Visual Studies

An understanding of religion as a practice of mediation has great potential to open up new methods and theories for a critical study of religion. Leading beyond the privileged medium of the text, this understanding approaches religion as a multi-media phenomenon that mobilizes the full sensorium. The central point of this article is that forms of visual culture are a prime medium of religion, and studying them offers deep insights into the genesis of worlds of lived experience. Pictorial media streamline and sustain religious notions of the visible and the invisible and involve embodied practices of seeing that shape what and how people see. Discussing the implications of the “pictorial turn” for the study of religion, I argue that a more synthesized approach is needed that draws these fields together. The methodological and theoretical implications of this approach are exemplified by turning to my research on video and representations of the “spiritual” in Southern Ghana.

"Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos opens the book with his latest contribution to his comprehensive project of re-theorising spatial justice with a piece titled ‘Spatial Justice in a World of Violence’. Through a close reading
of the photographic series Fortunes of War, Life Day by artist Eric Lesdema,
Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos is interested in how these images reveal peripheral
spaces at the edge of violence which impose an ethic of spatial responsibility on the
viewer in the act of turning away and looking elsewhere. While no acts of explicit
violence are shown in the images, we are left with no doubt that violence is ubiquitous
along the spatio-temporal continuum. This continuum of violence between
bodies raises questions of complicity and responsibility. Do we submit to a state
of affairs in which space is saturated with the everyday and immobilised violence
of the ‘engineered atmosphere’ – or is it also possible for bodies to withdraw from
the atmosphere, through ruptures and folds within the continuum? Such a notion
raises the ethical possibility of the ‘emergence of spatial justice’." Chris Butler and Edward Mussawir (eds)

Thèse de doctorat en histoire de l'art, soutenue le 13 novembre 2020 à l'université Paris Nanterre, sous la direction de Rémi Labrusse et Christian Joschke.

PhD dissertation "Graphic Propaganda : Photomontage in the Visual Culture of the French Left (1925-1939)". Université Paris Nanterre, 2020. Under the supervision of Rémi Labrusse and Christian Joschke.

Cette étude porte sur la place du photomontage dans le graphisme français de l’entre-deux-guerres, plus particulièrement dans la presse illustrée, l’affiche et la propagande politique. Fondé sur la combinaison d’éléments photographiques de façon à créer des images composites, généralement reproduites par impression photomécanique, le photomontage a été promu par les graphistes d’avant-garde mais aussi par les éditeurs de presse à grand tirage. Il devient à partir des années 1920 un élément caractéristique de la culture visuelle moderne, jusqu’à investir très largement les pavillons de l’Exposition internationale de 1937. Si les développements du photomontage en URSS et en Allemagne sont bien connus, la France a souvent été considérée comme réticente à l’usage de ce procédé, privilégiant un modernisme mesuré et un ancrage dans le dessin. En analysant le rôle des réseaux culturels communistes dans le développement du photomontage politique, nous identifions des phénomènes de transferts culturels étroitement liés à la sociabilité militante. L’étude de la production imprimée des organisations de gauche permet d’expliciter les fonctions attribuées à l’image comme moyen d’influence politique. Sur le plan iconographique, les photomontages se caractérisent par des procédés rhétoriques qui orientent la lecture du document photographique. Sur le plan du montage, s’opère une conjonction de temporalités hétérogènes. En prêtant une attention particulière à la fois aux conditions de production, aux réseaux d’acteurs et aux discours de légitimation, nous proposons un essai en iconologie politique qui en même temps se situe au plus près de la matérialité des images.

This study examines the place of photomontage in French graphic design between the two world wars, particularly in the illustrated press, posters and political propaganda. Based on the combination of photographic elements to create composite images, generally reproduced by photomechanical printing, photomontage was promoted by avant-garde graphic designers but also by editors of large-circulation magazines. From the 1920s onwards, it became a characteristic element of modern visual culture, until it was widely used in the pavilions of the 1937 Exposition internationale in Paris. While the developments of photomontage in the USSR and Germany are well known, France was often considered to be reluctant to this technique, favouring instead a measured modernism and drawn illustrations. By analysing the role of communist cultural networks in the development of political photomontage, we identify phenomena of cultural transfer closely related to militant sociability. The study of the printed production of left-wing organisations makes it possible to clarify the functions attributed to the image as a means of political influence. On the iconographic level, photomontages are characterised by rhetorical processes which guide the reading of the photographic document. On the level of montage, they allow for a conjunction of heterogeneous temporalities in a single image. By paying attention to the conditions of production, to the networks of actors and to the discourses of legitimation, this essay in political iconology remains as close as possible to the materiality of images.

In the second half of the 16th century, Girolamo Righettino, a brilliant draughtsman and theologian (a member of the Order of the Canons Lateran), produced city views with ornamental frames characterised by their rich allegorical programme. The drawings earned him widespread fame and were handsomely rewarded. A recently discovered autograph manuscript by Righettino sheds precious light on his only surviving view-an elaborate plan of Turin (1583). This article offers an introductory portrait of a personality forgotten to history and presents new research that allows us to situate his unique output-at the intersection of art and science, theology and politics, topography and allegory-in the wider context of Counter-Reformation Italy, when the ambitions of absolutist rulers were stoked by the fear of Turkish advances in the Mediterranean.

Poter accedere a qualsiasi immagine, in qualsiasi momento, in qualsiasi luogo. I nuovi media prospettano straordinarie vie di fruizione. Ma come orientarsi in questo scenario? La nostra cultura visuale è capace di tenere il passo della tecnologia? Questo libro racconta come il cinema, ben prima dell'avvento della tecnologia digitale, abbia saputo accogliere immagini provenienti da archivi pubblici e privati: dai rapporti con la pittura al foundfootage, dalla pratica del remake all'intermedialità. Molte volte assegnato al compito di produrre un calco del "reale", il film costituisce piuttosto uno spazio del pensiero nel quale si rielaborano le immagini del passato e si rigenerano i materiali "usurati" della cultura. Se i nuovi media invitano lo spettatore a manipolare le immagini e non semplicemente a osservarle, è dunque a partire dalle lezioni di montaggio offerte da maestri come Godard e Herzog, Sokurov e Van Sant, Pasolini e Moretti, che diventa possibile assumere un ruolo attivo e consapevole nell'orizzonte estetico e mediatico contemporaneo.

This book offers a way of reading maps of the Holy Land as visual imagery with religious connotations. Through a corpus of representative examples created between the sixth and the nineteenth centuries, it studies the maps as iconic imagery of an iconic landscape and analyses their strategies to manifest the spiritual quality of the biblical topography, to support religious tenets, and to construct and preserve cultural memory.
Maps of the Holy Land have thus far been studied with methodologies such as cartography and historical geography, while the main question addressed was the reliability of the maps as cartographic documents. Through another perspective and using the methodology of visual studies, this book reveals that maps of the Holy Land constructed religious messages and were significant instruments through which different Christian cultures (Byzantine, Catholic, Protestant, and Greek Orthodox) shaped their religious identities. It does not seek to ascertain how the maps delivered geographical information, but rather how they utilized the geographical information in formulating religious and cultural values.
Through its examination of maps of the Holy Land, this book thus explores both Christian visual culture and Christian spirituality throughout the centuries. 

http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod_id=IS-9782503585260-1

The Middle East played a critical role in the development of photography as a new technology and an art form. Likewise, photography was instrumental in cultivating and maintaining Europe’s distinctively Orientalist vision of the Middle East. As new advances enhanced the versatility of the medium, nineteenth-century photographers were able to mass-produce images to incite and satisfy the demands of the region’s burgeoning tourist industry and the appetites of armchair travelers in Europe. In this way, the evolution of modern photography fueled an interest in visual contact with the rest of the world.

Photography’s Orientalism offers the first in-depth cultural study of the works of European and non-European photographers active in the Middle East and India, focusing on the relationship between photographic, literary, and historical representations of this region and beyond. The essays explore the relationship between art and politics by considering the connection between the European presence there and aesthetic representations produced by traveling and resident photographers, thereby contributing to how the history of photography is understood.

Wykresy, schematy i diagramy nie są wyłącznie ilustracjami. Jak dowodzi Model i metafora, można je dziś uznać za niezbędne narzędzia ułatwiające tworzenie współczesnej humanistyki. Wykorzystując jednocześnie teksty i obrazy, książka w zwięzły sposób przedstawia szereg zagadnień istotnych dla każdego historyka, socjologa czy badacza literatury. Na Model i metaforę składają się teoretyczne podstawy myślenia obrazem, zarys historycznych relacji słowa i obrazu w humanistyce, a także praktyczne wskazówki dla tych, którzy chcieliby korzystać z obrazów w trakcie planowania i pisania tekstów. Inni czytelnicy mogą traktować tę książkę jak przewodnik, ułatwiający poruszanie się w epoce obrazów.
Jak przystało na książkę o komunikacji wizualnej, Model i metafora jest połączeniem obrazu i tekstu na równych prawach – zawiera ponad 150 rysunków wyjaśniających kwestie, które byłyby trudne do omówienia przy pomocy tekstu.

De los cuadros que representan las musas, diosas inspiradoras de las diferentes artes en la mitología griega, uno de los más sugestivos es el de Maurice Denis, pintor simbolista. La apacible escena se sitúa en un bosque de altos árboles. Algunas musas caminan, parcialmente escondidas detrás de troncos que se asemejan a los pilares del templo de la Naturaleza descripto por Baudelaire en su famoso poema Correspondencias. Es allí donde los perfumes, los colores y los sonidos se responden, afirmando la convicción romántica de la hermandad de las artes que llegará hasta Debussy y más allá. Volviendo al cuadro, vemos en primer plano a tres musas sentadas; mientras dos de ellas parecen conversar, la tercera escucha, con la mirada perdida en la lejanía. ¿Qué es lo que escucha esta tercera? A partir de esta imagen metafórica e imaginando que quienes hablan son las musas de la música y de las artes visuales, proponemos un recorrido por las posibles manifestaciones de ese intercambio. Las obras aquí reunidas, algunas realizadas especialmente para esta muestra interdisciplinaria y todas originadas en la Argentina, exploran el fenómeno desde variadas perspectivas, al tiempo que dan evidencia de ese inefable diálogo de musas.

This book chapter, published as part of the edited volume "Empirical Comics Research (Routledge, 2018), puts forward a quantitative approach to the study of comics by introducing a stylistic analysis of a corpus of around 240 graphic novels, graphic memoirs and other non-fiction.

Semiotics is the realm of research that studies sign as an important part of cultural life and message. During the semiotics, we can identify the culture and its reality by an explanation of sign, during the system of signification.
Through this, this essay analysis the myth of the phenomenon of the advertising in the semiotics and linguistic method to let us know how advertising creates myth by using sign and how the myth of advertising come into being might be discussed. Also, this essay seeks to find how the visual massage is formed and given meaning.

Derived from Maithil practices and festivals and assumed to protect the household, the Madhubani Paintings spread since the 1960s in India and abroad. Transferred on paper in order to be commercialized, they undergo important changes. I will focus on the reception history of Mithila paintings through two Western mediators, who each declared themselves to be the discoverers of these paintings: one is British, William Archer (1907- 1979); the other French, Yves Véquaud (1938-2000). They bear witness to an international reception which underlines a particular aspect of the worldwide connected and shared histories of Bihar.
After being appointed officer of the Indian Civil Service in Bihar, Archer publishes in 1949 the article “Maithil Painting”. This is a first moment in the reception history of these paintings. His writings show a universal aesthetic, based on psychoanalyze, surrealism and an organic vision of art.
The hippie “counter-culture” renews enchanted orientalist and romantic visions of a South Asian universe presumed to be spiritual, pantheist and sensorial. Followed on the heels of the sixties, indophily appears a particularly favourable, moment - or kairos - in the reception of Maithil works. It parallels the internationalization of its actors: Erika Moser Schmitt in Germany, Tokio Hasegawa in Japan, Raymond and Naomi Owens as well as David Szanton in United States and Yves Véquaud in France. The writings of the latter mingled an aptitude to capture the “air du temps” with a real interest in India and adhered to the values of the counter-culture. He is today mostly known for his essays on Mithila paintings. The Mithila Art is published in 1976, then translated in 1977 into English and German. In 1974, he co-directed the documentary Mithila. During a period of about ten years, he exhibited his collection of Mithila paintings in France and abroad (in particular in Paris, Musée de l’Homme, Musée des arts Décoratifs...).
In 1970, Véquaud discovered the Mithila paintings in New-Delhi thanks to the museologist Ratna Fabri. He remained in India for two years, went to Madhubani and met some village painters. In his writings, the Maithil women painters are presented as charismatic figures, between holiness and genius. In 1973, Sita Devi “appears to him as a saint”, withdrawn from the world, “in a inner-peace and trust refuge which nothing could disturb". From the author’s standpoint, the talent of these painters, neo-tantric muses presumed to create only when in a yogic state, is compared with that of an exorcist. This vision of the prophetic artist, fluctuating between the christic figure of the saviour and the holy icon, also bears witness to the transformation of the status of the artist since the 19th Century in the West and to the appearance of a ”vocational regime” (Nathalie Heinich). These charismatic figures call to mind the appearance of a conception of the artist as the author of innovative works, and living a singular life. Like Braque and Rouault, the Maithil women painters would so be transformed into figures of legend, likely to guide the work of their followers in their efforts to become an artist. These prophetic artists would become a modern incarnation of holiness. In 1968, Yves Véquaud describes Mozart and Van Gogh as saints, whose example overwhelms. From his standpoint, the prophetic Maithil artists are devoid of the overwhelming heroization that affects Western artists. They would correspond to his promotion of creative spontaneity and a present freed from the burden of the past, in quest of eternal moments.
In Yves Véquaud’s conception, the women painters swing between an ideal of devout humility and religious immortality. In 1973, Sita Devi is described as the one who “knew all the honours” and yet remained “humble and loving”. From the westernized standpoint of Véquaud, the artistic success of Maithil painters may be explained by their desire for singularity and timelessness in their results. This involves both the personalization of means, namely the invention of new paths, as well as the depersonalization of the ends of the success, namely the creation of objects crystallizing values recognized beyond the author. This contingency was traditionally reserved for saints and heroes.
His admiration for these artists assumed an almost devotional character. Following the example of the canonization of Western art, Yves Véquaud established a relationship between the Maithil pictorial phenomenon and a religious phenomenon, the neo-tantrism. His behaviour was almost that of a believer. He set up his exhibitions with a nearly sacerdotal and proselytizing diligence. His hermeneutics of the works is almost theological. The conditions in which the paintings were produced has been neglected. The art of Mithila is described as a (wedding) liturgy ; the paintbrush becomes the tool of prayer. The biographies of the painters appear as a “golden legend”. Nevertheless, these exegeses underline the effective ritual dimension of these paintings. Maithil art became the sphere onto which he projected the expectations traditionally assumed by the religion. It is no longer the instrument, but the object of the sacralization. Sanctified with the admiration of Yves Véquaud, the painters were not “acknowledged by the ecclesiastical authorities”: it concords with the informal religiosity of the author. He thus put forward an essentialized vision of Mithila paintings. Perhaps it represented also an attempt to sublimate his own artistic failures by projecting onto fantasized painters an imaginary solution to a melancholy situation: giving up novelistic publications, whether due to lack of inspiration or to editorial refusals. His neo-tantric vision of Mithila paintings resulted from the kairos of the hippie phase previously evoked.
Yet in 1994 India Served and Observed, the memoirs posthumously published by William Archer and his spouse, Mildred, put forward a fanciful account about the discovery of Mithila paintings, marked with a Flower Power sensitivity : it stays in-between the construction of a storytelling and an aesthetic emotion, which is a posteriori inflamed. To seize the proclaimed strong and valued discourses of the moment on South-Asia is equivalent to a re-enchantment of Archer’s writings. This work builds itself in resonance with Véquaud’s one. Thus in this new narrative about the discovery of Mithila paintings, the meeting with the paintings and the painters is described as simultaneously exalted and distanced, but sublimated by aesthetic emotion. A narrative play takes shape wavering between desire and repression. According to their words, "in these murals we somehow electrically met".
I will analyzed in what extent these idealized works and their women heroized figures could be situated in the social context of the “counter-culture” and the hippie movement, foreseeing the globalization of Mithila paintings in the 1990s : since then some maithil artists free themselves from categories of gender, caste and local belonging. The appearance of painters men in Mithila, motivated in particular by the prospect of profits, polls gender categories associated to a practice for a long time exclusively feminine. Simultaneously some researchers deconstruct this essentialized tradition. They expound Archer’s and Vequaud's interpretations as an hegemonic discourse constituted from masculine canons.

Molto spesso descritto come una riflessione sulla storia traumatica del Novecento, il cinema di Jean-Luc Godard è stato capace di squadernare a più riprese l’atlante geografico, costringendoci a concepire la pratica del montaggio come un incessante accostamento di luoghi diversi. Questo articolo cerca di ripensare il suo cinema come un grande laboratorio di montaggio, dove tanto la componente spaziale dell’immagine quanto quella geografica e politica sono chiamate in causa. Parlando di montaggio, si riprende dunque la nozione di “anacronismo” e quella di “anatopismo”, alla quale non sembra essere stato ancora assegnato il dovuto rilievo teorico.

This paper explores changing representations of the nation in 19th and 21st century Serbia and Croatia. I analyse how the changed structural conditions influence different visualisation strategies of a nation over long periods of time. More specifically I attempt to show how the dominant 19th century visual representations of nationhood in Croatia and Serbia were centred on violent images: representations of battlefields, personal sacrifices, national martyrdom, large-scale forced migrations of the nation, the past military glories of medieval kingdoms, and the production of maps depicting more expansive future states. In contrast to this mode of representation, the imagery of 21st century nationalist tends to focus on the nation’s international achievements in the fields of economy, science, technology, art and sports. Whereas the 19th century was saturated with violent images of the nation, in the 21st century such representations are less visible. On the surface this significant visual shift would indicate that nationalism was a far more influential force in 19th Serbian and Croatian societies than is the case today. However I argue that the opposite is the case: the changing representations of the nation in fact reflect a greater organisational and ideological penetration of nationalism in present-day Serbia and Croatia. While in the 19th century violent images of the past largely served as a didactic tool for the socialisation of mostly peasant, and thus nationally ambiguous populations, in the 21st century there is no need to perform such a role, as most citizens are already highly nationalised. Instead the visualisation of national success in sports or science and the relative absence of violent images reflect the organisational and ideological strength of nationalism in both cases.

Przysługujący widmom wywrotowy, niemalże rewolucyjny potencjał został odsunięty oraz zagubiony poprzez pozbycie się tej kontrowersyjnej kategorii z terytorium metafizyki i zbyt pośpieszne odesłanie jej do przestrzeni badań nad literaturą, sprowadzając ją jedynie do roli użytecznego, bezpiecznego narzędzia interpretacji.

Książka Andrzeja Marca odzyskuje niepokojący charakter widmontologii i ponownie wprowadza widma do myśli metafizycznej. Czym nawiedzona i przeniknięta jest tradycyjna metafizyka, co właściwie ją dręczy, nie daje spokoju oraz nieustannie podmywa jej stabilność?

Kategoria widma Derridy posłużyła Marcowi przede wszystkim do rozważań nad charakterem współczesności i przeobrażeń, jakie dokonały się w obrębie myśli ponowoczesnej. Współczesna kultura, zdaniem Marca, stała się miejscem powstawania widm, nieustannie powracających z przeszłości. Uznając, że nie jesteśmy już w stanie tworzyć utopijnych wizji przyszłości, autor stara się zdać sprawę z widmowego charakteru współczesnej kultury, analizując m. in. strategie vintage, retro, nurt no future w kulturze lat 70. czy nurt fantastyki naukowej w literaturze.

This approach to the imagery of the Southern and Eastern façades of Leon cathedral restores their original topography, their several liturgical functions, their intended audiences and the particular cultural and historical circumstances that surrounded their carving, and confronting them with the Portal of the Coronería and Sarmental of Burgos cathedral. In the portal of Saint Froilán is seen a celebration of this local saint’s main liturgical Feasts; the choice of an Apocalyptic program for the south central portal is justified by a Castilian tradition of decorating the cathedral entrance near the bishop’s palace with ecclesiological discourses; and Bishop Martín Fernández’s great expectations can be shown in the commemoration of the bethrothat of the Castilian heir Fernando de la Cerda and the French Princess doña Blanca in the south western portal’s sculpted decoration. As for the Western entrance, the baptismal imagery displayed in the northern access is related to the parish function of the chapel in the ground floor of the northern tower; and the scatological discourses in the Last Judgement and the Coronation of the Virgin portals adequate to the medieval use of the parvis as  a cemetery, and they are discussed in the frame of mid-thirteenth century theological controversies on the resurrection of the body that help to recognize a Franciscan bias not only in León but also in the “diplomatic” portal of La Coronería in Burgos. Finally, the different stylistic trends that converge in León are examined as sculpted counterparts of vernacular pastoral rhetorical devices: the more “narrative styles” of the portal of San Froilán and Saint John as opposed to the “expressionistic naturalism” of the last Judgement and Apocalyptic portals.

A vlog is a personal video diary in which the vlogger addresses an online audience. This master thesis deals with the vlogger’s discourse in order to understand what it means to express an embodied self in an online environment. It presents theoretical frameworks to analyze the act of vlogging and offers case studies to explore these practices.
The practice of vlogging transcends domains that we have traditionally learned to keep apart, such as private and public, real and fake, self and other, body and virtuality. This thesis argues that vlogging is a transboundary practice in which vloggers easily cross the rigid borders between domains that have traditionally been kept apart. It creates new relations between ourselves and the world around us, causing us to rethink our ideas about identity and ourselves. The vlogger’s discourse is a new domain in which hybrid bodies emerge that are able to find new unities within these transboundary practices.

This is the entire book.

"Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles?" is an attempt to understand why scholars have begun writing at such tremendous length on individual pictures. Before the 20th c., one of the longest texts on a single painting was Vasari's description of Leonardo's "Last Supper." In the last forty years it has become common for historians to write entire books on individual artworks.

Why have we started experiencing images as so complex? Why do they seem to us like puzzles, waiting to be solved? Why doesn't it concern us that previous generations did not think of writing at such length?

This book also has a couple of chapters on what I consider to be psychotic behavior about images: compulsive sighting of supposedly hidden images, and a crazy art historical book about a painting written by Dalí. So I have tagged the book with psychoanalytic terms.

The book itself is still in print and in copyright, but I found a full pdf of this on the internet (for example on scribd), so I decided to post it on here on academia.edu, where at least it can have the correct context and links.