Art History and Visual Studies

Книгата „Шахматът като символ във визуалните изкуства“ следва историческия ред като тематика и водещ методологичен принцип, извеждайки следната последователност на шахмата като визуален денотат (образно означаемо) с различни променящи се в хода на културната история конотати (означаващи):
1) Шахматът като интеркултурен
диалог (1007–1928); 
2) Шахматът и духовенството (1061–1927);
3) Шахматът като символ на изкуст­вото на управлението (късен XII в.–1929);
4) Шахматът като символ на при­двор­ната, интелектуалната и клуб­на­та култура (1305/1340–1883);
5) Шахматът като символ на любов­та (1430–1966);
6) Шахматът и смъртта (1480–1957);
7) Шахматът и дяволът (1496/1498–1827);
8) Шахматът като символ на играе­щия ум (1495/1500–1968);
9) Шахматът  като символ на човешкия живот (1661–1907).
Така, всъщност, книгата следва дина­миката в развитието на семантиката на символа шахмат или на какви дейности, занятия или ценности го уподобява. Т.е., в символа „шахмат“ човечеството с неговите ценности, схващания и разбирания се оглежда, хвърля образите им (само)рефлексивно. Така и успяваме да проследим какви са били копнежите, стойностите му във всеки отделен исторически период.

Както винаги започваме с най-ранното исторически тематично изображение: 1/ Шахматисти (фр. Les joueurs d' échecs)-един от малкото достигнали през времето до нас витражи от XV в. със секуларен 124 сюжет; изработен във Франция ок. 1450 г.; 125 част от колекцията на музея "Клюни" 126. Техниката му по изпълнение е позлатяване; гризайл; витражно стъкло, метал. [Произхожда от L'hôtel de la Bessée (в гр. Вилфранш-сюр-Сон, фр. Villefranche-sur-Saône). Украсявал къщата на благородник 127 недалеч от Лион]. Изображението е симетрично спрямо централната ос. Костюмите на персонажите са уникални. Например, тюрбанът на главата на мъжа-така оформен може да се наблюдава единствено в картина от майсторското ателие на Ян ван Ейк или от Рожир ван дер Вейден.

This paper considers eight artworks selected at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, to understand how these works and art in general shape the prevailing social-cultural atmosphere and influence the built environment. Through the analysis, the role of sculptures and mural paintings is revealed as dual: they enhance the physical identity of the campus and serve as one of the cultural tools for teaching, inspiring, and uniting the members of the university community. By adopting the points of view voiced by Adeyanju, Fajuyigbe, Feyisara, Ijisakin, and other writers, one can place each of the works in the context of the larger story about heritage preservation, identity formation, and communal interaction. The results show that the protagonistic use of these works in busy, iconic or shared spaces serves to incorporate the art in the everyday life on campus, encouraging contemplation, discussions and belonging. Moreover, by incorporating the elements of indigenous culture in their symbolism into the work of more modern architecture, the living story, the transition between the past and contemporary world occurs. The paper provides an argument that the strategy chosen by OAU to integrate art into architecture and landscape reflects the power of encapsulating education spaces into cultural landscapes that will always define the values, memories and identities of all people who experience the spaces.

Graffiti patterns are among the most important historical monuments after the Achaemenid era in Persepolis. These works have been seen in two places, namely Thatcher's Palace Palace and Queen's Palace (Takht Jamshid Museum). Researchers have presented several hypotheses about these motifs and their historical attribution. Among the goals of the current research, in addition to addressing the background of the studies conducted on these works, is the introduction of new Graffiti patterns that have not been reported on before. Which historical period do these works belong to? This is the main question of the present research. Six of these works belong to the Thatcher Palace and two to the Persepolis Museum. In a general view, these motifs can be seen in the Thatcher Palace on the north side of the west door of the south hall and also on the north side of the east door of the same (south) hall. Also, in this palace, on the lower part of the wall of the northern gate (East Jerez) in the middle hall, a sketch of a woman can be seen, which can be considered among the needle motifs of Greek art. In the Takht Jamshid Museum, two Graffiti engravings have been observed right in the main pillared hall of this place. It should be mentioned that this research was done based on documentary studies and field investigation. According to the documentation of the current research, it can be said that most of these motifs belong to the early Sassanid period and only two cases contain different art.

This article investigates the conception of art history and culture of the Viennese art historian Max Dvořák (1874–1921), as well as his methodological approach to the study of images, comparing it with that of other philosophers and scholars, including Wilhelm Dilthey, Wassily Kandinsky, Edmund Husserl, Aby Warburg, and Walter Benjamin. Dvořák was affiliated to the so-called Vienna School of Art History, and conceived art history as the history of ideas or spirit (Geist). The spiritual in art is a major concern in Dvořák’s late works, an interest that he shared with other intellectuals of the time, including Dilthey, Kandinsky, and Husserl. The affinity between Dvořák, Warburg, and Benjamin is another theme that has not yet been fully developed. In this sense, the present study compares Warburg’s idea of the ‘Afterlife of Antiquity’ (Nachleben der Antike) in European culture and Benjamin’s conception of history as a source of redemption with Dvořák’s understanding of art history. As this study shows, their critiques of technological development converge in the idea that there is no progress in history but only catastrophes. By considering these themes, this essay sheds new light on the relevance of Dvořák’s contribution to the study of art and culture.

El Greco (Doménikos Theotokópoulos), a post-Byzantine icon-painter registered in Heraklion between 1563 and 1567, first learned Catholic religious art in Italy (1567-1577), then moved to Spain (1577-1614), where, in Toledo, his artistic style matured and became highly original. The Mannerist metamorphoses in El Greco's work are eloquent of his immigrant route to the Mediterranean. However, it is difficult to pin him down to a particular artistic movement and a particular model of visuality. El Greco is a problematic subject for art history, because he cannot be categorized in relation to the artistic styles of his time.
The artist's biography and his work were not internationally recognized until the end of the 19th century, with European modernism. The interest of the European and North American art market soon followed, creating the "grecomania" of collectors and the "grecophilia" of artists and scholars.
In the case of this artist, we can speak of a spectacular transformation both of his biography and style, as well as in the reception of his work. Therefore, I propose to analyze and interpret the paradox of his belonging with the help of new research tools in visual cultural studies, including: transculturality, emigration / immigration, the process of adaptation and cultural integration, identity crises.

What is ethnicity? Is it social construction or a part of an ancestral heritage? In what way is ethnicity significant in the Indonesian context? These are the questions Holy Rafika Dhona tries to answer in Subjek Sunda: Genealogi. Kelahiran, dan Kewilayahan. Specifically, he offers a perspective on the emergence of Sundanese identity by employing Michel Foucault's concept (1973) of the genealogy of knowledge and Thongchai Winichakul's notion (1994) of the geo-body of the nation. Rather than viewing Sunda as a pre-existing ethnic category predating colonial rule, Holy argues that it is a social construction shaped by the impact of colonisation, which sought to both dominate and govern the colonised society within the Dutch East Indies administration. Review: Making the subject of Sunda 14 April 2025 -by WAHYUDI AKMALIAH How America's Tariff of 1930 helped end forced labour in the Dutch East Indies

The article lays the theoretical foundations for considering and understanding the Artist's Book as a unique form of expression in contemporary art. The Artist’s Book is defined as a free visual work of the artist that is conceived and realized through the specific expressive means of the book and is realized independently of the traditional structures and distribution network of formal book publishing. Essential characteristics define the Artist’s Book not as a literary genre but as a genre in the visual arts that derives from innovative ideas of the late 19th century and revolutionary currents in the avant-garde in the 20th century. The text elucidates the historical genesis and articulates the conceptual and aesthetic features of the two main movements: Artists’ Books realized in limited editions and conceptual Artists’ Books, also called Artists’ Publications. The current trends in the highly dynamic development of contemporary Artists’ Books, which are defined by a diversity of forms and innovative plastic and pictorial approaches of artists, are commented.

The article is devoted to the consideration and art criticism of the Apophatica multimedia art project (2016), the author of which is the Moscow artist Gor Chakhal. For several decades, he has been addressing religious topics in contemporary art, defining his work as Christ‐centered. This trend has long been of deep interest in world and Russian art, but its comprehension, place in the artistic process, and functional significance have not yet been definitively determined and differ in Russia and other countries. In this article, the Apophatica project is considered from the point of view of some traditions of Eastern Christian art, such as hierotopy. Additionally, an attempt is made to integrate the project into the innovative world context of art that addresses Christian themes, which is not easy with the difference in terminology. Many foreign researchers prefer the term ‘spirituality’. Apophatica is an example of a modern statement by a Russian artist on the theme of the eternal dialogue between man and God in the language of fine arts. / Статья посвящена рассмотрению и искусствоведческому осмыслению мультимедийного художественного проекта «Апофатика» (2016), автором которого является московский художник Гор Чахал. На протяжении нескольких десятилетий он работает в сфере современного искусства на религиозные темы, определяя свое творчество как христоцентричное. В мировом и отечественном искусстве данное направление уже давно вызывает глубокий интерес, но его понимание, место в художественном процессе и функциональное значение еще окончательно не определены и разнятся в России и других странах. В данной статье проект «Апофатика» рассматривается с точки зрения некоторых традиций восточно‐христианского искусства, таких как иеротопия. Также сделана попытка включить проект в современный мировой контекст искусства, обращающегося к христианской тематике, что непросто при различии терминологии. Многие зарубежные исследователи предпочитают термин «духовность». «Апофатика» — пример современного высказывания российского художника на тему вечного диалога человека и Бога языком изобразительного искусства.

Especially where the 19c and 20c are concerned, these issues would merit
discussion in greater depth. To understand not only art but its relationship to science and knowledge in general may yet prove fundamental to an understanding of the world and of life. This subject is something we can go back to very often in the classroom. You simply can’t say enough. At any rate, we have to point out to our students why it is thatthe whole project fell through. Analyses differ according to one’s ideology, and this too must be discussed with our students: for some, and I believe they are the majority, there had been attempts at revolution without taking care to renew mentality. This renewal would necessarily arise from radical awareness—not in sudden, abrupt fashion, but over a period of cultural maturing. Others feel that the lesson taught by May ’68 was bitter yet effective. “Bourgeois vous n’avez pas rien compris” was a dour indictment, born of humiliation, yet at the same time it was a veiled threat. Little by little almost everyone realized that art would have to become a part of social praxis if it was to contribute to a cultural revolution of mentality. Marcuse’s power of the imagination would have to be one of art’s weapons. If imagination could not attain to political power, as the graffiti of May ’68 would have it, then the establishment would be destroyed by the powers of imagination. No more would there be tolerance for Odes to Joy or Guernicas of the past, offerings burnt at the altar of human suffering.

An in-depth look into any of these art forms reveals ambiguity at the core of each and everyone. The concept of Ambiguity was developed by Umberto Eco in his book, OBRA ABERTA. Ambiguity arises as a direct consequence of a “chaogenous state” where its constitutive elements lay in the first place, and therein resides its great informative capacity and its “equiprobability”. The interpreter, faced with the availability that the aesthetic operator offers him, can freely own his identity as a subject and for the first time discard his
status as a passive agent face to face with an aesthetic object. Later on, certain forms of Art Process will cause the interpreter to become an active participant in the unfolding of the aesthetic process.

This study examines Max Dvořák's previously unknown papers prepared for his one-semester lecture series at the university of Vienna in 1913. Dvořák titled these lectures "explanations of selected works of art" (Erklärung ausgewählter Kunstwerke) and in doing so developed a distinctive method within the art historical research of the so-called Vienna School of Art History. The paper interprets the lectures through a close reading of the method as a parallel to the change in the concept of the work of art as it occurred in the philosophy and practice of art at the beginning of the twentieth century, demonstrated in the study by examples from the thinking of the german philosopher Oskar Becker and a transformation of the meaning of painting by the French artist Marcel Duchamp. As the study shows, such analogies allow us to understand the meaning of the work of art in Max Dvořák's art history in a new way.

Art over the last decades is a practical example of the materialization of all the realties we have been referring to. Often, and on a single plane, the frameworks for the materialization of memory will arise and, in more or less organized fashion (be it by juxtaposition, dispersion, or composition—more or less thorough, more or less classical—or even simple superimposition) will make us see, as cubism once did with its multiple viewpoints, or futurism as it represented the successive stages of movement and energy quanta, what we have always thought could not be figured on a plastic screen: the succession of mental imagery, past and future recollection, continually coursing through the mind.
We no longer seek to attain to “pure psychic automatism”, as Surrealism did, nor do we attempt to “introspectively materialize pre-reflective states”, as Pollock would have it with his Abstract Expressionism or Action Painting. The same goes for G. Mathieu and Lyrical Abstraction: the “transfer of psychic action into plastic forms bearing the nature of a manuscript”. We are faced with an openly avowed experiential stock of reminiscence. The artist is pleased to make it known—especially to him or herself. Reminiscence is decked out in an enticing game of intimacy-seeking rhetoric which, infusing creation with hermetic qualities, may either impoverish it or add new layers of meaning. This is particularly striking in the works of the Italian Trans-avantgarde, in Mimmo Paladino’s offerings, or Clemente’s, or the exertions of the New Image Painting in America, with de Salle or even Schnabel. But though they enjoy far more classic, thorough compositions, the result of major aesthetic and formal concern, they can likewise be found in the Pittura Colta, as in Carlo Maria Mariani, McKenna, or the far more expressionistic, meaning-laden offerings of Immendorf. This is where Douwe W. Fokkema’s palimpsest metaphor (undated:71) gains in accuracy and scope. At times, the apparent superimposition of layers, the fact of successive returns, demand abilities like those of web surfers, as we shall soon see. It must be reckoned however that in these works’ layers are fixed—only our ability to move between the creator’s understanding and memory and ultimately appropriate them can lead us to a multiple reading—sharing and re-creating of the most immediate and deepest reading. To be able to make memory operate on the surface and in depth demands that we outstrip our scientific or academic background. Therefore, creation and analysis abilities now demand both intellectual and emotional commitment. They are now the unavoidable condition for deep, dense reading, drawing on the flexibility of experiential stock—where you will find the expected (and the predictable) as soon as the truly unknown, arrived at by means of interrelationships with other platforms of understanding. Only intrinsical motivation and emotion will allow us to delve deep into the immediacy of discovery. At this stage, investigators do not yet realize the full weight of the understanding they have begun to collate and probe into. This somewhat intuitive and emotional knowledge tears down the autistic wall that surrounds creation, making way for true communication, true fruition.

René Thom (of Catastrophe Theory fame), on the Topoi of Utopia (Cascais, 1995), analyses the “logical structure of utopias” as an oxymoron (a figure in rhetoric that operates by offering an “antithesis of separate words, producing a paradox between the antithetical members.” ). It seems to me that paradox can simultaneously nullify the primal realities that the antithetical members allude to and gives rise of a new reality, one of a rather diverse nature than the two at its source… or, maybe not. Escher—who was not directly concerned with this issue—did, I think, represented these two realities to the point of overkill. Diverse in their conditions, the realities mingle and bring about a mongrelized reality, enhanced and enriched by the two preceding ones. Will not a reconciled reality attain to the paradoxical nature of utopias and come to ail with (as per Thom’s view) a logical, ontological lack of viability, now that classical antinomian positionings are gone? Are we not before the chosen birthplace of other utopias and, as such, a territory and/or a continent that has been truly deterritorialized? Here is the bridge—though there are quite a few that won’t own up to that—between an outdated present and a future we are already experiencing, at least in the imagination. Is that not how we so often renew our utopias in life?
We have all more or less explicitly felt the impact of globalization on our lives, of trans-disciplinarity and the trans-textuality it implies, both in the accrual of knowledge and the output of creation or, if you’d like to keep it simple, everyday life. Isn’t there, at this writing, an effort to establish a silent discourse and dialog, fruitful to the nth power, among disciplines of a like nature? Or even those which are apparently diverse? And, are not unexpected connections, transgression of all sorts, occurring right now? It happens obliquely, between surface and deep structure, generating deconstruction, and the most important thing will be alertness. There will be moments where the investigative eye will meet new and surprising outlooks on things. Dialog and discourse will, through their new trans-disciplinary condition, foster a healthy conviviality (as discussed in previous chapters) between the real and the virtual, accounting for and/or transmuting the presentification of absence as a presence that is constantly absent, or latent, as happens with the ellipse: a figure typical of the discontinuity encountered over the last decades on any given field of expertise. When we run into one of these situations, are we possibly before the dark matter of knowledge, a sort of black hole, containing a wealth of information? In a way we can see all these new situations triggering (on the level of mind and discourse) understanding and practice so widely differing that I am tempted to state they are as unpredictable as fractal objects.

Elsewhere in this work, I argued that the Emerging Pedagogical Paradigm as I see it must be a paradigm of truth, as it is also a paradigm of the complex. This complexity is of an experiential nature. By this I mean the paradigm must take into account the universe of knowledge—knowledge that is specific yet does not overlook the global, that reconciles, that bridges the gap between global and local, general and specific, social and individual. So all studies, even specific ones, must consider the reality of the student by contextualizing him or her, establishing frequent relationships with the coordinates in the “world of life”, creating constant analogies with current problems and the reflection that they generate. At the outset you take the student from the world of life, and in the end, you send him or her back, no matter how complex or virtual or specific the subject matter you’ve been dealing with. This seems the way to provide them with the basic means to go solo, even if they just wander, i.e., their movements have no apparent end in sight, and occur by means of intuitive, latent, inchoate knowledge built on the path itself, sometimes groping in the dark. The connecting nodes that teachers and students establish will enable each and every one to create a bigger, tighter mesh, with more landmarks, be they scientific or spatio-temporal. The mesh will be a fabric of interdependent connections that will allow students, according to their own paths and spatio-temporal location, both in knowledge and in life, to undertake all dislocation and connection among several levels of reality, inter-areas, inter-knowledge, inter-problems—unlike what happens with exclusively unidisciplinary knowledge. It creates intellectual and emotional upheavals and insecurity, as they will be capable of no more than go where others have gone before and be unable to apprehend the gulfs among uncharted disciplines, which are, by virtue of their novelty, the most promising.

В своята първа статия направих кратък анализ на скулптурата „Тук съм“ на Емил Попов, която участва в изложбата в Градска художествена галерия – Варна. Ще разкажа за друга творба от експозицията, която привлече моето внимание –
„Пресичане“ на Иван Кънчев. Искам да отбележа, че силно изразеният символичен заряд е обединяващ за двете разгледани пластики. Вдигнатата ръка на Емил Попов се свързва с протеста против насилието, както и с волята на Всевишния. При Иван Кънчев човешката фигура е метафора на крехкостта на човешкото същество и неговото битие.

In my first article, I made a brief analysis of the sculpture "I am here" by Emil Popov, which participated in the exhibition at the City Art Gallery - Varna. I will tell you about another work from the exhibition that caught my attention – "Crossing" by Ivan Kanchev. I would like to note that the pronounced symbolic charge is unifying for the two sculptures considered. Emil Popov's raised hand is associated with the protest against violence, as well as with the will of the Almighty. In Ivan Kanchev's work, the human figure is a metaphor for the fragility of the human being and his being.

THIS book is intended for all who feel in need of some first orientation in a
strange and fascinating field. It wants to show the newcomer the lie of the
land without confusing him with details; it hopes to enable him to bring
some intelligible order into the wealth of names, periods and styles which
crowd the pages of more ambitious works, and so to equip him for
consulting more specialized books. In planning and writing it I thought first
and foremost of readers in their teens who had just discovered the world of
art for themselves. But I have never believed that books for young people
should differ from books for adults except for the fact that they must reckon
with the most exacting class of critics, critics who are quick to detect and
resent any trace of pretentious jargon or bogus sentiment. I know from
experience that these are the vices which may render people suspicious of
all writings on art for the rest of their lives. I have striven sincerely to avoid
these pitfalls and to use plain language even at the risk of sounding casual
or unprofessional. Difficulties of thought, on the other hand, I have not
avoided, and so I hope that no reader will attribute my decision to get along
with a minimum of the art historian's conventional terms to any desire on
my part of 'talking down' to him. For is it not rather those who misuse
'scientific' language, not to enlighten but to impress the reader, who are
'talking down' to us—from the clouds ?

Colour reversal film transparencies (slides) are a medium that seems to have, almost, disappeared. They gained their prominence mostly between the 1950s to 1970s, as a preferable photographic choice, since their vibrant colours gave them an edge over negative film photographs, not only as a professional option but also as a means of recording family moments. Slide showing became a social activity. The gathering of people, cinema-like conditions and interaction made them quite popular. The question which we will concentrate on is about their colours and how this is consistent with the colour palette of their era. In the current study source material, from a family collection, is utilised and an empirical approach and analysis is applied. The study concludes that the medium employs the colours of their times, and how this helps with the preservation of these items, not only as family archives but as cultural objects enriched with semiotic elements.

Introduction: Today, the promotion of human health is far beyond the legal requirements for health and safety and includes any action to improve their health. The purpose of this study was to design health education strategies for human resources in one of the banks in Iran. Methods: This qualitative content analysis research is based on a semi-structured interviewing tool. The number of participants in this research was 14 experts who were selected through purposeful sampling. To analyze the interview texts, content analysis was used based on the constant comparison between Strauss and Corbin. Data validation has been referred to experts and participants in the research. Results: The results of open, axial and selective coding showed that human resources health education strategies in the studied bank are include: planning strategies (forecasting, employing specialized staff, training needs assessment, determining strategies and vision and etc.), executive strategies (replacement of temporary staff, outsourcing, comprehensive health education and etc.), assessment strategies (continuous monitoring of effectiveness and review) and global strategies (attention to international trends and changes and etc.). Conclusion: Considering the strategies derived from the research, attention to the vision of the banking and health field, resources and executive constraints, the proper assessment of the effects of education and international trends in the field of health education to manpower can have positive results in this regard to follow.

The research heritage of Vasyl Krychevsky (1873-1952) is known much less, compared to the architectural, graphic, painting, and decorative works of an outstanding, universally gifted personality. This determines the purpose-a preliminary systematization and characterization of the artist's and architect's legacy as a scientist and critic. The objects of our article are two dozen of Krychevsky's preserved texts in the scientific and journalistic field on the issues of sculpture, ornament, architecture, and cinema, and the article's subject is their thematic, substantive, and stylistic features. The methodology of our work is establishing a chronology and tracing changes in conceptual approaches, analyzing texts and identifying the interdependence of Vasyl Krychevsky's creative and scientific activities. The conclusion: an impressive erudition, scientific novelty, verbal skill and practical value of the published works allowed V. Krychevsky to be awarded the scientific degree of Doctor of Art Studies in 1939 without a dissertation defense and in the absence of a higher education diploma.

En la actualidad las imágenes son omnipresentes: estamos rodeados de  ellas, vivimos por ellas, habitamos en ellas e, incluso, devenimos imágenes. Es por ello que resulta imperativo aproximarnos a la Historia del Arte con una mirada inclusiva que nos permita repensar sus roles y añadir nuevos medios, entre los que destacan los videojuegos. Así, nos hemos aproximado a su análisis a partir de los Estudios Visuales y de un nutrido marco teórico para interrogarnos acerca de la intermedialidad y transmedialidad de una de las entregas de la saga Assassin’s Creed, Unity (Ubisoft,  2014),  especialmente relevante para acercarnos a la tecnocultura, a la concreción del espacio en un lugar y como se despliega en los videojuegos, el embodiment y el emplacement, las estrategias que  desarrolla este título para apelar a la autenticidad apostando por la verosimilitud y el re-conocimiento en vez de la exactitud, la relevancia del anacronismo,  cómo propone una nueva materialidad, cómo explora las conexiones entre la historia y la memoria, y cómo se sitúa en relación a los géneros. Como se evidencia en el artículo, en los videojuegos se ponen en tensión todas estas cuestiones y se advierte el peso de nuestra  memoria visual y el rol que desempeña en cómo percibimos las imágenes y la importancia que les damos.

Значимыми изданиями аукционного дома Лепке стали каталоги 6–7 ноября 1928 г., 4–5 июня 1929, и посвященный собранию Строгановых 4–9 мая 1931 г. Автором вступительной статьи первого был  В. Боде, второго - Г. Фосс, а третьего - О. Фальке.  В докладе будут раскрыты примеры научных описаний Отто фон Фалька к представленным на аукционах 1928 и 1931 гг. произведениям, которые сами по себе являют собой образец немецкой знаточеской школы искусствознания первой половины XX века.

Progress in the digitization of cultural assets leads to online databases that become too large for a human to analyze. Moreover, some analyses might be challenging, even for experts. In this paper, we explore two applications of computer vision to analyze historical data: watermark recognition and one-shot repeated pattern detection in artwork collections. Both problems present computer vision challenges which we believe to be representative of the ones encountered in cultural heritage applications: limited supervision is available, the tasks are fine-grained recognition, and the data comes in several different modalities. Both applications are also highly practical, as recognizing watermarks makes it possible to date and locate documents, while detecting repeated patterns allows exploring visual links between artworks. We demonstrate on both tasks the benefits of relying on deep mid-level features. More precisely, we define an image similarity score based on geometric verification of mid-level fea

Progress in the digitization of cultural assets leads to online databases that become too large for a human to analyze. Moreover, some analyses might be challenging, even for experts. In this paper, we explore two applications of computer vision to analyze historical data: watermark recognition and one-shot repeated pattern detection in artwork collections. Both problems present computer vision challenges which we believe to be representative of the ones encountered in cultural heritage applications: limited supervision is available, the tasks are fine-grained recognition, and the data comes in several different modalities. Both applications are also highly practical, as recognizing watermarks makes it possible to date and locate documents, while detecting repeated patterns allows exploring visual links between artworks. We demonstrate on both tasks the benefits of relying on deep mid-level features. More precisely, we define an image similarity score based on geometric verification of mid-level fea

Introduction from Counter Revanchist Art in the Global City
Walls, Blockades, and Barricades as Repertoires of Creative Action (Routledge, 2024). 9781032195117

Book Abstract: Through analyses of public artworks that have taken the form of blockades and barricades since the 1990s, this book theorises artists’ responses to global inequities as cultural manifestations of counter-revanchism in diverse urban centres.

This book is the first to analyse artworks as forms of counter-revanchism in the context of the rise of the global city. How do artists channel the global spatial conflicts of the 21st century through their behaviours, actions, and constructions in and on the actually existing conditions of the street? What does it mean for artists—the very symbol of freedom of personal expression—to shut down space? To refuse entry? To block others’ passage? The late critical geographer Neil Smith’s influential writing on the revanchist city is used as a theoretical frame for understanding how contemporary artists engender the public sphere through their work in public urban spaces. Each chapter is a case study that analyses artworks that have taken the form of walls and barricades in China, USA, UK, Ukraine, and Mexico. In doing so, the author draws upon diverse fields including art history, geography, philosophy, political science, theatre studies, and urban studies to situate the art in a broader context of the humanities with the aim of modelling interdisciplinary research grounded in an ethics of solidarity with global social justice work. Collectively these case studies reveal how artists’ local responses to urban revanchism since the end of the Cold War are productive reorientations of social relations and harbingers of worlds to come.

By using plain language and avoiding excessive academic jargon, the book is accessible to a wide variety of readers. It will appeal to scholars and graduate students in the fields of studio art, modern and contemporary art history, performance studies, visual culture, and visual studies; especially in relation to those interested in conceptual practices, performance art, site-specificity, public art, political activism, and socially engaged art. Cultural geographers and urban theorists interested in the social and political ramifications of temporary and everyday urbanism will also find the analysis of artworks relevant to their own studies.

This article examines how a man named John Reginald Abbott developed a sculpture programme on behalf of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) during the 1950s. Paying particular attention to contemporaneous happenings in Canadian sculpture, it begins by examining Abbott’s formal training as a sculptor and then considers his transition to police officer. It then assesses how the RCMP, in advance of the Canadian government’s widespread funding of the arts, paid for Abbott to study sculpture at Columbia University under the Italian sculptors Ettore Salvatore and Oronzio Maldarelli. After four months in New York, Abbott returned to Canada, and the article evaluates how he used the knowledge he gained there to initiate a formal system that used sculpted masks to help identify and locate criminal suspects. The article provides an in-depth analysis of one such case, a murder committed in Montreal during 1956, with specific emphasis on how photographic images of the masks were distributed. In doing so, it shows how the RCMP supported – at times reluctantly – the creation, display and dissemination of Abbott’s sculpture.

Артистично изследване - легитимност, измерения и перспективи.


Възможно ли е да се съчетае един обективен и емпиричен подход, който е характерен за всяко научно изследване и художествен такъв, който в голяма степен се занимава със абстрактни теми и субективни интерпретации на опита? Отговорът може би е набиращата популярност дисциплина “артистично изследване” (АИ), която в англоезичната си форма е Artistic Research (AR). “Артистично изследване” в смислите в които се прилага, като изследване чрез изкуството, изследване в изкуството.

بر اساس تجارب موفق توسعه گردشگری، انجام فعالیت­های دانش­بنیان و بکارگیری فناوری­های نوین حاصل از نوآوری­ها در زیربخش­های گردشگری، تاثیر فزاینده­ای در جذب گردشگران بین­المللی داشته­است. عوامل متعددی در اجرای فرایند نوآوری تاثیرگذار می­باشند که  سبب مدیریت بهتر فرآیند نوآوری و برنامه­ریزی می­گردد. از اینرو در پژوهش حاضر به طراحی و اندازه­گیری شاخص نوآوری بخش گردشگری در سطوح ملی و منطقه­ای پرداخته شده و وضعیت این شاخص در کشور با استان خراسان رضوی به عنوان یک استان دارای کارکرد گردشگری مقایسه شده­است. در این مطالعه از شاخص نوآوری جهانی ([1]GII) جهت طراحی و اندازه­گیری شاخص نوآوری گردشگری استفاده شد. همچنین با محاسبه ضرایب همبستگی میان ابعاد درونی و بیرونی شاخص نوآوری، به بررسی ارتباطات بین آن­ها پرداخته شد. جمع­آوری اطلاعات از طریق تکمیل پرسشنامه از خبرگان و از روش پیمایش میدانی انجام شده ­است. جامعه آماری این مطالعه اساتید و محققان حوزه گردشگری، کارشناسان شرکت­های دانش­بنیان فعال در حوزه گردشگری و کارشناسان گردشگری بخش­های دولتی و خصوصی می­باشند و حجم نمونه آماری 70 نفر می­باشد. نتایج ...

The study purpose was to determine the psychometric properties of the motivational structure questionnaire in adolescents. Method: Research method was correlational and the statistical population included all female and male adolescents from second secondary education in Tehran's 22nd district to 177000 people in the 2016-2017 academic year among whom based on Comrey & Lee (2016) suggestion 426 were selected using multi-stage sampling method. In the first stage, three direction, the north, center and south of Tehran map, in the second stage, three regions, 1, 5 and 18 of each direction and in the last stage of each region randomly Shahid Motahari and Somayeh High Schools from District 1, Shahid Amoyan and Ayin Tarbiat from District 5 and Shahid Mofeghian and Farzanegan from 18 District were selected. The research tool was the Personal Concerns Inventory by Cox & Klinger (2004). After removal of 6 distortion questionnaires and 2 outliers, 418 student data were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis. Results: The results showed that fitness indices of confirmatory factor analysis, confirmatory factor fitness indicators with the exception of the Chi-squared which was equal to 357.58 in 0.001 significant level, support the pattern of two components of adaptive and nonadaptive motivational structures and Cronbach's alpha coefficients for adaptive and non-adaptive motivational structures is respectively 0.73 and 0.77. Conclusion: According to the results, the motivational structure scale has appropriate validity and reliability, and it can be used to measure the motivational structure of students, as well as to prevent and detect cognitive, emotional and behavioral damages in schools.

Career boundaries are effective in all aspects of the medical profession. Since many factors can shape a junior doctor's choice of career, the concept of career has always been the focus of medical discussions and has even been able to be used as a perspective in medical education. The aim of the present study was to provide a conceptual framework of career boundaries in the medical profession. Methods: The present study is fundamental in terms of purpose and qualitative in terms of approach. The statistical population of this study included physicians who were selected by non-random snowball sampling. The criterion for entering the sampling was their having more than five years of work experience, and the criterion for completing the sampling was the researchers' reaching theoretical saturation: a total of 19 people participated in the study. In order to collect the data, a semi-structured interview was held, and for the analysis of the collected data, the systematic grounded theory was used. Results: The research findings indicated that the conceptual framework of career boundaries in the medical profession includes individual differences and social institutions as causal conditions, work-family boundaries, geographical boundaries, social boundaries, organizational boundaries, moral boundaries, and legal boundaries as the central phenomenon. Findings also included understanding boundaries, reviewing boundaries and crossing boundaries under strategies, educational and cultural contexts under the context conditions, macrofactors and micro-factors under the intervening conditions and future of the career, and re-planning the career and work-family balance as the consequences. Conclusion: Paying attention to the conceptual framework of boundaries can be a great help in planning, deciding, managing, and developing a career for physicians and other occupations. In addition, employed physicians, especially physicians who are at the beginning of their careers, job seekers, and university graduates can be aware of the boundaries of their careers. In addition, they become aware of the consequences of their career boundaries to make choices more openly and increase their chances of career success.

Background and Objective: It is a widely held belief that the physical workplace environment exerts a profound effect on the health and performance of office employees. The assessment of administrative working environment can pave the way for the enhancement of ergonomic conditions of workplace environment. With this background in mind, the present study aimed to design a valid and psychometrically evaluated questionnaire for the assessment of administrative work environment. Materials and Methods: Based on the theoretical foundations of ergonomics and the assessment of administrative work environment, a 22-item questionnaire for the evaluation of administrative workplace environment was designed. The face validity was evaluated by four experts and the content validity of the questionnaire (queries on necessity, relevance, clarity, and simplicity) was evaluated by 20 experts using the quantitative method (CVR and CVI). Thereafter, the questionnaire was administered to a total number of 203 employees of Iranian Gas Engineering and Development Company. Structural validity and reliability of the questionnaire were assessed by Cronbach's alpha coefficient using SPSSsoftware (version 24), and confirmatory factor analysis was performed in AMOS software (version 24) evaluating AVE and CR indices. Results: Based on the results of content validity, 21 questions were approved and 1 question was rejected. The mean content validity ratio and the mean content validity index were reported as 0.73 and 0.94, respectively. In addition, the results of the structural validity and reliability of the questionnaire demonstrated that confirmatory factor analysis fit indices were acceptable; moreover, Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the whole questionnaire was measured at 0.882 and AVE and CR indices were estimated at 0.57 and 0.96, respectively. Conclusion: As evidenced by the obtained results, the newly developed 21item questionnaire for administrative workplace environment assessment enjoys an appropriate validity and reliability to evaluate the conditions of the administrative workplace environment concerning ergonomy (engineering psychology dimension), and can be administered as an effective tool in related research.

The journey to Making New Time was as much about the instant-now
as it was about taking inventory of the urgencies of the now. In turn,
the exhibition became both a call and a response to artists. Artists who became friends. Artists who spoke different languages, whose work created ruptures, fissures, holes through an echo chamber – a space with multiple surfaces, contortions and resonances.

‚Bildende  Kunst‘  sowie  ‚Text  und  Bild‘  lassen  sich
auch  im  Vormärz  nur  in  dem  gemeinsamen  histo-
rischen  Rahmen  einer  visuellen  Kultur  behandeln
(Mitchell 2008; Frank/Lange 2010). Die Erforschung
dieses Zusammenhangs geht notwendig über die eng
begrenzten  Objektbereiche  der  Kunst-  und  Litera-
turgeschichte  hinaus,  denn  sie  setzt  alle  Bilder,  alle
Konzepte und Weisen des (primär sehenden) Wahr-
nehmens  und  des  Umgangs  mit  dem  Sichtbaren
miteinander ins Verhältnis: non-verbale wie verbale,
praktische wie kognitive.

Introduction: The present study aimed to test a model of the relationship between management commitment to safety and consciousness with unsafe performance,considering the mediating role of safety self-efficacy. Material and Method: Research design was the correlation throughStructural Equation Modeling (SEM) and the sampleconsisted of 265 employees of an industrialcompany who were selected by stratifiedrandom sampling method. Participants of this study completedsafety climatescale, short form of NEO personality questionnaire,safety self-efficacy scale, and unsafe performance questionnaire.Reliability and validity of the questionnaires were reported as acceptable. Evaluation of the proposed model was done by SEM through AMOS-21and SPSS-19 software packages. In addition, Preacher and Hayes' SPSS Macro program was used for testing the mediating role. Result: The results showed that the proposedmodel fit the data properly.Management commitment to safety and consciousness had direct effect on unsafe performance and safety self-efficacy.Moreover, the mediating effect of safety self-efficacy in the relationship between management commitment to safety and consciousness with unsafe performancewas confirmed. Conclusion: Overall, organizations canreduce unsafe performance and consequently occupational accidentsby increasing the management commitment to safety and employees' consciousness and also training of employees and supervisors to reinforce their safety self-efficacy.

Progress in the digitization of cultural assets leads to online databases that become too large for a human to analyze. Moreover, some analyses might be challenging, even for experts. In this paper, we explore two applications of computer vision to analyze historical data: watermark recognition and one-shot repeated pattern detection in artwork collections. Both problems present computer vision challenges which we believe to be representative of the ones encountered in cultural heritage applications: limited supervision is available, the tasks are fine-grained recognition, and the data comes in several different modalities. Both applications are also highly practical, as recognizing watermarks makes it possible to date and locate documents, while detecting repeated patterns allows exploring visual links between artworks. We demonstrate on both tasks the benefits of relying on deep mid-level features. More precisely, we define an image similarity score based on geometric verification of mid-level fea

The Austrian National Library acquired a collection of 213 autochromes by Heinrich Kuehn. These photographs were treated at the Conservation Department and will be the subject of a research project in the Pictures Archive. The features of the autochrome process are described as well as Kuehn's experience and work with this colour technique. The article explains the condition and the conservation treatment of the plates that was the result of a close co-operation among conservators, curators and scientists.