Staff Picks

The artist has been working with the new concepts of chaos theory and fractal geometry as a conceptual transformation--a new way to view nature, space and form--and as a liberation from the confines of Euclidean geometries in art. The artist compares the potential artistic importance of chaos theory and fractal geometry with important events in Western art history--the Renaissance and the birth of Modern Art--can be directly linked with the concurrent appearance of new geometries. The artist proposes that new geometric views in the world my be a key catalyst for artistic developments. Within this context, the new geometric vision of chaos theory and fractal geometry may give rise to another major innovation in art.

The article discusses the 1950s-1960s work of Colombian artists Edgar Negret and Eduardo Ramírez-Villamizar, whose work in New York City influences abstract geometric art in Colombia. The author focuses on Negret's "Magic Machines" sculpture and relief series and Ramírez-Villamizar's "White Reliefs" series. Specific topics include the abstract expressionist movement in New York City, the Coenties Slip group of artists, 1960s exhibitions of abstract art in New York City and Bogotá, Colombia, and other abstract artists including Ellsworth Kelly and Louise Nevelson.

As one of many efforts by midcentury African American painters to reinvent abstraction and transform it into a more pluralistic cultural practice, Hale Woodruff’s six-panel mural for Atlanta University, The Art of the Negro (1950–51), offers a visual history of transcontinental art that freely mingles Western and non-Western art, ancient and modern cultures, and abstract and figural forms. The series unsettles and destabilizes conventional and linear histories of modernism not only by demonstrating its stylistic and demographic diversity but also by revealing the complexity of the encounters between its practitioners and the non-Western arts from which they drew inspiration.

This article is based on a presentation given at the Canada International Conference on Education [CICE-2019] at The University of Toronto. Mississauga, Canada.

Minimalism in architecture contains the idea of the minimum as a leading creative tend to be considered and interpreted in working through phenomena of empathy and abstraction. In the Western culture, the root of this idea is found in empathy of Wilhelm Worringer and abstraction of Kasimir Malevich. In his dissertation, 'Abstraction and Empathy' Worringer presented his thesis on the psychology of style through which he explained the two opposing basic forms: abstraction and empathy. His conclusion on empathy as a psychological basis of observation expression is significant due to the verbal congruence with contemporary minimalist expression. His intuition was enhenced furthermore by figure of Malevich. Abstraction, as an expression of inner unfettered inspiration, has played a crucial role in the development of modern art and architecture of the twentieth century. Abstraction, which is one of the basic methods of learning in psychology (separating relevant from irrelevant features), Carl Jung is used to discover ideas. Minimalism in architecture emphasizes the level of abstraction to which the individual functions are reduced. Different types of abstraction are present: in the form as well as function of the basic elements: walls and windows. The case study is an example of Sou Fujimoto who is unequivocal in its commitment to the autonomy of abstract conceptualization of architecture.

The article focuses on the genealogy of minimalism. It states that "Art and Objecthood," by Michael Fried was successful in connecting the theatricality of Robert Morris to Donald Judd's derivation from modernist painting. It suggests that the troubles posed by John Cage to Fried and minimalism were related. Significant implications of Cage's work were discussed. The analysis made by Hal Foster regarding minimalism is presented.

In the 1970s, choreographer Lucinda Childs developed a reductive form of abstraction based on graphic representations of her dance material, walking, and a specific approach towards its embodiment. If her work has been described through the prism of minimalism, this case study on Calico Mingling (1973) proposes a different perspective. Based on newly available archival documents in Lucinda Childs’s papers, it traces how track drawing, the planimetric representation of path across the floor, intersected with minimalist aesthetics. On the other hand, it elucidates Childs’s distinctive use of literacy in order to embody abstraction. In this respect, the choreographer’s approach to both dance company and dance technique converge at different influences, in particular modernism and minimalism, two parallel histories which have been typically separated or opposed.

Over the span of more than fifty years, the Sudanese American and Chicago-based artist Amir Nour has created sculptures that reflect his remarkable ability to integrate methods, techniques, forms, and ideas that draw from his diverse experiences as a diasporic person. Nour was born in Shendi, an ancient city on the bank of the Nile River, and enrolled as a student at the College of Fine and Applied Arts in Khartoum in the mid-1950s. From the late 1950s to mid-1960s he trained at the Slade School of Fine Art and the Royal College of Art in London, later earning his PhD in African art in 2006 from the University of St Andrews, Scotland. Formative experiences for his art were his exposure to the diversity of Sudanese visual culture, arts, crafts, and landscape through annual trips to various parts of the country organized by the College of Fine and Applied Arts; the Western modernist tradition of figurative sculpture; and the work of many non-Western artists and art students he met in the United Kingdom. Nour's artistic development portrays an artist deeply engaged with the shifting social, political, and cultural ground beneath his feet. The result has been a remarkable body of sculpture that speaks of a cosmopolitan vision in which several traditions collide to create a new visual language combining African-derived forms with a minimalist aesthetic. The new works and the archival material included in the retrospective exhibition Amir Nour: Brevity Is the Soul of Wit, organized by the Sharjah Art Foundation November 2016 to January 2017, attests to Nour's sophistication and rigor as an artist and asserts his contributions to the canon of art history, not only as a transformational figure within Sudanese or African art movements, but also within global modern and contemporary art history. As Barthosa Nkurumeh once said, in Nour's works one senses a "timelessness," which "transcends the cultural space that inspired their evolution."

An essay is presented on the art movement Minimalism. It discusses the role of patronage in the movement and the origin of the Dia Art Foundation (Dia). Information about the intent of Dia to help fund art projects is provided and artists mentioned in the essay include Ad Reinhardt and Frank Stella. The art collector Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo is also mentioned and specific art commissions are described.

The 1960s were undoubtedly the most culturally productive period in the contemporary history of Iran. During these years, artistic trends as well as art historical practices attempted to present the idea of national art, while the intellectual atmosphere was charged with the conflicting ideologies of the Cold War. The Pahlavi state's cultural policies, based on its pro-Western and at the same time nationalist visions, were in contrast with most intellectuals' attitudes towards art, which mainly followed leftist ideologies. Within such an ideologically charged space, the idea of combining Euro-American modernism and traditional views formed the dominant discourse of modern Iranian art. This article maps the interconnections among artists, art historians and cultural custodians in 1960s Iran, and explores the ways in which nationalist, nativist, modernist and communist-Marxist ideologies influenced the artistic trends as well as art historical narratives. After focusing on the ways art history was introduced through Orientalist viewpoints in Iran, the article will shed light on the role of visual artists within the intellectual community of the 1960s. The idea of ‘national art’, epitomised in the movements of Saqqa khanih and Talar-i Iran, will then be analysed. Finally, the article will evaluate these artistic activities within their ideological framework.

The expectations modern art has to fulfill are of various kind. Modern art is to be a seismograph of societal developments and thus sensitive to political and economic themes. Thus, Western (critical) contemporary art is in the dilemma to deal with and challenge capitalism in mostly bourgeois frameworks of musealized exhibitions, criticizing political leadership and social inequalities and presenting it largely to exactly the established classes. Here contemporary art's task lies in both the individual and arts self-reflection and self-critique. Creating awareness of individual and collective historical processes and being able to sense and experience societal antagonisms can be described as conscious making by the means of critical modern art. Taking in account that to learn (socio-historically) art and thus to be able to sense dissonances is a pre-condition to understand modern art the question arises: How to deal with contemporary art from foreign cultures and unfamiliar civilizations? How to understand Asian critical contemporary art with a Western sensual kind of sensing and understanding? It is the question of universality and uniqueness of modern art and/or the integrating power of Western capitalism and consumerism within the sphere of critical art. Is it possible to sense and understand Chinese or Japanese art with a Western education and different socio-historical and political-economical understanding? How to decipher and contextualize modern art without "cultural expertise"? This contribution deals with the contradictions between the (cultural) particular and the general serving as gatekeepers for sensing societal and historical grown antagonisms and sensing of cultural and social dissonances in modern art production. Is modern art by definition Western? By experiencing Asian modern art the purpose of this research is to find the particularities and the general of (Asian) critical modern art.

The article reviews the exhibition "Dada Africa, Non-Western Sources and Influences" at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris, France from October 18, 2017 through February 19, 2018, featuring the influence of African and other traditional arts on the World War I era art movement.

The article focuses on the paintings and drawings of Ed Moses from the U.S. In general, Moses oscillate between the figurative and the abstract, thereby creating work that might be regarded as a representation of abstraction. Details on Moses' earlier work to American Indian art are also considered in the article.

This article examines the emergence of Lyrical Abstraction in Brazil in the late 1950s. Mostly forgotten in the contemporary moment in favour of Geometric Abstraction, the author reconsiders the rivalry between these two forms of abstract art and the influence on European styles of Art Informel and Tachisme. Lyrical Abstraction was predominantly practiced by Japanese immigrants in Brazil, and as a result the artists and their art challenged the category of national art as formed by European colonisation. Through the case study of Japanese Brazilian artist Manabu Mabe, the author argues for Lyrical Abstraction as a transnational art that brings together Japanese, European and Brazilian influences. Brazilian lyrical abstraction disorders the idea of national art as defined only in contrast to the international, the typical binary throughout the history of Brazilian modern art.

The growing disjuncture between the diversity of art practices and the narrow focus of canonical art histories has prompted art historians to pronounce the death of art history. And yet very little has changed because the modernist canon still dominates global art. The western avant-garde continues to be a closed discourse, writing the art of Asia, Africa and Latin America out of art history. Marginalization of non-western art is explained in terms of its 'derivativeness'. And yet there have been significant developments in non-western art since the 20th century, many of its artists engaged in creating vital modernist expressions of cultural resistance to colonialism. We need to probe more closely the epistemological framework that fuels the 'universalist' claims of the western canon. Even though western avant-garde has inspired the rest of the world, it is still dominated by the universalism that creates asymmetrical relations between the centre and the peripheries, which is not one of geography but of power and authority, with modernism creating its own tacit exclusions and inclusions. Hence borrowings of primitive art by western artists such as Picasso are judged as mere affinities, unlike the use of the syntax of cubism by non-western artists, which is seen as the influence of the West. This paper proposes certain strategies for 'decentring' the dominant canon. An inflected narrative of global modernity offers us a possible way of restoring the artist's agency in the context of colonial empires, by analysing art practices and reception as a cultural document that is historically situated.

Early modern Indian art moves between a return to images of the past that express Indian difference from the colonizer and imitation of Western styles of modernity. On the one hand, early modern Indian art is characterized by a desire for a return to the past and the utopian urge to suture the divisions between present and past, elite and subaltern, and museum and street corner. On the other hand, it reveals a need to reach out to Europe in an ongoing act of “imitation.” This neocolonial condition of imitation has nothing utopian about it, being the condition of life.