Weighing the work of love: on Kate Davis's re-visioned iconoclasm

This essay offers a close reading of recent work by Glasgow-based artist Kate Davis to argue that her practice engages iconoclasm in ways importantly modified by her feminist commitments. Often Davis’s source material has significant historical, political or art historical import, as in her works dealing with the Suffragist attack on Velásquez’s Rokeby Venus in 1914. What is at stake in her ‘re-visioning’ of such moments, which often involves labour-intensive drawing as a key method, is a formal commitment to a kind of delicate or caring vandalism, often pursued through labour-intensive drawing (iconoclasm as a means of making images) and a specifically feminist contention with existing hierarchies of value and systems of representation (iconoclasm as contestation). To reckon with these stakes, Jean-Luc Nancy’s account of ‘the pleasure in drawing’ and the feminist concept of the ‘work of love’ are brought into relation with Davis’s work

Sexual Iconoclasm in Early Modern Drama

My thesis examines the relationship between sexuality and the destruction of images – iconoclasm – in the context of post-Reformation English theatre by analyzing three plays: Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, Middleton and Rowley’s The Changeling, and Aphra Behn’s The Rover. I argue that the idea of sexual iconoclasm is not only present in these plays but also contributes to the discussion of the religious and sociopolitical contexts (and perhaps commentary) of these plays and early modern theatre in general. So what exactly is sexual iconoclasm? In short, it describes the destruction of sexual images, and by sexual images I mean ‘of sex,’ both individual sexuality and any depictions of sexual relationships, be they physically sexual or describing relationships between the male and female sexes. In my analysis of Titus Andronicus, The Changeling, and The Rover, I use sexual iconoclasm as a new theoretical lens that allows us to examine the obsession with and destruction of sexual imagery in the context of larger sociopolitical concerns of a culture

Paradoxical personality scale: Its development and construct validity analysis

Se presenta el proceso de construcción y validación de la Escala de Personalidad Paradójica, diseñada a partir de la propuesta de Csikszentmihalyi (1996), quien describiera el concepto evaluado en relación a los individuos creativos. Se redactaron 150 reactivos que fueron sometidos a juicio experto y a examen de validez aparente en un estudio piloto. La versión resultante fue usada en un estudio factorial exploratorio (473 estudiantes; 50.5% varones, 49.5% mujeres; 18 a 35 años; = 21.82; DT= 3.14). La estructura resultante, de 6 dimensiones y 30 ítems, fue confirmada mediante un análisis factorial confirmatorio (800 estudiantes universitarios; 44.4% varones, 55.6% mujeres; 18 a 35 años; = 23.47; DT= 3.30). Ambas muestras provenían de la población de estudiantes universitarios de Buenos Aires, Argentina. También se analizó la consistencia interna y la estabilidad temporal de las puntuaciones, obteniéndose en ambos casos coeficientes aceptables, dada la composición de las dimensiones subyacentes al constructo analizado. Se discuten los resultados a la luz de los modelos teóricos propuestos, las ventajas de la brevedad y sencillez de aplicación y según nuevas líneas de investigación.The development and construct validation process of the Paradoxical Personality Scale is presented in this paper. The concept assessed has been posed by Csikszentmihalyi (1996) and was described as related to creative individuals. Following his guidelines, 150 items were designed and judged by five experts, and later analysed from a facies standpoint. The resulting version was used in a sample of college students (n=473; 50.5% males, 49.5% females) from 18 to 35 years (M = 21.82; DT= 3.14), to explore underlying dimensions. A 30item/6-factor solution was firstly isolated and after confirmed by a confirmatory factor analysis developed with 800 college students (44.4% males, 55.6% females), between18 and 35 years (M = 23.47; DT= 3.30). Both samples were selected from the population of college students from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Internal consistency and temporal stability of scores were also tested, obtaining adequate coefficients in both cases, in view of the composition of the dimensions underlying the construct analysed. Results show acceptable psychometric properties as well as shortness and simplicity for data gathering, which are discussed taking into account theoretical models and new research lines.Fil: Freiberg Hoffmann, Agustín. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Psicología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: de la Iglesia, Guadalupe. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Psicología; ArgentinaFil: Stover, Juliana Beatriz. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Psicología; ArgentinaFil: Fernandez Liporace, Maria Mercedes. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentin

Pandora: Description of a Painting Database for Art Movement Recognition with Baselines and Perspectives

To facilitate computer analysis of visual art, in the form of paintings, we introduce Pandora (Paintings Dataset for Recognizing the Art movement) database, a collection of digitized paintings labelled with respect to the artistic movement. Noting that the set of databases available as benchmarks for evaluation is highly reduced and most existing ones are limited in variability and number of images, we propose a novel large scale dataset of digital paintings. The database consists of more than 7700 images from 12 art movements. Each genre is illustrated by a number of images varying from 250 to nearly 1000. We investigate how local and global features and classification systems are able to recognize the art movement. Our experimental results suggest that accurate recognition is achievable by a combination of various categories.To facilitate computer analysis of visual art, in the form of paintings, we introduce Pandora (Paintings Dataset for Recognizing the Art movement) database, a collection of digitized paintings labelled with respect to the artistic movement. Noting that the set of databases available as benchmarks for evaluation is highly reduced and most existing ones are limited in variability and number of images, we propose a novel large scale dataset of digital paintings. The database consists of more than 7700 images from 12 art movements. Each genre is illustrated by a number of images varying from 250 to nearly 1000. We investigate how local and global features and classification systems are able to recognize the art movement. Our experimental results suggest that accurate recognition is achievable by a combination of various categories.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure, 6 table

Lubetkin's Lenin Memorial

This conference paper summarised my recent research on the strange story of the Lenin Memorial erected in wartime London and destroyed shortly afterwards. It placed this episode within the wider context of iconoclasm and the destruction of public art. It was based on research that will contribute to my forthcoming book on the subjec

De sacra militia contra iconomachos : civic strategies to counter iconoclasm in the Low Countries (1566)

Although the iconoclastic scare must have been enormous and the actual impact of the attacks of summer and autumn 1566 can hardly be exaggerated, the Beeldenstorm was not as comprehensive as it seemed to contemporaries and subsequent historians. Indeed, a considerable number of important cities in the Habsburg Netherlands actually managed to ward off destruction, but until now their role has hardly been studied. The aim of this article is twofold: first, it seeks to chart the cities in question. Second, it analyses the preventive measures that they took against the violence. In so doing, it nuances the idea of the Beeldenstorm as an all-destructive wave, and provides insights into the dynamics of the Iconoclastic Fury. More specifically, the cliché that the passivity of magistrates was the main reason for all losses seems in need of considerable revision

'Commemorating a Disputed Past: Football Club and Supporters' Group War Memorials in the Former Yugoslavia

This article documents the existence of numerous football-related war memorials throughout the former Yugoslavia. Utilizing photographic evidence of these monuments, plaques and other methods of memorialization, it illuminates the ways in which those involved in the game have written the deeds of their fallen members into the historical record, often harnessing these sacrifices in the service of a variety of political causes in the process. These commemorative gestures include socialist patriotic memorials erected in the aftermath of the Second World War Partisan victory, as well as monuments and murals created in honour of football supporters who went into battle as paramilitaries and members of incipient national armies during the dissolution wars of the 1990s. It is argued that the deeds of the fallen have been elevated, and at times manipulated, while the creativity of the latest wave of football remembrance is arguably heavily influenced by the traditional epic poetry and mythologized histories of the region. The fact that these disparate memorials have survived from various historical periods means that the region's built environment offers problematic and conflicting accounts of Yugoslav football's violent past. Memorials which honour impossibly pure socialist heroes coexist awkwardly alongside those dedicated to supporters who gave their lives in pursuit of ethnically exclusive states. In the case of one desecrated monument, these distinct periods are somewhat paradoxically remembered by the same symbolic object

`Iconoclastic', Categorical Quantum Gravity

This is a two-part, `2-in-1' paper. In Part I, the introductory talk at `Glafka--2004: Iconoclastic Approaches to Quantum Gravity' international theoretical physics conference is presented in paper form (without references). In Part II, the more technical talk, originally titled ``Abstract Differential Geometric Excursion to Classical and Quantum Gravity'', is presented in paper form (with citations). The two parts are closely entwined, as Part I makes general motivating remarks for Part II.Comment: 34 pages, in paper form 2 talks given at ``Glafka--2004: Iconoclastic Approaches to Quantum Gravity'' international theoretical physics conference, Athens, Greece (summer 2004

Scientific iconoclasm and active imagination: synthetic cells as techo-schientific mandalas

Metaphors allow us to come to terms with abstract and complex information, by comparing it to something which is structured, familiar and concrete. Although modern science is “iconoclastic”, as Gaston Bachelard phrases it, scientists are at the same time prolific producers of metaphoric images themselves. Synthetic biology is an outstanding example of a technoscientific discourse replete with metaphors, including textual metaphors such as the “Morse code” of life, the “barcode” of life and the “book” of life. This paper focuses on a different type of metaphor, however, namely on the archetypal metaphor of the mandala as a symbol of restored unity and wholeness. Notably, mandala images emerge in textual materials related to one of the new “frontiers” of contemporary technoscience, namely the building of a synthetic cell: a laboratory artefact that functions like a cell and is even able to replicate itself. The mandala symbol suggests that, after living systems have been successfully reduced to the elementary building blocks and barcodes of life, the time has now come to put these fragments together again. We can only claim to understand life, synthetic cell experts argue, if we are able to technically reproduce a fully functioning cell. This holistic turn towards the cell as a meaningful whole also requires convergence at the “subject pole”: the building of a synthetic cell as a practice of the self, representing a turn towards integration, of multiple perspectives and various forms of expertise