Ephemeral art

En 1652 el ejército de Felipe IV capitaneado por Juan José de Austria recupera el control de la ciudad de Barcelona, zanjando así el enfrentamiento entre Cataluña y la Corona Hispánica que se conoce como Guerra dels Segadors. La noticia oficial de la victoria llega a Cerdeña el 1 de noviembre de 1652. En Cagliari se decretan varios días de fiesta con ceremonias religiosas, música, luminarias nocturnas y torneos.
El objetivo del presente artículo es analizar una relación impresa que describe dichas celebraciones y que representa uno de los escasos ejemplos de relaciones de fiestas en Cerdeña en el siglo XVII. El estudio se centra de manera especial en la figura del promotor de las fiestas: Pedro Martínez Rubio, virrey interino de la isla (1652-1653), eclesiástico muy cercano a la Corte de Felipe IV, partidario y aliado político de Juan José de Austria.

Artículo incluido en el monográfico "Al Parnaso a través de las artes".
Este ensayo contextualiza y describe la serie de tarjetas postales que la tipografía Hauser y Menet editó con el texto de la leyenda "El estudiante de Salamanca", de José de Espronceda, e ilustraciones de Primitivo Carcedo.

This essay contextualizes and describes the series of postcards that Hauser and Menet typography edited with the text of the legend "The student of Salamanca", by José de Espronceda, and illustrations by Primitivo Carcedo.

Este artículo plantea el interés de las tarjetas postales ilustradas como nuevos canales de la literatura a comienzos del siglo XX. Profundiza en una colección especial dedicada a las rimas de Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, impresas por la prestigiosa casa Hauser y Menet. La investigación ofrece nuevas perspectivas sobre el ejercicio de la lectura poética en el siglo XIX.
This article raises the interest of illustrated postcards as new channels of literature in the early 20th century. Further investigation regarding a special collection dedicated to the rhymes of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, printed by the prestigious house Hauser and Menet. The research offers new perspectives on the exercise of poetic reading in the 19th century.

Taking as reference the legendary tradition of the ancestral solar temples which reinforced
the believing that Iberia was really the mythical place of the finis terrae, this study focuses on the symbolic
representations of the Sun within the Portuguese Baroque artistic production, paying special attention
to emblematic compositions. Following a comparative approach, it analyses various logo-iconic
devices, in order to gather a representative and diverse corpus, selected from different sources, including
emblem books, festive accounts (namely royal entries, weddings and funeral ceremonies) and applied
emblematics on painting and tiles. This sample will support a comparative reading, looking for relations
to international models. Besides, this work aims to interpret the ideological and functional role of each
emblem, according to its political, religious or artistic purpose. In this way, it will be possible to draw some
conclusions on the use of the Sun iconography in the context of Portuguese emblematic production from
the 16th to the 18th centuries.

In relation to the wider theme of this journal, this paper explores how ephemeral arts investigate basic ecocritical questions around experience, presence, and loss, through a literal language of fragility and disappearance. Ephemeral art is used here to define a category of artworks which physically exist within a limited timeframe and for which this fixed duration clearly frames the work. Through creating landscape interventions, the three artworks discussed, explore the relationship with what is manmade and artificial, and the physical environment in which they are placed. The conversation the works enable is both with and about our relationship to our physical surrounding. It is an exploration of place and (be)longing through the temporary materialization of an uncertain presence which jarringly subverts the expectation of what fits and what lasts. Specifically, the argument is put forward that ephemeral art through its staging of limited material duration is a coping tool within the Anthropocene which both expresses and confronts the human condition.

El arte efímero ha comenzado, en los últimos años, a habitar el entorno urbano más que en toda la historia. Ha tomado las calles con la intención de transformar el espacio público y de interactuar con la sociedad. Dentro de esto, la arquitectura efímera toma el protagonismo, pues se convierte en un motor fundamental para la creación de reflexiones en torno a las nuevas formas de expresión, y permite replantearse la noción de arquitectura tradicional. Lo efímero se fusiona con la ciudad y ambos dan lugar a un espacio accesible e inclusivo.

In recent years, the ephemeral art has begun to inhabit the urban environment more than ever. He has taken to the streets with the intention to transform public space and to interact with society. Whitin this, ephemeral architecture takes the role, becomes an essential engine for the creation of reflections on new forms of expression, and allows you to redefine the notion of traditional architecture. The ephemeral merges with the city and give rise to reachable and inclusive space.

Propongo en estas líneas una vía de investigación acerca de los fastos que dedicó la orden capuchina de Sevilla a la celebración del culto a los nuevos santos Fidel de Sigmaringa y José de Leonisa en la primavera de 1748. La información ha sido extraída de una interesante y poco explorada fuente: el Libro primero de historia, o fastos del convento de menores capuchinos [...], escrito por fray Ángel de León, memoria donde se describe el conjunto de decoración artística con el que fue adornado el convento de la mencionada orden, así como los nombres de los artistas, predicadores, patronos e instituciones implicados en los mismos. Incidiré en el papel que cumple el arte –ornato, pinturas, etc.–, como medio adecuado y preciso de transmisión de mensajes e ideas en el contexto estético del pleno Barroco.

In 1584 Alfonso II d’Este entered Modena together with his
third wife Margherita Gonzaga. This event belongs to an
established tradition in the dukedom and has been described
in various sources: they include one drawing, attributed to the
architect Gian Maria Menia, devoted to five ephemeral arches
designed for the occasion, and a detailed description of the
ceremonial entry written by the humanist Carlo Sigonio. This
work focuses on these two aspects: on the one hand, the essay
examines the references used by Menia to realize the ephemeral
architectures; on the other, the essay frames the description
of the triumphal ceremonial in the varied interests and in the
antiquarian studies of Sigonio.

This study aims to offer an interpretation of the possible meanings of the emblematic images and verses of Camões present in the triumphal arches erected for the royal wedding of Afonso VI and Maria Francisca de Sabóia , through the analysis of the epithalamic album entitled Festas que se fizerão pelo Cazamento del Rey D. Affonso VI. Its texts and symbolic watercolors are of great artistic and cultural interest, because they derive their inspiration from the emblem books of the period in order to disseminate political messages that can be read in multiple ways.

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek: Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar.

Der Beitrag gibt einen historischen Überblick über die unterschiedlichen Möglichkeiten, die Flüchtigkeit von Tanzbewegung mit der Transitorik von Blumen zu verschränken. So wird im Bühnentanz das Auf- und Verblühen von Blumen verkörpert, etwa im Romantischen Ballett (»Théa, ou La Fée aux Fleurs«, 1847) oder in diversen Blumenchoreographien des Ausdruckstanzes. Umgekehrt erfahren Blumen trotz ihrer Sessilität eine kulturelle Zuschreibung von Tanzbewegungen, etwa bei William Wordsworth (»I wandered lonely as a cloud«, 1807) oder Hans Christian Andersen (»Die Blumen der kleinen Ida«, 1835), und fast immer wird auch hier die besondere Vergänglichkeit von Blumen mithilfe der Metapher des flüchtigen Tanzes reflektiert.

Festival arenas and parade streets, which provided architecturally choreographed settings for massive political rallies, advanced to becoming the two most essential components of every city’s urban redesign, serving solely to celebrate highlights of a newly, autocratically imposed political calendar. These celebrations were to provide a commonality of experience, promote unified national identity and quickly and permanently establish tradition and ritual.
These political Nazi celebrations were meticulously organized, aesthetically calculated and hence, psychologically manipulative – whether they were designed in the form of mass rallies or smaller public events. Like the title suggests, their structures and meaning were determined by two criteria, the organisation of space and the employment of iconographically significant material.
The opening chapter, “A New Order of Time and Space”, deals with the phenomenon of festival culture, whose socio-political and psychological significance had already been articulated by the National Socialist Party as early as in the 1920s and were soon strictly regulated by specific propaganda departments of the government. After the Nazi’s seizure of power in 1933, public life therefore underwent a huge transition. After all, in order to psychologically mobilize an entire nation, strategies had to be developed that weren’t located on the level of logical observation and rational reflection but that triggered subconscious feelings by creating “sensuous”, communal experiences.
Besides establishing a cyclical political calendar, specific cultic rituals were created and permanently installed. For these specific purposes alone, cultic sites, political symbols and other highly effective aesthetical elements were designed. These political “ambiences” served in removing the masses – both geographically and psychologically – from everyday life  in order to ensnare them in the totalitarian system of “leader” and “followers”.
The second chapter, “Urban Cult Sites”, focuses on sites within cityscapes, such as in Berlin and Munich. Mono-functional areas on the other hand, like the rally grounds on the outskirts of Nuremberg, pose an exception but follow the same principles structurally and architecturally, in order to represent autocratic intentions. Until the outbreak of war, festival sites and streets were aggrandized with immeasurable dimensions following those very characteristics, in a way that has, in general, only become of such significance in totalitarian regimes. Adjoining parade streets were of equal relevance, being part of the cult site’s infrastructure. Thus, cultic space was constituted not only by reconstructing and analyzing the permanent architecture, but by use of the specific utilized ephemeral materials.
It was therefore of further major relevance to determine how ephemeral materials, in opposition to solid and durable materials, constituted disparate semantic levels. Especially because in most of the secondary literature the materials of ephemeral stagings are merely treated as “cultic props”.
Political rallies however, were not confined to architectural settings in urban areas, but were also executed in the countryside, amplifying and utilizing hereby the “natural” ambiance. This is subject in the third chapter, “Political Cult Sites in Nature”, in which prominent aesthetical features illustrate which calculating propagandistic connotations were sought, by instrumentalizing these natural habitats and their regional materials. In addition, the Nazis also selectively enhanced and propagandized certain topographies, such as visible historical structures, silhouettes and skylines, which were either negated or an ennobling vicinity was sought to justify political ideologies.
The fourth and final main chapter on lighting effects begins with a chapter on fire, “Lumen Naturale – Fire Spectacles”. This chapter which covers different techniques of utilizing natural fire as a political medium and covers many different locations as its use was of almost pyromaniac nature and whose contrasting mythical and religious features were utilized for ideological purposes. Electric light, as the ephemeral design tool par excellence, took on a primary role in the designing and reorganization of space at political rallies, which constitutes a major part of the forth chapter, “Lumen supranaturalis – Lighting Effects”. Albert Speer’s “Lichtdom” was the cultic highlight of the entire, meticulously organized Reich’s party rallies in Nuremberg.
The final chapter is a summary of superordinate phenomena that epitomize specific characteristics of Nazi cult sites and its materials, the instrumentalization of specific environments, thus elevating them to political landscapes.