DOCSLIB.ORG

Riegl and Darwin: Evolutionary Models of Art and Life Harriet Kate Sophie Mcatee Bsc, Barts (Hons)

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Riegl and Darwin: Evolutionary Models of Art and Life Harriet Kate Sophie Mcatee Bsc, Barts (Hons) Riegl and Darwin: Evolutionary Models of Art and Life Harriet Kate Sophie McAtee BSc, BArts (Hons) A thesis submitted for the degree of Master of Philosophy at The University of Queensland in 2014 School of Communications and Arts Harriet McAtee Abstract Austrian art historian Alois Riegl (1858-1905), a core member of the first Vienna School of Art History that flourished during the late-nineteenth century, is widely acknowledged as one of the key figures of art history leading into the twentieth century, and remembered for his then-radical treatises that used formal analysis to narrate a history of the evolution of artistic forms. The uniqueness of Riegl’s project, in which he developed a model that emphasised both the instances of continuity and innovation in the history of art, stands alone amongst his contemporaries, and has kinship with the evolutionary theories proposed by Charles Darwin (1809-1882). Riegl was preoccupied with delineating the uninterrupted history of art’s evolution, which accounted not only for changes in form and style, but also the function and role of art in society. However, despite intriguing analogies between Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection and Riegl’s model for the continuous evolution of art, the relationship between Riegl and Darwin has remained largely unexplored. Over the past two decades, contemporary interest in Riegl has surged, as art historians uncover his ongoing relevance to questions which preoccupy their current investigations. However, interaction with Riegl has largely been delineated by a framework of Hegelian aesthetics and art history, which as this thesis will demonstrate, does not appropriately account for the uniqueness of Vienna’s intellectual context, in which Darwinism was hugely popular. Part of today’s interest in Riegl stems from his stark contrast to his contemporaries, and rereading Riegl’s works through the lens of Darwin’s theories is key to unpacking his singular approach to relating the history of art. This thesis explores the nature and extent of Riegl’s engagement with Darwin and Darwinian theory in three key ways. First, by establishing the intellectual climate of mid-nineteenth century Vienna from 1860 to 1890: its scientific and art historical traditions. Secondly, we turn to Riegl’s engagement with Darwin in his first major theoretical work, Stilfragen (Questions of Style) (1893). It is through the ideas of German architect and theorist Gottfried Semper (1803-1879), and his followers, the so-called ‘Semperians,’ that Riegl engages most explicitly with Darwin. Moreover, a broader evolutionary construct will be shown to be at work in Stilfragen. Third, the continued use and development of Darwinian constructs in Riegl’s mature work (from 1897-1902) is demonstrated. The intellectual consequences of Darwinian theory in Riegl’s work are seen in three !2 Harriet McAtee aspects of his mature art history: (i) its loss of telos; (ii) Kunstwollen (‘the will of art’); and (iii) the death of beauty. Ultimately, Riegl develops a history of art that prioritises looking, but is fundamentally suspicious of beauty. Beauty is, in fact, all but negated. Instead, Riegl prioritises the genetic relationships between objects and motifs, tracing the interwoven history of their development. Riegl’s art history is continuous, and like the existence of life on earth, all pervasive. It considers objects in a hierarchy of descent, and engages with the relationships between objects, artists, even cultures, in diachronic manner, rather than ranking them according to a subjective idea of beauty or virtue. It is a history of art that is no longer reduced to a series of cyclical drives towards a universal goal or telos. What Riegl took from Darwin is the understanding that questions can and must remain unanswered and open; that the interest and wonder of our shared histories of art and life lies in the story and development of how they unfolded, rather than in the pursuit of a single, obedient, absolute truth. What Riegl offers today’s art historians is an approach to the history of art that is simultaneously limitless and systematic, material and intuitive. By reading Riegl through his interaction with Darwin, we can begin to engage with his nuances and seemingly idiosyncratic contradictions. !3 Harriet McAtee Declaration by author This thesis is composed of my original work, and contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference has been made in the text. I have clearly stated the contribution by others to jointly-authored works that I have included in my thesis. I have clearly stated the contribution of others to my thesis as a whole, including statistical assistance, survey design, data analysis, significant technical procedures, professional editorial advice, and any other original research work used or reported in my thesis. The content of my thesis is the result of work I have carried out since the commencement of my research higher degree candidature and does not include a substantial part of work that has been submitted to qualify for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution. I have clearly stated which parts of my thesis, if any, have been submitted to qualify for another award. I acknowledge that an electronic copy of my thesis must be lodged with the University Library and, subject to the General Award Rules of The University of Queensland, immediately made available for research and study in accordance with the Copyright Act 1968. I acknowledge that copyright of all material contained in my thesis resides with the copyright holder(s) of that material. Where appropriate I have obtained copyright permission from the copyright holder to reproduce material in this thesis. !4 Harriet McAtee Publications during candidature No publications. Publications included in this thesis No publications included. Contributions by others to the thesis No contributions by others. Statement of parts of the thesis submitted to qualify for the award of another degree None. !5 Harriet McAtee Acknowledgements There are many whom I wish to thank. Firstly, my principal supervisor, Dr Andrea Bubenik, whose support and guidance has been invaluable. Thank you for your continued encouragement to pursue my instinctual (and often whimsical) ideas. A sincere thanks also to Associate Professor Rex Butler, my associate supervisor, who has inspired an independent and fearless approach to my thinking. Thanks also to the academic staff of Art History at UQ: Dr Sally Butler, Dr Amelia Barikin, and Dr Allison Holland, all of whom have at various times, attended talks, helped me shape my ideas, or provided words of support and encouragement. For their patience and eternal willingness to help and support, I also wish to thank the administrative staff at EMSAH: Cathy Squirell, Angela Tuohy, Stormy Wehi, Jennifer Yared, and Vicky McNicol. The most enormous and grateful thanks to my amazing cohort of students and colleagues at UQ, in particular: Amanda van der Drift, Judy Hamilton, and Chari Larsson. Danielle Smith requires extra mention, for her invaluable companionship, moral support, and shared appreciation for the snacks required to write a thesis. My friends and family have provided immeasurable and invaluable support to me. Throughout periods of crippling frustration and writer’s block, and periods of elation and creative mania, they have remained steady and constant pillars of strength and patience. In particular, thanks to my parents, who have never once questioned my desire to study a little known and largely misunderstood Austrian art historian; and my husband, both for his wealth of knowledge on Greek philosophy and language, and his invaluable emotional and mental fortification. Thanks to Reana McCourt and Brigid Batch, whose laughter and love have helped me more than they know. Thank you to the enduring staff of the inter-library loan department at UQ Library, who have endeavoured with my persistent and obscure requests. I also wish to acknowledge the financial support of the Australian Postgraduate Award, without which this project would not have been possible. Finally, many and sincere thanks to the enduring and hospitable staff of many of Brisbane’s cafes, who have often tolerated many hours of rumination over a single cup of coffee. You have facilitated my thesis in a way that cannot be underestimated: BarMerlo UQ, Sol Natural Foods West End, Blackstar Coffee, Evo Espresso. !6 Harriet McAtee Keywords art/science, Alois Riegl, Charles Darwin, art historiography, Darwinism, Kunstwollen, 19th century, evolution, decorative arts Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classifications (ANZSRC) ANZSRC code: 190102 Art History, 50% ANZSRC code: 190103 Art Theory, 50% Fields of Research (FoR) Classification FoR code: 1901 Art Theory and Criticism, 100% !7 Harriet McAtee Table of Contents List of Figures 9 Introduction 10 1860-1890: Intellectual Traditions in Vienna 34 1893: Darwinian Constructs in Riegl’s Stilfragen 57 1899-1903: the Consequences of Evolutionary Theory for Riegl’s Mature Work 82 Conclusion 109 Appendix 1: Figures 112 Bibliography 123 Works by Riegl 129 List of Corrections 145 !8 Harriet McAtee List of Figures 1.1 Gold Brooch with Garnets and Set Stones. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum. From Alois Riegl, Spätrömische Kunstindustrie (1901). 1.2 Month of November. Der Kalendar von St Mesmin bei Orleans. 11th century. Vat. Cod. Reg. lat. 1263 folio 73 v. From Vaticanische Miniaturen (1893) 1.3 Charles Darwin, Tree of Life, 1859. From On the Origin of Species (1859). 2.1 Karl Hasenauer and Gottfried Semper, Kunsthistorisches Museum (exterior, facade with statue in foreground), Vienna (1872-1881). Clarence Ward Archive, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, USA. 3.1 Owen Jones, The lotus and papyrus, types of Egyptian ornament, 1856. From Egyptian chapter in The Grammar of Ornament, plate IV. Lithograph. 3.2 Acanthus, 1908. From Thomas Davidson, Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary of the English Language (1908).
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Work in Progress. Report on Rudolf Von Eitelberger: Netzwerker Der
    Work in Progress. Report on Rudolf von Eitelberger: Netzwerker der Kunstgeschichte. Conference held for the 200th Anniversary of the birth of Rudolf Eitelberger (1817-1885). Museum of Applied Art, Vienna, 27-29 April 2017.1 Matthew Rampley Rudolf Eitelberger is commonly recognised as a key figure in the institutional formation of art history as a scholarly discipline. The first professor of art history in Austria and only the second in Europe, he also organised the first international art historical congress in 1873. He persuaded Emperor Franz Joseph to found the Museum for Art and Industry and was involved in the establishment of many other museums of design and industry across the Habsburg Empire. He was also influential in the development of monument conservation and protection in Austria. One can therefore safely state that without him the landscape of the nineteenth-century art world in Austria-Hungary would have been markedly different. How should we, therefore, assess his legacy? Even though his name may be familiar to art historians, he has seldom been the subject of close analysis and, if asked, few would be able to do more than repeat the brief outline provided above. This symposium set out to address that deficit, with 19 presentations on his social and intellectual origins, his involvement in Viennese cultural politics, his work as museum director, and his broader social, political and intellectual concerns. As the initiator of the Vienna School of Art History, he is invariably compared with his better known successors, such as Alois Riegl or Max Dvořák, but this is probably misconceived.
    [Show full text]
  • A Short History of Poland and Lithuania
    A Short History of Poland and Lithuania Chapter 1. The Origin of the Polish Nation.................................3 Chapter 2. The Piast Dynasty...................................................4 Chapter 3. Lithuania until the Union with Poland.........................7 Chapter 4. The Personal Union of Poland and Lithuania under the Jagiellon Dynasty. ..................................................8 Chapter 5. The Full Union of Poland and Lithuania. ................... 11 Chapter 6. The Decline of Poland-Lithuania.............................. 13 Chapter 7. The Partitions of Poland-Lithuania : The Napoleonic Interlude............................................................. 16 Chapter 8. Divided Poland-Lithuania in the 19th Century. .......... 18 Chapter 9. The Early 20th Century : The First World War and The Revival of Poland and Lithuania. ............................. 21 Chapter 10. Independent Poland and Lithuania between the bTwo World Wars.......................................................... 25 Chapter 11. The Second World War. ......................................... 28 Appendix. Some Population Statistics..................................... 33 Map 1: Early Times ......................................................... 35 Map 2: Poland Lithuania in the 15th Century........................ 36 Map 3: The Partitions of Poland-Lithuania ........................... 38 Map 4: Modern North-east Europe ..................................... 40 1 Foreword. Poland and Lithuania have been linked together in this history because
    [Show full text]
  • A Century of Cataloguing of Illuminated Manuscripts in Vienna
    OTTO PÄCHT-ARCHIV ARCHIV PROJEKTE FÖRDERER TEAM MATERIALIEN * A Century of Cataloguing Illuminated Manuscripts in Vienna Martin ROLAND Historical Background and Library History With reference to historical holdings in general and manuscripts in particular, the Austrian National Library is one of the world’s leading libraries. The importance of these treasures does not correspond with the 80,000 km² of territory of a republic created by the treaty of Saint Germain in 1919. After World War I the inhabitants neither considered themselves Austrians nor had they a unifying culture. Instead, they regarded themselves, on the one hand, as part of the German- speaking culture, and, on the other, as Styrians, Tyroleans, Carinthians etc. Each of these crown lands (“Kronländer”) had strong historical roots of identification reaching back to the middle ages. Additionally there was a supranational identification which centred on the tradition of the Habsburg monarchy intensively connected with Vienna as residential city. This function as the centre of a monarchic empire is the basis of the library and its treasures. As a princely library some of its holdings go back to the 14th century property of the Austrian dukes, who were Habsburgs since 1282. The first milestone towards a collection was due to Frederick III (1415–1493), who merged his own holdings with those of his Luxemburg predecessors as king and emperor (Wenceslaus and Sigismund). A library with librarians and indexing began to evolve in the second half of the 16th century. The holdings of the princely library were limited to high-end volumes (in terms of artistic decoration) and – due to the influence of humanism – to works of philological and historical interest.
    [Show full text]
  • Ikonotheka 30, 2020
    IKONOTHEKA 30, 2020 Tomáš Murár insTiTuTe oF arT hisTory, czech academy oF sciences, czech republic orcid: 0000-0002-3418-1941 https://doi.org/10.31338/2657-6015ik.30.1 “A work of art is an object that necessitates contemplation”. Latency of visual studies within the Vienna School of Art History? Abstract This article investigates a research method of the so-called Vienna School of Art History, mainly its transformation by Max Dvořák around the First World War. The article suggests the possible influence of Georg Simmel’s philosophy on Dvořák in this time, evident mainly in Dvořák’s interpretation of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s art, written by Dvořák in 1920 and published posthumously in 1921. This another view on the Vienna School of Art History is then researched in writings on Pieter Bruegel the Elder by Dvořák’s students Hans Sedlmayr and Charles de Tolnay when Tolnay extended Dvořák’s thinking and Sedlmayr challenged its premises – both Tolnay and Sedlmayr thus in the same time interpreted Bruegel’s art differently, even though they were both Dvořák’s students. The article then suggests a possible interpretative relationship of the Vienna School of Art History after its transformation by Max Dvořák with today’s approaches to art (history), mainly with the so-called visual studies. Keywords: Max Dvořák, Vienna School of Art History, Georg Simmel, Visual Studies, Charles de Tolnay, Hans Sedlmayr. Introduction In Max Dvořák’s text on the art of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, written in 1920 and published posthumously in 1921,1 a reference to Georg Simmel’s interpretation of 1 M.
    [Show full text]
  • Wood Curriculum Vitae May 2016
    Christopher Stewart WOOD Professor and Chair, Department of German, New York University (Affiliated Faculty, Department of Comparative Literature) 19 University Place New York, NY 10003 email: [email protected] tel 212-998-8650 CURRICULUM VITAE (May 2016) Academic degrees and study 1979-1983 Harvard College A.B. magna cum laude in History and Literature 1983-1985 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich three semesters in degree program in art history 1984-1991 Harvard University Ph.D. in Fine Arts Dissertation: "The Independent Landscapes of Albrecht Altdorfer," advised by Konrad Oberhuber and Henri Zerner 2000 Yale University Honorary Master of Arts Privatim (MAH) Employment 1992-2014 Yale University Assistant, (from 1996) Associate, (from 2000) Full Professor, and (from 2013) Carnegie Professor, History of Art 2014-present New York University Professor, Department of German Visiting professorships fall 1997 University of California, Berkeley Visiting Associate Professor spring 2001 Vassar College Belle Ribicoff Distinguished Visiting Scholar spring 2007 Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Visiting Professor fall 2013 New York University, Department of German, Visiting Professor AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS: 2 1980 Jacob Wendell Scholarship, Harvard University 1983-1984 Deutscher Akademischer Austauschsdienst (DAAD) fellowship, Munich 1987-1988 Sheldon Fellowship, Harvard University, for study and travel abroad (Vienna, Paris) 1989-1992 Junior Fellow, Society of Fellows, Harvard University summer 1994 Guest scholar, Institut für Europäische
    [Show full text]
  • Arabesken – Das Ornamentale Des Balletts Im Frühen 19
    2017-10-18 10-58-48 --- Projekt: transcript.anzeigen / Dokument: FAX ID 026f474678049510|(S. 1- 2) VOR2935.p 474678049518 Aus: Eike Wittrock Arabesken – Das Ornamentale des Balletts im frühen 19. Jahrhundert November 2017, 358 Seiten, kart., zahlr. Abb., 39,99 €, ISBN 978-3-8376-2935-4 Die Arabeske ist nicht nur eine der wichtigsten Positionen des klassischen Ballettvo- kabulars, mit ihr lässt sich auch das Ornamentale des Balletts im frühen 19. Jahrhun- dert beschreiben. Aus bisher größtenteils unveröffentlichten ikonografischen Quellen entwickelt Eike Wittrock eine Ästhetik des Balletts, die sowohl die Einzelfigur Arabes- ke wie auch die Gruppenformationen des corps de ballet erfasst. Lithografien, choreo- grafische Notationen, Abbildungen in Traktaten, Musterbücher und Buchverzierun- gen werden dabei als historiografische Medien von Tanz verstanden, die die fantasti- sche Bildlichkeit dieser Ballette in der Aufzeichnung weiterführen. Eike Wittrock ist Tanzwissenschaftler an der Freien Universität Berlin und forscht dort zur Tanzgeschichte. Außerdem arbeitet er als Dramaturg und Kurator im Bereich des zeitgenössischen Tanzes. Weitere Informationen und Bestellung unter: www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-2935-4 © 2017 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2017-10-18 10-58-48 --- Projekt: transcript.anzeigen / Dokument: FAX ID 026f474678049510|(S. 1- 2) VOR2935.p 474678049518 Inhalt 1. Einleitung | 7 Le Délire d’un peintre: Figur und Fantasie | 11 Zur Methode | 20 Der Begriff Arabeske | 36 Tanzhistorischer Forschungsstand | 53 2. Danseuses d’Herculanum | 65 3. Genealogie der Arabeske | 97 Drei frühe Auftritte der Arabeske | 104 Carlo Blasis’ Theorie der Arabeske | 108 Eingebildete Linien | 131 Of the figure that moves against the wind | 146 Finale Arabeske/Unzählige Variationen | 149 Im Cirque Olympique | 159 Arabesken in Giselle | 168 4.
    [Show full text]
  • Viennese Art, Ugliness, and the Vienna School of Art History: the Vicissitudes of Theory and Practice
    Viennese art, ugliness, and the Vienna school of art history: the vicissitudes of theory and practice Kathryn Simpson Around 1900 in Vienna, the concept of ugliness developed a new significance in both art theory and practice. The theorists of the Vienna school of art history, including Franz Wickhoff, Alois Riegl, and later Otto Benesch and Max Dvoř{k, rejected the scholarly tradition of Germanic contemporaries like renowned art historian Heinrich Wölfflin, who championed classical art as the highest aesthetic good. By contrast the Vienna school art historians opposed absolute aesthetics and its insistence that a specifically classical beauty was the goal of all art.1 At the dawn of the twentieth century, Wickhoff and Riegl both presented radically new theories arguing for a revaluation of aesthetic values, a non-hierarchical relationship between so-called beauty and ugliness, and the importance of developing an art that was appropriate for the age. Ugliness was suddenly spotlighted in Viennese artistic practice as well. Gustav Klimt was the undisputed king of the Viennese art scene; he had inherited the throne from the revered history painter, designer, and decorator Hans Makart, whose sensual, decorative sensibility had defined late-nineteenth-century tastes in Vienna, giving rise to the term Makartstil, or ‘Makart style.’ After three years as the leader of the Vienna Secession movement, Klimt produced a series of works of art which enraged sectors of the intellectual establishment and the general public, who reacted in particular to the purported ugliness of Klimt’s latest visions. Yet shortly thereafter young Viennese artists eager to lead what they called the ‘new art’ movement began to develop deliberate strategies of ugliness to help create and buttress their own antagonistic artistic personae.
    [Show full text]
  • Beyond Kunstwollen (Beijing, 8 Apr 2017)
    Beyond Kunstwollen (Beijing, 8 Apr 2017) Beijing, Apr 8, 2017 Wenyi Qian Beijing, OCAT Institute & The University of Chicago Center in Beijing, 8 April 2017 Jas' Elsner Seminar One Beyond Kunstwollen Co-organized by OCAT Institute & The University of Chicago Center in Beijing Jas' Elsner Seminar Series Jas' Elsner Seminar Series, a three-part seminar series curated and organized by OCAT Institute, forms an integral part of OCAT Institute’s 2017 Annual Programs and anticipates the 2017 OCAT Annual Lectures to be delivered by Jas' Elsner in Beijing in September 2017. The Seminar Series is offered in the form of three historiographic workshops. These three workshops contemplate what the French theorist and historian Michel de Certeau calls “historiographical operation” within art history, by looking at three critical aspects of its practice—a disciplinary moment (the Vienna School), a rhetorical practice (description, or ekphrasis), and a critical modality (comparativism). As such, these three aspects or cross-sections in art historiography correspond to three inter- linked stages of thought process in Jas' Elsner’s vision of art history as a discipline—from past, present, to future—which the participants are encouraged to follow through as a logical sequence. The first seminar, whose firm focus is on the discipline’s past, aims at an exercise in rigorous his- toricization wherein methodological debates are localized into episodes of early literature in the discipline and illuminated against wider cultural, political, and ideological backgrounds. Histori- cization has as one of its purposes the liberation from, and the caution against, facile or whole- sale acceptance of any single set of methods.
    [Show full text]
  • Vojtěch Birnbaum's Concept and Method of Art History, 2017
    ISBN 978-80-905744-7-2 9 788090 574472 Tomáš Murár (1990) je historik umění, věnuje se historiografii a teorii Tato publikace byla vydána jakou součást výstavy Vojtěch dějin umění. Vedle svého zájmu o vídeňskou školu dějin umění se Birnbaum: Princip umění, kterou uspořádal Archiv výtvarného zabývá evropským a americkým uměním 19. a 20. století a interpretací umění v Centru současného umění DOX v Praze v roce 2017 obrazu z perspektivy intermediality. u příležitosti 140. výročí narození předního českého historika umění Vojtěcha Birnbauma (1877–1934), zakladatele vědeckého Tomáš Murár (1990) is an art historian who specialises in the zkoumání výtvarného umění u nás. Přehledně shrnuje aspekty historiography and theory of art history. He is particularly interested in Birnbaumovy teorie „principu“ a „zákonitosti“ umění, jak je the Vienna School of Art History, 19th- and 20th-century European and sledoval a rozpracoval zejména ve 20. a 30. letech 20. století. American art, and the interpretation of images from the perspective of Zároveň sleduje zakořenění Birnbaumovy teoretické práce intermediality. v širších kruzích dobového evropského uměleckohistorického i filozofického myšlení a dopad jeho formulace uměleckého „vývoje“ na další generace historiků umění. This book was published to coincide with an exhibition titled Vojtěch Birnbaum: The Principle of Art organised by the Archive of Fine Arts at the Centre for Contemporary Art DOX in Prague in 2017, commemorating the 140th anniversary of the birth of art historian Vojtěch Birnbaum (1877–1934), a pioneering figure in the scholarly study of art in the Czech lands. It explores Birnbaum’s concepts of a ‘principle’ and ‘pattern’ in art, which he developed and wrote about in the 1920s and 1930s.
    [Show full text]
  • Rudolf Eitelberger Von Edelberg. Netzwerker Der Kunstwelt
    University of Birmingham Across the Leitha Rampley, Matthew DOI: 10.7767/9783205209256.363 License: Creative Commons: Attribution (CC BY) Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Citation for published version (Harvard): Rampley, M 2019, Across the Leitha: Rudolf Eitelberger, the Austrian Museum for Art and Industry and the liberal view of culture in the Habsburg Empire. in E Kernbauer, K Pokorny-Nagel, R Rosenberg, J Rüdiger, P Werkner & T Jenni (eds), Rudolf Eitelberger von Edelberg: Netzwerker der Kunstwelt. 1st edition edn, Bohlau Verlag, Vienna, pp. 363-392. https://doi.org/10.7767/9783205209256.363 Link to publication on Research at Birmingham portal General rights Unless a licence is specified above, all rights (including copyright and moral rights) in this document are retained by the authors and/or the copyright holders. The express permission of the copyright holder must be obtained for any use of this material other than for purposes permitted by law. •Users may freely distribute the URL that is used to identify this publication. •Users may download and/or print one copy of the publication from the University of Birmingham research portal for the purpose of private study or non-commercial research. •User may use extracts from the document in line with the concept of ‘fair dealing’ under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (?) •Users may not further distribute the material nor use it for the purposes of commercial gain. Where a licence is displayed above, please note the terms and conditions of the licence govern your use of this document. When citing, please reference the published version.
    [Show full text]
  • The Pseudo-Kufic Ornament and the Problem of Cross-Cultural Relationships Between Byzantium and Islam
    The pseudo-kufic ornament and the problem of cross-cultural relationships between Byzantium and Islam Silvia Pedone – Valentina Cantone The aim of the paper is to analyze pseudo-kufic ornament Dealing with a much debated topic, not only in recent in Byzantine art and the reception of the topic in Byzantine times, as that concerning the role and diffusion of orna- Studies. The pseudo-kufic ornamental motifs seem to ment within Byzantine art, one has often the impression occupy a middle position between the purely formal that virtually nothing new is possible to add so that you abstractness and freedom of arabesque and the purely have to repeat positions, if only involuntarily, by now well symbolic form of a semantic and referential mean, borrowed established. This notwithstanding, such a topic incessantly from an alien language, moreover. This double nature (that gives rise to questions and problems fueling the discussion is also a double negation) makes of pseudo-kufic decoration of historical and theoretical issues: a debate that has been a very interesting liminal object, an object of “transition”, going on for longer than two centuries. This situation is as it were, at the crossroad of different domains. Starting certainly due to a combination of reasons, but ones hav- from an assessment of the theoretical questions raised by ing a close connection with the history of the art-historical the aesthetic peculiarities of this kind of ornament, we discipline itself. In the present paper our aim is to focus on consider, from this specific point of view, the problem of a very specific kind of ornament, the so-called pseudo-kufic the cross-cultural impact of Islamic and islamicizing formal inscriptions that rise interesting pivotal questions – hither- repertory on Byzantine ornament, focusing in particular on to not so much explored – about the “interference” between a hitherto unpublished illuminated manuscript dated to the a formalistic approach and a functionalistic stance, with its 10th century and held by the Marciana Library in Venice.
    [Show full text]
  • Typological Studies of Ancient Theatre Architecture: the Tree Vs
    Paper Information: Title: Typological Studies of Ancient Theatre Architecture: The Tree vs. the Rhizome Model Author: Zeynep Aktüre Pages: 89–107 DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/TRAC2007_89_107 Publication Date: 04 March 2008 Volume Information: Fenwick, C., Wiggins, M., and Wythe, D. (eds.) (2008) TRAC 2007: Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, London 2007. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Copyright and Hardcopy Editions: The following paper was originally published in print format by Oxbow Books for TRAC. Hard copy editions of this volume may still be available, and can be purchased direct from Oxbow at http://www.oxbowbooks.com. TRAC has now made this paper available as Open Access through an agreement with the publisher. Copyright remains with TRAC and the individual author(s), and all use or quotation of this paper and/or its contents must be acknowledged. This paper was released in digital Open Access format in April 2013. Typological Studies of Ancient Theatre Architecture: The Tree vs. the Rhizome Model Zeynep Aktüre This paper aims to draw attention to a comparatively recent paradigm shift in studies on ancient theatre architecture that has resulted in a transformation of the rather familiar theatre typology based on Greek-Roman binarism to one which stresses a multiplicity in the ancient performance building types that escapes a representation of the binary model; and explains this change by a parallel shift of emphasis from the idea of commonness to that of plurality in the conceptualisation of European cultural identity. Such contextualisation of the modern historiography on ancient theatre architecture in contemporary Europe, where we find the origins of archaeology as a discipline, would conform to the idea that ‘archaeological interpretation is necessarily a subjective process which is influenced by the socio-political context in which it takes place’ (Jones and Graves-Brown 1996: 19).
    [Show full text]