him? You killed the otaman!”“Shut your mouth,” the boys told him.“You... ”I slugged Roman's stinky herring mouth. How did that son of a bitch find pickled herring in a sugar factory? My fist was now bigger and stronger than ever before, a steel anvil that could split nails and shatter memorial plaques. The unfortunate man's jaw twisted like an upper millstone that had gone off track from the lower.“Let's get out of here and go to Makhno's camp,” I gave my first order.We galloped so fast the grass burned beneath us. The birds and bugs had no time to fly out of the way; hooves trampled the burrows of rodents who didn't dare crawl out of their holes for a long time after. We raced like no one had ever raced before.The steppe, that sly fox, pretended to be an innocent fool. The steppe said, “I'm like Adam: I don't even know my own name.” But its grass harbored the tracks of thousands of armies and the heels of Herodotus, the crunch of Trypillia vessels, and the smell of Scythian hemp, Roman coins, clay figures of wolf people, the chevrons of Denikin's army, glass from the Chekists’ ruby stars, traces of uranium from flying saucers. I threatened it: “Steppe, show me your layers, or I will burn you, plow you under, flood you.” But it just replied: “I'm like Adam: I don't yet know my name.”I lost geography as if it were a silver coin. It fell out of my pocket and rolled through the feather grass that blanketed the steppe in white foam. The open space ahead was so endless that the whole world might as well have been steppe. If people ended up here from somewhere else, they would conclude they were on another planet. The coin fell and became an argentum, became one with the ring on the hand of the princess who had one green eye and one blue, with the twisted candlestick at the monastery on the other side of the steppe, with melted ingots. It broke down into simpler elements, simpler and simpler yet. The horse carried me spreading the seeds of northern plants to the south, just as southern riders had once brought flowers and weeds to the north. And then I turned back. Just as I had no geography, I had no time. Every night I fell asleep with the thought that the next day I would again race. Through all spacelessness, all timelessness. I exchanged one horse for another, got on a train, on a boat, traversed forty versts on foot—in rain that brought the river up to the road, in heat that overturned cattle. The earth I walked on became mine. Mine was the water in the lakes and springs, clean water, dirty water, enlightened water, contaminated with oil, stinking of algae, of fish that died in wells, stinking of the memory of atrocities, water as clean as broken bread. The water did not become Alina.I was doing this for her: I got the basturma out from under my saddle, sodden with the horse's sweat, sliced the throat of a rich man whose daughter I had danced with at a ball, climbed into a vat of beet juice and took a sugar bath, carried out the expropriation of the savings banks, wiped the sweat from my face with my shirt—and the cloth turned red; I didn't know from what. If it was someone else's blood, I didn't care; if it was my own, even less.We mostly came across Reds. We scraped them up like old red paint on a door in order to repaint the boards black. Black looked better. Red is tasteless, but black has style. Healthy men died before us of myocardial rupture like bunnies found in the nest. The ones whose hearts were sewn of steel wire envied the deceased. Seizing estates, banks, distilleries, and prisons reminded us of gathering in the harvest. If you're too lazy to pick an apple, you can shake the tree; some of the fruit gets bruised when it falls. We seized buildings like we were shaking apple trees. No one picked the fruits, we just shook: shook under the beds, under the tables, behind the curtains. No, there was no picking. We just shook until the red juice spurted from the apples.Near the Khorol River with Father Makhno and me in charge, we captured sixteen machine guns and four cannons, as well as five hundred prisoners who immediately came over to our side. The villagers voluntarily gave us bread and cheese, chickens and kvas. People joined us. The front of the machine-gun cart said “You can't run,” and “You won't catch us” at the back. We took factory after factory. Millions of karbovantsi, thousands of poods of sugar, weapons. We smashed the telephone exchanges and captured the telegraphs. We made alliances with some and then with others. Lenin, Wrangel, Frunze, the Germans, Chinese, Australians, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Cleopatra, Maria Theresa Walburga Amalia Christina. We ran the steppe. There were a hundred thousand of us. There were three hundred thousand of them. There were three hundred thousand of us. There were a million of them. There were two million of them. We were all of humanity. We were so many that we were none.The nobles’ estates were long ago forsaken. In the people's deepest trunks lay silks and guipure laces that were once perhaps used only to cover a table. Five steps from the barn in the direction of the pear tree, some silver candlesticks are buried; there's a plaster figure of an angel in the chicken coop, covered with shit and feathers.I was reluctant to be going to my home, but I didn't see any way out. Fate intended me to be a different being from the one I was before.Here my grandfathers and great-grandfathers were born. Here the ones who caused my grandfathers and great-grandfathers to flee had stopped. When we were still far off I noticed that someone was in the house. It was our men—Skorsky had brought them here, about twenty in all. I asked Sanko, whom I had walked with side by side more than once, where the doctor was now. All the men answered that he was around somewhere, but I didn't see him that evening.In 1918, the spirit of my great-grandfather Stepan, along with my mother and uncle, had gotten into a britzka and scrambled off to Paris, to Napoleon, against whom my great-grandfather had fought with the Cossacks, to whom the Russians promised to return self-rule. Following him in the cart went the soul of Grandpa Oleh, who lost a finger when he cut down the old linden near the house; his second finger was blown off by a cannonball near Balaklava, and later his entire hand was cut off by some Turk. Next went the spirit of my father, also Stepan, who did not take part in any war but died of measles at the age of forty. They all got the hell out of here. First, they went to Kyiv, led by my mother, Tamara Makarivna, in order to collect Uncle's family and me, their son. And their son, it turns out, has now come back to rob his own home (I didn't drive my war buddies away, did I?). It's a shame that I didn't know where the bathtub was, or whatever they bathed me in when I was small. It would have been good to walk through the ranks of anarchists with that basin and tell them all to spit into it.Remembering every room, I carried Alina upstairs to my mother's bedchamber. There was no longer furniture or pictures, only bare walls. The bed and mattress remained, but that was enough. Mother hated noise, so she set up her room far away from the running in the halls and the creaks on the stairs. I adjusted the mattress; in a gap, looking like a stalk of wheat, there lay a gold bracelet that she lost in the haste and that the thieves could not find in the mayhem. I tucked it into my pocket.The place could still be saved. It was strong, built under the leadership of my grandfather, who knew how to do it right. He built a sawmill, a gristmill, a dress factory (today it's probably been ransacked, maybe even by our own men).Alina had a complete, displaced break in her right fibula. We needed water first. I went downstairs—the guys were dragging out the piano like an old cow to the slaughter.“What are you doing with that?”“Taking it out.”“Why?”“What's it to you? We want to have fun.”“Can you play?”“We're not your bourgeois lily-handed bitches.”They couldn't play, but they were famous at destruction. “Noise is the music of the new time,” one of the smarter among them might have said. “But noise is the opposite of music. Just as a rose is the opposite of your ugly mugs,” I'd have responded if there was anyone to say it to. I could also have said that this was a Bosendorfer grand piano, that it was very valuable—but do the guys not deserve such a luxury?“Why are you so boring? We're relaxing.”“Then let me play a little first.”“Go ahead, but fast. One-two.”So I played. As before. My fingers ran up and down the black and white keys, which weren't simply keys of these, the simplest, colors. These were the keys that remembered my fingers specifically—achieved by that slovenly German Katerina, our governess. She knew a bundle of languages, could play the piano, and was interested in the latest scientific discoveries. But she had not an ounce of sympathy for anyone who couldn't master anything on the first try. More than once she hit my pinkie against the black key that remembered every one of its four thousand touches. She would pound it on the key and shout, “Si bémol! Si bémol,” and later bang my fingers and translate, “B flach! B flach!”I played. I could not expose myself, so the only thing I could do was believe in miracles. What if these coarse men saw value in this bit of furniture so unintelligible to them? And what if they didn't destroy it, this emblem of my childhood, my land, my air, which I could protect in no other way? My air. My water.“Shchedryk, shchedryk, shchedrivochka,” one of them who recognized the tune began to sing along.“Look at you.” They did not expect music from me, who had until recently been drinking blood like water.They said, “Again, again!”A group of curious men gathered around me. They were ordinary farmers, thieves, and recidivists, peasants and workers, everyone except for Skorsky. They needed this music as they needed baths. The music cleansed them from the inside, perhaps. They had not heard anything besides the whistle of a bullet, the neighing of a horse, or the knocking of a chisel and the whirring of a saw, amputating limbs, for a long time.But it could not go on long. I did not close the piano lid, just stood and went to fetch water for Alina, leaving the unfinished song for later. The well was to the north—that is, at the “Head.” My father once promised to give me a compass if I could learn to identify the ends of the earth by means of the sun. And to make it easier to remember, I gave each one of them a name: the east where the day begins was “Right” (my right hand), the west “Left,” the north “Head,” and the south “Feet.” Back when I could still do whatever I wanted all day long, I would wake in the morning and say: I'm going to the Feet. The mound was at the Feet, Left had the river, Right had the forest. It was only to the Head that I rarely went, because a village was located there. When the villagers saw me, they would speak in whispers and avoid the master's son.... I wiped her brow and her burning, sunken cheeks. I lay down next to her to feel the heat of her skin.When the fire in Alina calmed slightly, I went out into our orchard. My father had once been given a gift from Japan—a tulip tree that blossomed with yellow-green flowers. It had to have grown in the time that I was away. It would have been fatal had it been cut down. I again took the stairs down into the drawing room and came across nobody—they had all disappeared in search of food or were hidden away in their burrows. In the middle of the hall, like an opened rib cage, was the piano, irreparably shattered.B Flach! B Flach!Translation © Ali Kinsella 2022. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Rembrandt BookProfessor Emeritus John Adkins RichardsonThe Rembrandt Book by Gary Schwartz. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2006, 384 pp. $40.95, cloth.This truly is the Rembrandt book. Substantial in every way, it is physically imposing, magnificently printed on heavy, glossy stock and profusely illustrated with splendid color reproductions of all the master’s major works and many sketches and preparatory drawings, as well as etchings and dry-point engravings. Gary (...) Schwartz, who studied art history at New York University and Johns Hopkins University, is now living in the Netherlands. The merits of his book are enormous. Not only is it filled with magnificent reproductions, there are tables and graphs detailing such things as the number of Rembrandt paintings in catalogues from 1836 to 1992; analyses of the artist’s borrowings and adaptations in five-year periods; key dates in the life of the man; Rembrandt’s relation to the forms of sale for paintings in the Dutch seventeenth century; and so on. There is even a computer rendering of the famous depiction of Captain Banning Cocq’s Company of Guards at the Gates of Amsterdam (popularly called The Night Watch), specifying the weapons shown and identifying all present, either by name and title or by a description, such as “girl in gold and blue,” “pikeman,” “musketeer,” etc.A sampling of the chapter headings and subcategories suggests just how comprehensive is Schwartz’s treatment: 1. Introduction, 2. A Dutch Artist’s Life, 3. Family, Loved Ones, Households, 4. Craft, 5. Earning and Spending, 6. Patrons, 7. Landscape, 8. Humankind, 9. Man and God. Just the specifics of the last chapter are remarkably capacious: Holy Family; Christ’s Ministry; Passion, Death and Afterlife; Divine Intervention; Holy People; Moral Examples from the Old Testament; The Man of God, Simeon; Afterlife; and Rembrandt as a Christian Rhetorician of the Brush. It’s hard to imagine a better reference for the lay reader than The Rembrandt Book.The book is also full of interesting contrasts of opinion as well as some surprising remarks. As for one of the latter, Schwartz writes that Rembrandt’s “portraits are said to be more ‘psychological’ than those of his contemporaries. What this might mean I frankly do not understand” (213). He goes on to note that the field of psychology did not exist in Rembrandt’s time. However, from long before its invention people spoke of Rembrandt’s ability to reveal the soul of the sitter. Indeed, the reason I was not surprised, although somewhat distressed, when the Rembrandt Research Project—a group of connoisseurs set up in 1969 with the explicit charge of authenticating all works ascribed to the master—announced in 1985 that The Man with a Golden Helmet in Berlin was not by the master at all, was that I had all along been troubled by this face that lacked the quality of animation in repose so [End Page 115] characteristic of Rembrandt portraits. Schwartz thinks the artist would have to have relied upon the ancient theory of the humors to do “characterological descriptions” of his sitters, and that in portraiture, “such characterizations would quickly resemble caricatures.” And, indeed, they do, but in profoundly subtle ways, much as someone like the popular illustrator Norman Rockwell employed tiny caricature-like distortions to project a kind of homely Americanism. I’m not comparing Rockwell to Rembrandt but choosing a realistic illustrator in whose work the trick is more apparent. Caricature can be as broad as it is in Jacques Callot, William Hogarth, or Honoré Daumier and yet be a feature of true art. Or so it seems to me, admittedly, a sometimes cartoonist as well as painter and engraver.Schwartz’s completeness of coverage leads him to include, in addition to superb drawings and prints, some that are so careless and hasty as to make one doubt their authenticity. One of the works of marginal quality is an etching of Six’s Bridge, which is said to have been created outdoors, hastily, on the site. This is a hotly debated issue. Rembrandt is known to have carried “varnished”—that is, grounded—copper etching plates, so there wouldn’t seem much reason to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Histories of Science in Early Modern Europe:IntroductionRobert GouldingIn 1713, Pierre Rémond de Montmort wrote to the mathematician Nicolas Bernoulli:It would be desirable if someone wanted to take the trouble to instruct how and in what order the discoveries in mathematics have come about.... The histories of painting, of music, of medicine have been written. A good history of mathematics, especially of geometry, would be a much more interesting (...) and useful work.... Such a work, if done well, could be regarded to some extent as a history of the human mind, since it is in this science, more than in anything else, that man makes known that gift of intelligence that God has given him to rise above all other creatures.1Such a history of mathematics was attempted by Jean-Etienne Montucla in his Histoire des mathématiques (first printed in 1758, and reissued in a [End Page 33] greatly expanded form in 1799).2 Montucla's great work is generally acknowledged as the first genuine history of mathematics. According to some modern historians, previous attempts at such a history had amounted to little more than collections of anecdotes, biographies or exhaustive bibliographies: "jumbles of names, dates and titles," as one writer in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography characterized them.3 Montucla, on the other hand, was thoroughly animated by the Enlightenment project expressed in Rémond's letter, and his Histoire was a philosophical history of the "development of the human mind," as he himself described it.4 It was precisely Montucla's vision of what mathematics meant and his conviction that mathematics itself must change in order to reflect the historical elevation of the human intellect, that allowed him to transform the scattered dates and anecdotes of his predecessors into a genuine history. All subsequent histories of mathematics—until the most recent social histories5 —have been in a sense "footnotes to Montucla."The papers here argue that there were indeed histories of mathematics before Montucla which are worthy of scholarly attention, and that the dismissal of Renaissance histories of science as nothing more than a "cloud of fine adjectives and metaphors" is unfair (although it contains a germ of truth). Anthony Grafton has argued in an article on the historical writings of Cardano, Rheticus, and Kepler, that the purpose of such texts was not so much to trace what actually happened, as to justify the study of a subject often derided—by both humanist and scholastic writers—as obscure, useless and undignified.6 The following four papers go further in arguing that writings in this genre (or, at least, some writings in this genre) were not limited to this characteristically humanist objective. Authors did not just use their histories to persuade others. They themselves relied on historical narratives in order to think about their discipline, define its parts, distinguish among its acceptable and unacceptable forms and prescribe its content [End Page 34] and method of teaching. By placing their discipline into a historical context shared by other, more mainstream humanistic arts, moreover, they could draw upon the large, narrative structures which Renaissance humanists had adapted to understand human intellectual and cultural development, origins, progress and decline.James Byrne's article highlights a disparity of vision between those humanists who treated the origin of the arts as just another subject for humanistic display; and those (like Regiomontanus) who were invested in the arts and wrote their histories from an insider's perspective. Alongside Regiomontanus, one could include several other authors treated in this collection, such as Thomas Vaughan, Peter Ramus, and Henry Savile. In each case, history provided a means for working through problems of the legitimacy and nature of their disciplines. While their writings are not "histories of the human mind," their interests went beyond mere rehearsal of anecdotes. Ramus's histories, for instance, written 200 years before Montucla's Histoire, had the kind of unifying vision which de Montmort demanded, and shared Montucla's concern to find a meaning in the development of mathematics. Ramus, and the supporters and detractors he spawned, were convinced that constructing the history of this science was crucial to understanding how and why human beings have... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.4 (2003) 12-19 [Access article in PDF] The Concept of Freedom in Art Education in Japan The concept of freedom has played a very important role in art education in Japan. Needless to say, freedom has been regarded as an essential principle of education in the West. Writers from Jean Jacques Rousseau to John Dewey stressed the significance of freedom in education. Especially, in (...) the field of art education, Frantz Cizek, Viktor Lowenfeld, and Herbert Read emphasized the importance of children's free expression in relation to creativity. This article examines the concept of freedom in art education in Japan, focusing on the ideas of two major non-governmental movements in art education; the Free-Expression Movement in the 1920s and the Creative Aesthetic Education Movement in the 1950s-1960s. Although both movements have already declined, their impacts are still felt in Japanese art education. The Beginning of Art Education in Japan In the early Meiji Era (1868-1912), art education was introduced to Japan when the modern school system was imported from the West. In 1872, the first government drawing textbook; Seiga Shinan [Guide to Western Pictures] was published based on a Japanese translation of British drawing manuals. 1 In this period, the purpose of art class was to teach the basic skill of mechanical drawing for industrial development; the method consisted of merely copying model pictures in the drawing textbook. In 1910, Akira Shirahama, who spent three years in Europe and the United States surveying art education, edited Shintei Gacho [New Textbook of Drawing]. As Okazaki points out, Shirahama, who was impressed by the art curriculum in the public schools of the United States, referred to the importance of children's creative imagination; however, the new textbook did not fully reflect the idea. 2 Thus, the practice of art class was limited to copying textbooks, and children's free expression was not considered important in art class. Until this period, the issue of freedom did not correlate to art education. The Free Expression Movement in the Taisho Era After the World War I, a democratic movement prevailed during the Taisho Era (1912-1926) in Japan. This movement, called Taisho Democracy, influenced various parts of Japanese life including politics. In the field of education, many democratic ideas of education were introduced from the West and books on progressive educational thought such as John Dewey's Democracy and Education were translated into Japanese. Child-centered education also became popular among progressive teachers. During this period, Jiyuga KyouikuUndo, the Free-Drawing Education movement, was started by Kanae Yamamoto. Okazaki describes this epoch-making movement as "the remarkable movement of art education in 1919 which began to change art education philosophy." 3 It was the first time the issue of freedom was raised in art education in Japan. [End Page 13] Yamamoto's Concept of Freedom Kanae Yamamoto, born in 1882, studied Western painting at the Tokyo Fine Arts School. After graduation, he started his career as a print artist and set off for Europe in 1912. He stayed in France to study art and experienced the much freer atmosphere in Europe compared to Japan. When he returned to Japan via Russia in 1916, he encountered an exhibition of children's paintings in Moscow. The free expression of the Russian children's paintings deeply impressed him.After Yamamoto's return from Europe, he organized the first exhibition of children's free painting in Japan and established Japan Children's Free Drawing Association in 1919. The exhibition was given great attention by the public, who, influenced by the Taisho democratic movement, was becoming very interested in democratic education. Yamamoto's book; Free Drawing Education was published in 1921. In his usage, the term "freedom" is sometimes synonymous with creativity. 4 He explained the meaning of freedom in his education theory: Our education of freedom is not to educate as teachers like. It is not a worship of freedom showing the model of freedom but to teach freedom itself....In my belief, the essence of human beings will never... (shrink)

This article draws on insights of young people learning to make natural pigments and traditional paintings in acute climate vulnerable areas. Why do they paint during ongoing crises and how do they voice their future concerns? Critical realism is applied as a meta-theory in this field-based study in a slum area in Kolkata and the Sundarbans mangrove forest. Methods comprise focus groups, semi-structured interviews, and participant observation. Analysis was done in an abductive process, applying Roy Bhaskar’s model of ‘four-planar social (...) being’. The analysis demonstrates how painting with natural pigments leads the young ones towards: (a) discovering beauty in nature (b) transcendence of borders (c) transformation and responsible action (d) discovering one’s own dignity. Findings are discussed considering the key concepts co-presence and crisis system. I reflect upon how this local effort can inspire a new economy, with the signposts: becoming co-present with the natural world and the necessity of beauty. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss cases of replication in the visual arts, with particular focus on paintings. In the first part, I focus on painted copies, that is, manual reproductions of paintings created by artists. Painted copies are sometimes used for the purpose of aesthetic education on the original. I explore the relation between the creation of painted copies and their use as aesthetic surrogates of the original artwork and draw a positive conclusion on the aesthetic benefits of replica production (...) by artists. A skeptical conclusion follows regarding the use of such replicas as surrogates for the original painting. The second part of the paper concerns mechanically produced replicas, such as photographs and 3-D prints. On the basis of some of the claims made in the first part, I set conditions that mechanically produced replicas need to meet in order to function as aesthetic surrogates of an original. I argue that perfect aesthetic surrogates are either already available or at least possible. I conclude by considering two possible objections. (shrink)

continent. 1.3 (2011): 208-212. … intervals of destructuring paradoxically carry the momentum for the ongoing process by which thought and perception are brought into relation toward transformative action. —Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation 1 Facing a blank canvas or blank page is a moment of pure potential, one that can be enervating or paralyzing. It causes a pause, a hesitation, in anticipation of the moment of inception—even of one that never comes. The implication is that the (...) blank is yours in that moment, and it calls on you to act on it, to think into it, to create on it. Each blank canvas gives you time, of an undefined length, to transform that canvas’ inherent potential into a work. This two-dimensional plane of potential can be projected into a space, which the body can then occupy. When you “destructure” a space in the same way, prepare it to be a blank, much as you build a canvas, you allow your entire body to enter the space of potential, and you rest in anticipation of work, like the hand poised above the page. Artists have found that the deliberate creation of that space of potential through sealing the space and painting it white, thereby erasing details and distractions, can be such a transformative experience as to help define their whole practice. The cessation of distraction, the absence of indicator that a “blanked” workspace provides allows for a new presence of mind, it gives them the room, literally, to move into their work, and from there to move their work into the world. The workspace for the artist, the studio, is often perceived as a lab-like condensation of the gallery or museum, the traditional and idealized white cube. Similarly, with the blank page, a concrete relation between space and time comes forward as the intentional simplification of the architecture changes behavior and perception within the space. The work of “blanking” the studio space is a meditative reduction, an erasure, and in a way, an attempt at drawing away from the world beyond the studio - the sealed space is meant to recede from reality, to become abstracted by its willed lack of details and distractions. Within that space the time for a new beginning is made more present, more attainable, and the focus it fosters becomes another tool to aid creation. At the formative moment of his artistic practice, Tom Friedman used the blank of his studio, saturated in white, sealed off from the world, to fight velocity. He describes how he projected his vision of the end goal, the museum - a place he believes to be defined by slow contemplation - onto his own studio experience. He then sat and reflected on common objects, one by one, framed by the blank box he had created. The domestic objects he brought into the space to study foreshadow his mature works, where often the quotidian object has a single additional element – his intense labor. Friedman makes discrete objects through absurdly intense and focused labor, epitomized, perhaps by his 1,000 hours of Staring , made from 1992-97: Tom Friedman. 1000 Hours of Staring (1992-1997) His labor, to use his own words, is his way to “bring all of who you are to the experience.” Friedman shares his labor, allows the slow, deliberate pace of his work born in the studio to penetrate the museum. Nothing seems effortless, or a gesture, the labor is apparent, displayed, and tangible. He gives us the labor, the personal investment in the physical that saved art for him, that divorced the work from the language he cites as a factor of alienation. When we see his work we do not see words, we see acts, we see objects. He has forced the studio as workspace into the exhibition space, as he stuffs hundreds of more hours of labor into his shows with each new piece, filling the space with material and labor, material and labor – his involvement, his investment, is his gift to us as the viewers, as he introduces the laborious and contemplative pace he feels belongs to the museum. He saves us also from the alienation of language, which first drove him into the sealed studio and away from the discourse of his school. He presents us with his real, the object which stands in stark contrast to the white slate of the studio, the sealed white box he started from, where his individual, self-contained objects begin and end, completed through the intensity of isolation, first of the individual artist, and then of the material he chooses to slowly, slowly, slowly work: Tom Friedman. Untitled (1992) In his in-depth analysis of galleries as a blank white cube, Brian O’Doherty emphasizes the religious connotations implied in the strict laws of the exhibition space and the valuation, aesthetics and elements of control he feels it imposes upon the work. Like Friedman, he recognizes the power of the restricted space – indicating the “perceptual fields of force” – that act on any object introduced into it. Going beyond Friedman’s assessment of the space as highly utilitarian for focusing his perception, O’Doherty emphasizes the rejection of the physical body of the artist or observer, saying that the cube allows for only observation - eyes and mind. He later parallels the picture frame as a psychological container for the artist with the room as the same for the observer. In both cases, this is an emphasis on the alienating nature of the relationship – just as the artist is kept out of the frame by the picture, in the gallery the art forces the body of the spectator out, calling for a self-referential purity. Patrick Ireland. White Cube (1998) O’Doherty makes a point of saying that the installation shot of the gallery without figures is “one of the icons of our visual culture.” In recent years, however, installation shots have begun to include figures, in some cases they are essential to understanding the scale and even the nature of the work, specifically with work that captures the experience of the space and the way that it varies from a white cube. The work of Olafur Eliasson is a case in point, as the Danish artist uses elements of scientific and natural phenomena to alter perception within the controlled gallery environment, tweaking and redirecting O’Doherty’s “perceptual fields of force” to make points about the act of seeing, or seeing yourself seeing, to quote the artist. This indicates a shift in the role of the artwork, not to exclude the body and stand discretely and self-sufficiently, but to include it, to manipulate it and to make the observer aware of the nature of that manipulation and the work’s ability to manipulate. Olafur Eliasson. 360º room for all colours (2002) So though in O’Doherty’s analysis, the intense blankness of the gallery pushed the observer out in favor of the artwork’s isolation, artists can replicate this inhumane sterility in their own workspace to focus their work on the influence of the gallery right from inception. This can be interpreted as an almost opposite understanding of the purpose of sealing and whitewashing the workspace as stated by Friedman. He sought a refuge from the critical language of the art school, and a space that, like the museum, gave him a protracted sense of time, and, he felt, welcomed him in, “to bring all of who you are,” as opposed to O’Doherty’s feeling that the museum was asking you, at least in body, to leave, and allow the work to take on its own life. Friedman does not seem to imply the tension with the cube and critical stance that O’Doherty prioritizes. Where Friedman finds a refuge, O’Doherty defines an opponent. In a third position, Robert Irwin describes his sealed studio space as “the world.” Though he made the same effort as Friedman to seal out all influences and distractions, he implies that he is in dialogue with the world through his own concentration and perception. This is reminiscent of the nature of the monad, as interpreted by Deleuze, a unity that envelops a multiplicity, a sealed container that contains the universe. He went through the same ritual described by Friedman, sealing up the space, painting it white, and then forcing himself to remain inside, staring at his own work, training his concentration relentlessly. But he found that the room became the distraction: …he became aware that a thin crack along the wall a few yards away from the canvas likewise exerted its presence; that when he plastered that crack over and repainted the wall, the canvas itself presented an entirely new aspect.2 The context was in a relentless dialogue with the work, and trying to neutralize that dialogue, to mute the conversation between space and object, became part of his ritual as he “fixed” his space each day in the hope of total concentration on the work. Ultimately, Irwin shaped the trajectory of his art by relinquishing the studio, establishing a post-studio practice, where the work is conceived and created out in the world, in dialogue with the world and reflective of the conditions it finds surrounding it. The white cube failed to ever achieve neutrality, his heightened concentration prevented him from ever neutralizing the space, so, instead of continuing to try to maintain the charade of a perfect blank, he acknowledged the unstoppable voice of place and turned all his efforts onto the object and the world, as a constant dialogue. Some artists push their studio space far from purity, domesticating it like a lair or a living room, and others destroy it, fill it with chaos or detritus, blacken or clutter it so as never to be starting from a blank, and thereby try to avoid the anxiety of facing that void. Similarly artists may never prepare a white canvas, a clean page, a marble block, or other form that is intentionally lacking, in order to try to escape the dialogue with emptiness. But Irwin, like O’Doherty, found an opponent in the white cube, and he learned not to fight it, rather he ended the conflict by making it an ally, an interlocutor, a collaborator. We can vainly strive to start from nothing, to find the lull, the clearing, and to always consider what we do in balance with the empty set. Somehow that intangible cloud of hazy nothingness, that softness of a lapse continually offers a place to bounce off of, to react to, to wrestle with, to rest with, in tension, or a place to begin. Robert Irwin. Excursus: Homage to the Square3 (1998) NOTES 1 Massumi. Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. p271. 2 MOMA, NY. Eliasson, 360 ? Room for All Colours . Installation. 2002. (shrink)

Capricci are nonsense drawings that delineate an elusive but inevitable sense behind or, better, within the palpable nonsense of the elementary proposition of a drawing; they are capers on a tightrope stretched between the poles of pathos and the ridiculous. We shall succeed in not falling only if we step forward boldly and know not only what we are doing but also what we are up against in the making of a picture as well as in living in the world. (...) For the world, in its yawning impudence of death and the dance of blind eagerness, ambition, and noisy speechlessness, makes us look to art not, or not necessarily, to escape from the world but rather to learn how to take its measure.... There is a painting ["St. Vincent Ferrer Preaching"] joined to the Passion cycle in S. Polo which demonstrates as well as any paradox ever will how Giandomenico joined piety and irony in his religious art without curtailing the glory of either. He arrives, as it were, at a God-fearing irony. We see St. Vincent Ferrer preaching. He speaks so eloquently, so convincingly in praise of the divine truth, that light shines forth from him and angel's wings grow on his shoulders. Fascinated by the miracle but even more so by the saint's words, his audience sits spellbound at his feet; in the foreground, however, sits a youth, a fop perhaps, gorgeously dressed, with a singular smile on his face, his hand musingly poised to his cheek, who looks at us quizzically. He is the link between us and the miracle. "Can you believe it?" says the smile, and perhaps "I did not—and yes—how can you now not believe it, you need but look - as I did - for there it is!" It is, I think, the face of one who knows about the truth of the absurd and its inner logic. Credo quia absurdum: if it were not so, we could prove the existence of God by feeding data into a computer, and there would be many believers, whose faith, in turn, deserved but little credit. Needless to say, perhaps, the face that so speaks to us in laughter joined to wonder is a self-portrait.1 · 1. In S. Polo the painting of St. Vincent Ferrer Preaching hangs opposite a matching picture of The Finding of the True Cross. There is a beautiful young woman on the right who looks at us beseechingly and with her right hand points at the cross. Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo who looks out of St. Vincent Ferrer Preaching cannot help but see this lady and be affected by her earnest gesture. For a reproduction of the painting, see Maruz, G. D. Tiepolo, plate 22. Philipp P. Fehl is a professor in the department of art and design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has edited Franciscus Junius: The Literature of Classical Art. His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, "Turner's Classicism and the Problem of Periodization in the History of Art," appeared in the Autumn 1976 issue; the present essay was delivered in an earlier version at Stanford University in 1976 and is included in his collection of essays, Art and Mortality. His capricci, Birds with Titles, were exhibited in a one-man show at Kenyon College. (shrink)

Capricci are nonsense drawings that delineate an elusive but inevitable sense behind or, better, within the palpable nonsense of the elementary proposition of a drawing; they are capers on a tightrope stretched between the poles of pathos and the ridiculous. We shall succeed in not falling only if we step forward boldly and know not only what we are doing but also what we are up against in the making of a picture as well as in living in the world. (...) For the world, in its yawning impudence of death and the dance of blind eagerness, ambition, and noisy speechlessness, makes us look to art not, or not necessarily, to escape from the world but rather to learn how to take its measure. . . . There is a painting ["St. Vincent Ferrer Preaching"] joined to the Passion cycle in S. Polo which demonstrates as well as any paradox ever will how Giandomenico joined piety and irony in his religious art without curtailing the glory of either. He arrives, as it were, at a God-fearing irony. We see St. Vincent Ferrer preaching. He speaks so eloquently, so convincingly in praise of the divine truth, that light shines forth from him and angel's wings grow on his shoulders. Fascinated by the miracle but even more so by the saint's words, his audience sits spellbound at his feet; in the foreground, however, sits a youth, a fop perhaps, gorgeously dressed, with a singular smile on his face, his hand musingly poised to his cheek, who looks at us quizzically. He is the link between us and the miracle. "Can you believe it?" says the smile, and perhaps "I did not—and yes—how can you now not believe it, you need but look - as I did - for there it is!" It is, I think, the face of one who knows about the truth of the absurd and its inner logic. Credo quia absurdum: if it were not so, we could prove the existence of God by feeding data into a computer, and there would be many believers, whose faith, in turn, deserved but little credit. Needless to say, perhaps, the face that so speaks to us in laughter joined to wonder is a self-portrait.1 · 1. In S. Polo the painting of St. Vincent Ferrer Preaching hangs opposite a matching picture of The Finding of the True Cross. There is a beautiful young woman on the right who looks at us beseechingly and with her right hand points at the cross. Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo who looks out of St. Vincent Ferrer Preaching cannot help but see this lady and be affected by her earnest gesture. For a reproduction of the painting, see Maruz, G. D. Tiepolo, plate 22. Philipp P. Fehl is a professor in the department of art and design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has edited Franciscus Junius: The Literature of Classical Art. His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, "Turner's Classicism and the Problem of Periodization in the History of Art," appeared in the Autumn 1976 issue; the present essay was delivered in an earlier version at Stanford University in 1976 and is included in his collection of essays, Art and Mortality. His capricci, Birds with Titles, were exhibited in a one-man show at Kenyon College. (shrink)

Kendall Walton's Mimesis as Make-Believe is the most significant event in Anglo-American aesthetics in many a year, and joins a small pantheon of landmark books such as Nelson Goodman's Languages of Art, Richard Wollheim's Art and Its Objects and Arthur Danto's Transfiguration of the Commonplace. Walton's aim is to provide a comprehensive account of the representational arts—literature, drama, cinema, painting, drawing, sculpture—from both the generative and the receptive points of view. That is to say, he attempts to explain how (...) representations are fashioned, what their representational status consists in, how representations are apprehended and what the experience of them characteristically involves. Inthese aims he is to my mind enormously, if not completely, successful. (shrink)

Sanitizing Justice Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-5 DOI 10.1007/s11158-011-9174-y Authors Oliver Dowlen, 62 Brockswood Lane, Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire AL8 7BQ, UK Journal Res Publica Online ISSN 1572-8692 Print ISSN 1356-4765.

Serlio achieved fame as an architect and the author of seven books on architecture, but his activities as a painter are hardly known. The recently discovered autograph manuscript reveals his thinking about this 'most noble art': collectively its pages form the introduction to an unfinished treatise on painting. As with his architectural discourse, Serlio's approach to writing about painting is entirely practical. In no sense a humanist reflection on the subject of art, the work was planned as an (...) illustrated manual and pedagogical tool for the novice painter. The discussion opens with a first section on disegno where the rudiments of drawing are outlined. Very quickly Serlio turns to foreshortening and perspectives on the human figure, emphasising the infinite nuances possible as the body to be represented moves. Such concerns disclose the influence of his mentor Baldassare Peruzzi and association with other members of Raphael's studio. As presented in this manuscript, the manual may have graphically resembled Dürer's Vier Bücher in its printed form, but the rules of disegno respect the Italian workshop tradition as we know it from Carlo Urbino's Le regole del disegno and the Leonardesque heritage. Serlio's projected volume of painting instruction may be regarded as a first literary experiment—a precursor to his later illustrated books on architecture. (shrink)

The use of instruments for drawing from life is documented since the fifteenth century in a variety of books, drawings and actual devices. Almost all of the instruments invented for this purpose belong to the linear perspective tradition, being conceived as mechanical expressions of a geometric principle, namely the intersection of the visual pyramid. On the basis of a close but controversial analysis of some important paintings of the early Renaissance, David Hockney and Charles Falco have concluded to a widespread (...) use of optical devices in painters' workshops, such as concave mirrors, convex lenses and camera obscuras. Devices of this kind were generally used by optics scholars in their experiments with light and the multiplication of species. However, except for some isolated references to the camera obscura and flat mirrors,1 the documentary history of art is completely silent about the use of these optical tools by painters. Written evidence, in this sense, can be found only in the late sixteenth century but related to map-making more than to painting. Moreover, growing interest in such devices is only evident in connection with the invention of the telescope and its interpretation as an "artificial eye."2. (shrink)

This article focuses on one aspect of the late mediaeval debate over divine power, as it was discussed by Oxford philosophers Walter Chatton (d. 1343) and William Ockham (d. 1347). Chatton and Ockham would have agreed, for example, that God is ultimately responsible for the existence of the works of Pablo Picasso, but they would not agree over wheher it violates God's omnipotence to say that he cannot make something that Picasso made, for example, the painting Guernica, without using (...) Picasso himself as an intermediate cause. The context of their dispute was a larger debate regarding the ontological status of relations. This article (1) explains how these two issues, omnipotence and relations, became so interestingly tangled together, (2) tries to see which of the two men mentioned above got the better of their exchange, and finally (3) draws out some important consequences for fourteenth-century discussions of causality, occasionalism, and omnipotence. (shrink)

Eighteenth-century England saw the rise of a "peculiarly English" art form—landscape gardening—and a corresponding change in attitudes toward the antural world. While the French, who lived under tyranny, had a tightly organized, restrictive gardens, the "free" English enjoyed gardens where they were at liberty to wander. John Dixon Hunt examines eighteenth-century letters, literary and critical works, biographies, paintings, prints, and drawings to trace the gradual movement from formal regularity toward a carefully calculated naturalness.

Cécile Wick's work, oscillating among photography, painting, and drawing, is one of the most important oeuvres in contemporary Swiss art. Solo exhibitions in various galleries and a large retrospective at the Museum of Fine Art in Berne have recently showcased her prints and etchings to great acclaim. Cécile Wick. Colored Waters offers readers the first glimpse of the artist's more recent photographs and, in particular, drawings. Watercolors, ink drawings, inkjet prints and photographs are presented in series, putting media and (...) motifs in a dialogue and revealing new aspects of Wick's work. Around 160 color reproductions of artworks are complemented with essays by Martin Jaeggi and Nadine Olonetzky on subjects such as light, traces, signs, buildings, nature, and rhythm in Wick's oeuvre. (shrink)

This article explores the meaning of inclusive participation in global conservation decision-making processes. It draws on data collected in collaborative ethnographic research of the latest World Conservation Congress (WCC) held in 2008 in Barcelona, Spain. We argue that despite a discernible shift towards the incorporation of indigenous rights and indigenous peoples' representatives within the conservation equation, many challenges to full participation still exist for both indigenous peoples and other local resource users who may be affected by conservation governance decisions. Several (...) conditions exist at a global scale that limit democratic participation, including the unequal power relations between indigenous peoples and the global north, which limits the space for indigenous inclusion, the democratic deliberation that is often treated as a checkbox item, the limited resources to facilitate broad inclusion (in terms of both monetary and cultural capital), and the political challenges of legitimacy for some at more local scales, such as the concern of who represents whom at the global scale. We recognise effort has been given to expanded participation in global conservation governance, but inclusive and deliberative participation is still limited within IUCN and among other conservation NGOs. (shrink)

Art therapy encourages the use of art materials to express feelings and thoughts in a supportive environment. Art materials differ in fluidity and are postulated to thus differentially enhance emotional response (the more fluid the material the more emotion). Yet, to the best of our knowledge, this assumption has not been empirically tested. The current study aimed to examine the emotional and physiological responses to art making with different art materials. We were particularly interested in vagal activity, indexed by heart (...) rate variability (HRV), because of its association with numerous health related outcomes. In this study, fifty adults (mean age 33 ± 10.27 years, 52% males) participated in a repeated measures experiment, in which they were requested to draw with three art materials (order randomized) differing in their level of fluidity (pencil, oil-pastels and gouache paint) intermittent with periods of music. We measured the emotional response to art making with each material using a self-report measure and matrices of HRV using a wearable electrocardiogram (ECG) device. We calculated two indices of HRV, one indicative of parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) activity, and one indicative of sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity. Art making with gouache paint and oil pastels resulted in improved positive mood, while pencil did not. Art making explained approximately 35% of the variability in parasympathetic reactivity, which may indicate changes in emotional regulation processes during the art-making task. Yet, fluidity was not sufficient to explain the reaction to art-making. Surprisingly, the largest suppression of PNS and augmentation of the SNS occurred during art-making with oil-pastels and not with Gouache. Moreover, PNS and SNS reactivity to oil-pastels were related to emotional valance, which may point to emotional engagement. We can conclude that art-making with oil-pastels, first created in Japan in 1924 to increase self-expression of students, results in a unique emotional and physiological responses. These findings might be explained by the enhanced tactile experience of art-making with oil-pastels along with their relative fluidity, triggering an arousal pattern. Further studies that take the format and presentation of the materials as well as the content of the artwork, into account, are needed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Boundaries: Writing and DrawingTom ConleyBoundaries: Writing and Drawing, edited by Martine Reid; Yale French Studies, iv & 268 pp. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994, $15.95 paper.The fifteen articles of this issue of Yale French Studies discern the limits of meaning and legibility wherever writing and drawing become coextensive. In pondering the origins of writing Henry-Jean Martin (in Le pouvoir et l’histoire de l’écrit) has recently asked if (...) script and print have evolved from pictographic or hieroglyphic writing. If so, he implies, to what degree does visual force animate all writing? How does meaning, otherwise conveyed through writing, get complicated or subverted by the shape or motion of its form? When does the writer engage the illegible to call into question communication in general? Citing Michel Foucault, for whom calligraphy and drawing offer a glimpse of an “immense and unavowable teratology” (p. 12), the editor argues that the visible matter of discourse becomes its repressed or irrecuperable—hence supremely literary—worth.She organizes the contributions under three rubrics. Part one studies the history of the relation of writing to drawing through emphasis on psychogenesis. For Serge Tisseron an “inscriptive gesture” (p. 29), a memory of a manual pleasure, is relayed through the artist’s or writer’s labors. The written trace recalls originary separation, the page becoming a “metaphoric container of one’s own body and the mother’s body” (p. 41). Georges Roque shows how postcartesian ideology associates line with philosophy and relegates color to a lower order of sensation. In a Derridean turn he notes, “color is to drawing as [End Page 410] writing is to speech” (p. 57). Jean-Gérard Lapacherie argues that we are taught to exclude reading from the act of looking at a text, and that contemporary literature forcibly erodes that division.Part two is devoted to close analysis of writers who draw. Jacques Leenhardt brilliantly analyzes visual and aural displacements, even condensations, what he calls “monograms of sensation,” in the sketches and notes in Stendhal’s Journal de Paris. Alain Buisine traces the appeal that drawings of Rimbaud’s face had for the poet’s milieu. Claude Gandelman studies Proust’s manuscript drawings in light of the broader process of dreamwork in A la recherche du temps perdu. Looking at the Cahiers, 1894–1914, Serge Bourjea contends that for Paul Valéry the labors of intellection and writing are a “matter of sketching” (p. 137), or of perpetually “rough” drafting. Jacques Derrida’s “Maddening the Subjectile,” Mary Ann Caws’s limpid translation of an essay on Artaud’s textual drawings (“Forcener le subjectile”), defines a pictogram as what moves ceaselessly and inseparably between painting, drawing, and verbal expression.Part three moves toward artists who write. Bernard Vouilloux rehearses Derrida’s arguments about the “supplement” and the pictogram to themes of painting and painters in Rousseau’s early and later works. Michel Thévoz gives a dazzling reading of Jean Dubuffet’s art brut dans l’écriture, the explosive sketching of discourse that fractures the icons of elegance and control that project the myth of clear and classical French. Jan Baetens calls “latent violence” the marvelous areas where image, geometrical form, typography, and enunciation abut each other in M. C. Escher’s drawings, Régis Franc’s comic strips, and Martin Vaughn-James’s La Cage. Renée Riese Hubert sums up the volume with a study of the double binds that Derrida and Adami project in their collaborations of drawing and writing.This issue of Yale French Studies holds to the theme of writing as drawing. Martine Reid’s introduction and her two interviews with Michel Butor and Yves Bonnefoy map out an overall itinerary of vicious circularity. Literature is a continuing regression, fraught with pleasure and risk, that takes place when language, writing, and drawing are conflated. All of the essays are of high quality. Tisseron, Leenhardt, Derrida, and Thévoz set a standard to which the others conform. All adepts of art and literature will welcome this fabulous volume.Tom ConleyHarvard UniversityCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

This is the 1992 Marquette Aquinas lecture, the fifty-third in a distinguished series sponsored by the Wisconsin Alpha Chapter of Phi Sigma Tau. Though presented as a lecture, it is clearly the outline of a project that draws upon Ernan McMullin's considerable knowledge of the history of the philosophy of science and his realistic assessment of contemporary scientific inquiry. His is a large canvas and he admittedly paints with wide brush strokes. His major thesis, contra the positivism that lingers in (...) some quarters, is that nothing other than a realist philosophy of science will enable one to make sense of contemporary natural science. A very literal reading of Aristotle leads him to distance himself from the Stagirite in certain respects, but McMullin's is fundamentally an Aristotelian analysis of science. To have science is not merely to know what is given in experience and codified in laws of nature, but to have an explanation of the given in terms of its proper causes. It is not enough to know that copper is malleable, conducts electricity, takes on a certain hue under such and such circumstances, and has a melting point of 1083 degrees centigrade. To have scientific knowledge of a material which has been used since antiquity is to know why it has these properties. Such knowledge is not obtained by simple observation, but is gained by the inference which leads to the postulation of an unobserved structure. McMullin believes that empiricists in the tradition of Bacon, Hume, and Mill are hard pressed to explain the inferential leap from observed effect to inferred cause. In passing he notes, "Though Bacon is trying very hard to separate himself from the Aristotelian tradition, one can still catch echoes of [Aristotle's] epagoge". Reviewing Mill's logic of science, McMullin observes that at the same time Mill was writing that causal relations hold only between observables, "the growing reliance of natural scientists on non-inductive inference to and from observables was leading to dramatic advances in fields like optics, chemistry and theory of gases". (shrink)

This paper examines how communities of naturalists in mid-nineteenth-century Britain were formed and solidified around the shared practices of public meetings, the publication and reading of periodicals, and the making and printing of images. By focusing on communities of naturalists and the sites of their communication, this article undermines the distinction between amateur and professional scientific practice. Building on the notion of imagined communities, this paper also shows that in some cases the editors and illustrators utilized imagery to construct a (...) specifically British naturalist community. Following three ‘amateur’ natural-history periodicals (Science Gossip,Midland Naturalistand theJournal of the Quekett Microscopical Club) the article demonstrates how the production and reproduction of natural history in the nineteenth century was contingent on community debate – and that this debate both was highly visual and moved across printed and geographical boundaries. This paper investigates images both for their purported success and for their ascribed value to natural history. Additionally, it considers the debates over their limitations and alleged failures of printing. Altogether, the article argues that investigating the communal practices of observation, writing, drawing and engraving allows for a better understanding of the shared practices of nineteenth-century natural history. (shrink)

Drawing on the empirical premise that attention makes objects look more intense, Ned Block has argued for mental paint, a phenomenal residue that cannot be reduced to what is perceived or represented. If sound, Block's argument would undermine direct realism and representationism, two widely held views about the nature of conscious perception. We argue that Block's argument fails because the empirical premise it is based upon is false. Attending to an object alters its salience, but not its perceived intensity. We (...) also argue that salience should be equated with mental primer, a close cousin of mental paint that reintroduces difficulties for direct realism and representationism. The upshot is that direct realism and representationism are still in trouble, but not for the reason that Block thinks. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to better understand the diffusion of environmentally preferable manufacturing technology (as distinct from pollution control technology) in small-and medium-sized firms (SMEs) and the influence of technical assistance programs on the diffusion of these technologies. The authors draw their insights from the printing industry, a sector where small firms predominate. They find that smaller firms lag slightly in the adoption of environmental technologies. With regard to technical assistance, they find that printers identify suppliers and other (...) industry sources as more useful than government in providing information that leads to active exploration of new environmental technologies. In addition, in comparison to larger firms, smaller firms reported to be less familiar with government-sponsored programs and perceived some of the programs to be less useful. They point to several ways in which regulatory agencies are experimenting to make government sponsored programs more effective. (shrink)

What you see can shape how you feel, and the route from seeing to feeling sometimes involves empathy – as you might empathize with a woman you see grieving the death of her child. But empathy also comes from what you see in pictures. Bellini's Pieta? is one among many paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs that evoke empathy – and are designed to do so. Going further, it seems that episodes of empathy triggered by pictures can help build up a (...) person's capacity for empathic response. Indeed, they do so by fortifying the link between seeing and empathy in a distinctive way. To establish this thesis, we need a broad conception of empathic response and also the right conception of what we see in pictures. (shrink)

A famous portrait of Erasmus by Hans Holbein depicts the scholar with his hands resting on a volume identified as his ‘Herculean Labours’. Erasmus associated this adage with the effort expended and ingratitude encountered by the philologist, and made it central to his self-presentation. In this article, its origins are traced to Erasmus’s encounter with Aldus Manutius, the venetian printer-humanist who published his Adagia in 1508. The impact of Aldus on Erasmus is shown to be significant, affecting his entire ideology (...) of humanism, including its relationship to print and its religious purpose. This article challenges distinctions between the Italian and the Northern Renaissance that are unhelpful for understanding Erasmus’s development. In light of its findings, it also proposes a new interpretation of Holbein’s painting. (shrink)

Gregory Conniff's large-scale black and white pastoral images evoke the sensuality of nineteenth century photographic materials. In his affectionate and intelligent work, there is a visible connection to the history of landscape art, reaching back as far as Claude Lorrain and seventeenth-century Dutch drawing. Conniff is also a leading practitioner of a new pastoralism that is casting a contemporary eye on the current state of America's open land. Postmodern in the best sense, Conniff's pictures address the timeless human need to (...) see beauty in the world that shapes our lives. A resident of Wisconsin for more than thirty years, Conniff has focused much of his artistic energy on the rural Midwest, exploring the interdependent relationship between land and people. For the past fifteen years, Conniff has also been making pictures of rural Mississippi, again focusing on elements of the landscape that resonate with a universal sense of aesthetic familiarity. As he explains, "I am interested in work that defines and protects the vanishing, commonplace beauties that let us know we're home.". (shrink)

Drawing on texts in psychology, philosophy, and literature the paper argues that art avails us of a distance from ourselves. Art has a potential to change our perspective on monstrosity and to make us question our moral categories and presuppositions. The study focuses on a single painting by Paul Gavarni, Two Pierrots Looking into a Box (1852), which I have discovered holds two images in one representation. I turn to Gavarni's work in order to prompt a literal gestalt shift (...) in my readers. I direct the readers' viewing so that, at first, Gavarni's pierrots appear as handsome, albeit licentious youths, but then, through a shift in focus, I reveal their hideous, monstrous profiles. At this point, I argue that if we treat Gavarni's pierrots and the sorts of desires that they represent with single-minded opprobrium, then we run the risk of perpetuating the ugliness we scorn. There is, then, a double change in vision, which I seek to effect. The first one is the alteration of the visual, and the second, of the ethical perspective. The latter has to do with a realization that Gavarni's Pierrots can elicit from us — depending on how we see them — either complicity or reprehension, which is not so much a commentary on the drawing, as it is a reflection on ourselves (our biases, opinions, desires, values, etc.). The phenomenon that underlies the change in how we see what Gavarni portrays and how we, thereafter, relate to what we notice — the malleability of the human psyche — is what allows for and calls the many masking images we, ourselves, wear and perceive. The final question that I address in the paper is whether we can claim mastery over those images, which mask the monstrous or whether, if we do, then far from getting rid of the callous, the cruel, and the inhumane, we stand the risk of giving these expressions a freer playground? (shrink)

What makes for a good education? What does one need to count as well-educated? Knowledge, to be sure. But knowledge is easily forgotten, and today's knowledge may be obsolete tomorrow. Skills, particularly in critical thinking, are crucial as well. But absent the right motivation, graduates may fail to put their skills to good use. In this book, Nathan King argues that intellectual virtues-traits like curiosity, intellectual humility, honesty, intellectual courage, and open-mindedness-are central to any education worthy of the name. Further, (...) such virtues are crucial to our functioning well in everyday life, in areas as diverse as personal relationships, responsible citizenship, civil discourse, and personal success. Our struggles in these areas often result from a failure to think virtuously. Drawing upon recent work in philosophy and psychology, King paints a portrait of virtuous intellectual character-and of the vices such a character opposes. Filled with examples and applications, this book introduces readers to the intellectual virtues: what they are, why they matter, and how we can grow in them. (shrink)

Fascinating illustrations contribute to this illuminating and award-winning account of how and why philosophy emerged and make it a must-read for any inquisitive thinker unsatisfied with prevailing assumptions on this timely and highly relevant subject._ By taking the reader back to the Greek colonies of Southern Italy more than 500 years B.C., the author, with unparalleled insight, tells the story of the Pythagorean quest for otherwordly konwledge -- a tale of cultism, political conspiracies, and bloody uprisings that eventually culminate in (...) tragic failure. The emerging hero is Parmenides, who introduces for the first time a technique for testing the truth of a statement that was not based on physical evidence or mortal sense-perception, but instead relied exclusively on the faculty we humans share with the gods: the ability to reason. "Figures from Anaximander to Zeno, the ruins where they lived and thought, and the paradoxes and thought-experiments they proposed are depicted among the [many] well-chosen color illustrations. The results read like an introductory textbook, but one that has been lovingly written, lavishly laid-out and crisply printed-- making it engaging enough to draw in readers to whom it has not been assigned." - _ Publishers Weekly___ "_To Think Like God_ is a highly ambitious book... Hermann's approach deserves to be taken seriously as an alternative to standard interpretations." - _ Richard D. McKirahan, Jr., Edwin Clarence Norton Professor of Classics and Professor of Philosophy, Pomona College___ "Arnold Hermann brings fresh life into the specialists' debates... a blow of wind that dissipates much fog." - _ Walter Burkert, Professor Emeritus of Classical Philology, University of Zurich___ ARNOLD HERMANN_ is pursuing independent research on the origins of philosophy and methods of thinking. He specialices on subjects connected with Parmenides and Plato's _Parmenides._. (shrink)

The Guggenheim’s spring retrospective of the seminal Swedish painter, Hilma Af Klint, has, naturally, evoked a multitude of art critics and visual culture scholars who laud her radical abstraction which, at the beginning of the 20th century, preceded Kandinsky, Malevich, Mondrian. Yet, where much attention has been given to the symbology and motifs riddling Klint’s work – bold, private, untethered and nonrepresentational as they are – there has been a modicum of nuanced thought on how, exactly, esotericism and theology fomented (...) Klint’s pedagogical projects. Jillian Steinhauer, for instance, has underscored Klint’s naturalistic watercolors; featuring flowers and lifelike drawings of women; Summer Landscape (1888) suggests Klint’s technical aptitude for rendering light. Jadranka Ryle, in a clever article titled “Reinventing the Yggdrasil,” invokes Klint’s motif of the Yggdrasil, or the holy tree of Norse mythology, as a political axle for Nordic romanticism. Ryle makes the claim that by redirecting the Yggdrasil towards androgynous abstraction, Klint’s engagement with Norse mythology subverts the nationalist and patriarchal romanticism that previously characterized the nineteenth century’s use of the Yggdrasil. Others have adroitly uncovered biographical fragments from Klint’s life, detailing how she and four friends formed De Fem (“the Five”), an exclusively female coven that met weekly, praying, meditating, and holding seances to commune with spiritual guides. Rather than poise the Swedish maverick within the cannon of abstraction qua a political praxis, feminist subject-being, or historiography – projects that have been exhaustively overwrought, to the point of rendering Klint’s work both mute and reductively technical– I would like to take this time to closely examine simply one of Klint’s paintings and foreground it as an axiomatic modernist injunction between metaphysics and epistemology. (shrink)

Drawing on previously unexplored sources, Kerry H. Whiteside presents the political theory of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, one of France's best-known twentieth-century philosophers. Whiteside argues that Merleau-Ponty's objective in his political writings was to make existentialism into the foundation for a philosophically consistent mode of political thinking. This study discusses the inadequacies Merleau-Ponty found in the traditional philosophies of empiricism and idealism, and then examines the subject-object dualism that he believed deprived previous forms of existentialism of political significance. Whiteside shows how Merleau-Ponty (...) overcame these problems by grounding political reasoning in a theory of consciousness that emphasized both its individuality and its need for socially created meaning. After explaining Merleau-Ponty's modifications of the views of Sartre, Aron, and others, the book investigates how he applied his political theory in editorial exchanges with Communists and liberals. Throughout this study, Whiteside traces and criticizes the changes in the philosopher's concept of Marxism and points to his many ideas that bear on current controversies in political theory. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

This article makes a contribution to the on-going debates about universalism and cultural relativism from the perspective of sociology. We argue that bioethics has a universal range because it relates to three shared human characteristics,—human vulnerability, institutional precariousness and scarcity of resources. These three components of our argument provide support for a related notion of ‘weak foundationalism’ that emphasizes the universality and interrelatedness of human experience, rather than their cultural differences. After presenting a theoretical position on vulnerability and human rights, (...) we draw on recent criticism of this approach in order to paint a more nuanced picture. We conclude that the dichotomy between universalism and cultural relativism has some conceptual merit, but it also has obvious limitations when we consider the political economy of health and its impact on social inequality. (shrink)

Abstract Drawing upon evolutionary theory and the work of Daniel Dennett and Nicholas Agar, I offer an argument for broadening discussion of the ethics of disenhancement beyond animal welfare concerns to a consideration of animal “biopreferences”. Short of rendering animals completely unconscious or decerebrate, it is reasonable to suggest that disenhanced animals will continue to have some preferences. To the extent that these preferences can be understood as what Agar refers to as “plausible naturalizations” for familiar moral concepts like beliefs (...) and desires, then they can make moral claims on us and provide support for intuitive opposition to disenhancement. Content Type Journal Article Category Original Paper Pages 1-6 DOI 10.1007/s11569-012-0142-6 Authors John Hadley, School of Humanities and Communication Arts, University of Western Sydney, 7.G.10b, Bankstown Campus, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith, NSW 2751, Australia Journal NanoEthics Online ISSN 1871-4765 Print ISSN 1871-4757. (shrink)

Abstract Drawing on the features of “practical philosophy” described by Toulmin ( 1990 ), a “practical” ethic for animals would be rooted in knowledge of how people affect animals, and would provide guidance on the diverse ethical concerns that arise. Human activities affect animals in four broad ways: (1) keeping animals, for example, on farms and as companions, (2) causing intentional harm to animals, for example through slaughter and hunting, (3) causing direct but unintended harm to animals, for example by (...) cropping practices and vehicle collisions, and (4) harming animals indirectly by disturbing life-sustaining processes and balances of nature, for example by habitat destruction and climate change. The four types of activities raise different ethical concerns including suffering, injury, deprivation, and death (of individuals), decline of populations, disruption of ecological systems containing animals, and extinction of species. They also vary in features relevant to moral evaluation and decision-making; these include the number of animals affected, the duration of the effects, the likelihood of irreversible effects, and the degree to which the effects can be controlled. In some cases human actions can also provide benefits to animals such as shelter and health care. Four mid-level principles are proposed to make a plausible fit to the features of the four types of human activities and to address the major ethical concerns that arise. The principles are: (1) to provide good lives for the animals in our care, (2) to treat suffering with compassion, (3) to be mindful of unseen harm, and (4) to protect the life-sustaining processes and balances of nature. This “practical” approach arguably makes a better fit to the complex, real-life problems of animal ethics than the single foundational principles that have dominated much recent animal ethics philosophy. Content Type Journal Article Category Articles Pages 1-26 DOI 10.1007/s10806-011-9353-z Authors David Fraser, Animal Welfare Program, University of British Columbia, 2357 Main Mall, Vancouver, V6T 1Z4 Canada Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Art in Social Studies: Exploring the World and Ourselves with RembrandtIftikhar Ahmad (bio)IntroductionRembrandt’s art lends itself as a fertile resource for teaching and learning social studies. His art not only captures the social studies themes relevant to the Dutch Golden Age, but it also offers a description of human relations transcending temporal and spatial frontiers. Rembrandt is an imaginative storyteller with a keen insight for minute details. His narrative (...) of the culture, society, economy, geography, and contemporary events of seventeenth-century Dutch life is as vivid and perceptive as a historian’s eloquent text. How people lived in community, how the city of Amsterdam functioned, how important religion was to people, how diverse and cosmopolitan the culture was, how interdependent the world was in the seventeenth century, and what the social and civic ideals of the Dutch people were during the Golden Age—Rembrandt’s paintings, etchings, and drawings neatly organize these and other social studies themes into visual messages. More importantly, our appreciation and interpretation of Rembrandt’s work helps us learn about not just Dutch society and culture of four hundred years ago but also about ourselves. The passion, emotions, conflicts, and inspirations of his subjects are essentially human and eternal, arousing empathy in every generation and cross-section of society. In this article I look at Rembrandt’s art for the purpose of teaching and learning social studies in our contemporary interdependent world—a world that is chronologically and geographically distant from the Dutch Golden Age but in many respects shares its enduring values, norms, ideals, pursuits, challenges, and possibilities. To do so, I employ a conceptual lens—the curriculum thematic strands of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS)—to examine Rembrandt’s art in order to explore life and make meaning of the story that is being told about the human condition, and to seek out its relevance to ourselves and [End Page 19] our world in the early twenty-first century. Although Rembrandt’s oeuvre is extensive, including the diverse genres of self-portraits, group portraits, drawings, etchings, landscapes, and religious themes, for our limited purpose I have selected only those works that, in my judgment, correspond with the following seven of the ten thematic curriculum strands of the NCSS:CultureTime, Continuity, and ChangePeople, Places, and EnvironmentIndividual Development and IdentityProduction, Distribution, and ConsumptionGlobal ConnectionsCivic Ideals and PracticesThese thematic curriculum strands are derived from the foundational disciplines of the social sciences and humanities such as anthropology, history, geography, sociology, political science, psychology, economics, philosophy, and law, but they are conceptually interrelated.1 For example, culture is a core concept in anthropology but it is also relevant to Time, Continuity, and Change, which is the main concept in the history discipline. Similarly, culture is relevant to the theme of People, Places, and Environment, which is the central focus of geography. More importantly, since social studies is about human experiences, there is a general consensus among the social studies educators that classroom teachers should draw content knowledge not just from the social sciences as mentioned here but from wide sources “to construct curricular experiences enabling students to actively relate new knowledge to existing understanding.”2 That is to say all fields of knowledge that are related to human civilization and that help in developing students’ skills in reflective thinking, decision making, and problem solving are relevant to social studies education. Those fields also include art. Rembrandt’s art is especially relevant because his themes are universal and the social, political, and economic contexts in which he created his work—globalization, individualism, and free enterprise—are more or less similar to our age.It needs to be mentioned that by looking at Rembrandt’s art from the social studies perspective it is not my intention to strip his work of its aesthetic scope and value. On the contrary, by looking at Rembrandt in the social studies classroom I seek to humanize social studies education itself. That [End Page 20] is to say I wish to step back from the conventional view of social studies to feel free from the bonds of traditionalism and discover, describe, analyze... (shrink)

Anthony van Dyck’s period of service to the Stuart court stretches from 1632, when he was appointed “principalle Paynter in ordinary to their Majesties” and knighted, to his death at the end of 1641. After an earlier visit of a few months, beginning in December 160, van Dyck had gone to Italy to improve himself; there he had defected from the service of James I. On his return to England this was forgiven, and in the early years he was mainly (...) employed in making portraits of the royal family and household. Later he was again absent from England, spending an entire year beginning in July 1634 back in Antwerp. During the last six years van Dyck spent in England, his clientele widened further; it is chiefly the portraits of this latter period that I will consider here.These portraits have been approached and evaluated in two basic ways. First of all, they have been taken to demonstrate the adaptation of van Dyck’s preexisting skills, especially his command of the “grand style,” to the requirements of a court and aristocracy which prized grace and elegance as hallmarks of breeding and quality, and which at the same time welcomed the trappings of grandeur and the subtleties of variation, in costume, post, and gesture, that the artist could build into his presentation for their predilection.1 Second, where critical considerations have come up, these paintings have been evaluated in terms of whether the adoption of mannered and decorative traits now betokens a decline from the artist’s previous work, or whether it represents rather a different kind of achievement which gave rise, at its best, to equally outstanding successes in conveying refined and subtly enhanced distinction.2But both these approaches agree in finding no intellectual content in the works in question, either of van Dyck’s own devising or based on interests and concerns in which his subjects partook. This absence of implication to the portraits is seem as fitting with thea rtist’s tendency to make creative decisions on an ad hoc basis, as evidenced by his preference for rapidly made drawings from the life over the use of oil sketches and by the pentimenti that his finished works reveal.3 It is also seen as fitting with the whole pattern—cultural as well as social and economic—of his relationship to the Stuart aristocrazy, for which these images were fashioned. 1. See esp. Ellis Water house, Painting in Britain, 1530-1790 , pp. 49-50 ; and cf. more recently Christopher Brown, Van Dyck .2. See, for example, Erik Larsen, intro. to L’opera completa di Van Dyck 1626-1641 , p. 8 and Oliver Millar, intro. to exhibition catalog Van Dyck in England , p. 27 and esp. p. 31 .3. See Millar, Van Dyck in England, p. 31, citing the miniaturist Richard Gibson on the “Sketches made from the life,” mainly lost, and cat. no. 12, on the pentimenti found in the 1633 Charles I on Horseback. Mark Roskill is professor of the history of modern art at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His most recent book is The Interpretation of Cubism . Previous contributions to Critical Inquiry include “On the Recognition and Identification of Objects in Paintings” and “A Reply to John Reichert and Stanley Fish”. (shrink)

The COVID-19 crisis, and its ensuing periods of confinement, has generated high levels of social stress on a global scale. In Spain, citizens were isolated in their homes and were not able to interact physically with family members, friends or co-workers. Different resources were employed to face this new stressful and unexpected situation (fitness, reading, painting, meditation, mindfulness, dancing, listening to music, playing instruments, cooking, etc.). Humor was one of the most frequent and widely used strategies in an attempt (...) to keep perspective, deal with the seriousness of the situation and make the day-to-day more bearable. Humor is cultural: it varies from one country to the next and is part of the idiosyncrasies of a culture. It is deemed a particularly important feature of the Spanish personality. During the COVID-19 crisis, the main means or channels of communication were social networks. Throughout the confinement period, there was an excessive flow of humorous memes concerning Coronavirus and related shared experiences during the National State of Emergency decreed by the Spanish Government. The memes draw on irony, ingenuity and creativity to make a difficult and stressful experience more bearable. In this paper, a qualitative methodology based on ethnography research is used and ethnographic fieldwork is carried out on the memes disseminated through WhatsApp during the lockdown period experienced in Spain (14 March to 21 June 2020). The memes are considered to be an example of Netlore, digital contemporary folklore, and a theoretical framework on memes and humor is presented that discusses its different functions in order to channel grief, fear and suffering or to play down specific situations. A corpus of 644 memes that have flooded social networks are categorized and analyzed to witness how the Spanish have managed to bring out their humorous and creative side in difficult times even as they have criticized political decisions, let out their frustrations, described their new “normal” lives, interacted with others and anticipated the future. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to determine what a philosophical approach, the one that Jacques Derrida uses on blindness in his Memoirs of the Blind, can bring to Cultural Disability Studies. Using some of the paintings and drawings reproduced in this 1990 work, the present study first intends to show that, for Derrida, it is a particular way of considering the mutism of visual art works that leads to seeing or imagining, in those that show blind people, representations of (...) blindness that have in common to make it a powerlessness. This paper then analyses how, for the philosopher, these same works can be approached by virtue of a second way of considering their mutism, and thus read as giving rise to the idea of a completely different kind of blindness, understood this time as a power that is highly resistant to the narratives that, in history, have made it an powerlessness. Finally, he proposes to complement this way of reading pictorial images of blindness with Stiker’s theorized “Reversal scheme” and the “neo-historicism” applied by Snyder and Mitchell to artistic representations of disability. (shrink)

In this paper, the author addresses the problem of socialisation of children with a history of disabilities and mental retardation by means of visual arts. It is important to look at the very sphere of life of these categories of children. As a rule, these children, for the most part, live in dysfunctional families, which makes it almost impossible to provide them with a form of socialization. This article focuses on the extent to which and how a programme of socialisation (...) of these children can be achieved through the medium of visual arts. At the moment there are works of modern pedagogues who have devoted their scientific researches to this problem, but there are few teachers-artists who deal with this problem. In this article the author devotes his creative attention to this issue and reflects on what means of fine arts and visual literacy can develop and guide in the right direction the socialization of children and young people with disabilities by means of fine arts. A number of scientific works devoted to this problem are seriously reviewed. The author is actively trying to draw the attention of the teaching community to the problem of prevailing social conditions, to reach an educational and cognitive level and, as a consequence, to a better product of the set task of socialization of children with special needs and disabilities in the learning process by means of subject disciplines: drawing, painting, composition, printmaking, etc. (shrink)

This article draws together two works created in late fifteenth-century Mantua. Although radically different in kind, they were borne from the same acts of violence: Andrea Mantegna’s Madonna of Victory and a responsum about Jewish religious law by Rabbi Joseph Colon. Mantegna’s altarpiece, painted to commemorate the bloody battle of Fornova as a Gonzaga victory, was paid for by Daniele Norsa; Norsa, a Jewish banker, was accused of destroying a prior Christian icon and ordered to finance the new altarpiece as (...) reparations for this crime, under threat of death. Colon’s responsum addressed the permissibility of creating a Christian image under duress—idolatry being one of the sins for which a Jew must sacrifice their life rather than transgressing. We explore the remarkable artistry and distinct craft practiced by the painter and the rabbi—image making in the one case, legal reasoning in the other—as modes of describing, interpreting, and creating reality. Both works address problems of religion and idolatry, faith and coercion, victory and violence, and triumph and lament. Together they reveal the dynamics of a fascinating iconoclash, a conflict of culture waged over the struggle between making and breaking images. (shrink)

What happens to us when we die? Is there really a heaven and hell? Are there angels watching over us? These questions follow us from early childhood to old age, particularly in moments when we’re confronted with the loss of a loved one. In _Window to Eternity,_ Bruce Henderson draws from the teachings of visionary Emanuel Swedenborg to paint a vivid picture of heaven and hell, where the souls of the departed become angels and demons and indescribable wonders await. But (...) far from being a distant destination, Henderson shows that heaven is a choice that each of us makes every day—ours to have or to turn away from, regardless of our background or religious upbringing. (shrink)