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Author:
Abstract
The paper attempts to establish a dialogue between advertising, the Yugoslav avant-garde and a theoretical discourse on the “death” of the avant-garde. In a first step, the trope of the avant-garde dying through its techniques being appropriated by advertising is briefly scrutinized. In a second step, the article demonstrates that the axes of exchange between Yugoslav avant-garde movements (Zenitism, Hypnism, Dadaism) and early advertising were multifold and irreducible to a simple matrix of originality and bad appropriation. Finally, the results of the analysis are considered from the perspective of “peripheral modernism” and their consequences for the grand death-discourse are scrutinized.
Moritz Retzsch's Prints in Circulation
Author:
In a new approach to Goethe's Faust I, Evanghelia Stead extensively discusses Moritz Retzsch's twenty-six outline prints (1816) and how their spin-offs made the unfathomable play available to larger reader communities through copying and extensive distribution circuits, including bespoke gifts. The images amply transformed as they travelled throughout Europe and overseas, revealing differences between countries and cultures but also their pliability and resilience whenever remediated.
This interdisciplinary investigation evidences the importance of print culture throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in nations involved in competition and conflict. Retzsch's foundational set crucially engenders parody, and inspires the stage, literature, and three-dimensional objects, well beyond common perceptions of print culture's influence.
This book is available in open access thanks to an Institut Universitaire de France (IUF) grant.
This interdisciplinary investigation evidences the importance of print culture throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in nations involved in competition and conflict. Retzsch's foundational set crucially engenders parody, and inspires the stage, literature, and three-dimensional objects, well beyond common perceptions of print culture's influence.
This book is available in open access thanks to an Institut Universitaire de France (IUF) grant.
Moritz Retzsch's Prints in Circulation
Author:
In a new approach to Goethe's Faust I, Evanghelia Stead extensively discusses Moritz Retzsch's twenty-six outline prints (1816) and how their spin-offs made the unfathomable play available to larger reader communities through copying and extensive distribution circuits, including bespoke gifts. The images amply transformed as they travelled throughout Europe and overseas, revealing differences between countries and cultures but also their pliability and resilience whenever remediated.
This interdisciplinary investigation evidences the importance of print culture throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in nations involved in competition and conflict. Retzsch's foundational set crucially engenders parody, and inspires the stage, literature, and three-dimensional objects, well beyond common perceptions of print culture's influence.
This book is available in open access thanks to an Institut Universitaire de France (IUF) grant.
This interdisciplinary investigation evidences the importance of print culture throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in nations involved in competition and conflict. Retzsch's foundational set crucially engenders parody, and inspires the stage, literature, and three-dimensional objects, well beyond common perceptions of print culture's influence.
This book is available in open access thanks to an Institut Universitaire de France (IUF) grant.
Author:
Abstract
The first fully-fledged documentary about the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca was produced in 1928 when the Dutch filmmaker George Krugers (1890–1964) accompanied Muslim pilgrims from the Netherlands East Indies to the Arabian Peninsula. In the late 1920s, when the film project was carried out, an increasing number of Muslims from the archipelago embarked on the hajj journey, which was closely supervised and administered by Dutch colonial institutions. To uncover the “colonial gaze” engrained in the film, this article addresses the filming circumstances, the documentary’s visual content, its intended audiences, and the reception of the moving images in the Netherlands. It draws on Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory, foregrounding the social, political, and technological agents and networks that undergird Krugers’ pioneering film project about the hajj.
Author:
Abstract
This article examines a large calligraphic panel from Morocco preserved in the Harvard Art Museums (2016.206). The artwork features stylized representations of Mecca and Medina alongside Prophet Muhammad’s sandals and a selection of religious texts praising the prophet. This composition is characteristic of Islamic devotional imagery, highlighting artistic transfer from Moroccan illustrated copies of the Dalāʾil al-Khayrāt by the ninth/fifteenth-century Sufi mystic al-Ǧazūlī. This article aims to contextualize the production of this specific panel artwork within the Wazzāniyya Sufi Brotherhood in Morocco. It also presents how the expression of religious devotion through symbolic images reflects a mediation between the believer and Islamic holy sites and relics of the prophet.
Author:
Abstract
The two most prestigious and technically challenging types of ceramic decoration used in the Islamic world during the sixth–seventh/twelfth–thirteenth centuries were mīnāʾī and lustre. By far the rarest type of mediaeval ceramic wares are the pieces featuring both types of overglaze decoration on the same vessel. This article examines the corpus of twenty-two sherds, including repaired and several previously unpublished examples. They are studied together to show the two main types of wares and their connection to other categories of mīnāʾī ware.
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Abstract
Three documents from Fatimid Egypt, ʿAbbasid Mesopotamia, and Taifa Toledo – dated between the fourth–sixth/tenth–twelfth centuries – describe the practice of decorating audience halls with gold-threaded furnishing textiles. By identifying fragments believed to be described in these texts, it is proposed that these vibrant interiors were an aesthetic and ceremonial phenomenon of the period. The colour potential of such fabrics, often emphasised in poetry, appears to have encouraged their use, given the symbolic significance associated with the palace and the caliph-imam as vessels and emitters of divine light.
Author:
Abstract
This article seeks to demonstrate that a believed Seljuq hat from Iran is in fact a Fatimid hat from Egypt. For the first time, it uses an analysis of the paper documents that used to line this once splendid samite piece and asks about the archival logic of their reuse. Beyond this narrow question of origin, the analysis illustrates a methodological challenge for textile historians who often have to operate without additional documentary material and sufficient information on provenance. Finally, an attempt is made to contextualize what appears to have been a tradition of sartorial representation when limited textual and pictorial sources have survived.
Abstract
This article explores the making of the British Museum’s Albukhary Foundation Gallery of the Islamic World, which widened the geographical, temporal, and material presentation of the museum’s collections, reframing the new display as one of “Islamic material culture” rather than “Islamic art.” Discussed from an insider curatorial perspective, it examines how this reconceived framework made it possible to feature multifaceted narratives about the peoples of the Islamic world, as well as the ideas, technologies, and interactions inspiring their visual culture. Representing a transformative practice open to continual adaptation, this epistemic shift in the narrative could serve as a template for other galleries of world civilisations in global museums today.
Abstract
Many remains of the Muslim pilgrimage road from Cairo to Mecca, the Darb al-Hajj al-Maṣri are preserved in the Eilat region of southern Israel. These include sections of the road, camps, and other associated structures. Most of these remains date to the Mamluk and Ottoman periods. In one camp (Netafim 2), an assemblage of unusual objects was found, including fragmentary clay rattles, votive clay incense burners, anthropomorphic and perhaps zoomorphic clay figurines, a cluster of colored quartz pebbles, and some seashells. The fabric of the clay objects indicates that they originated in Egypt. Based on the nature of the assemblage and a literary survey, this study suggests that the discussed artifacts were related to popular magic. The magical rituals, whose nature is yet unclear, were likely carried out at the site by professional sorcerers, who offered their services to pilgrims making the hajj.