Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/09528822.2023.2213017
David Lloyd
Abstract This article is based on a painting by Los Angeles-based Black artist Mark Bradford, On a Clear Day, I Can Usually See All the Way to Watts (2001), which was exhibited at SFMOMA in an installation that juxtaposed it to a series of drawings by abstract artist Agnes Martin, Untitled (Study for ‘On a Clear Day'), (2019–2020). In an extended reading of abstraction and its social implications and of Bradford's engagement with abstract traditions, the article explores the material traces of impurity in his contemporary non-representative visual art. In particular, it focuses on hair as complex sign of impurity, concealment, animality, decay, aesthetic beauty, etc, and of the ways in which its incorporation, materially and metonymically, in the painting disturbs the clarity of the white aesthetic gaze. The article thus considers how the material practices of certain, broadly speaking, postcolonial artists, but in particular the Black Abstraction exemplified by Bradford’s work, challenge the Kantian aesthetic tradition that has dominated the visual arts even in a post-Kantian artistic realm.
{"title":"Grid Locks","authors":"David Lloyd","doi":"10.1080/09528822.2023.2213017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2023.2213017","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article is based on a painting by Los Angeles-based Black artist Mark Bradford, On a Clear Day, I Can Usually See All the Way to Watts (2001), which was exhibited at SFMOMA in an installation that juxtaposed it to a series of drawings by abstract artist Agnes Martin, Untitled (Study for ‘On a Clear Day'), (2019–2020). In an extended reading of abstraction and its social implications and of Bradford's engagement with abstract traditions, the article explores the material traces of impurity in his contemporary non-representative visual art. In particular, it focuses on hair as complex sign of impurity, concealment, animality, decay, aesthetic beauty, etc, and of the ways in which its incorporation, materially and metonymically, in the painting disturbs the clarity of the white aesthetic gaze. The article thus considers how the material practices of certain, broadly speaking, postcolonial artists, but in particular the Black Abstraction exemplified by Bradford’s work, challenge the Kantian aesthetic tradition that has dominated the visual arts even in a post-Kantian artistic realm.","PeriodicalId":45739,"journal":{"name":"Third Text","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43348483","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/09528822.2023.2197724
F. Zahedi
Abstract The widespread acknowledgement of Kiarostami as a global auteur provides us with a background against which to reconsider one of his most local films as well as one of the most important representations of children in Iranian cinema. When interpreting Where Is the Friend’s House?, many critics and scholars see metaphysical references in the simple act of a child attempting to overcome obstacles put in his way by adults. But any mystical reading of the film runs the risk of closing off consideration of Kiarostami’s endeavour to offer a cognitive map of a crucial moment in Iranian history. This study aims to rethink the film, focusing on Kiarostami’s depiction of social conflicts through an exploration of quotidian spaces and a portrayal of simple objects such as doors, windows and homework notebooks. Abbas Kiarostami, in creating such a microcosmic space, was following great Iranian thinkers and poets such as Hafez in expressing his contestation of the dominant ideologies of post-1979 Iran.
{"title":"Doors, Windows and the Notebook of Solidarity","authors":"F. Zahedi","doi":"10.1080/09528822.2023.2197724","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2023.2197724","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The widespread acknowledgement of Kiarostami as a global auteur provides us with a background against which to reconsider one of his most local films as well as one of the most important representations of children in Iranian cinema. When interpreting Where Is the Friend’s House?, many critics and scholars see metaphysical references in the simple act of a child attempting to overcome obstacles put in his way by adults. But any mystical reading of the film runs the risk of closing off consideration of Kiarostami’s endeavour to offer a cognitive map of a crucial moment in Iranian history. This study aims to rethink the film, focusing on Kiarostami’s depiction of social conflicts through an exploration of quotidian spaces and a portrayal of simple objects such as doors, windows and homework notebooks. Abbas Kiarostami, in creating such a microcosmic space, was following great Iranian thinkers and poets such as Hafez in expressing his contestation of the dominant ideologies of post-1979 Iran.","PeriodicalId":45739,"journal":{"name":"Third Text","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44865926","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/09528822.2023.2214048
Paula Gortázar
Abstract This article analyses the development of Conceptual Art in Bratislava during the communist period, with specific emphasis on the practices produced throughout the so-called ‘Normalisation’ (1968–1989). The text starts by introducing the functioning mechanisms of the Czechoslovakian artistic scene of the time. It then moves on to analyse the work of Július Koller, Rudolf Sikora and Ĺubomír Ďurček. It is argued that, despite the difficult conditions for art production present in Bratislava during Normalisation years, Conceptual Art served its precursors as an escape valve for their political convictions, which they manifested through the use of puns, parody, irony, metaphors and the design of elaborate cosmological fictions through utopian and dystopian projections of their own political and cultural reality. In doing so, the unique properties of photography, such as its reduced size, low cost and indexical qualities, turned the medium into the most suitable form to materialise their conceptual practice.
{"title":"Cosmos, Fiction and Transcendence","authors":"Paula Gortázar","doi":"10.1080/09528822.2023.2214048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2023.2214048","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article analyses the development of Conceptual Art in Bratislava during the communist period, with specific emphasis on the practices produced throughout the so-called ‘Normalisation’ (1968–1989). The text starts by introducing the functioning mechanisms of the Czechoslovakian artistic scene of the time. It then moves on to analyse the work of Július Koller, Rudolf Sikora and Ĺubomír Ďurček. It is argued that, despite the difficult conditions for art production present in Bratislava during Normalisation years, Conceptual Art served its precursors as an escape valve for their political convictions, which they manifested through the use of puns, parody, irony, metaphors and the design of elaborate cosmological fictions through utopian and dystopian projections of their own political and cultural reality. In doing so, the unique properties of photography, such as its reduced size, low cost and indexical qualities, turned the medium into the most suitable form to materialise their conceptual practice.","PeriodicalId":45739,"journal":{"name":"Third Text","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48438191","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-17DOI: 10.1080/09528822.2022.2140519
Published in Third Text (Vol. 36, No. 5, 2022)
发表于第三篇(第三十六卷第五期,2022年)
{"title":"Contributors","authors":"","doi":"10.1080/09528822.2022.2140519","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2022.2140519","url":null,"abstract":"Published in Third Text (Vol. 36, No. 5, 2022)","PeriodicalId":45739,"journal":{"name":"Third Text","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138520257","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-02DOI: 10.1080/09528822.2022.2147689
Kasia Mika
Abstract Sasha Huber’s Shooting Back-Reflections on Haitian Roots portraits (2004) and the Haïti chérie (‘Haiti, my beloved’, 2010) performance are multi-sensorial works which voice an incessantly reverberating call for justice and solidarity with the absent and silenced victims of past, and ongoing, violences; from Columbus’s 1492 ‘discovery’ and landing on Hispaniola; the Duvaliers’ dictatorship in Haiti; and the 12 of January 2010 earthquake that became a disaster. Taking Huber’s works as the starting point, the article explores the ways in which these wakeful pieces gesture towards an ambivalent repair and perform a form of justice against legal, epistemic and representational regimes of ‘un-visibility’. With each tak-tak-tak of the staple gun, the shining staples, or the contour of a snow angel, these works conjure a space of defiant care and Afro-diasporic solidarity, protest and presence, creating an alternative ‘archive of affect’.
{"title":"Sensing History, Seeking Justice","authors":"Kasia Mika","doi":"10.1080/09528822.2022.2147689","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2022.2147689","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Sasha Huber’s Shooting Back-Reflections on Haitian Roots portraits (2004) and the Haïti chérie (‘Haiti, my beloved’, 2010) performance are multi-sensorial works which voice an incessantly reverberating call for justice and solidarity with the absent and silenced victims of past, and ongoing, violences; from Columbus’s 1492 ‘discovery’ and landing on Hispaniola; the Duvaliers’ dictatorship in Haiti; and the 12 of January 2010 earthquake that became a disaster. Taking Huber’s works as the starting point, the article explores the ways in which these wakeful pieces gesture towards an ambivalent repair and perform a form of justice against legal, epistemic and representational regimes of ‘un-visibility’. With each tak-tak-tak of the staple gun, the shining staples, or the contour of a snow angel, these works conjure a space of defiant care and Afro-diasporic solidarity, protest and presence, creating an alternative ‘archive of affect’.","PeriodicalId":45739,"journal":{"name":"Third Text","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44926494","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-02DOI: 10.1080/09528822.2022.2146398
Namiko Kunimoto
Abstract This article focuses on the question of periodisations in Japanese art history through a consideration of the long-running careers of four successful but politically and aesthetically diverse artists: Domon Ken (1909‒1990), Okamoto Tarō (1911‒1996), Yoshihara Jirō, and Katsura Yuki (1913‒1991). The arc of these artists careers across the prewar, war, and postwar periods upsets popular periodisations in Japan’s art history that assert the postwar as a time of rupture and renewal. My focus is meant to challenge this ‘postwar paradigm’ while elucidating these artist’s negotiation of ethics and plurality during drastically different political eras. How does a reading of their work reveal continuities before and after the war, and what are the political stakes of these continuities?
{"title":"Transwar Art in Japan","authors":"Namiko Kunimoto","doi":"10.1080/09528822.2022.2146398","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2022.2146398","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article focuses on the question of periodisations in Japanese art history through a consideration of the long-running careers of four successful but politically and aesthetically diverse artists: Domon Ken (1909‒1990), Okamoto Tarō (1911‒1996), Yoshihara Jirō, and Katsura Yuki (1913‒1991). The arc of these artists careers across the prewar, war, and postwar periods upsets popular periodisations in Japan’s art history that assert the postwar as a time of rupture and renewal. My focus is meant to challenge this ‘postwar paradigm’ while elucidating these artist’s negotiation of ethics and plurality during drastically different political eras. How does a reading of their work reveal continuities before and after the war, and what are the political stakes of these continuities?","PeriodicalId":45739,"journal":{"name":"Third Text","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45018773","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-02DOI: 10.1080/09528822.2022.2145049
Alírio Karina
Abstract This article considers the role of museums in contemporary and past formations of imperial knowledge and power, and the consequences of this role for the questions of accountability and restitution that have gained new prominence over the past few years. Departing from the view that matters of repatriation and restitution should privilege the terms of collection, this article instead examines the problem of colonial inheritance for museum collections as a whole, and for the museum as an institution. Further, it argues that the museum is an institutional form lacking in contemporary justification, this article proposes that the project for those who seek to ‘decolonise’ the museum must be to end the museum, and to imagine, in its place, new ways of relating to matters of memory and identity.
{"title":"Against and beyond the Museum","authors":"Alírio Karina","doi":"10.1080/09528822.2022.2145049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2022.2145049","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article considers the role of museums in contemporary and past formations of imperial knowledge and power, and the consequences of this role for the questions of accountability and restitution that have gained new prominence over the past few years. Departing from the view that matters of repatriation and restitution should privilege the terms of collection, this article instead examines the problem of colonial inheritance for museum collections as a whole, and for the museum as an institution. Further, it argues that the museum is an institutional form lacking in contemporary justification, this article proposes that the project for those who seek to ‘decolonise’ the museum must be to end the museum, and to imagine, in its place, new ways of relating to matters of memory and identity.","PeriodicalId":45739,"journal":{"name":"Third Text","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44563066","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-02DOI: 10.1080/09528822.2022.2149008
Daniel Herwitz
Abstract The removal of the statue of Cecil Rhodes at the University of Cape Town in 2015, prompted by the student Rhodes Must Fall (RMF) campaign, represents a window into how questions of race, art and inequality intertwined as they played out some twenty-five years into South African democracy. Since RMF then turned to the artwork exhibited at University of Cape Town, finding in it a collectively degraded vision of blackness − even though much of it was created in support of the anti-Apartheid struggle − this interpretive mismatch then became central to the university’s conflict. The sense of offense felt by RMF over these artworks could, in all probability, not have been negotiated at the time, leading to the abstract question of how such offense might ideally be negotiated. About this, I introduce a dialogical notion, one involving reflection on the part of both parties: the offender and the offended.
{"title":"Negotiating Offence of Fallist Proportion","authors":"Daniel Herwitz","doi":"10.1080/09528822.2022.2149008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2022.2149008","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The removal of the statue of Cecil Rhodes at the University of Cape Town in 2015, prompted by the student Rhodes Must Fall (RMF) campaign, represents a window into how questions of race, art and inequality intertwined as they played out some twenty-five years into South African democracy. Since RMF then turned to the artwork exhibited at University of Cape Town, finding in it a collectively degraded vision of blackness − even though much of it was created in support of the anti-Apartheid struggle − this interpretive mismatch then became central to the university’s conflict. The sense of offense felt by RMF over these artworks could, in all probability, not have been negotiated at the time, leading to the abstract question of how such offense might ideally be negotiated. About this, I introduce a dialogical notion, one involving reflection on the part of both parties: the offender and the offended.","PeriodicalId":45739,"journal":{"name":"Third Text","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48977075","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-02DOI: 10.1080/09528822.2022.2149010
Tessel Janse
Abstract Incorporating reindeer remains into haunting art installations, with Pile o’Sápmi, Máret Ánne Sara manifests how Norwegian forced culls impact Sámi autonomy. Mobilising the notion of animal colonialism, this article places Norwegian reindeer policy in a global history of colonisation through targeting animals upon which Indigenous peoples depend. Turning the gaze toward the North, it reads Sámi art and activism with Indigenous critique to examine how colonisation in Europe itself continues today. Whereas most interpretations stop at affirming Sara’s accusation of colonialism, this article argues that her work expands our understanding of it. Pile o’Sápmi unveils the performative aspect of colonial sovereignty, whilst her insistence on centralising reindeer indicates an opportunity for postcolonial studies to decolonise its own anthropocentrism. Simultaneously, her work escapes the violence it bears witness to. Seen through the lens of Sámi aesthetics or duodji, Pile o’Sápmi tends to localised interspecies ecologies and shows the value of art in doing the work of decoloniality.
{"title":"Piles of Bones","authors":"Tessel Janse","doi":"10.1080/09528822.2022.2149010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2022.2149010","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Incorporating reindeer remains into haunting art installations, with Pile o’Sápmi, Máret Ánne Sara manifests how Norwegian forced culls impact Sámi autonomy. Mobilising the notion of animal colonialism, this article places Norwegian reindeer policy in a global history of colonisation through targeting animals upon which Indigenous peoples depend. Turning the gaze toward the North, it reads Sámi art and activism with Indigenous critique to examine how colonisation in Europe itself continues today. Whereas most interpretations stop at affirming Sara’s accusation of colonialism, this article argues that her work expands our understanding of it. Pile o’Sápmi unveils the performative aspect of colonial sovereignty, whilst her insistence on centralising reindeer indicates an opportunity for postcolonial studies to decolonise its own anthropocentrism. Simultaneously, her work escapes the violence it bears witness to. Seen through the lens of Sámi aesthetics or duodji, Pile o’Sápmi tends to localised interspecies ecologies and shows the value of art in doing the work of decoloniality.","PeriodicalId":45739,"journal":{"name":"Third Text","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47759898","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-02DOI: 10.1080/09528822.2022.2149993
Aaron Katzeman
Abstract Concentrating on contemporary art, visual culture and politics in Hawaiʻi, this article articulates a specific kind of abolitionist aesthetics that has ecology at its core and through which traces of a demilitarised futurity are interwoven. The work of anonymous collectives, artists and architects ‒including Hui Menehune, Tropic Zine, Jane Chang Mi, Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick and Sean Connelly ‒ stretches abolitionism to consider the role US militarism in Hawaiʻi plays in maintaining and enforcing global capitalism, holding captive alternative ways of organising society and the possibility of an environmentally just future. Analysing experimental residencies, video work, socially engaged proposals and other public interventions produced in relation to movements for racial justice, demilitarisation and Hawaiian sovereignty, these projects offer the provocation that the US might have to burn before the world, both spatially – in terms of being visible for all to see – and temporally, a prerequisite to mitigating the worst of climate catastrophe.
{"title":"Burning the American Flag Before the World","authors":"Aaron Katzeman","doi":"10.1080/09528822.2022.2149993","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2022.2149993","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Concentrating on contemporary art, visual culture and politics in Hawaiʻi, this article articulates a specific kind of abolitionist aesthetics that has ecology at its core and through which traces of a demilitarised futurity are interwoven. The work of anonymous collectives, artists and architects ‒including Hui Menehune, Tropic Zine, Jane Chang Mi, Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick and Sean Connelly ‒ stretches abolitionism to consider the role US militarism in Hawaiʻi plays in maintaining and enforcing global capitalism, holding captive alternative ways of organising society and the possibility of an environmentally just future. Analysing experimental residencies, video work, socially engaged proposals and other public interventions produced in relation to movements for racial justice, demilitarisation and Hawaiian sovereignty, these projects offer the provocation that the US might have to burn before the world, both spatially – in terms of being visible for all to see – and temporally, a prerequisite to mitigating the worst of climate catastrophe.","PeriodicalId":45739,"journal":{"name":"Third Text","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48381349","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}