History and Theory of Art

Stillmark Theory
A Treatise on Presence, Vanishing, and the Discipline of the Fleeting
By Dorian Vale

Can something fleeting leave a mark deeper than permanence?

In this paradigm-shifting treatise, Dorian Vale presents Stillmark Theory, a foundational pillar in the Post-Interpretive Movement and a radical aesthetic philosophy that places presence above permanence, and vanishing above possession.

Stillmark is the name given to a mark that does not remain physically, but remains ethically — a residue of presence that lives on not through its duration, but through the way it demanded your attention. Like a footprint in water, or a pause in ritual, it is a mark felt rather than seen. And it asks not: what did you see? but were you there when it passed?

This treatise explores how the fleeting — the ephemeral artwork, the disappearing gesture, the unsaved voice — disciplines the viewer into reverent attention. Through philosophical engagement with ritual, silence, and the aesthetics of loss, Vale outlines how fleeting experiences, if witnessed properly, can alter perception more profoundly than enduring monuments.

Stillmark Theory is not about minimalism or aesthetic reduction. It is about ethical witnessing: the ability to stay present before something that will not wait for you to interpret it. It urges a return to encounter, to stillness, to restraint — and proposes a new mode of value: not what lasts, but what requires moral presence while it lives.

This is a crucial contribution to Post-Interpretive Criticism, and a necessary framework for curators, critics, artists, and institutions seeking to engage works of art that resist documentation, defy collection, and demand presence without possession.

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Theory of Misplacement is a foundational treatise in the Post-Interpretive canon developed by Dorian Vale. It identifies a crucial but often ignored aesthetic violence: the misplacement of art through curatorial overreach, critical projection, or institutional dislocation. Unlike theories that focus solely on interpretation, this theory addresses what happens when a work is placed—physically, linguistically, or contextually—into a space that distorts its moral, cultural, or spiritual gravity.

Vale argues that not all aesthetic violence is enacted through misreading. Some is enacted through mis-siting—when works are exhibited without regard for their ontological weight, placed in institutional frames that suffocate their resonance, or paired with language that collapses their dignity.

This treatise outlines the differences between interpretation, erasure, and misplacement, showing how the latter often masquerades as reverence while enacting dilution.

Through philosophical analysis, metaphysical framing, and case-based reflection, Theory of Misplacement refines the post-interpretive imperative:

Not only must the critic resist speaking on behalf of the work — they must also ensure the work is not spoken over by its surroundings.

This theory complements Absential Aesthetics and Stillmark Theory in establishing a new custodial vocabulary for protecting the sanctity of placement, presence, and poetic truth in contemporary aesthetics.

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 essay is included in the exhibition catalogue for "Seeing the Unseeable: Data, Design, Art," 2025, published by Hirmer Verlag/ArtCenter College. Available at Hirmer, Abebooks, Amazon.

Abstract:
Generative art of the 21st century has a history spread throughout the 20th before and back at least to the 19th before that -- a history that parallels and structurally echoes the evolution of scientific understanding over the same period. The essay notes that beauty generated as a byproduct of objective systematic methodologies, as occurs in the making of generative art, is in contrast to traditional art-making methodologies that rely upon personal artful choices and acts of subjectively intended creation. The essay proposes that the impulse to generative art by artists has been present in various aspects of modern and contemporary art over nearly two centuries, and that its emergence has been interwoven with, and reflective of, the ongoing evolution of scientific knowledge. And further, that one interpretive lens on the impulse to generative art is that it can serve as a metaphor for how science has changed the paradigm that nature and its archtypal beauty are products of divine creation, to being understood instead as beauty being a byproduct of natural forces without a creator, or a creator's intent. Thus, as the essay title suggests, leaving humans as the lucky finders of beauty where it wasn't meant to be.

In a painting of Raphael's Madonna with a background preserved in Hungary, as in many other great painters' works and in other Raphael's Madonnas with  backgrounds, we find a hidden story that is relatively easy to reveal  with astromythical theory and practice. Hidden in the background of the painting is the story of the old St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, a story that could have been deduced even without astromythical knowledge,  if art historians had been more attentive in identifying the "ruins" in the background of the painting, or had looked more closely at Raphael's fresco The Fire in Borgo...

The Leonardo-inspired or influenced painting sometimes uses bold ideas to elabo­rate on a traditional theme, although, the details are not always worked out in a way befitting the practised masters with many works. The planets and the monogram of Jesus and the assignment of ED axes are ingenious, and for me this interpretative part seems to be the real strength of the work.

Giotto's pupil Taddeo Gaddi develops a long-table model of the Last Supper written on the linear zodiac as part of a larger work, with Jesus coded to Pisces and Judas coded to the "evil" Saturn, the latter being removed from the 13-character grouping.  Castagno brings a similar solution in a independent fresco - with an EDM system - but aligns the outer characters according to an archaic zodiacal narrative. Ghirlandaio, in his first version of 1476, divides the linear zodiac into cardinal, fixed and mutable signs, so that Jesus is placed in the fixed sign group representing eternity. His second version, dated 1480, shows the earth, fire and air signs, separated by a water signs, which in the symbolic context of the time may be the zodiacal coding of the Trinity. Judas' character is completed by Mars, bringing violence, and the framing Cancer and Libra are associated with Jesus as a signs of love and Christianity. In his third version, 1486, he returns to the cardinal-fixed-mutable division, but moves it one step to the left, keeping the second version's framing of Cancer and Libra, and forming the EDM scheme to highlight the signs Taurus and Aquarius, the signs of the Eucharist, from the linear zodiac, i. e., to encode the Eucharist. Judas is also marked with the Gemini code representing two-facedness and falsehood. Leonardo was probably familiar with the works of his predecessors and sum-marized their symbolic solutions in his work, which is to his credit. He does not seem to have been able or willing to develop the traditional exile-domicile system, and for this and other reasons the character of Judas, the symbolic representation of the bread from the Eucharist, the monogram of Jesus and the representation of the Trinity are somewhat more uncertain. A clearer and more uncompromising formulation of the Leonardo summing-up is given by a later Warwick window, which also depicts the struggle between light and darkness with a hidden devil's head. The Gouda window goes even further, showing not only Jesus' ascension but also assumption of Mary, while the four corners of the work  contain the four evangelists. The Trinity is repre­sented not only zodiacally, but also with a set of geometrical codes more commonly used in the East.

Litigation costs constitute a standard human rights issue under the right of access to a court, as enshrined in Article 6(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights. This article provides a detailed overview of the factors and considerations that the European Court of Human Rights examines in its proportionality analysis of litigation costs for civil rights claims, particularly those factors that may disrupt the balance between the right of access to a court and legitimate aims. These factors and considerations include excessive formalism in court fees, stamp duties, or security for costs that impose disproportionate financial burdens; unreasonable cost calculations, particularly concerning claim success and non-pecuniary damages; excessive and unjustified litigation costs claimed by state authorities; and the failure to consider a litigant's vulnerability. These factors serve as benchmarks and red flags, triggering human rights scrutiny in the assessment, allocation, and justification of litigation costs in civil rights cases.

The article looks at the minorization of the "General Science of Art" (allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft), a transdisciplinary movement that represented a very fertile laboratory for art research in the first decades of the twentieth century in German-speaking countries, before being almost erased from the history of art theory. Following in the footsteps of one of its leading figures, the Prague philosopher Emil Utitz (1883-1956), the article first looks at his biography, before examining his role in the development of the General Science of Art and the process that led to its oblivion.

Il titolo della mostra va utilizzato con cautela e riportato ad un preciso contesto per spogliarlo di equivoci e fraintendimenti. Roberto Puzzu sfrutta l' alto grado di ironia di cui è dotato per guardare alla corposa e versatile attività artistica accumulata negli anni da un'angolazione disincantata e allo stesso tempo profondamente consapevole dei percorsi tracciati, delle esperienze vissute, dei debiti contratti e dell'impegno come strumento operativo. Doti che appartengono a quelle generazioni che hanno attraversato la storia dell'arte isolana da veri protagonisti e ne hanno conosciuto le pieghe più intime e vere. La condizione di SOPRAVVISSUTO diventa così una dichiarazione storica e metodologica. Roberto Puzzu usa mezzi espressivi freddi e razionali. Una questione di tasso alchemico, di grado delle cose da cui discende la soluzione finale del manufatto artistico. L' incontro alla fine degli anni 60, con quella fucina di fermenti e occasioni inaspettate che è stata la "Chironi 88", magistralmente diretta da Sandra Piras, figura di donna illuminata e lungimirante, volitiva ed audace che ha fatto, di Nuoro e dell'isola stessa, un luogo non periferico delle sorti dell'arte contemporanea in Sardegna. Spazio di incontri, dibattiti, presenze di rilievo la cui ricaduta si sentirà nel tempo a venire mentre lei, Sandrina per tutti, tesse rapporti e legami con le altre situazioni di avanzata ricerca dell'isola, conscia del valore del sistema dialettico e di scambio che occorre costruire se si vuole avere la forza di superare i confini personali per creare una realtà propositiva e dinamica. Nessuno è riuscito, in seguito, a raccogliere la sua eredità di intenti. Se è vero allora che la vicenda esauriente e puntualmente documentata (non solo evocata come siamo soliti fare) di quella galleria, della funzione di Sandra Piras e del clima operativo di quegli anni è ancora da scrivere e consegnare alla storia dell'arte del nostro territorio, è anche vero che dal quel nucleo sono discesi fenomeni e situazioni vitali con cui oggi stiamo facendo i conti. Roberto Puzzu allora è poco più di un ragazzo, allievo di un vulcanico Nino Dore (maestro riconosciuto e indimenticabile), che dall'Istituto d'arte di Sassari si avventura nel cuore dell'isola attratto dal fascino di quel tumulto culturale destinato a segnarlo e orientarlo sempre più audacemente verso forme espressive di continua scoperta. E' sul piano infatti della esplorazione di campi operativi sempre inediti, mai limitanti, semmai ciascuno volàno di altri percorsi e altri attraversamenti, che connota la ricerca di Roberto Puzzu, mai pago dei risultati ottenuti, costantemente proiettato nella verifica di nuove realtà che questa mostra rivela. Sostenuto da Sandra Piras che di artisti ne ha visti passare molti, non tutti altrettanto incoraggianti. Non è un caso che sara presente alla ormai mitica mostra del 1984 , "Venticinque anni di ricerca artistica in Sardegna", curata da Salvatore Naitza e Sandra Piras. Essere parte di quella storia nuorese è,oggi, un momento di formazione culturale da rivendicare con passione e saggia valutazione storica. Ripartiamo allora dal titolo di questa mostra: Sopravvissuto è di fatto una condizione esistenziale, una presa di posizione e un dato in-controvertibile che implica il riconoscimento, vale la pena ribadirlo, di una stagione dell'arte troppo facilmente dimenticata. La definizione è dunque provocatoria quanto giocosa. Roberto Puzzu taglia i ponti con quelle radici che ha percorso negli anni ottanta e novanta per cercare, con il nuovo secolo, terreni impervi e inaspettati. Convinto che in arte non esiste progresso ma "altro" di cui andare costantemente alla ricerca, si avventura nella realtà contemporanea sondando tutte le opportunità che la tecnologia è in grado di offrire nel rapporto con una concezione dell'arte in continuo dinamismo. Dove gli sconfinamenti tra i mezzi e i

This article uses photography series by Edward Steichen, Krešimir Tadić,
and Zlatko Kopljar, and aims to examine the relationship between body
gestures and spaces in which performances took place. Different authors
are quoted in their readings of gesture in photography, which leads to
understanding certain spaces as a whole. Spaces lose authenticity over
time, and are left empty because those who inhabited them or visited
them are no longer there, or cannot experience them auditorily. The performance
protagonists, now in photographs, remain merely faint figures
of abandoned places, which served as spaces of art. Each of the three
examples, although primarily different in their photographic tendencies,
in a way acts as a witness of the photo conquering over the performance
itself. If the chosen examples cannot tie the bodies to certain spaces,
which are crucial to understanding the performances,then photography
is doing the same, twice removed.

Emerging in the context of American and European art during the 1960s, the term 'site-specific' has been employed to characterize art projects created with a specific location in mind. This departure from traditional artistic expressions within galleries and museums primarily focused on formal considerations, often divorced from the socio-political context of the site. In Iran, where site-specific art has flourished for nearly as long as in America, the concept of 'site' is deeply intertwined with history and heritage. Here, while formal aspects remain relevant, the shape and meaning of art are primarily shaped by the historical significance of the site. By primarily examining the work of Tehran-based artist Pooya Aryanpour, this article explores how Iranian site-specific artists have expanded the boundaries of art by establishing a dialogue between art objects and the rich history and cultural significance of specific sites. This practice has enabled Iranian artists to transcend the constraints of governmental institutions. Above all, site specificity empowers Iranian artists to facilitate intimate dialogues between art objects, history, heritage, and the people for whom heritage and cultural identity matter, further enriching the connection between art and history.

The question of the relationship between art and knowledge and whether and in what sense art can be regarded as a form of knowledge has been addressed from different perspectives but it still does not have secure grounds in contemporary aesthetics. The argument involves rather skeptical attitudes – from Plato to Kant and throughout the dominance of positivist tradition in Western philosophy in the first half of the 20th century – as well as cognitivist approaches, such as James O. Young’s view of art as a source of knowledge, which has the capacity to provide both propositional and practical knowledge.
The “linguistic turn” in contemporary thought and the ensued iconization of language in western culture led to the identification of cognitive potential with discourse, resulting in inequitable disregard of sensory awareness and turning the human experiences and cognition into the product of language. The submission of iconicity to semantics and reducing the pictorial to interpretable text without sensory significance led to the questioning of the cognitive aspect of visuality.
The hermeneutical perspective, drawing upon Michael Polanyi’s view of all knowledge as established in relation to tacit thought, considers art as embodying tacit knowledge and emphasizes the importance of the inherent inexhaustibility of meaning in art that can contribute to the inquiry. Recognizing that knowledge is not always reducible to language, such perspective liberates knowledge from the dominance of the propositional and provides further insights for the phenomenology of art as a creative practice.
No doubt that the ways of representation in arts are fundamentally different from those in the sciences and both realms contribute to knowledge in radically different ways. However, while the ways to explicate how art can enhance the faculty of judgment and practical knowledge might be relatively obvious in literary works, the question of how visual works can provide the same kinds of knowledge is more ambiguous. Consequently, the question of epistemic potential of visual representation is even more challenging.
Image as a system constructed according to the immanent laws with its own iconic sense - which determines its difference from reality as well as from discourse – challenges perception, because a conceptual, abstract tendency of perception is incompatible with a sensual particularity of the image (Boehm). At the same time, it allows a multiplicity of experience made possible by simultaneity inherent in the image provided that we understand the act of seeing as comprising simultaneity and consecutiveness as well as the unconscious, pre-conceptual processes. It is the expressive potential of the pictorial and the specificity of art as an experiential and perceptual modality embodying representational meanings that distinguishes it as a distinctive form of knowledge.
In an endeavor to defy the approach of semiotics and the epistemology of science that insist on amodality of knowledge and its dependence on discursive context, this paper rejects the reducibility of knowledge to language and embraces the approach that advocates „disestablishing the view of cognition as dominantly and aggressively linguistic“ (Stafford).

Keywords: Visual art; pictorial representation; art and knowledge; aesthetic cognitivism.

As we discuss artwork, we need to define what it means. Is art an accurate representation of the world, as realists may believe, or is it more about exploring human psychological states that an artist may experience? These questions lead us to believe in a form of representation of something original and pre-existing, whether it's the world, nature, society, or the artist's psychological state. In this paper, we explore the phenomenological concepts of Edmund Husserl's literature to show how artwork represents the meaning of the world through the artist's intentional and non-reflective experience. We define Husserl's concepts and establish the necessary proportions to achieve our research goal.

We focus on the relationship between the artwork and the artist's body and perception, as well as the fundamental relationship between the artist and the work of art. We demonstrate how artwork represents the world through the artist's intentional experiences. We also examine the importance of the artist's relation to the world around them, both in creating and understanding the artwork. We explore the attachment of artwork to a natural approach and examine the relationship between truth claims and art in a phenomenological reading.

We reject the idea that art is merely a representation of something and instead propose that art creates the world. Art is autonomous and not bound to scientific approaches. It provides a non-scientific foundation for human conversation as a tool for improving the inter-subjective world we share. We use Husserlian Conceptions to answer anti-foundationalist accounts of art, which deform what we know as art and reduce it to a soloistic self-expression of the artist. This essay is an introductory attempt to find new possible truth foundations in art and artworks.

Neste artigo são expostos os resultados preliminares da pesquisa de doutoramento em Artes na Universidade Federal do Pará (UFPA), cujo objeto de estudo é a obra Três séculos de modas, livro e exposição artística, trazido a público em Belém do Pará entre 1917 e 1923 pelo intelectual maranhense João Affonso do Nascimento (1855-1924). Para isso, são apresentadas algumas características da obra pioneira, com o propósito de discutir o uso de fontes visuais, do campo da arte, na disciplina história da moda em seu processo de surgimento, entendendo-a a partir das teorias da história da arte que concernem o "historicismo", o "estilo" e a "iconologia".
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This article presents the preliminary studies of my doctoral research in Arts at the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), whose object of study is the work Três séculos de modas, a book and artistic exhibition, published in Belém do Pará between 1917 and 1923 by João Affonso do Nascimento (1855-1924). To this end, some of the characteristics of this pioneering work are presented, with the aim of discussing the use of visual sources, from the field of art, in the discipline of fashion history as it emerged, understanding it from the perspective of art history theories that concern "historicism", "style" and "iconology".

How does one position oneself in a world that threatens constantly to destroy one's ability to live peaceably? To explore this and related issues, the current essay focuses on works by women artists in which guns are pivotal or prominently featured. Yet it is not so much the guns themselves that are of interest here, but the way that in the hands of women artists, they allow us to perceive the frequently unacknowledged multiplicity, obscurity and aleatory workings of violence. Why, when one is in a position to pull the trigger, one would not do so? In tackling these questions, the essay considers how the artists Milica Tomić, Olivia Plender, Maria Kulikovska and Rita Duffy use guns to raise questions about the radically conflicting modalities of violence that are routinely folded into a single term. In

Tout livre d’histoire digne de ce nom - Marc Bloch wrote in "Apologie pour l'Histoire" - devrait comporter un chapitre, ou si l’on préfère, insérée aux points tournants du développement, une suite de paragraphes qui s’intitulerait à peu près: «Comment puis-je savoir ce que je vais dire?». It is certainly an old epistemological question, which also applies to the History of Art, but why, precisely for such a reason, do many, too many, art historians pretend not to know it, and why do they even less feel obliged to take it seriously? How can art history and philosophy dialogue and where can they meet?

The purpose of this contribution is to evaluate the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in freedom of artistic expression cases dealing with visual and performance arts. The reasons for this particular evaluation are salient to the fact that the ECtHR has consistently provided a lesser level of protection to artistic expression than to political expression. The aim of this article is to challenge the approach of the Court to the freedom of artistic expression in relation to visual and performance arts. The critical evaluation is based on two different but complementary grounds: contemporary theory of art critique of the ECtHR's understanding of art and critique based on the ECtHR's own political freedom of expression cases. The argument of the authors is that the ECtHR approach to visual and performance arts as an exercise in ethics and aesthetics is contradicted by contemporary art theory and practice which invariably assumes the societal role of art, its potential subversive and transformative function within a society at large, and, ultimately, its lato sensu political value. In addition, visual and performance arts are powerful yet fragile instruments for delivering the debate to society at large. Viewed from this perspective, artistic expression has the same beneficial effect on a democratic society as political expression stricto sensu. Therefore, the rationales underpinning protection of political expression are essentially the same as those of artistic expression, therefore the ECtHR should extend the same level of legal protection to arts and artists to keep valuable social dialogue alive.

La Historia Natural es una de las obras más valiosas de la Anti-
güedad grecolatina. Cayo Plinio el Viejo (23/34-79 d.C.) com-
puso su texto enciclopédico para describir los fenómenos de
la naturaleza, tal y como los entendían los eruditos del siglo I
d.C. Que se haya conservado en su integridad a pesar del tiempo trans-
currido, es elocuente de su trascendencia a lo largo de los siglos.
La obra también es de vital importancia para la historia de las artes,
pues ofrece un amplio corolario del arte griego y del coleccionismo ro-
mano. Plinio vivió en una época en la que las obras griegas de los siglos
V y IV a.C. ya eran consideradas clásicas y su acaparamiento se había
convertido en un motivo de prestigio para los gobernantes romanos.
De este modo, en la Historia Natural no solo se ofrecen datos esen-
ciales sobre los más importantes artistas helenos, de Fidias a Lisipo,
de Zeuxis a Apeles, sino que el relato del aprecio de sus obras durante
las siguientes centurias, nos describe cómo el arte pasó de ser una ce-
lebración de la divinidad a convertirse en objeto estético y motivo de
especulación teórica y económica.
La presente edición ofrece una nueva y completa traducción al caste-
llano de los textos de Plinio referentes a las artes. Además, cuenta con
una cuidada edición científica que lo convierte en un proyecto inédito
en nuestra lengua. La traducción directa del latín se completa con un
buen número de notas explicativas. Además, un extenso prólogo es-
tudia una serie de aspectos que ayudan al lector a comprender el con-
texto de su creación: la biografía del autor, el objetivo de la obra o su
influencia en los siglos posteriores. La edición está ilustrada con una
serie de grabados antiguos que, de forma también visual, manifiestan
el sostenido interés que el estudio de la Antigüedad y los escritos de
Plinio, han suscitado desde el Renacimiento.

The world is not standing still, and the development of information technology is giving rise to even more new areas of social relations. It is only logical that new human rights and responsibilities arise. The sphere of information relations is quite new and is rapidly developing. While the international community and national authorities pay a fairly high level of attention to information rights by introducing special regulations, they pay less attention to obligations. This is due to the absence of a single unified act, and therefore, in general, the concept of duty is consistent with law, including in the field of information relations. This is the relevance of the study, which is driven by the rapid development of informational and legal relations and the improvement of the digital space, as well as the strict fulfillment of obligations arising from them. The purpose of this article is to emphasise the urgent need for doctrinal changes in the human rights system caused by the d...

The African Union and African states’ have committed to upholding gender equality and women’s rights. A pivotal mechanism for advancing this commitment and human rights in general is the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, with its broad substantive jurisdiction. This article considers the legal basis for gender parity and the extent to which gender representation and women’s rights has been advanced through or by the Court. It establishes that though the Court’s jurisprudence on women’s right is quite scant, the Court has illustrated its potential and willingness to protect women’s rights through its advisory and contentious jurisdiction. Significant strides have also been made in attaining gender equality on the Court’s bench, but with more to be done in terms of substantive representation in the Court’s leadership positions.

This book explores Iranian modern and contemporary art, examining art movements and practices in relation to cultural, social, and political discourses from the twentieth to the twenty-first century. It emphasizes the impact of these discourses on art movements and selectively examines their representation within movements such as Saqqā-khāneh, revolu
tionary art, and diasporic art. Furthermore, it investigates artistic strategies employed during this period, including humour, criticism of cultural heritage, deconstruction, and the use of subversive language, which were highly significant. By tracing artistic trends in Iran from the 1940s to the present, the book connects art to its broader social, cultural, and political context and offers fresh perspectives on its interdependence/mutual influence. Through case studies and close analysis of artists’ works, it provides valuable insights into contemporary artistic concerns and annotates the intricate relationship between art and its environment in Iran.

Conference organised by Dr Tomáš Murár and Prof. Dr Tomáš Hlobil, 19-20.4.2023.

This lecture presents the hypothesis that art schools have enabled art history to digest the new definitions of art and overcome the methodological crisis diagnosed by Arthur C. Danto and Hans Belting; more concretely that the Viennese Kunsthochschulen served as laboratories for the experimentation of new art histories. To this end, the ways in which contemporary art was theorised and art history was practised at the Hochschule für angewandte Kunst and at the Akademie der bildenden Künste will be analysed. The relationship between the Institut für Kunstgeschichte at the University of Vienna and contemporary art will then be examined.

This article identifies scientists' attributes and their approaches to innovation, sciences, research, and discovery as ascribed by Abu Musa-Jabir Ibn Hayyan al-Azdi-also known as Jabir Ibn Hayyan (or Geber) in the late 7th to early 8th century. Jabir was the first polymath to have set the stage for the Golden Age of Islam that lasted from the 8th to 12th century. In several of his books and research articles, Jabir identified researchers, scientists and scholars as the "artists" and their research methodologies and experimentation as the "art." A mastery or specialization in any given discipline that an "artist' pursues was termed by him as the "Majistery". The attributes that he proposed several centuries ago have since become the criteria, befitting the "art" of our present-day scientists and scholars. He explicitly detailed the attributes of an "artist" and also those who were recommended not to pursue sciences as a career. He described natural talent, innate propensity, the conquest of knowledge, deeper insights into Mother Nature, ingenuity, critical thinking, foresight, flexibility, adaptability, resiliency, persistence and selflessness as the essential ingredients of scientists and their success. Additionally, he also deemed funding, collaboration, partnership and community support to be pivotal. Rigidity-the "stiff neck," as he described it, and the lack of adaptability to be detriments to the 'art' of sciences. This article provides an eye-opening account of the scientific rigor that led to the Golden Age on the one hand, and on the other hand, attempts to reconcile the compatibility of modern sciences with traditional Islamic teachings. It also identifies the critical success factors that led to the rise of sciences in the Islamic world, which have since either been forgotten or ignored. We make recommendations throughout as to what needs to be done to revive the Golden Age of Sciences in the Muslim world.

Who is an agelast? The one who never laughs 2. Democritus has been mentioned as a hypergelast philosopher who theorized nature's mechanization. Evidently, humour may be examined as a swerve of order, an unpredictable signal of information 3 in the process of human evolution. Mechanistic is a lemma by definition relating to theories which explain phenomena in purely physical or deterministic terms 4 , already under dispute since the Epicurean clinamen, an idea that atoms swerve during unpredictable pathways in the void.

This article is a contribution to the genealogy of the Science of Art, a discipline that emerged in the German speaking countries at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries at the crossing of aesthetics, art philosophy and art history and to which the Second World War brought an end. It attempts to revive a relatively unknown figure: the German-speaking Czech philosopher Emil Utitz (1883-1956), who in the 1920s and 1930s tried to give a philosophical grounding to this new science. Against what he regarded as an aesthetic subjectivism—be it the aesthetics of the judgement of taste, the Hegelian science of beauty or the psychophysiological aesthetics—Utitz developped an ontology of the work of art based on its “objectality”. The article attempts to retrace the key elements of this systematisation project.

En vue de contribuer à la généalogie de la Kunstwissenschaft, cette discipline née dans les pays germaniques au tournant des xixe et xxe siècles du croisement de l’esthétique, de la philosophie de l’art et de l’histoire de l’art et engloutie par la seconde guerre mondiale, l’article fait revivre une figure méconnue : celle du philosophe tchèque de langue allemande, Emil Utitz (1883-1956), qui s’engagea dans le projet de la fondation philosophique de cette nouvelle « science » dans les années 1920-1930. À rebours de ce qu’il tenait pour un subjectivisme esthétique – tant dans l’esthétique du jugement de goût que dans la science de la beauté hégélienne ou encore dans l’esthétique psychophysiologique – Utitz chercha à élaborer une ontologie de l’œuvre d’art en partant des conditions de son « objectalité ». L’article s’efforce de restituer les lignes de force de ce projet de systématisation.

Anthropological surveys of hunter-gatherers and pastoral peoples from Siberia and North America during the early 1900’s recorded wide-spread use of lunar calendars for the observation and harvesting of terrestrial and aquatic animals. Volumes of evidence in biological fields followed throughout the 20th century that record animals across the biological spectrum as being cued by the sun and dark/light phases of the moon (Endres, KP and Schad, W. 1977).

This study explored whether geometric patterns accompanying depicted animals in the Upper Paleolithic Franco-Cantabrian archaeological record, lunar calendars of hunter-gatherers and pastoral peoples as recorded in the anthropological surveys, and the light/dark lunar cued biological behavior of significant animals presented can be correlated. Such relationships would support the idea that the knowledge of lunar calendars as a means to monitor the biological activity of significant animals was important in hunting, gathering and general timekeeping success on the European, Asian and American continents (Taylor, B. 2022).

REFERENCES:

Endres, Klaus-Peter and Schad, Wolfgang. 1997. Moon Rhythms in Nature: How Lunar Cycles Affect Living Organisms. Floris Books.

Marshack, Alexander. 1972. The Roots of Civilization. McGraw-Hill Book Company.

Taylor, Bernie, 2021. Lunar Timekeeping in Upper Paleolithic Cave Art. Praehistoria. New Series 3 (13).

Kreuz genannt wird, wo dekadische und nationale Feiertage gefeiert werden sollen, 1798/1799. 7 Charles de Wailly: Umbauplan eines Versammlungssaals der Freunde der Freiheit und Gleichheit, zu verwirklichen in der alten Kirche der Jesuiten in Brüssel, 1793.

Στο δοκίμιο αυτό επανεξετάζω τη σπουδαστική περιοδεία του αρχιτέκτονα Gottfried Semper (1803–1879) στην Ελλάδα, με βάση το περιηγητικό κείμενο «Reise-Erinnerungen aus Griechenland», που δημοσίευσε το 1858. Σε αντίθεση με τις δημοσιεύσεις σε άμεση συνέχεια του ταξιδιού του, οι οποίες επικεντρώθηκαν στο ζήτημα της αρχαίας πολυχρωμίας, στο κείμενο του 1858 ο Semper εστιάζει στο βυζαντινό και οθωμανικό αρχιτεκτονικό παρελθόν της χώρας, ενώ παράλληλα αναδεικνύει την ανώνυμη παραδοσιακή αρχιτεκτονική της Ύδρας και της Μάνης ως κατεξοχήν σημείο αναφοράς για την οικιστική ανάπτυξη του νεοσύστατου κράτους σε βάρος των επείσακτων δυτικοευρωπαϊκών μοντέλων. Πρόκειται ίσως για την πρώτη θετική αποτίμηση και προτροπή σε χρήση της τοπικής αρχιτεκτονικής παράδοσης, μισό αιώνα περίπου πριν το ενδιαφέρον που ανέπτυξαν γι’ αυτήν οι μοντερνιστές αρχιτέκτονες του 20ού αιώνα. Η εξέταση του ταξιδιωτικού κειμένου του Semper που επιχειρώ στο παρόν δοκίμιο φέρνει επίσης στο φως νέα ευρήματα γύρω από τις επιτόπιες έρευνές του στα βυζαντινά μνημεία της Ελλάδας. Προτείνω συγκεκριμένα την ταύτιση ενός από τους ατεκμηρίωτους ακόμα εικονογραφικούς πίνακες της θεμελιώδους θεωρητικής του πραγματείας Der Stil (1860–1863). Πέραν των ζητημάτων ιστοριογραφίας της αρχιτεκτονικής, οι «Ταξιδιωτικές Αναμνήσεις από την Ελλάδα» προσεγγίζονται από τη σκοπιά της μελέτης του φιλελληνισμού και της κουλτούρας του περιηγητισμού. Αναλύω τους κοινούς τόπους της περιηγητικής λογοτεχνίας και εικονογραφίας αλλά και τους μηχανισμούς οικειοποίησης του ελληνικού χώρου που ενεργοποιούνται στο κείμενο του Semper, το οποίο κατηγοριοποιώ ως ύστερο δείγμα φιλελληνικής γραφής. Δείχνω επίσης ότι το κείμενο υπονομεύει τις συμβάσεις του φιλελληνικού λόγου, επιχειρώντας όχι ν’ ανιχνεύσει τις επιβιώσεις του αρχαίου παρελθόντος στις ζώσες πρακτικές του παρόντος αλλά να χρησιμοποιήσει τις τελευταίες για μια βαθύτερη κατανόηση του παρελθόντος. Επιπλέον, σε αντίθεση με την αναζήτηση συνδέσεων μεταξύ Γερμανίας και ελληνικής αρχαιότητας, που είναι συνήθης στη γερμανόφωνη περιηγητική λογοτεχνία για την Ελλάδα, ο Semper φαίνεται μάλλον να διεκδικεί συνδέσεις μεταξύ του γερμανικού και νεότερου ελληνικού πολιτισμού στον άξονα της συγχρονίας. Συζητώ, τέλος, διεξοδικά τις (επιστημολογικές και άλλες) απορίες που σχετίζονται με την ετεροχρονισμένη αφήγηση του ταξιδιού στην Ελλάδα εικοσιπέντε σχεδόν χρόνια μετά το πέρας του. Αναδεικνύω τις πολλαπλές χρονικότητες της αφήγησης, εντός της οποίας η ελληνική εμπειρία του Semper επικαιροποιείται τόσο σε σχέση με το σώμα της περιηγητικής λογοτεχνίας και εικονογραφίας με το οποίο συνομιλεί, όσο και σε σχέση με την εξέλιξη των θεωρητικών ενδιαφερόντων του αρχιτέκτονα, αλλά και τις αναπάντεχες τροπές του βίου του ύστερα από τη συμμετοχή του στις επαναστάσεις του 1848/1849.

O tema da paisagem é desafiante desde logo pela multiplicidade de áreas em que é um conceito importante: nas ciências da natureza, em particular na ecologia, na geografia física e na geografia humana, na antropologia cultural e em algumas engenharias (de ambiente, de construção, de geodesia, agronómica, etc.). A lista pode continuar pelas
ciências militares preocupadas com a vigilância do território e com as estratégias de defesa e ataque. Nas artes é central para a arquitetura e não apenas para a que se designa “paisagística”, mas para toda a arquitetura enquanto forma organizada de construção de paisagens, aliando natureza e cultura. Na poesia foi elemento glosado em muitos momentos da sua história; é especialmente associada à poética romântica, que na pintura e demais artes plásticas, se tornou um género autónomo, e na música, solidariamente com aquelas artes, expressou estados de alma.

'Mapping Ideas. Identifying, Describing, Defining | The Conceptual Lexicon of Renaissance and Baroque Art Theory in Europe, before and after Federico Zuccari's Writings' is an initiative curated and coordinated by Vita Segreto and Marco Bussagli. 'Mapping Ideas' wants to investigate the paths of creativity in the history of art, studying the thought of important figures as Federico Zuccari, his ‘auctores’ and his heirs. The 'Mapping Ideas' Cycle of International Seminars is produced by the Roman Accademia di Belle Arti under the patronage of the ‘Edizione Nazionale delle opere di Federico Zuccari’ in Rome and in collaboration with the Fondazione Memofonte in Florence. The four seminars that make up the cycle want to promote a reflection on the history of artistic ideas and 'the lexical structures in which they find expression in the European tradition,' through the mapping of art theory's key concepts in Europe between the 16th and 18th centuries. Starting with Federico Zuccari's writings, the cycle aims to reconstruct, on philological and genetic grounds, the theoretical physiognomy, the philosophical, linguistic, literary, and artistic background of key concepts considered, as well as the networks and material / immaterial paths of their transmission and circulation.
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The seminars will be held in-person and remotely, once a month, from November 11, 2022 to February 24, 2023, 3.30-7 p.m., at the Sala Colleoni - Aula Magna of the Accademia di Belle Arti at Via di Ripetta 222 - 00186 Rome.
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Scientific Committee: Marco Bussagli (Roma, Accademia di Belle Arti), Salvatore Carannante (Trento, Università degli Studi), Donata Levi (Udine, Università degli Studi e Firenze, Fondazione Memofonte), Peter M. Lukehart (Washington DC, NGA, The Center), Vita Segreto (Roma, Accademia di Belle Arti), Annamaria Siekiera (Campobasso, Università del Molise).
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Seminar Program:
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11 November, 2022 ---
'Intelletto, Intelligente' ---
Salvatore Carannante | Seminar Leader
(Trento, Università degli Studi)
Leen Spruit
(Nijmegen, Radboud Universiteit)
Lorenzo Pericolo
(Tallahassee, Florida State University)
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16 December, 2022
'Intendere, Inteso' ---
Donata Levi | Seminar Leader
(Udine, Università degli Studi)
Anna Maria Siekiera
(Campobasso, Università del Molise)
Paul S. Tucker
(Firenze, Università degli Studi)
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26 January, 2023 ---
'Mente, Mano' ---
Peter M. Lukehart | Seminar Leader
(Washington DC, National Gallery of Art, The Center)
Stuart Lingo
(Seattle, University of Washington)
Nino Nanobashvili
(Mainz, Gutenberg-Museum)
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24 February, 2023 ---
'Corpo, Moto' ---
Vita Segreto | Seminar Leader
(Roma, Accademia di Belle Arti)
Marco Bussagli
(Roma, Accademia di Belle Arti)
Enrico Mattioda
(Torino, Università degli Studi)

Εστιάζοντας το ενδιαφέρον σε διαφορετικές ιστορικές περιόδους και περιστατικά, το μάθημα επιχειρεί να απαντήσει στο τι εννοούμε όταν μιλάμε για λογοκρισία στην τέχνη, στην Ελλάδα και διεθνώς. Το μάθημα αποτελεί μια συνεργασία του Διατμηματικού Μεταπτυχιακού Προγράμματος «Τέχνη και Δημόσια Σφαίρα» με το ΜΟΜus, τον Μητροπολιτικό Οργανισμό Μουσείων Εικαστικών Τεχνών Θεσσαλονίκης, με τη συμμετοχή και ερευνητών του μεταδιδακτορικού ερευνητικού έργου «Η λογοκρισία στον Κινηματογράφο και τις Εικαστικές Τέχνες: Η Ελληνική εμπειρία από τα μεταπολεμικά χρόνια μέχρι σήμερα» (CIVIL) που φιλοξενήθηκε στο Τμήμα Πολιτικής Επιστήμης και Ιστορίας του Παντείου Πανεπιστημίου (ΕΛΙΔΕΚ).
Συντονίστριες: Ηρώ Κατσαρίδου  & Πηνελόπη Πετσίνη