Journal articles on the topic 'Painting Reinterpretation'

Abstract This research focuses on one of the most famous paintings made at the court of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911)—Qingming shanghe (Up the River during Qingming). Commissioned by the Yongzheng emperor (r. 1723–1735) and completed in the second year of the Qianlong emperor's reign (1736–1795), the painting is a rare example of Qing court art that reveals how Qianlong furthered his father's artistic vision while formulating his own in the first fifteen years of his long tenure as ruler. This vision involved how to reinterpret and reinvent the Chinese painting tradition through time-honored themes. The article is divided into four sections. In the first, it brings attention to the salient and crucial but long neglected stylistic features of the painting—those that emphasize theatricality and spectatorship. These interconnected features link and characterize the paintings commissioned by Yongzheng. The second section shifts to discuss the emerging cultural agenda of Yongzheng as seen through the manner in which court art references the Chinese painting tradition. The most remarkable act regards the reinterpretation of old painting themes that include Qingming shanghe and Baijun tu (One Hundred Horses). The third section analyzes how the paratextual elements of Qingming shanghe, especially Qianlong's poem and inscription, inform us of the emperor's views about the production mechanism of court painting and the political meaning of this work. The last section, based on Qianlong's understanding of the painting, highlights the emperor's cultural agenda associated with the idea of yuanben, which pointed to new versions of old themes made by his painting academy.

The traditions followed by people throughout history underlie the development of the culture of monumental art, forming the continuity of generations, memory and traditions of temple architecture of the Crimea. The topic of religious monumental painting draws interest of the researchers. The object of this article is the Crimean religious monumental and decorative art; while the subject is the peculiarities of modern religious painting in Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Simferopol and Saint Vladimir Cathedral in Chersonesos. The goal is determine the modern artistic-aesthetic form of temple painting carried out by the experts of monumental and decorative art, as well as the command of the unique languages of creative reinterpretation of wholeness. Temple religious painting is explored on the works of the modern artists of monumental religious painting, using the analysis of the academic style of painting, use of classical canons in images of the figures, artistic-stylistic, thematic, unique systems in the ornamental painting. The author determines the characteristics of the image such as material texture and plastic modeling of artistic form, which allows combining the modern wall paintings of the Crimean Orthodox churches of into a holistic system of material and spiritual values. The crucial theoretical-methodological vector of research is interweavement of the methods of culturology and art history, which reveals the techniques and peculiarities of academic painting in temple architecture.

The object of this research is the artistic heritage of Slovenian painter and teacher of painting Anton Ažbe (1862-1905) and its interpretation in the works of art historians and testimonies of his students and contemporaries. The subject of this research is the graphic and painting works of Anton Ažbe. The goal consists in reconsideration of the existing within modern art history understanding of the vector of creative path of the painter. Particular attention is given to his painting “The Black Girl” and clarification of the date of its creation. In the course of writing this article, the author applied the method of formal-stylistic analysis for meeting the precise purpose of the article. The scientific novelty of this study consists in reinterpretation of creative development of the Slovenian painter and teacher of painting Anton Ažbe based on the new information of the date of creation of one of his signature paintings – “The Black Girl”. The main conclusion lies in characteristics of the evolutionary stages of creative development of Anton Ažbe.

The article discusses Pier Paolo Pasolini’s reinterpretation of the myth of Medea in his 1969 fi lm by placing it in a range of artistic contexts, primarily painting. It fi rst recounts the history of mythological sorceress from ancient Kolchida, known from Greek myths and Eurypides’s play. A number of artistic works dedicated to Medea are referred to, including Seneca’s tragedy, Lars von Trier’s movie, Christa Wolf’s novel, Victor Mottez’s and Thomas Satterwhite Noble’s paintings. The methodological framework is based on the work of critics such as Alicja Helman, Kinga Anna Gajda, Piotr Kletowski and Janusz Kossak.

This article is devoted to the attribution of the Madonna and Child painting from the collection of the Sverdlovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore (Yekaterinburg), corresponding to the image of Madonna del Libro distributed in Italy in the sixteenth century. Referring to works of Italian researchers, the author reveals the original source that served as the basis for creating the iconographic work, i.e. a work of Perino del Vaga, an Italian artist. Further research helps establish the fact that the Ural canvas is a copy of an original painting of the Spanish artist Pedro de Rubiales who worked in Italy in the 1640s–1660s and reinterpreted P. del Vaga’s work. However, a technological analysis of the Ural canvas demonstrates that it was created much later, between the second quarter and the mid-nineteenth century. The unknown author of the picture studied in the article made attempts to reconstruct the technology of the original, but the discrepancies between them and the materials and methods of the Italian painting from between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries revealed in the analysis of the canvas, ground, the stratigraphy of the paint layer, and paint binder make it possible to speak about the author’s insufficient awareness of the principles of painting of the era and region he referred to in his reinterpretation. Thus, the work in question demonstrates the peculiarities of creating imitations of sixteenth-century works at a later time. The article also proposes a version on the place and time of restoration of the painting, formulated on the basis of comparing data on the use of duplication technology, the design of the subframe, the presence of a signature on the subframe, and the correlation of said features with records from the catalogue of the Nizhny Tagil collection of paintings by D. P. Shorin. They suggest that work to improve the preservation of the painting was performed in the workshops of the imperial Hermitage by restorer N. A. Sidorov.

This article examines the representation mode painting like a change parallel to the profound transformation of the technical or theoretical knowledge, and also parallel to changes in the Balinese society values due to the physical evolution and the evolution of the system of values. In fact, within one century of painting it has been like moving from the classical, traditional, standard, homogeneous, local, and collectively turned into a painting that has been varied, heterogeneous, individual, and internationally with a modern twist. These waves of change occurred in the span of time through several stages, and most striking result from cash capitalistic economy and culture, especially tourism. In pre-colonial time the painting is a narrative religious functions until the time of breath commercialism modernist touches to always make innovations or changes. From the sacred space of temples and palaces to moving objects souvenirs, hotel interiors, fash- ion and even interior and exterior car. Developments of painting through innovation should not be inter- preted as a discontinuity (rapture) or discontinuity of the local context, but on the contrary, to appreciate again the classical values (pastiche), not by road of preserving it rigidly, but the process of reinterpretation and re-contextualization.

The article focuses on the landscape art of the South Korean artist Oh Hyun-yong (b. 1949) proposing an original approach to adapting the artistic traditions of Korean landscape painting sansuhwa (“mountain-water”) by using the technology of our time — the visual symbol of the bar code. The purpose of the article is to study the distinctive features of the master’s creative method, in which, while using new expressive means, one can observe the preservation of high spiritual ideality inherent in the traditional Korean landscape, which undoubtedly constitutes the most important specific feature of Korean sansuhwa painting — increased attention to the philosophical and aesthetic aspect of landscape art which was considered as an integral and largely determining part of the artistic process. The research is based on the principle of an integrated approach to the problem stated in the theme of the report. In addition to a systematic analysis, an art history approach is used which combines elements of typological comparisons of various discoveries of Oh Hyun-yong with stylistic and comparative analysis of selected landscape paintings of famous Korean artists of the past era, such as Jeong Seon (1676–1759), Kim Hongdo (1745–1806?), Kim Gyujin (1868–1933) and others. Analyzing Oh Hyun-yong’s landscape works, called “bar-coded landscape” by South Korean critics, which represent a creative reinterpretation of artistic traditions while following the innovations of our time, their role and significance in the contemporary art of the Republic of Korea is determined. The author makes a conclusion about the originality of Oh Hyun-yong’s landscape art that represents the aspiration to technology and the reflection of the problems of the modern world, based on the artistic principles inherent in the traditional painting of sansuhwa which contributes to the revival of the aesthetics of the Korean landscape in the new art forms of modernity.

The Chinese novelist and playwright Li Yu 李漁 (1610~1680) enjoyed great fame in Japan since the 1690s when he was introduced to Japanese readers of the Tokugawa period. Particularly important in the reception history of Li Yu in Japan was Jieziyuan huazhuan, the Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting. The reproduction and reinterpretation of Jieziyuan huazhuan in Tokugawa Japan shaped Li Yu’s reputation as a literatus ideal among his Japanese readers in spite of his obscure reputation among his Chinese contemporaries. Through a wide range of primary materials, this article examines the idolization of Li Yu in the middle and late Tokugawa period and argues that it was a result of the misrepresentation of Li Yu as a literati painting master, as well as a hermit fiction writer. The close connection established between him and Jieziyuan huazhuan led to the recognition of him in Tokugawa Japan as one of the greatest literati painting artists. Meanwhile, the imagination of him as a hermit further established his image as the ideal of literati spirit among his Japanese admirers. Such idolization in turn contributed to his reputation in early modern China when his works were re-introduced to Chinese readers in the 1930s.

Individualization in music art at the turn of the XXth – XXIst centuries affected not only the concept of the composer's opus, but also the style, manner of writing, and composition of performers. At the same time, the focus on novelty coexists with the actualization of artistic experience of the near and distant past. In addition, the junction of these trends includes "excursions" to other art forms. In this sense, particularly interesting are the works by the composers at the intersection of cultures, epochs and languages. Such examples include the poem for viola and piano "The Agony in the Garden" (based on El Greco's painting) by Margarita Zelenaia (born 1954) — composer, pianist, teacher, organizer, uniting the traditions of Russian and Western schools. The article deals with the specifics of the musical implementation of the eternal Gospel story depicted in the painting "The Agony in the Garden" by the Renaissance artist El Greco. The concept of Margarita Zelenaia's unique programme work is born at the "crossroads" of various types of art and the Gospel word, modernity and Baroque. Her dramaturgy is based on a system of symbolically loaded leitentonations — the author's reinterpretation of the rhetorical figures of the Baroque.

WITH WALTER CRANE, marginality is a question of medium. For his contemporaries, Crane's artistic practice embodied the ethos of Arts and Crafts eclecticism, apparent in this view of his studio from 1885 (Figure 15): watercolor, oil painting, tempera, sculpture, design, and illustration vie for our attention. As the painter Sir William Rothenstein recalled, “Crane could do anything he wanted, or anyone else wanted” (292). As an artist, designer, and – crucially – a socialist, Crane disregarded the traditional distinctions between high art and popular culture. With a history of art constructed along the fault lines of media, school, and style, Crane's diverse artistic practice and radical politics defy easy categorization. And this is precisely the point: his work requires the viewer to think across media, to move from the margins of wallpaper and illustration to the center of painting and back again. Or perhaps it is more fruitful to think of this process as one of inversion, placing wallpaper at the center and painting at its margins. According to Homi Bhabha, it is this “disjunctive temporality” (151) of the margins that allows cultural identity and political solidarities to emerge. The forging of political solidarities through art was the crux of Crane's project, and the disruption of established cultural hierarchies signaled the central role of art in political agitation. Visible on the right margin of photograph of Crane's studio (see Figure 15), the watercolor Pandora from 1885 (Figure 16) provides an ideal starting point for an exploration of the ways in which socialist politics move from the decorative margins to the very heart of Crane's art, a process enabled by the artist's politicized reinterpretation of classical mythology.

AbstrakPerempuan di daerah Kerinci sangat diistimewakan, seperti menarik garis keturunan dari pihak ibu (perempuan) yang disebut dengan sistem matrilineal. Selain menarik garis keturunan dari pihak ibu (perempuan) sistem pewarisan juga datangnya dari kaum perempuan, seperti sko (pusaka) yang berbentuk gelar, tetapi dipakai oleh mamak (saudara laki-laki ibu) dan orang sumendo (suami ibu); dan harta pusaka tinggi; seperti rumah dan sawah dikendalikan oleh perempuan. Perempuan Kerinci selalu menerapkan etika beradat kemanapun pergi, sehingga mereka dihormati dan disegani di dalam masyarakat. Etika beradat perempuan Kerinci yakni “sesuai dengan Icopake.” Icopakeperempuan Kerinci sifatnya lunak atau lemah lembut, seperti malu pada laki-laki, takut pada janji, mulut manih kecindam murah (ketika berbicara lemah lembut tutur katanya dan sopan santun), pandai memilihara diri, rajin mengurus rumah tangga, , dan menurut kata junjungan (suami). Metode yang dipakai dalam penciptaan karya ini observasi, dokumentasi, dan eksperimen. Karya ini menggambarkan tentang kekaguman pengkarya terhadap perempuan Kerinci yang diwujudkan kedalam karya seni lukis dengan menghadirkan berbagai kegiatan yang dilakukan oleh perempuan Kerinci dalam kehidupan sehari-hari. Perwujudan karya menggunakan konsep reinterpretasi yang menggambarkan kembali aktivitas perempuan Kerinci dalam berbagai aspek mulai dari kesawah sampai pada aktivitasnya dalam adat yang diwujudkan ke dalam karya seni lukis dengan gayadekoratif. Kata Kunci:Perempuan Kerinci, kekaguman dan seni lukis AbstractKulouk is one Women in Kerinci regency are very special, such as drawing a bloodline from mother (female) called the matrilineal system. In addition to drawing a line frommother (female) inheritance system also came from women, such as sko (heirloom) in the form of a title, but was used by mamak (mother's brother) and sumendo (mother's husband); and high inheritance, like houses and rice fields controlled by women. Kerinci women always apply ethical ethics wherever they go, so they were respected in society. Kerinci's civilized ethics are "in accordance with the Icopake." Icopake female Kerinci is soft or gentle, such as being ashamed of men, fear of promises, low-priced mouth when she speaks softly and politely), good at choosing herself , diligently taking care of the household, and according to the word lord (husband). The method used in the creation of this work is observation, documentation, and experimentation. This work illustrates the admiration of the artists for Kerinci women who embodied the work of painting by presenting various activities carried out by Kerinci women in their daily lives. The embodiment of the work uses the concept of reinterpretation which re-illustrates the activities of Kerinci women in various aspects ranging from the crater to the activities in adat which are embodied in painting with decorative style.. Keywords:Kerinci’s women, admiration and painting

The basic design course is the heritage of the Bauhaus and similar avant-garde approaches, who established a practical education system and a theoretical framework comprehending art and design disciplines during the early 20th century. Today, basic design is still the most important course of the first year in the curriculum of many art and design programs in Turkey and abroad. This is also viable for architectural education. In the discipline of architecture, which is based on the definition of space, basic design has a special value for the comprehension of basic principles in the transition between two dimensional and three dimensional compositions. For the student facing the design process for the first time, it is difficult to understand the basic design principles. This study reinterprets the Suprematist painting compositions of the early 20th century Russian avant-garde through applicable examples and raises new proposals for basic design applications. ÖzetTemel Tasarım dersi erken 20. Yüzyıl’da sanat ve tasarım disiplinlerini kapsayıcı uygulamalı bir eğitim modeli ve kuramsal çerçeve ortaya koymuş olan Bauhaus okulu ve benzer eğilimler taşıyan avant-garde ekollerin mirasıdır. Halen ülkemizde ve yurtdışında birçok sanat ve tasarım programında temel tasarım eğitimin ilk yılında en önemli ders olma özelliğini sürdürür. Bu durum mimarlık eğitimi için de geçerlidir. Mekân tanımı üzerine kurgulanan mimarlık disiplininde temel tasarım, kompozisyonda iki boyuttan üç boyuta geçişe ilişkin temel ilkelerin kavranması açısından özel bir değere sahiptir. Tasarım süreciyle ilk defa karşılaşan öğrencinin temel tasarım ilkelerini kavraması ise zor bir süreçtir. Bu çalışma söz konusu süreci sistemleştirmek için erken 20. Yüzyıl Rus Avant-garde akımlarından seçilen Süprematist resim kompozisyonlarının katkılarını gerekçeli olarak ve uygulamalı örnekler üzerinden değerlendirmekte ve temel tasarım uygulamaları için yeni öneriler ortaya koymaktadır.

Cui Xiuwen (b. 1970) and Yu Hong (b. 1966) are contemporary Chinese artists whose images of women reflect a complicated gendered perspective. This article focuses on Cui’s Ladies’ Room (2000) and Yu’s Female Writer (2004, from the series She). Both can be construed as feminist reinterpretations of Chinese works of the imperial era that represented idealized female figures from a male perspective. Ladies’ Room, a video that shows behind-the-scenes images of sex workers in a nightclub washroom, brings to mind earlier paintings that depict women in feminine space. Ladies’ Room, however, incorporates multiple female gazes: not only that of the artist but also those of the subjects, who look at each other and at their own mirror reflections. Female Writer, a diptych consisting of a photograph and painting of the writer Zhao Bo, recalls paintings from the “beautiful women” genre. Though both photograph and painting reflect Yu Hong’s point of view, Zhao Bo was permitted to select her photograph, and thus the work engages with both author’s and subject’s gaze. Ladies’ Room and Female Writer both reclaim female subjectivity as they present images of contemporary Chinese women while also grappling with problems of authenticity, the public/private dichotomy, identity, and self-expression.

The Japan House (Korean: waegwan; Japanese: wakan) in the port city of Pusan, was a Japanese outpost during the Chosŏn dynasty. In the period 1639 to 1718, the Sō clan of Tsushima, commissioned made-to-order ceramics here, reflecting Japanese requirements, and a long-standing Japanese enthusiasm for kōrai chawan (“Korean tea bowls”), as demanded by the tea authorities in Japan. The focus of this paper is a group of tea bowls with decoration of standing cranes, the most representative type of made-to-order tea bowls produced at the Japan House kilns. Historical records and recent excavations of kiln sites have revealed that the type of tea bowl with standing crane design enjoyed popularity and continued to be produced until the closure of the Japan House kilns. A bowl of the deep, cylindrical shape adheres closely to early Koryŏ prototypes, while its notched foot resembles those of soft porcelain bowls made for ritual use. The subject of its design motif can be traced back to the ubiquitous cranes of Koryŏ inlaid celadon. The ethereal crane, traditionally associated with longevity, was popular in East Asian pictorial culture. The standing crane design on this type of tea bowl displays a combination of influences from the crane painting by the Southern Song painter Muqi (act. ca. 1240-75) and its reinterpretation by the Kano painters. This paper seeks to define the characteristics of the Japan House kiln products by examining its best-known type of tea bowl with decoration of standing cranes. It elucidates how the tea bowl with standing crane design is clearly not an imitation of early Koryŏ celadon but shows a range of decorative styles that reflect the tastes of the Edo-period daimyo tea world. While adapted to the tastes of Japanese consumers, the tea bowl with standing crane design produced at the Japan House kilns display influences from regional kilns in Chosŏn Korea. In this light, the type of tea bowl with decoration of standing cranes manifests a hybrid state of shifting boundaries and demarcations where Japanese and Korean influences coexisted and encountered with difference.

Mark Tobey’s City Paintings have traditionally been interpreted as joyous evoc­ations of the energy inherent in the modern urban scene. This article looks at the evolutionary character of Tobey’s City Paintings during the decades of the 1930s, ‘40s, and’ 50s, and points out that they may instead be understood as modern reinterpretations of the traditional themes of the Apocalypse, Hell, the Day of Judgment, and the New Jerusalem. This interpretation finds its roots in the study of the relationship of Tobey’s City Paintings to the artist’s long held beliefs in the Bahá’í Faith and to specific Bahá’í teachings concerning the Book of Revelation and the coming of a New Age. The article also looks at the overall influence of the Bahá’í Faith on Tobey’s work and draws parallels between major themes in the City Paintings and important Bahá’í scriptures, including The Seven Valleys. In this connection, Tobey’s City Paintings can be understood as symbolic of the various stages in humanity’s spiritual quest, ending with the theme of the resolution of opposites and a celebration or the essential unity of all creation.

In this article, we propose a methodology for the archaeological documentation of limestone plaquettes decorated with faint paintings and fine engravings. The plaquette number 16330 is presented, belonging to the portable art collection in Cova del Parpalló (Gandía, Spain), one of the most important Paleolithic sites in the UNESCO’s Rock Art of the Mediterranean Basin on the Iberian Peninsula. Macro photogrammetry is used to generate a 3D model and basic treatments on raster images. The resulting 3D model has a spatial resolution of tens of microns and was used to generate a digital elevation model (DEM) and orthorectified macro photographs for documenting the engravings and paintings. All stages of the workflow are detailed in-depth, specifying the data collection parameters and the configuration used in the subsequent processing with HyperCube and DStretch software. The resulting documentation is accurate, reproducible, and objective and allows the reinterpretation of the available graphic documentation started in the 1990s.

The paper analyzes the thesis that constantly transgressing boundaries in art is a fundamental principle and essential condition for artistic progress. Crossing external (the art – other discourses) and internal (between various art genres) boundaries is analyzed on the basis of transformations (especially adaptation) and representations. Dialogue relations initialized by art crossing the boundaries are analyzed as well: reinterpretations, polemics, extensions and supplementations. There is also a discussion of the ways in which semiotic and media boundaries are trangressed, especially the semiotic and media borders that are essential for the semiotic sphere of one artistic genre for the semiotic and media sphere of the other. The article refers to examples taken from literature, film, sculpture and painting.

Сборник «Стихотворения» (1916) князя Владимира Палея не имеет общего сюжета и композиции, представляя разрозненные лирические впечатления, однако композиционную организацию осуществляют внетекстовые изобразительные элементы: заставки и виньетки. Отвечая коллекционерскому вкусу автора сборника, они заставляют читать его лирику иначе: не как передачу личных впечатлений, но как сложное выстраивание собственной идентичности с опорой на различные языки культуры. Использование иконологического метода и обращение к ресурсам визуальной семиотики позволяют показать, как благодаря порядку иллюстраций отдельные мотивы романтической и модернистской поэзии перестают быть самодостаточными, становясь лишь моментами в обретении более целостной лирической позиции. Анализу подвергнуты такие элементы оформления книги, как картуши с названиями стихотворений, заставки-иллюстрации с изображениями пейзажных и жанровых сцен и разрозненные виньетки, при этом охвачен весь объем иллюстративного сопровождения сборника. Хотя оформление книги принципиально сдержанное, что отвечало новым установкам вкуса военного времени, каждый из видов художественного сопровождения выстраивает свою программу прочтения стихотворений, не позволяя свести содержание отдельных стихов к воспроизведению романтических, неоромантических или символистских мотивов. Показано, в какой мере картуши с названиями стихотворений могут помочь образованному читателю тематизировать соотношение природы и истории, деавтоматизировав восприятие заглавия как указания только на предметную тему. Декор этих элементов указывает как на взаимопроникновение мира природы и мира культуры, так и на недостаточность отдельных языков или семиотических образований для передачи идеи метафизического предназначения человека. Три стихотворения, снабженных такими картушами, выстраивают самостоятельный сюжет присутствия в природе не только фатальных сил, но и метафизических озарений. Заставки-иллюстрации потребовали специальной интерпретации, исходящей из знания реалий и содержательного смысла отдельных живописных жанров. Доказано, что снабженные такими заставками стихотворения передают общий сюжет независимости интимной душевной жизни от готовых паттернов восприятия истории. В этих стихотворениях господствует идея интимизации истории как единственного способа осмыслить значение исторических катастроф. Наконец, отдельные виньетки позволяют прочитывать весь массив стихотворений данной книги как поддерживающий основную идею принятия природной необходимости ради преодоления частных представлений о судьбе, с необходимой христианской реинтерпретацией предчувствий и отдельных символических указаний. Таким образом, иллюстративный режим книги отвечает принципам многоязычия и полистилистики русского модерна. Проведенное исследование позволяет уточнить как ориентиры официальной русской культуры предреволюционного времени, так и специфику поэтического творчества Владимира Палея как одного из наиболее ярких случаев поддержки оригинальной поэтики визуальной семиотикой природных и культурных объектов. The collection Poems (1916) by Prince Vladimir Paley does not have a common plot and composition, it presents scattered lyrical impressions. The composition of the collection is organized by extra-textual pictorial elements: headpieces and vignettes. Responding to the collector’s taste of the poet, these elements force one to read his lyrics differently: not as a transfer of personal impressions, but as a complex construction of his own identity based on various cultural languages. The use of the iconological method and appeal to the resources of visual semiotics allow showing how, thanks to the order of illustrations, certain motifs of romantic and modernist poetry cease to be self-sufficient, becoming only moments in the acquisition of a more holistic lyrical position. Such design elements of the book as cartouches with the titles of poems, headpieces with images of landscape and genre scenes, and scattered vignettes were analyzed; the entire volume of the book’s illustrative accompaniment was covered. The article shows that despite the fact that the design of this book is fundamentally restrained, which corresponded to the new settings of the taste of wartime, each type of artistic accompaniment builds its own program for reading these poems, not allowing the content of individual poems to be reduced to the reproduction of romantic, neo-romantic or symbolist motifs. The article demonstrates how cartouches with the titles of the poems allowed educated readers to thematize the relationship between nature and history by de-automating the perception of the title as an indication only of a subject topic. The decor of these elements indicates both the interpenetration of the natural world and the world of culture, and the inadequacy of individual languages or semiotic formations to convey the idea of a person’s metaphysical destiny. Three poems with the cartouches build an independent plot of the presence in nature of not only fatal forces, but also metaphysical insights. Illustrations-headpieces demanded a special interpretation based on knowledge of the realities and conceptual meanings of certain painting genres. The article proves that poems with the headpieces convey the general plot of the independence of an intimate mental life from ready-made patterns of history perception. In these poems, the idea dominates of intimizing history as the only way to comprehend the meaning of historical catastrophes. Finally, individual vignettes allow reading the entire array of the poems in this book as supporting the main idea of accepting natural necessity in order to overcome private ideas about fate, with the necessary Christian reinterpretation of forebodings and individual symbolic indications. Thus, the illustrative mode of the book corresponds to the principles of multilingualism and polystylistics of Russian modern style. The study allows clarifying both the landmarks of the official Russian culture of the pre-revolutionary period and the specificity of the poetic works of Vladimir Paley as one of the most striking cases of supporting the original poetics with the visual semiotics of natural and cultural objects.

In this essay I aim to draw close to an exceptional case study in American modernist art theory: Clement Greenberg’s reinterpretation of Flemish and Dutch painting. I will focus on it in connection with the Greenbergian vision of modernism as a whole. Firstly, I will make a genealogy of the “Flemish turn” in the history of aesthetics, by analyzing the key moments (Winckelmann, Hegel, Baudelaire) in which the so-called Northern Primitives have served to frame modern painting, in contrast to Southern classic Renaissance. Then, I will concentrate on Greenberg’s use of this heritage, by comparing his linking Flemish colour with photography to Svetlana Alpers’ notion of “art of describing”. It will emerge that an original interaction between colour and photography is given, that is suitable both to the notion of realism and to its modernist acceptance.

A submarine eruption in Cumberland Bay, Robinson Crusoe Island, was reported by Thomas Sutcliffe, the former British Governor, shortly after the earthquake that struck the coast of Chile on 20 February 1835. This episode was described by Charles Darwin in his Voyage of the Beagle and extensive mention has been made since then, especially stimulated by a renowned painting by J.M. Rugendas. Because of the apparent causal relation, this event has also been widely cited as an example of remote tectonically triggered eruption. However, there are inconsistencies that pose doubts about the actual occurrence of an eruption. Here we present evidence against the hypothetical eruption based on both the absence of any geological evidence and a reinterpretation of the historical accounts. We first observe that no bathymetric anomaly is present immediately below the place of the depicted ‘eruptive column’. We also note the absence of any deposit or recent volcano morphology and then unravel some incompatibility between the expected volcanological parameters and the featured column. In addition, we analyse the historical records and conclude that they are compatible with a tsunami entering the bay. By means of numerical simulations we further demonstrate that the accounts well match with the expected behaviour of a distant earthquake-triggered tsunami. We infer that some tsunami-related processes (sound waves, rockfalls, lightning) may have been misunderstood at that time. The latter corresponds to the current knowledge of natural processes but also could have been deliberatively amplified in Sutcliffe’s report. Our multidisciplinary approach provides full consistent geographical evidence of a fact that did not happen. This finding is relevant from the hazard’s perspective, but also for the science of earthquakes and eruptions, or the knowledge of processes that control the late secondary volcanism at oceanic islands and seamounts.

Following in the footsteps of the protagonists of the Italian architectural debate is a mark of culture and proactivity. The synthesis deriving from the artistic-humanistic factors, combined with the technical-scientific component, comprises the very root of the process that moulds the architect as an intellectual figure capable of governing material processes in conjunction with their ability to know how to skilfully select schedules, phases and actors: these are elements that – when paired with that magical and essential compositional sensitivity – have fuelled this profession since its origins. The act of X-raying the role of architecture through the filter of its “autonomy” or “heteronomy”, at a time when the hybridisation of different areas of knowledge and disciplinary interpenetration is rife, facilitates an understanding of current trends, allowing us to bring the fragments of a debate carved into our culture and tradition up to date. As such, heteronomy – as a condition in which an acting subject receives the norm of its action from outside itself: the matrix of its meaning, coming from ancient Greek, the result of the fusion of the two terms ἕτερος éteros “different, other” and νόμος nómos “law, ordinance” – suggests the existence of a dual sentiment now pervasive in architecture: the sin of self-reference and the strength of depending on other fields of knowledge. Difference, interpreted as a value, and the ability to establish relationships between different points of observation become moments of a practice that values the process and method of affirming architecture as a discipline. The term “heteronomy”, used in opposition to “autonomy”, has – from the time of Kant onwards – taken on a positive value connected to the mutual respect between reason and creativity, exact science and empirical approach, contamination and isolation, introducing the social value of its existence every time that it returns to the forefront. At the 1949 conference in Lima, Ernesto Nathan Rogers spoke on combining the principle of “Architecture is an Art” with the demands of a social dimension of architecture: «Alberti, in the extreme precision of his thought, admonishes us that the idea must be translated into works and that these must have a practical and moral purpose in order to adapt harmoniously ‘to the use of men’, and I would like to point out the use of the plural of ‘men’, society. The architect is neither a passive product nor a creator completely independent of his era: society is the raw material that he transforms, giving it an appearance, an expression, and the consciousness of those ideals that, without him, would remain implicit. Our prophecy, like that of the farmer, already contains the seeds for future growth, as our work also exists between heaven and earth. Poetry, painting, sculpture, dance and music, even when expressing the contemporary, are not necessarily limited within practical terms. But we architects, who have the task of synthesising the useful with the beautiful, must feel the fundamental drama of existence at every moment of our creative process, because life continually puts practical needs and spiritual aspirations at odds with one another. We cannot reject either of these necessities, because a merely practical or moralistic position denies the full value of architecture to the same extent that a purely aesthetic position would: we must mediate one position with the other» (Rogers, 1948). Rogers discusses at length the relationship between instinctive forces and knowledge acquired through culture, along with his thoughts on the role played by study in an artist’s training. It is in certain debates that have arisen within the “International Congresses of Modern Architecture” that the topic of architecture as a discipline caught between self-sufficiency and dependence acquires a certain centrality within the architectural context: in particular, in this scenario, the theme of the “autonomy” and “heteronomy” of pre-existing features of the environment plays a role of strategic importance. Arguments regarding the meaning of form in architecture and the need for liberation from heteronomous influences did not succeed in undermining the idea of an architecture capable of influencing the governing of society as a whole, thanks to an attitude very much in line with Rogers’ own writings. The idea of a project as the result of the fusion of an artistic idea and pre-existing features of an environment formed the translation of the push to coagulate the antithetical forces striving for a reading of the architectural work that was at once autonomous and heteronomous, as well as linked to geographical, cultural, sociological and psychological principles. The CIAM meeting in Otterlo was attended by Ignazio Gardella, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, Vico Magistretti and Giancarlo De Carlo as members of the Italian contingent: the architects brought one project each to share with the conference and comment on as a manifesto. Ernesto Nathan Rogers, who presented the Velasca Tower, and Giancarlo De Carlo, who presented a house in Matera in the Spine Bianche neighbourhood, were openly criticised as none of the principles established by the CIAM were recognisable in their work any longer, and De Carlo’s project represented a marked divergence from a consolidated method of designing and building in Matera. In this cultural condition, Giancarlo De Carlo – in justifying the choices he had made – even went so far as to say: «my position was not at all a flight from architecture, for example in sociology. I cannot stand those who, paraphrasing what I have said, dress up as politicians or sociologists because they are incapable of creating architecture. Architecture is – and cannot be anything other than – the organisation and form of physical space. It is not autonomous, it is heteronomous» (De Carlo, 2001). Even more so than in the past, it is not possible today to imagine an architecture encapsulated entirely within its own enclosure, autoimmune, averse to any contamination or relationships with other disciplinary worlds: architecture is the world and the world is the sum total of our knowledge. Architecture triggers reactions and phenomena: it is not solely and exclusively the active and passive product of a material work created by man. «We believed in the heteronomy of architecture, in its necessary dependence on the circumstances that produce it, in its intrinsic need to exist in harmony with history, with the happenings and expectations of individuals and social groups, with the arcane rhythms of nature. We denied that the purpose of architecture was to produce objects, and we argued that its fundamental role was to trigger processes of transformation of the physical environment that are capable of contributing to the improvement of the human condition» (De Carlo, 2001). Productive and cultural reinterpretations place the discipline of architecture firmly at the centre of the critical reconsideration of places for living and working. Consequently, new interpretative models continue to emerge which often highlight the instability of built architecture with the lack of a robust theoretical apparatus, demanding the sort of “technical rationality” capable of restoring the centrality of the act of construction, through the contribution of actions whose origins lie precisely in other subject areas. Indeed, the transformation of the practice of construction has resulted in direct changes to the structure of the nature of the knowledge of it, to the role of competencies, to the definition of new professional skills based on the demands emerging not just from the production system, but also from the socio-cultural system. The architect cannot disregard the fact that the making of architecture does not burn out by means of some implosive dynamic; rather, it is called upon to engage with the multiple facets and variations that the cognitive act of design itself implies, bringing into play a theory of disciplines which – to varying degrees and according to different logics – offer their significant contribution to the formation of the design and, ultimately, the work. As Álvaro Siza claims, «The architect is not a specialist. The sheer breadth and variety of knowledge that practicing design encompasses today – its rapid evolution and progressive complexity – in no way allow for sufficient knowledge and mastery. Establishing connections – pro-jecting [from Latin proicere, ‘to stretch out’] – is their domain, a place of compromise that is not tantamount to conformism, of navigation of the web of contradictions, the weight of the past and the weight of the doubts and alternatives of the future, aspects that explain the lack of a contemporary treatise on architecture. The architect works with specialists. The ability to chain things together, to cross bridges between fields of knowledge, to create beyond their respective borders, beyond the precarity of inventions, requires a specific education and stimulating conditions. [...] As such, architecture is risk, and risk requires impersonal desire and anonymity, starting with the merging of subjectivity and objectivity. In short, a gradual distancing from the ego. Architecture means compromise transformed into radical expression, in other words, a capacity to absorb the opposite and overcome contradiction. Learning this requires an education in search of the other within each of us» (Siza, 2008). We are seeing the coexistence of contrasting, often extreme, design trends aimed at recementing the historical and traditional mould of construction by means of the constant reproposal of the characteristics of “persistence” that long-established architecture, by its very nature, promotes, and at decrypting the evolutionary traits of architecture – markedly immaterial nowadays – that society promotes as phenomena of everyday living. Speed, temporariness, resilience, flexibility: these are just a few fragments. In other words, we indicate a direction which immediately composes and anticipates innovation as a characterising element, describing its stylistic features, materials, languages and technologies, and only later on do we tend to outline the space that these produce: what emerges is a largely anomalous path that goes from “technique” to “function” – by way of “form” – denying the circularity of the three factors at play. The threat of a short-circuit deriving from discourse that exceeds action – in conjunction with a push for standardisation aimed at asserting the dominance of construction over architecture, once again echoing the ideas posited by Rogers – may yet be able to finding a lifeline cast through the attempt to merge figurative research with technology in a balanced way, in the wake of the still-relevant example of the Bauhaus or by emulating the thinking of certain masters of modern Italian architecture who worked during that post-war period so synonymous with physical – and, at the same time, moral – reconstruction. These architectural giants’ aptitude for technical and formal transformation and adaptation can be held up as paradigmatic examples of methodological choice consistent with their high level of mastery over the design process and the rhythm of its phases. In all this exaltation of the outcome, the power of the process is often left behind in a haze: in the uncritical celebration of the architectural work, the method seems to dissolve entirely into the finished product. Technical innovation and disciplinary self-referentiality would seem to deny the concepts of continuity and transversality by means of a constant action of isolation and an insufficient relationship with itself: conversely, the act of designing, as an operation which involves selecting elements from a vast heritage of knowledge, cannot exempt itself from dealing in the variables of a functional, formal, material and linguistic nature – all of such closely intertwined intents – that have over time represented the energy of theoretical formulation and of the works created. For years, the debate in architecture has concentrated on the synergistic or contrasting dualism between cultural approaches linked to venustas and firmitas. Kenneth Frampton, with regard to the interpretative pair of “tectonics” and “form”, notes the existence of a dual trend that is both identifiable and contrasting: namely the predisposition to favour the formal sphere as the predominant one, rejecting all implications on the construction, on the one hand; and the tendency to celebrate the constructive matrix as the generator of the morphological signature – emphasised by the ostentation of architectural detail, including that of a technological matrix – on the other. The design of contemporary architecture is enriched with sprawling values that are often fundamental, yet at times even damaging to the successful completion of the work: it should identify the moment of coagulation within which the architect goes in pursuit of balance between all the interpretative categories that make it up, espousing the Vitruvian meaning, according to which practice is «the continuous reflection on utility» and theory «consists of being able to demonstrate and explain the things made with technical ability in terms of the principle of proportion» (Vitruvius Pollio, 15 BC). Architecture will increasingly be forced to demonstrate how it represents an applied and intellectual activity of a targeted synthesis, of a complex system within which it is not only desirable, but indeed critical, for the cultural, social, environmental, climatic, energy-related, geographical and many other components involved in it to interact proactively, together with the more spatial, functional and material components that are made explicit in the final construction itself through factors borrowed from neighbouring field that are not endogenous to the discipline of architecture alone. Within a unitary vision that exists parallel to the transcalarity that said vision presupposes, the technology of architecture – as a discipline often called upon to play the role of a collagen of skills, binding them together – acts as an instrument of domination within which science and technology interpret the tools for the translation of man’s intellectual needs, expressing the most up-to-date principles of contemporary culture. Within the concept of tradition – as inferred from its evolutionary character – form, technique and production, in their historical “continuity” and not placed in opposition to one other, make up the fields of application by which, in parallel, research proceeds with a view to ensuring a conforming overall design. The “technology of architecture” and “technological design” give the work of architecture its personal hallmark: a sort of DNA to be handed down to future generations, in part as a discipline dedicated to amalgamating the skills and expertise derived from other dimensions of knowledge. In the exercise of design, the categories of urban planning, composition, technology, structure and systems engineering converge, the result increasingly accentuated by multidisciplinary nuances in search of a sense of balance between the parts: a setup founded upon simultaneity and heteronomous logic in the study of variables, by means of translations, approaches and skills as expressions of multifaceted identities. «Architects can influence society with their theories and works, but they are not capable of completing any such transformation on their own, and end up being the interpreters of an overbearing historical reality under which, if the strongest and most honest do not succumb, that therefore means that they alone represent the value of a component that is algebraically added to the others, all acting in the common field» (Rogers, 1951). Construction, in this context, identifies the main element of the transmission of continuity in architecture, placing the “how” at the point of transition between past and future, rather than making it independent of any historical evolution. Architecture determines its path within a heteronomous practice of construction through an effective distinction between the strength of the principles and codes inherent to the discipline – long consolidated thanks to sedimented innovations – and the energy of experimentation in its own right. Architecture will have to seek out and affirm its own identity, its validity as a discipline that is at once scientific and poetic, its representation in the harmonies, codes and measures that history has handed down to us, along with the pressing duty of updating them in a way that is long overdue. The complexity of the architectural field occasionally expresses restricted forms of treatment bound to narrow disciplinary areas or, conversely, others that are excessively frayed, tending towards an eclecticism so vast that it prevents the tracing of any discernible cultural perimeter. In spite of the complex phenomenon that characterises the transformations that involve the status of the project and the figure of the architect themselves, it is a matter of urgency to attempt to renew the interpretation of the activity of design and architecture as a coherent system rather than a patchwork of components. «Contemporary architecture tends to produce objects, even though its most concrete purpose is to generate processes. This is a falsehood that is full of consequences because it confines architecture to a very limited band of its entire spectrum; in doing so, it isolates it, exposing it to the risks of subordination and delusions of grandeur, pushing it towards social and political irresponsibility. The transformation of the physical environment passes through a series of events: the decision to create a new organised space, detection, obtaining the necessary resources, defining the organisational system, defining the formal system, technological choices, use, management, technical obsolescence, reuse and – finally – physical obsolescence. This concatenation is the entire spectrum of architecture, and each link in the chain is affected by what happens in all the others. It is also the case that the cadence, scope and intensity of the various bands can differ according to the circumstances and in relation to the balances or imbalances within the contexts to which the spectrum corresponds. Moreover, each spectrum does not conclude at the end of the chain of events, because the signs of its existence – ruins and memory – are projected onto subsequent events. Architecture is involved with the entirety of this complex development: the design that it expresses is merely the starting point for a far-reaching process with significant consequences» (De Carlo, 1978). The contemporary era proposes the dialectic between specialisation, the coordination of ideas and actions, the relationship between actors, phases and disciplines: the practice of the organisational culture of design circumscribes its own code in the coexistence and reciprocal exploitation of specialised fields of knowledge and the discipline of synthesis that is architecture. With the revival of the global economy on the horizon, the dematerialisation of the working practice has entailed significant changes in the productive actions and social relationships that coordinate the process. Despite a growing need to implement skills and means of coordination between professional actors, disciplinary fields and sectors of activity, architectural design has become the emblem of the action of synthesis. This is a representation of society which, having developed over the last three centuries, from the division of social sciences that once defined it as a “machine”, an “organism” and a “system”, is now defined by the concept of the “network” or, more accurately, by that of the “system of networks”, in which a person’s desire to establish relationships places them within a multitude of social spheres. The “heteronomy” of architecture, between “hybridisation” and “contamination of knowledge”, is to be seen not only an objective fact, but also, crucially, as a concept aimed at providing the discipline with new and broader horizons, capable of putting it in a position of serenity, energy and courage allowing it to tackle the challenges that the cultural, social and economic landscape is increasingly throwing at the heart of our contemporary world.

“The cop in our head represses us better than any police force. Through generations of conditioning, the system has created people who have a very hard time coming together to create resistance.” – Seth Tobocman, War in the Neighborhood (1999) Even when creators of autobiographically-based comics claim to depict real events, their works nonetheless inspire confrontations as a result of ideological contestations which position them, on the one hand, as popular culture, and, on the other hand, as potentially subversive material for adults. In Seth Tobocman’s War in the Neighborhood (1999), the street politics in which Tobocman took part extends the graphic novel narrative to address personal experiences as seen through a social lens both political and fragmented by the politics of relationships. Unlike Art Spiegelman’s Maus (1986, 1991), War in the Neighborhood is situated locally and with broader frames of reference, but, like Maus, resonates globally across cultures. Because Tobocman figures the street as the primary site of struggle, John Street’s historiographically-oriented paper, “Political Culture – From Civic Culture to Mass Culture”, presents a framework for understanding not that symbols determine action, any more than material or other objective conditions do, but rather that there is a constant process of interpretation and reinterpretation which is important to the way actors view their predicament and formulate their intentions. (107-108) Though Street’s main focus is on the politicization of choices involving institutional structures, his observation offers a useful context to examining Tobocman’s memoir of protest in New York City. Tobocman’s identity as an artist, however, leads him to caution his readers: Yes, it [War in the Neighborhood] is based on real situations and events, just as a landscape by Van Gogh may be based on a real landscape. But we would not hire Van Gogh as a surveyor on the basis of those paintings. (From the “Disclaimer” on the copyright page.) This speaks to the reality that all art, no matter how innocuously expressed, reflect interpretations refracted from the artists’ angles. It also calls attention to the individual artist’s intent. For Tobocman, “I ask that these stories be judged not on how accurately they depict particular events, but on what they contain of the human spirit” (from the “Disclaimer” on the copyright page). War in the Neighborhood, drawn in what appears to be pencil and marker, alternates primarily between solidly-inked black generic shapes placed against predominantly white backgrounds (chapters 1-3, 5, 7-9, and 11) and depth-focused drawing-quality images framed against mostly black backgrounds (chapters 4 and 6); chapter 10 represents an anomaly because it features typewritten text and photographs that reify the legitimacy of the events portrayed even when “intended to be a work of art” (from the “Disclaimer” on the copyright page). According to Luc Sante’s “Introduction”, “the high-contrast images here are descended from the graphic vocabulary of Masereel and Lynn Ward, an efficient and effective means of representing the war of body and soul” (n.p.). This is especially evident in the last page of War in the Neighborhood, where Tobocman bleeds himself through four panels, the left side of his body dressed in skin with black spaces for bone and the right side of his body skeletonized against his black frame (panels 5-6: 328). For Tobocman, “the war of body and soul” reifies the struggle against the state, through which its representatives define people as capital rather than as members of a social contract. Before the second chapter, however, Tobocman introduces New York squatter, philosopher and teacher Raphael Bueno’s tepee-embedded white-texted poem, “‘Nine-Tenths of the Law’” (29). Bueno’s words eloquently express the heart behind War in the Neighborhood, but could easily be dismissed because they take up only one page. The poem’s position is significant, however. It reflects the struggles between agency and class, between power and oppression, and between capitalism and egalitarianism. Tobocman includes a similar white-texted tepee in Chapter 4, though the words are not justified and the spacing between the words and the edges of the tepee are larger. In this chapter, Tobocman focuses on the increasing media attention given to the Thompson Square Park homeless, who first organize as “the Homeless Clients Advisory Board” (panel 7: 86). The white-texted tepee reads: They [Tent City members] got along well with the Chinese students, participated in free China rallys, learned to say ‘Down with Deng Xiao ping’ in Chinese. It was becoming clear to Tent City that their homelessness meant some thing on a world stage. (panel 6: 103) The OED Online cites 1973 as the first use of gentrification, which appeared in “Times 26 Sept. 19/3.” It also lists uses in 1977, 1982 and 1985. While the examples provided point to business-specific interests associated with gentrification, it is now defined as “the process by which an (urban) area is rendered middle-class.” While gentrification, thus, infers the displacement of minority members for the benefits of white privilege, it is also complicated by issues of eminent domain. For the disenfranchised who lack access to TV, radio and other venues of public expression (i.e., billboards), “taking it to the streets” means trafficking ideas, grievances and/or evangelisms. In places like NYC, the nexus for civic engagement is the street. The main thrust of Tobocman’s War in the Neighborhood, however, centers on the relationships between (1) the squatters, against whom Reagan-era economics destabilized, (2) the police, whose roles changed as local policies shifted to accommodate urban planning, (3) the politicians, who “began to campaign to destroy innercity neighborhoods” (20), and (4) the media, which served elitist interests. By chapter 3, Tobocman intrudes himself into the narrative to personalize the story of squatters and their resistance of an agenda that worked to exclude them. In chapter 4, he intersects the interests of squatters with the homeless. With chapter 5, Tobocman, already involved, becomes a squatter, too; however, he also maintains his apartment, making him both an insider and an outsider. The meta-discourses include feminism, sexism and racism, entwined concepts usually expressed in opposition. Fran is a feminist who demands not only equality for women, but also respect. Most of the men share traditional values of manhood. Racism, while recognized at a societal level, creeps into the choices concerning the dismissal or acceptance of blacks and whites at ABC House on 13th Street, where Tobocman resided. As if speaking to an interviewer, a black woman explains, as a white male, his humanity had a full range of expression. But to be a black person and still having that full range of expression, you were punished for it. ... It was very clear that there were two ways of handling people who were brought to the building. (full-page panel: 259) Above the right side of her head is a yin yang symbol, whose pattern contrasts with the woman’s face, which also shows shading on the right side. The yin yang represents equanimity between two seemingly opposing forces, yet they cannot exist without the other; it means harmony, but also relation. This suggests balance, as well as a shared resistance for which both sides of the yin yang maintain their identities while assuming community within the other. However, as Luc Sante explains in his “Introduction” to War in the Neighborhood, the word “community” gets thrown around with such abandon these days it’s difficult to remember that it has ever meant anything other than a cluster of lobbyists. ... A community is in actuality a bunch of people whose intimate lives rub against one another’s on a daily basis, who possess a common purpose not unmarred by conflict of all sizes, who are thus forced to negotiate their way across every substantial decision. (n.p., italics added) The homeless organized among themselves to secure spaces like Tent House. The anarchists lobbied the law to protect their squats. The residents of ABC House created rules to govern their behaviors toward each other. In all these cases, they eventually found dissent among themselves. Turning to a sequence on the mayoral transition from Koch to Dinkins, Tobocman likens “this inauguration day” as a wedding “to join this man: David Dinkins…”, “with the governmental, business and real estate interests of New York City” (panel 1: 215). Similarly, ABC House, borrowing from the previous, tried to join with the homeless, squatters and activist organizations, but, as many lobbyists vying for the same privilege, contestations within and outside ABC splintered the goal of unification. Yet the street remains the focal point of War in the Neighborhood. Here, protests and confrontations with the police, who acted as intermediary agents for the politicians, make the L.E.S. (Lower East Side) a site of struggle where ordinary activities lead to war. Though the word war might otherwise seem like an exaggeration, Tobocman’s inclusion of a rarely seen masked figure says otherwise. This “t-shirt”-hooded (panel 1: 132) wo/man, one of “the gargoyles, the defenders of the buildings” (panel 3: 132), first appears in panel 3 on page 81 as part of this sequence: 319 E. 8th Street is now a vacant lot. (panel 12: 80) 319 taught the squatters to lock their doors, (panel 1: 81) always keep a fire extinguisher handy, (panel 2: 81) to stay up nights watching for the arsonist. (panel 3: 81) Never to trust courts cops, politicians (panel 4: 81) Recognize a state of war! (panel 5: 81) He or she reappears again on pages 132 and 325. In Fernando Calzadilla’s “Performing the Political: Encapuchados in Venezuela”, the same masked figures can be seen in the photographs included with his article. “Encapuchados,” translates Calzadilla, “means ‘hooded ones,’ so named because of the way the demonstrators wrap their T-shirts around their faces so only their eyes show, making it impossible for authorities to identify them” (105). While the Encapuchados are not the only group to dress as such, Tobocman’s reference to that style of dress in War in the Neighborhood points to the dynamics of transculturation and the influence of student movements on the local scene. Student movements, too, have traditionally used the street to challenge authority and to disrupt its market economy. More important, as Di Wang argues in his book Street Culture in Chengdu: Public Space, Urban Commoners, and Local Politics, 1870-1930, in the process of social transformation, street culture was not only the basis for commoners’ shared identity but also a weapon through which they simultaneously resisted the invasion of elite culture and adapted to its new social, economic, and political structures. (247) While focusing on the “transformation that resulted in the reconstruction of urban public space, re-creation of people’s public roles, and re-definition of the relationship among ordinary people, local elites and the state” (2), Wang looks at street culture much more broadly than Tobocman. Though Wang also connects the 1911 Revolution as a response to ethnic divisions, he examines in greater detail the everyday conflicts concerning local identities, prostitutes in a period marked by increasing feminisms, beggars who organized for services and food, and the role of tea houses as loci of contested meanings. Political organization, too, assumes a key role in his text. Similarly to Wang, what Tobocman addresses in War in the Neighborhood is the voice of the subaltern, whose street culture is marked by both social and economic dimensions. Like the poor in New York City, the squatters in Iran, according to Asef Bayat in his article “Un-Civil Society: The Politics of the ‘Informal People’”, “between 1976 and the early 1990s” (53) “got together and demanded electricity and running water: when they were refused or encountered delays, they resorted to do-it-yourself mechanisms of acquiring them illegally” (54). The men and women in Tobocman’s War in the Neighborhood, in contrast, faced barricaded lines of policemen on the streets, who struggled to keep them from getting into their squats, and also resorted to drastic measures to keep their buildings from being destroyed after the court system failed them. Should one question the events in Tobocman’s comics, however, he or she would need to go no further than Hans Pruijt’s article, “Is the Institutionalization of Urban Movements Inevitable? A Comparison of the Opportunities for Sustained Squatting in New York City and Amsterdam”: In the history of organized squatting on the Lower East Side, squatters of nine buildings or clusters of buildings took action to avert threat of eviction. Some of the tactics in the repertoire were: Legal action; Street protest or lock-down action targeting a (non-profit) property developer; Disruption of meetings; Non-violent resistance (e.g. placing oneself in the way of a demolition ball, lining up in front of the building); Fortification of the building(s); Building barricades in the street; Throwing substances at policemen approaching the building; Re-squatting the building after eviction. (149) The last chapter in Tobocman’s War in the Neighborhood, chapter 11: “Conclusion,” not only plays on the yin and yang concept with “War in the Neighborhood” in large print spanning two panels, with “War in the” in white text against a black background and “Neighborhood” in black text against a white background (panels 3-4: 322), but it also shows concretely how our wars against each other break us apart rather than allow us to move forward to share in the social contract. The street, thus, assumes a meta-narrative of its own: as a symbol of the pathways that can lead us in many directions, but through which we as “the people united” (full-page panel: 28) can forge a common path so that all of us benefit, not just the elites. Beyond that, Tobocman’s graphic novel travels through a world of activism and around the encounters of dramas between people with different goals and relationships to themselves. Part autobiography, part documentary and part commentary, his graphic novel collection of his comics takes the streets and turns them into a site for struggle and dislocation to ask at the end, “How else could we come to know each other?” (panel 6: 328). Tobocman also shapes responses to the text that mirror the travesty of protest, which brings discord to a world that still privileges order over chaos. Through this reconceptualization of a past that still lingers in the present, War in the Neighborhood demands a response from those who would choose “to take up the struggle against oppression” (panel 3: 328). In our turn, we need to recognize that the divisions between us are shards of the same glass. References Bayat, Asef. “Un-Civil Society: The Politics of the “Informal People.’” Third World Quarterly 18.1 (1997): 53-72. Calzadilla, Fernando. “Performing the Political: Encapuchados in Venezuela.” The Drama Review 46.4 (Winter 2002): 104-125. “Gentrification.” OED Online. 2nd Ed. (1989). http://0-dictionary.oed.com.csulib.ctstateu.edu/ cgi/entry/50093797?single=1&query_type=word&queryword=gentrification &first=1&max_to_show=10>. 25 Apr. 2006. Pruijt, Hans. “Is the Institutionalization of Urban Movements Inevitable? A Comparison of the Opportunities for Sustained Squatting in New York and Amsterdam.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 27.1 (Mar. 2003): 133-157. Street, John. “Political Culture – From Civic to Mass Culture.” British Journal of Political Science 24.1 (Jan. 1994): 95-113. Toboman, Seth. War in the Neighborhood (chapter 1 originally published in Squatter Comics, no. 2 (Photo Reference provided by City Limits, Lower East Side Anti-displacement Center, Alan Kronstadt, and Lori Rizzo; Book References: Low Life, by Luc Sante, Palante (the story of the Young Lords Party), Squatters Handbook, Squatting: The Real Story, and Sweat Equity Urban Homesteading; Poem, “‘Nine-Tenths of the Law,’” by Raphael Bueno); chapter 2 (Inkers: Samantha Berger, Lasante Holland, Becky Minnich, Ursula Ostien, Barbara Lee, and Seth Tobocman; Photo Reference: the daily papers, John Penley, Barbara Lee, Paul Kniesel, Andrew Grossman, Peter LeVasseur, Betsy Herzog, William Comfort, and Johannes Kroemer; Page 81: Assistant Inker: Peter Kuper, Assistant Letterer: Sabrina Jones and Lisa Barnstone, Photo Reference: Paul Garin, John Penley, and Myron of E.13th St); chapter 3 originally published in Heavy Metal 15, no. 11 (Inkers: Peter Kuper and Seth Tobocman; Letterers: Sabrina Jones, Lisa Barnstone, and Seth Tobocman; Photo Reference: Paul Garin, John Penley, Myron of 13th Street, and Mitch Corber); chapter 4 originally published in World War 3 Illustrated, no. 21 (Photo Reference: John Penley, Andrew Lichtenstein, The Shadow, Impact Visuals, Paper Tiger TV, and Takeover; Journalistic Reference: Sarah Ferguson); chapter 5 originally published in World War 3 Illustrated, no. 13, and reprinted in World War 3 Illustrated Confrontational Comics, published by Four Walls Eight Windows (Photo Reference: John Penley and Chris Flash (The Shadow); chapter 6 (Photo reference: Clayton Patterson (primary), John Penley, Paul Garin, Andrew Lichtenstein, David Sorcher, Shadow Press, Impact Visuals, Marianne Goldschneider, Mike Scott, Mitch Corber, Anton Vandalen, Paul Kniesel, Chris Flash (Shadow Press), and Fran Luck); chapter 7 (Photo Reference: Sarah Teitler, Marianne Goldschneider, Clayton Patterson, Andrew Lichtenstein, David Sorcher, John Penley, Paul Kniesel, Barbara Lee, Susan Goodrich, Sarah Hogarth, Steve Ashmore, Survival Without Rent, and Bjorg; Inkers: Ursula Ostien, Barbara Lee, Samantha Berger, Becky Minnich, and Seth Tobocman); chapter 8 originally published in World War 3 Illustrated, no. 15 (Inkers: Laird Ogden and Seth Tobocman; Photo Reference: Paul Garin, Clayton Patterson, Paper Tiger TV, Shadow Press, Barbara Lee, John Penley, and Jack Dawkins; Collaboration on Last Page: Seth Tobocman, Zenzele Browne, and Barbara Lee); chapter 9 originally published in Real Girl (Photo Reference: Sarah Teitler and Barbara Lee); chapter 10 (Photos: John Penley, Chris Egan, and Scott Seabolt); chapter 11: “Conclusion” (Inkers: Barbara Lee, Laird Ogden, Samantha Berger, and Seth Tobocman; Photo Reference: Anton Vandalen). Intro. by Luc Sante. Computer Work: Eric Goldhagen and Ben Meyers. Text Page Design: Jim Fleming. Continuous Tone Prints and Stats Shot at Kenfield Studio: Richard Darling. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 1999. Wang, Di. Street Culture in Chengdu: Public Space, Urban Commoners, and Local Politics, 1870-1930. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2003. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Raney, Vanessa. "Where Ordinary Activities Lead to War: Street Politics in Seth Tobocman’s War in the Neighborhood." M/C Journal 9.3 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0607/01-raney.php>. APA Style Raney, V. (Jul. 2006) "Where Ordinary Activities Lead to War: Street Politics in Seth Tobocman’s War in the Neighborhood," M/C Journal, 9(3). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0607/01-raney.php>.