Academic literature on the topic 'Sculpture Psychological aspects'

Обозначена актуальность исследования феномена детства. Определены области научного знания о детстве и представлена дефинитивная палитра этого термина. Исследованы подходы к его изучению, функции. Обозначены особенности процесса развития ребенка. Рассмотрено пространство детства, описаны его характеристики и функции. Приведена позиция государства в отношении детей. Рассмотрены теоретические и практические аспекты исследований детства в XXI веке.Авторский вклад в исследование детства заключается в сопоставлении, анализе, изложении актуальных, значимых, перспективных аспектов современных исследований данной тематики. Представлен обзор теоретических и прикладных аспектов детства. Предложено авторское определение детства. В рамках профессиональных интересов авторов детство рассматривается как дополнительное направление в системных персонологических исследованиях, отдельный элемент структуры репродуктивной функции человека, составная часть материнско-детских взаимоотношений.На основе сопоставления и анализа данных системного исследования сделаны следующие основные выводы.Интерес социума к проблеме детства возникает с эпохи Возрождения (XIV–XVII вв.).Различные аспекты мира ребенка и его психологии раскрываются в произведениях искусства (графика, живопись, скульптура), художественной и просветительской литературе, кинематографе.Психология детства является актуальной и перспективной темой научного исследования.Исследование феномена детства носит полидисциплинарный характер: традиционно это науки о человеке (психология, педагогика, социология, философия, биология, медицина, история, культурология), а также специфические области междисциплинарного знания (психоанализ, педагогика, этнография, история).Целью детства как периода онтогенеза является взросление, рассматриваемое как присвоение, освоение, реализация взрослости.В периоде детства Homo sapiens sapiens выделяются три основные функции, отражающие гетерогенные аспекты существования человека: биологическая (соматическое развитие организма), психологическая (развитие психики человека), социальная (включение индивидуума в систему общественного воспитания).Существуют две точки зрения на процесс развития ребенка: развитие непрерывно и развитие дискретно.Детство интерпретируется как производная от исторической эпохи, характерной для нее культуры (духовной и материальной), уровня экономического развития и представляет собой n-мерное психосоциокультурное пространство. The article highlights that the investigation of the phenomenon of childhood is highly relevant. It investigates various approaches to the investigation of childhood and scrutinizes various definitions of the phenomenon. The article outlines various characteristics of childhood development, investigates various characteristics and functions of childhood, and focuses on theoretical and practical aspects of childhood research in the 21st century.The authors’ contribution to the investigation of childhood consists in the comparative analysis and investigation of relevant, significant and prospective aspects of modern research in the field. The authors overview theoretical and applied aspects of childhood. They provide their own definition of childhood and investigate childhood as a component in the system of reproductive functions and an essential element of mother-to-infant bonding.The authors provide an illustration in Danish artist H. Bidstrup’s style to underline the relevance of the investigated research and to popularise science.A comparative analysis of the data of systemic research enables the authors to draw the following conclusions:The Renaissance (the 14th–17th centuries) was the first historical period to see social interest in childhood.Various aspects of the children’s world and child psychology can be seen in works of art (graphics, painting, sculpture) and literature (fiction and popular science).Child psychology remains a relevant and prospective issue of research.The investigation of the phenomenon of childhood is multidisciplinary, it incorporates human-related research (psychology, sociology, philosophy, biology, medicine, history, culturology) and some specific interdisciplinary knowledge (psychoanalysis, pedagogy, ethnography, history).The aim of childhood as a period of ontogenesis is maturing, which is viewed as learning to be an adult.The young of the Homo sapiens species perform three functions which reflect heterogeneous aspects of human existence: biological (somatic development), psychological (psychic development) and social (social involvement).Some scholars believe that children undergo continuous development, others argue that children’s development is discreet.Children are exposed to the influence of culture (spiritual and material) typical of the historic period, economic development and n-dimensional psychosocial space.

For the masters of modern art of Kazakhstan, along with the importance of samples of classical culture and discoveries of modernist art, Kazakh folk art is becoming a single field of tradition today. Intertextuality, constant dialogue with different layers of world and national painting and sculpture determine the search for new expressiveness in art. This article describes the role of intertextuality in the development of new forms of artistic statements, namely, as in the works of modern Kazakh sculptors (S.Bekbotayev, D.Sarbasov, Z.Kozhamkulov), jewelers (A.Mukazhanov), tapestry masters (A.Bapanov), the importance of the values of native culture as a space of cultural memory is preserved. Experiments with the material are perceived as a ritual, a creative act, a search for their own author's style, modern means of expression of the artist. It is shown that the danger of losing one's own national identity associated with the process of globalization explains the interest of the masters in the author's myth-making, designed to awaken the spiritual foundations of the nation in the minds of contemporaries. Through mechanical details, sculptors create new myths in order to streamline the ethical and psychological state of a modern person, while in the works of masters of decorative and applied art, bricolage is practiced as a combination of different materials and textures, meanings and images closest to the construction of a myth.

In terms of cultural and ideological disposition, Kožarić is an artist who emphasizes the speculative and psychological aspect of artistic creation. As a dynamic author of wide conceptual and sculptural range, with an extraordinary stylistic evolution and thematic physiognomy, he has created a considerable and exquisite body of creative proofs on his own intellectual and ethical existence. His magnificent oeuvre is laden with challenges, with unique intellectual, ontological, phenomenological, aesthetical, moral, and cultural meanings and values. It is a huge and original contribution to Croatian art, as well as one of its greatest and most far-reaching productions from the second half of the 20th century, an opus that condenses and combines numerous issues that are typical of the global high-modernist and then postmodernist situations. This radical individualist, known for his anarchic behaviour, has reached the position of high esteem in contemporary Croatian art and the status of an exquisite phenomenon on the art scene – as the iconic features of his artistic handwriting have long been recognized in Croatia and are today gaining appreciation on the global level as well – owing to his unique artistic stance, an opus of inimitable conceptual and sculptural-phenomenological structure, and an individualist position in his recent creative transformations. Avoiding all definite poetic, thematic, iconographic, or formal sculptural stereotypes and constants, he has consciously broken up with the production of aesthetical objects that would cater to any particular taste or code of stylistic or formal innovation, or generally fit the strict prerogatives of the artistic disciplines in which he creates. He keeps evading everything that an art tradition consists of, even his own formalized or verified artistic handwriting.

Frederic Rzewski composed Coming Together and Attica in response to the 1971 uprising at the Attica Correctional Facility. The texts for the works draw upon testimonies of two men who participated in the riot: Samuel Melville and Richard X. Clark, respectively. Rzewski condemns the government crackdown on the uprising through representations of both prisoners and prison. In these and other works, the prisoner is a figure of suffering. Both Melville and Clark suffer through efforts to raise a voice about the hardships of incarceration only to have that voice break apart into fragments and silence. Prison emerges as a space of increasing confinement, conveyed by rigorous compositional schemes that tightly link individual sections and close them off in a larger sealed structure. The musical evocation of confinement along with the expression of psychological distress in the texts creates scenes of suffering. Through these scenes, Rzewski brings out the infliction of pain that scholars have viewed as a fundamental aspect of incarceration. The interaction between the critiques of incarceration and the compositional schemes in Coming Together and Attica is an example of how artists at the time (Steve Reich and sculptor Melvin Edwards) drew upon abstract idioms and materials in works that comment on contemporary political developments.

The personality and creativity of Jean-Jacques Rousseau are multifaceted, sometimes difficult to structure and observe in modern humanistic theorizations, although the idea of a special social function of personal sovereignty and the idea of history as a meaningful synthesis of historical facts have not lost their relevance today, if we find the necessary range of review and ways of implementation. Another example – the idea of education as a system, which should be the very nature – the nature of the pupil, the “nature-loving” educator, and the natural educational process itself. If we consider the idea of following the natural pupil so as to create conditions for detection, disclosure, and facilitating the full deployment of the individual capacities of the pupil, this idea is at least highly relevant. This is an aspect of the modern psychological, pedagogical, and even – political – mainstream, the focus of what is most concerned about contemporary human society and its various institutions. If we consider that the idea of naturalness facilitates the educational process as a way of bringing it closer to some “maieutic” ideal – it is also one of the centrifugal issues of modern pedagogy and educational affairs in general, the question – how to make the process – non-violent, opening prospects, and not prevent them from forming the ability to independently explore the world and find ways of acting effectively in it. If we treat the idea of the “nature-loving” educator as subtly and carefully acting in relation to any of the manifestations of the pupil, thereby unleashing the potential of the tutor, is not this the way to pre-empt all types of “burn up” (both professional, and emotional) for the modern educator in the broad sense of the word – “sculptor of human souls”? In this article with the elements of an essay – the proposal is to make a fascinating excursion, full of unexpected discoveries into the world of Rousseau.

The article focuses on the study of graphic works depicting the life of the Moscow metro, created in 1980–1990 by the Moscow artist Alyona Dergiliova. The etchings convincingly reflect the life of our people on the threshold of national historical development. In her complex, variously sized, drawn from life compositions with many figures in motion, the artist mastered the whole range of compositional and visual devices that she would use in her narrative watercolours of the 2000s. She found the contrast of the pathos in the metro interior – stations with a bustling motley crowd of Muscovites deep in themselves and rather shabby travellers from the depths of the Russian backcountry – which became the counterpoint for her further creative search for the image of Moscow. Investigation of resources, experiments in methods of taking the motion of subjects beyond the boundaries of the compositional plane, allow the series to be included in the list of artistic experiments relentlessly carried out by Dergiliova despite the years of difficulties in her creative life. The theme of ‘A Man and His City’ is apparently simple but it is resolved in a multitude of complex relationships carried from life on the squares of Moscow over to the interiors of its underground. People above and underground are the same, with their acquired strangeness, yet their psychological state in a confined space is different. The environment – albeit imperceptibly – changes people. It is vibrant all the same, but in a different way. The architecture inside the metro is closer to the person, and Dergiliova successfully uses this aspect in building her composition. The compositions include many recognizable details of architectural decor which complement the central narrative. These details are clues helping the viewer to figure out its meaning. The characteristic feature of the metro is motion, and the artist draws numerous human figures, figurative stucco elements, sculptural compositions, chips and cracks in the steps, chandeliers swinging at the arrival of the subway train – into an endless cycle. Scenes depicting the entrances to the metro is a separate theme, which is almost non-existent in Russian art. By rendering the entrances as energy hubs – breaches between the aboveground Moscow and its underground – Dergiliova fills them with particular meaning, as all these people, drawn by a skilful and confident hand, will have to squeeze into the endless corridors and noisy subway wagons rattling on rails. Careful analysis of the artist’s creation reveals the disturbing condition of the master’s soul. The condition which the masters of art were firmly in for the entire decade after the events depicted in these works.

This article attempts to substantiate, in the light of the synergetic research method, a new aspect of the quality of life - its beauty, its creative and constructive potential. The beauty of life characterizes its quality not through its separate component, but using the same components of the level and quality of life. Let’s recall the elements of the standard of living: health and life expectancy, production of the gross national income per capita (GNI), educational and qualification standard of the population, employment, housing and communal living conditions, environment, social security of the people, etc., and quality of life indicators also - through subjective feelings and assessments of living conditions - satisfaction with oneself and one’s life as a whole, the state of the country's economy, satisfaction with labor activity, state democracy in the country, government control, a sense of harmony with socio-psychological and many other aspects of life, etc. The beauty of life describes its quality through its new aspect, namely, the emotional and aesthetic state of life. Within the limited framework of the article, the beauty of life as a creative potential is justified by us with such types and forms of labor as: the work of ballerinas and their partners, musicians; through the results of labor: composers, artists and sculptors, workers employed in the fields of mechanical engineering, clothing, food, other industries and agriculture; directly through the types of heroic, selfless and noble labor. Partly, the work justifies the beauty of life as a new side of its quality through a happy family-intimate life with baby talk and crying, which requires, in addition to love and children, normal and comfortable housing and communal living conditions.

В статье рассматривается художественная концепция «Врат Ада», над которыми Роден работал в период с 1880 по 1917 год. «Божественная комедия» Данте явилась отправной точкой в трактовке темы, вобравшей в себя сложный интертекст из изобразительных и вербальных источников, прежде всего относящихся к XIX веку. Главное внимание в своем анализе автор статьи обращает на пластическую выразительность языка мастера и литературную сторону его замысла и приходит к выводу, что этой последней принадлежит важное место в решении целого. Подобное соотношение Образа и Слова в портале Родена свидетельствует о зарождении новых черт в европейской скульптуре, которые сближают памятник с открытиями в области психологического романа второй половины XIX века и ведут к появлению новых форм искусства. The article deals with artistic conception of Rodin’s Gates of Hell (1880 – 1917). The «Divine Comedy» by Dante is served the basis of interpretation of the theme, absorbed also complicated intertext – first of all there are figurative and verbal sources of the nineteenth century. Author of the article pays a principal attention to the plastical expressiveness of master’s language and to the literary aspect of his intention and concludes that this latter has played an important part to realize a general conception. Such correlation of Image and Word is evidence of beginnings of new European sculpture traits which bring the Gates of Hell together with discoveries in a sphere of psychological novel of the second half of the nineteenth century and lead to emergence of new forms of art.

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 eye altering, alters all." - Blake In his essay "How Culture Conditions the Colours We See," Umberto Eco claims that chromatic perception is determined by language. Regarding language as the primary modeling system, Eco argues for linguistic predominance over visual experience: ". . . the puzzle we are faced with is neither a psychological one nor an aesthetic one: it is a cultural one, and as such is filtered through a linguistic system" (159). Eco goes on to explain that he is 'very confused' about chromatic effect, and his arguments do a fine job of illustrating that confusion. To Eco's claim that color perception is determined by language, one can readily point out that both babies and animals, sans language, experience--and respond to--color perception. How then can color be only a cultural matter? Eco attempts to make a connection between the "negative concept" of a geopolitical unit (e.g., Holland or Italy defined by what is not Holland or Italy) and a chromatic system in which "units are defined not in themselves but in terms of opposition and position in relation to other units" (171). Culture, however, is not the only determinant in the opposition that defines certain colors: It is a physiological phenomenon that the eye, after staring at one color (for example, red) for a long time, will see that color's complement, its opposite (green), on a white background. Language is a frustrating tool when discussing color: languages throughout the world have only a limited number of words for the myriad color-sensations experienced by the average eye. Though language training and tradition have an undoubtedly profound effect on our color sense, our words for color constitute only one part of the color expression and not always the most important one. In his Remarks on Colour (1950-51), Wittgenstein observed: 'When we're asked 'What do the words 'red', 'blue', 'black', 'white' mean?' we can, of course, immediately point to things which have these colours,--but our ability to explain the meanings of these words goes no further!' (I-68). We can never say with complete certainly that what this writer meant by this color (we are already in trouble) is understood by this reader (the woods are now officially burning). A brief foray into the world of color perception discloses that, first and foremost, a physiological process, not a cultural one, takes place when a person sees colors. In his lively Art & Physics (1991), Leonard Shlain observes that "Color is the subjective perception in our brains of an objective feature of light's specific wavelengths. Each aspect is inseparable from the other" (170). In his 1898 play To Damascus I, August Strindberg indicated specifically in a stage direction that the Mourners and Pallbearers were to be dressed in brown, while allowing the characters to defy what the audience saw and claim that they were wearing black. In what may well be the first instance of such dramatic toying with an audience's perception, Strindberg forces us to ask where colors exist: In the subject's eye or in the perceived object? In no other feature of the world does such an interplay exist between subject and object. Shlain notes that color "is both a subjective opinion and an objective feature of the world and is both an energy and an entity" (171). In the science of imaging (the transfer of one color digital image from one technology to another) recent research has suggested that human vision may be the best model for this process. Human vision is spatial: it views colors also as sensations involving relationships within an entire image. This phenomenon is part of the process of seeing and unique to the way humans see. In some ways color terms illustrate Roland Barthes's arguments (in S/Z) that connotation actually precedes denotation in language--possibly even produces what we normally consider a word's denotation. Barthes refers to denotation as 'the last of connotations' (9). Look up 'red' in the American Heritage Dictionary and the first definition you find is a comparison to 'blood.' Blood carries with it (or the reader brings to it) a number of connotations that have long inspired a tradition of associating red with life, sex, energy, etc. Perhaps the closest objective denotation for red is the mention of 'the long wavelength end of the spectrum,' which basically tells us nothing about experiencing the color red. Instead, the connotations of red, many of them based on previous perceptual experience, constitute our first encounter with the word 'red.' I would not be so inclined to apply Barthes's connotational hierarchy when one sees red in, say, a painting--an experience in which some of the subjectivity one brings to a color is more limited by the actual physical appearance of the hue chosen by the artist. Also, though Barthes talks about linguistic associations, colors are more inclined to inspire emotional associations which sometimes cannot be expressed in language. As Gaston Bachelard wrote in Air and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Movement: 'The word blue designates, but it does not render' (162). Still, the 'pluralism' Barthes argues for in reading seems particularly present in the reader's encounter with color terms and their constant play of objectivity/subjectivity. In painting color was first released from the confines of form by the Post-Impressionists Cézanne, Gauguin, and van Gogh, who allowed the color of the paint, the very marks on the canvas, to carry the power of expression. Following their lead, the French Fauve painters, under the auspices of Matisse, took the power of color another step further. Perhaps the greatest colorist of the twentieth century, Matisse understood that colors possess a harmony all their own--that colors call out for their complements; he used this knowledge to paint some of the most harmonious canvases in the history of art. 'I use the simplest colors,' Matisse wrote in 'The Path of Color' (1947). 'I don't transform them myself, it is the relationships that take care of that' (178). When he painted the Red Studio, for example, the real walls were actually a blue-gray; he later said that he 'felt red' in the room--and so he painted red (what he felt), leaving the observer to see red (what she feels). Other than its descriptive function, what does language have to do with any of this? It is a matter of perception and emotion. At a 1998 Seattle art gallery exhibit of predominantly monochromatic sculptures featuring icy white glass objects, I asked the artist why he had employed so little color in his work (there were two small pieces in colored glass and they were not as successful). He replied that "color has a tendency to get away from you," and so he had avoided it as much as possible. The fact that color has a power all its own, that the effects of chromaticism depend partially on how colors function beyond the associations applied to them, has long been acknowledged by more expressionistic artists. Writing to Emile Bernard in 1888, van Gogh proclaimed: 'I couldn't care less what the colors are in reality.' The pieces of the color puzzle which Umberto Eco wishes to dismiss, the psychological and the aesthetic, actually serve as the thrust of most pictorial and literary uses of color spaces. Toward the end of his essay, Eco bows to Klee, Mondrian, and Kandinsky (including even the poetry of Virgil) and their "artistic activity," which he views as working "against social codes and collective categorization" (175). Perhaps these artists and writers retrieved color from the deadening and sometimes restrictive effects of culture. Committed to the notion that the main function of color is expression, Matisse liberated color to abolish the sense of distance between the observer and the painting. His innovations are still baffling theorists: In Reconfiguring Modernism: Exploring the Relationship between Modern Art and Modern Literature, Daniel R. Schwarz bemoans the difficulty in viewing Matisse's decorative productions in 'hermeneutical patterns' (149). Like Eco, Schwarz wants to replace perception and emotion with language and narrativity. Language may determine how we express the experience of color, but Eco places the cart before the horse if he actually believes that language 'determines' chromatic experience. Eco is not alone: the Cambridge linguist John Lyons, observing that color is 'not grammaticalised across the languages of the world as fully or centrally as shape, size, space, time' (223), concludes that colors are the product of language under the influence of culture. One is reminded of Goethe's remark that "the ox becomes furious if a red cloth is shown to him; but the philosopher, who speaks of color only in a general way, begins to rave" (xli). References Bachelard, Gaston. Air and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Movement. Dallas: The Dallas Institute Publications, 1988. Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Trans. Richard Miller. New York: Hill and Wang, 1974. Eco, Umberto. 'How Culture Conditions the Colours We See.' On Signs. Ed. M. Blonsky. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985. 157-75. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. The Theory of Colors. Trans. Charles Lock Eastlake. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1970. Lyons, John. 'Colour in Language.' Colour: Art & Science. Ed. Trevor Lamb and Janine Bourriau. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. 194-224. Matisse, Henri. Matisse on Art. Ed. Jack Flam. Rev. ed. Berkeley: University of California, 1995. Riley, Charles A., II. Color Codes: Modern Theories of Color in Philosophy, Painting and Architecture, Literature, Music and Psychology. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1995. Schwarz, Daniel R. Reconfiguring Modernism: Explorations in the Relationship between Modern Art and Modern Literature. New York: St. Martin's, 1997. Shlain, Leonard. Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time & Light. New York: Morrow, 1991. Strindberg, August. To Damascus in Selected Plays. Volume 2: The Post-Inferno Period. Trans. Evert Sprinchorn. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. 381-480. Van Gogh, Vincent. The Letters of Vincent van Gogh. Trans. Arnold Pomerans. London: Penguin, 1996. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Mussari, Mark. "Umberto Eco Would Have Made a Bad Fauve" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.3 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0207/eco.php>. Chicago Style Mussari, Mark, "Umberto Eco Would Have Made a Bad Fauve" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 3 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0207/eco.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Mussari, Mark. (2002) Umberto Eco Would Have Made a Bad Fauve. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(3). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0207/eco.php> ([your date of access]).

Over three decades of research has shown that memories have significant effect on the behaviour, attitudes, beliefs, and identities of individuals and collectives, revealing also how experiences of trauma and acts of narrativisation have pertinence to the ways in which memories are stored and reconstructed. In this thesis a link is developed between memory, trauma, narrativisation processes and the interpretation of works by Jane Alexander, a contemporary artist whose work is informed by observations about South African life. Alexander’s sculptures are revealed to be not only important vessels of collective memories and experiences, but also evocations of individuals’ countermemories and traumas that remain unarticulated and invisible. Through an exploration of the workings of memory and its relation to her art, it is revealed how the past continues to exert its influence on many of South Africa’s present sociopolitical concerns and interpersonal dynamics. Indeed constantly changing memories have a significant effect on future generations’ perceptions of, and connectedness to, the past. While theories about memory have been deployed in Art History as well as the Humanities in general, Alexander’s work has not previously been considered in light of the influence of these ideas. This thesis thus contributes a new dimension to literature on the artist.

The artist uses herself as the object of study. Her subjective position is validated within a theoretical framework provided by feminism, existentialism and Freudian theory. The three world views provide the context for an analysis of sculpture produced between the years 1988 and 1997. Three one-person exhibitions held in 1990, 1993 and 1996, are examined in terms of their iconographic emphasis and their theoretical bias. The role of the unconscious in the genesis of the sculptures and the problem of author/reader dichotomies in interpretation are dealt with as thematic threads throughout the dissertation.
Department of History of Art and Fine Arts
M.A. (Fine Arts)