Art is a lie that makes people realize truth, Pablo Picasso once said. It is an idea epitomized by global thinkers -- painters, sculptors, architects, and filmmakers. From searing images of children doing everyday things against the backdrop of the Syrian war, to a massive sphinx made of sugar that forces an intellectual confrontation with racism in America, to a satirical installation that questions the ethics and efficacy of Western aid to Africa, the works created by these artists demand that viewers reconsider what they know to be true. A few of them are: 1. Kara Walker, 2. Maymanah Farhat, 3. Mohannad Orabi, 4. Jason Decaires Taylor, 5. Alexander Ponomarev, 6. Nadim Samman, 7. Rithy Panh, 8. Sam Hpkins, 9. Kiluanji Kia Henda, and 10. Camille Henrot. Adapted from the source document.
Art is a lie that makes people realize truth, Pablo Picasso once said. It is an idea epitomized by global thinkers -- painters, sculptors, architects, and filmmakers. From searing images of children doing everyday things against the backdrop of the Syrian war, to a massive sphinx made of sugar that forces an intellectual confrontation with racism in America, to a satirical installation that questions the ethics and efficacy of Western aid to Africa, the works created by these artists demand that viewers reconsider what they know to be true. A few of them are: 1. Kara Walker, 2. Maymanah Farhat, 3. Mohannad Orabi, 4. Jason Decaires Taylor, 5. Alexander Ponomarev, 6. Nadim Samman, 7. Rithy Panh, 8. Sam Hpkins, 9. Kiluanji Kia Henda, and 10. Camille Henrot. Adapted from the source document.
There is a place for artistic creation purely in the name of beauty: Ars gratia artis, the saying goes -- art for the sake of art. But as the Global Thinkers in this category show, art also has the power to make a striking political statement or reflect, even define, a moment in history. These artists have used brush strokes, words, images, and more to shock the senses and, in some cases, the sensibilities. They have defied the rules of artistic forms, as well as social norms of gender, race, and class. From China to Saudi Arabia, Britain to Azerbaijan, they have shown that art doesn't just matter -- it is vital. They include: 1. Haifaa Al Mansour for quietly breaking the Kingdon's gender barriers, 2. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for defying stereotypes on two continents, 3. Noviolet Bulawayo for giving voice to the 'born-free' generation, and 4. Mohsin Hamid for painting a disquieting picture of Asia's rise. Adapted from the source document.
Pierre Labrousse, Institut national des Langues et Civilisations orientales, Paris L'entrée des artistes Oil painting, despite earlier forms that can be found in Javanese craftsmanship, is a modern creation. The paramount promoter of this new type of art was Raden Saleh, who was the first painter to publicize the position of the artist. His particular way of performing his trade, in the context of colonial society and of the Yogyakarta kraton is analysed in the first part of the article. Another reason for the prestige attached to painting was found in the social origin of pre-war and independence-era artists. These generations of lesser priyayi artists were aware that the ideology of nationalism that they had taken up was a way to recover an eminent position in the new society. As new painting academies were established in universities, this trend intensified and resulted in the emergence of a new kind of power, that of discourses on painting. Regarding their relation to politics, artists were part of the prince's court under Soekarno, as well as under the New Order, although in a less personal way.
Abstract Mixing criticism and memoir, "Artists in Residence" offers a rumination on improvisation and collaboration in visual art-making and contemporary jazz performance. The author meditates on the 2017 Unite the Right rally and Ryan Kelly's award-winning photographs of the event and considers how artists offer models for resisting anti-Black racism and white supremacy through collaborative practices. The author analyzes the documentary films Looks of a Lot and RFK in the Land of Apartheid and reviews exhibitions by Roy DeCarava and Jason Moran, highlighting the points of intersection between jazz musicianship and visual artistry. Finally, the essay argues that artists like Kara Walker, William Kentridge, and Yusef Komunyakaa create works that express the pleasure and pain of Black Diasporic experience through practices such as blues idiom improvisation and collage. The author presents criticism as a mode of personal writing.
At least since Antiquity, art and war have interfered. The most common aspect to consider is the propaganda associated with it. At the same time, artists took a stand for/against certain wars (or the concept of war) according to their personal values, beliefs, and experiences. The first part of the paper investigates how arts, war, and propaganda intertangled during the past two millennia. The Second World War, the most complex one to this date with globally diverse implications, seems to prove most how important artists are involved in times of war. This paper investigates how artists reacted to war and propaganda during the past two millennia. It includes a case study that analyzes the Russian aggression in Ukraine through the eyes of various artists. It follows how Russian, Ukrainian, and foreign artists responded to this shocking event. As expected, many Russian artists are supporting the war, on various grounds: they fear negative consequences, they believe the official perspective and propaganda, etc. Nevertheless, Russian artists – still living in Russia or who left the country immediately after the beginning of the war in Ukraine – are an important opposition voice despite the risks they take to express their views. It is even more relevant since the common political lines of action seem not to be possible in present-day Russia. As expected, most Ukrainian artists are publicly expressing their opinions against the war. Their art has benefited from wider attention than previously, especially in the EU, where many of them live as refugees of war, and in the US. The internet is, as expected, an important platform that gives voice to artists and allows the wide distribution of their work. In this facilitating framework, memes are also flourishing and getting viral, informing about and influencing attitudes to the war. The investigation also identified numerous foreign artists who took a public position, in most cases for Ukraine, especially in the first months of the war. The way artists reacted and related to the war, both on the Russian and the Ukrainian side, shows the complex relationships society and, above all, the arts have with war. In arts, as in society, war is both hated for its suffering and praised as a feat of patriotism.
Abstract "Visible Monstrosity as Empowerment" asks, How can we own the transgender imaginary? Anthony Clair Wagner uses the figure of the monster in their art to reflect the stigmatization of monsterized others, specifically transsexuals. Wagner proposes that refusing hegemonic shame and boundaries through embracing the stigmatizing figure of the monster helps deconstruct the violent hegemonic imaginary. They call for monstrous visibility. In this artist statement Wagner explains the importance of the appropriation of the figure of the monster in their art as a tool for empowerment.
The best things come ... from the talents that are members of a group; every man works better when he has companions working in the same line, and yielding to the stimulus of suggestion, comparison, emulation. Great things have of course been done by solitary workers; but they have usually been done with double the pains they would have cost if they had been produced in more genial circumstances [Henry James, in Cowley 1973: 134].
When Ronald Reagan infamously declared the Soviet Union to be the "Evil Empire" in 1983, he was playing upon a fundamental axiom of Cold War politics: that the world can be neatly divided between the First World of Capitalism and the Second World of Communism. Equating this divide with that of good and evil only served to strengthen the notion that the two sides were mutually exclusive. Personal politics were an extension of this perspective. One was either a Capitalist or a Communist—to reject one was equivalent to embracing the other. This paper examines the art of dissident artists such as Alexander Kosolapov, Leonid Sokov, and Ilya Kabakov; artists from the Soviet Union who were exiled to the West during the Cold War. It seeks to better understand why these artists' rebellion against the Soviet system did not translate into an embrace of Western culture upon arrival in America. The roots of their critical artistic approach are interpreted through the prism of ideological nomadism which reveals their art to be deeply ambivalent. These artworks are analyzed as a disruption to the binary understanding of the Cold War and Post-Soviet eras by their embrace of a liminal position in the overlap between the capitalist and communist cultural milieus.
