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The secret life of objects in the immanent art of Morandi: Or: How art shows us how to write about art if we only let it
Get PDFIn this example of relatively long-form art writing, the writer begins by relaying an anecdote regarding a difficult interaction with an editor. As this rocks the confidence of the writer, they try to rally themselves but seeking out an almost arbitrary receptor for their art writing skills and passions. This turns out to be a concurrent exhibition of the paintings of Giorgio Morandi. The piece describes the writer’s feelings, as well as the journey to the gallery, and ultimately creates a form of review or representation of the exhibition. However, the initial impulse for the piece remains and is returned to in a series of analyses of the writer’s method. This includes a candid exploration of the writer’s considerations of the place of judgement in their own and in contemporary art writing. Ultimately, the piece toys with the idea that, in an age of ambivalence, in which judgements all too easily seem all too harsh, it might just be the use of adjectives that are sufficient to betray an art writer’s evaluation of what they are otherwise simply describing. While the initial criticism by an editor involved the concept of transcendence, the art writer takes this accusation on board and tries, again candidly, to judge themselves, and for themselves, with regard to this concept. Ultimately, they find that, far from leaning towards transcendent values in art they are in fact committed to forms of immanence. Along the way other artists, including Cezanne and De Chirico, as well as other thinkers such as Deleuze and Alfred Jarry are utilized to develop the lines of thought. Ultimately, and rather obliquely, the piece becomes a response to the editor’s riposte and appears to succeed, to some extent, in re-founding the writer’s confidence in their own methods and beliefs, to which they have been led by their own approach to art writing, and of course by the art itself
Staying alive: Transcendence and immanence in contemporary painting
Get PDFThis article is initiated by the writer’s response to a criticism from an editor that they ‘cleave to the transcendent in art’, and also inspired by the discovery of James McMullan’s 1970s illustrations for a New York magazine, which formed the aesthetic and narrative basis for the ‘Saturday Night Fever’ movie. These two, seemingly unconnected factors, come together to conjure and weave a discussion of the relative qualities and values of immanence and transcendence. It uses examples drawn from art and with particular reference to a range of painters with greatly differing styles, and from different eras, but compared and consoidered here as con-temporary (sharing the time of the article and its writing)
Cultural value as meaning-making
Get PDFThis article defines cultural value as a non-monetary and fundamental expression of the value of culture. It argues that cultural value is constituted through meaning-making and can be characterised as normative, hermeneutic and intersubjectively warranted. Thus understood – even though originally a construct of the discourse of cultural economics and considered a factor shaping the economic value of culture – cultural value sits outside of the purview of contemporary welfare economics. This raises many questions, including how and whether cultural value can be registered in policy which relies on standard economics as its lingua franca; what implications this has for polemics about how value, impact and evidence are framed in cultural policy; and, centrally, what role arts and humanities expertise plays in policy decision-making
Guest editorial: Leadership strategies for sustaining business success in the post-pandemic era
Get PDFThis special issue explored how firms can develop capabilities to sustain businesses in the post-pandemic era. The collection of research papers in this issue focuses on various issues, such as the challenges and impediments faced by employers and employees during the Covid-19, the impact of the pandemic on business models and efficacy and pitfalls of revamped strategies and business practices used to cope-up with the pandemic. Drawing insights from the research papers featured to date on this subject, we present leadership strategies designed to empower businesses towards success in the post-pandemic era
Wadi Hanifah Embroidery Landscape
No full textThe series of embroidery appliqué canvases titled ‘Wadi Hanifah Embroidery Landscape’ depicts plant species endemic to the Wadi Hanifah, a desert valley west of the city of Riyadh in Saudi Arabia.
During a research trip to Saudia Arabaia, commissioned by the 2024 Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, Lucy Orta met with botanists from the National Centre for Vegetation Cover Development and Combatting Desertification (NVCV) to learn more about the unique properties of vegetation that survives in extreme temperature and drought conditions. In an ongoing collaboration, she translated the research into more than one-hundred meticulous line drawings of flowers, shrubs and trees endemic to Saudi Arabia.
To create ‘Wadi Hanifah Embroidery Landscape’ the drawings are enlarged into pattern templates 70 x 70 cm each. Lucy has silk-satin digitally printed to achieve the depth of colour and texture of each species; the details of the species are then cut into silk-satin, motifs are assembled together and embroidered onto coloured canvas using coloured threads to add further detail.
Each silk motif is associated with geometric forms derived from Al Sadu, weaving traditionally practised by Bedouin women. Al Sadu is a manifestation of the material, spatial and symbolic culture of nomadic dwelling, and the forms reveal the embedded knowledge of astronomy and the environment. Triangles and zigzag motifs, and clusters of lozenges may reference the Pleiades navigational star cluster, fertile grassland, or desert plants assuring the survival of the tribe.
With expanding urbanisation and the loss of traditional practices, 'Wadi Hanifah Embroidery Landscape' presents a poetic language of resilience and adaptation to the effects of climate change through figurative and abstract representation of the desert
Signs and Realities: developing and exploring critical thinking with maps: towards a critical cartosemiotic pedagogy
Get PDFThe paper presents practice-based action research that develops and explores critical cartosemiotic pedagogy. The research builds on Lackovic's (2020) ‘Inquiry Graphics’, hybrid signs that place graphic data at the centre of learning exploration and inquiry, linking a multimodality approach and a theory of educational semiotics. The research addresses a gap in edusemiotics and higher education scholarship regarding applying maps to critically engage with complex spatial issues among spatial design students; to support students' exploration of space and place concerning identity and climate justice. Students are invited to creatively reinvent mapping an area as a personal composition of various geospheres - their cultural semiosphere, noosphere and natural biosphere. The project builds on the work of the map semiotician Denis Wood to evolve a semiotic framework to decode the position politics of these maps. Wood proposes a theory of map signs grounded in Barthes's two-tiered semiological system, the language and the myth, and presents ten codes to unravel the complex text of maps (Wood, 2010). Wood's codes were used in map elicitation interviews to interpret students' maps. The paper will be presented as an emerging Atlas. This multimodal document will bring together affective maps crafted by student cartographers, their reflections and an evolving cartosemiotic framework to decode the maps
Fashion 4.0 and emerging designers: leveraging data and AI to drive creativity, innovation and compliance in global supply chain regulation
Get PDFThis paper presents three interrelated arguments concerning the fashion industry and regulation. First, we propose that Bertola’s and Teunissen’s concept of Fashion 4.0 offers a powerful framework for understanding the organisation of global fashion today. This model emphasises the dynamic, decentralised and technology-driven character of the ‘smart factories’, ‘smart networks’ and ‘smart products’ that dominate the global fashion industry. The value of this framework is illustrated with contemporary examples from the UK.
Second, we argue that increasing regulatory demands impose uncertain and costly compliance obligations on firms across multiple aspects of their operations and supply chain. Our discussion highlights the confluence of challenges related to intellectual property, value chain monitoring and AI regulation. We contend that smaller and medium-sized enterprises, particularly emerging designers, are disproportionately affected by this regulatory burden—a phenomenon we term the ‘tragic character’ of contemporary compliance.
Finally, we explore how the challenge of navigating an increasingly complex business and regulatory landscape necessitates the deployment of ever-more sophisticated digital technologies, especially AI. We outline several potential applications of such technologies across the fashion industry.
In conclusion, we suggest that in the context of Fashion 4.0, understanding the interaction between different regulatory schemes, as well as their effects on industry stakeholders, is becoming critical yet increasingly complex and opaque. This raises difficult questions about the limits of law and other regulatory schemes in fostering innovative, sustainable, and socially responsible business practices in the fashion sector
Urban surfaces, graffiti, and the right to the city
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Urban surfaces, graffiti, and the right to the city
by Sabina Andron, Abingdon, Routledge, 2024, 203 pp., £28.49 (paperback), ISBN 978-1-032-59751-5; £105.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-032-01655-
Weaving Vessels for Emerging Climates
Get PDFDeparting from the well-trodden paths of architectural education, Weaving Vessels — A class part of Central Saint Martins Architecture Masters' Program — attends to notions of embodiment, belonging, and kinship offering a path to reconsider, in plural, how we inhabit, teach, and care for planetary architectures
Learning to be Modern: Domesticity and the Modern State in 1970s Singapore
Get PDFIn 1960, faced with significant housing shortage, Singapore’s government established the Housing and Development Board (HDB) to replace the former colonial Singapore Improvement Trust. The HDB was charged with rapidly increasing the scale of construction of social housing, both within the city and in New Towns. The programme was a great success; by the end of the decade the problems of housing shortage and overcrowding had abated, and by 1976 more than half of Singapore’s 2.3 million residents lived in HDB flats. For many at this time, moving into HDB flats entailed a dramatic change in lifestyle – through new patterns of domestic life, new community structures, and transformed urban landscapes – and residents often needed to learn to adjust to this new, modern way of living.
In this paper I take as my focus various elements of the media campaigns that were crafted by the state in order to instruct Singaporeans how to live such a ‘modern’ life in the early 1970s. In particular, I focus on Our Home (1973–1992), a magazine published by the HDB, and compare this to earlier state-supported campaigns such as ‘Gracious Living’ (1971) and the ‘Singapore Garden City’ (1967). Through this media we can question what being ‘modern’ meant in post-colonial Singapore, which went far beyond the adoption of modern architectural forms, and instead looked toward an economic reconstruction that linked to politics and the shaping of national character. Our Home, which took the guise of an interior decoration magazine, I argue, was a form of social contract. Among its lessons in how to furnish a flat, readers were also taught how to negotiate the new urban and cultural environment they found themselves within, what behaviours were expected of them, and what they should provide in return. The magazine acted as an instructional guide for Singapore’s modern citizenship