统筹发展:衡量领导能力的重要标志

统筹发展是衡量领导能力产生的社会结果。它要求发展的各个要素、各个部门适应政治、经济、文化发展要求,政治、经济、文化也要能相互适应对方发展的需要。这是一种科学的发展观,也是一种科学的领导观。现代领导需要强调统筹发展,坚持用统筹的眼界提高领导境界,在领导活动实践中增强统筹能力,提高统筹艺术,以顺应当代国际社会发展趋势,保持经济社会持续健康发展。     

论艺术和技术的逻辑联系

技术必须遵循客观的自然法则和刻板的机械模式，这些与艺术不断地怀疑与否定的自由天性和个性喜好是相互排斥的，因而技术发展势必带来对艺术的负面影响，甚至迫使某些艺术类型的解析；另一方面，技术发展导致新的艺术种类的诞生和繁荣，导致艺术的形式、内容乃至于审美观念的巨大变革，促使艺术走向一个无法预料的全新境界。     

西方人体艺术中的恐怖表达及其文化意味

从古希腊时期一直到现代派艺术,西方人体艺术在表现恐怖情感方面不仅源远流长,而且颇有独到之处。在不同时代各种美术流派所描绘的人体艺术中,由于社会历史和政治背景的不同,引起恐怖情感的原因和事件的不同,社会各阶层人物对待恐怖事件的情感态度也是千差万别的,从而使人体艺术表现出丰富多彩的文化意味,同时又从不同角度揭示了大千世界异彩纷呈的生活层面。     

影响当代中国工艺美术的设计性因素解析

单就设计性因素考察,中国当代工艺美术及其设计,除了受中国传统关学及中国传统设计思想的影响外,还有着与西方设计思潮互动的历史。进入工业时代,艺术与技术的融合成为一种必然,但随着设计美学由现代向后现代的转换,艺术自身的生命力与渗透力也不容小视,激进主义、材料美学、设计艺术的商业化倾向等,都对中国当代工艺美术设计产生了深刻影响。     

社会转型期的群众文化建设：“下里巴人”的重建

在社会转型阶段,群众文化艺术形式发生了深刻的变化,形成了多元混合的格局：既有传统的＂下里巴人＂——民族民间传统文化艺术形式,又有新的＂下里巴人＂——市场经济条件下的大众文化艺术形式,还有主流价值观的＂下里巴人＂——代表先进文化前进方向的主导文化艺术形式。现阶段的群众文化建设,面临三种形态的＂下里巴人＂相互分割,发展不平衡以及群众文化工作与群众文化脱节,群众文化活动式微等困境。应根据文化大发展大繁荣的时代需要和群众生活方式变化的实际情况,通过文化空间、文化内容、城乡文化、民族文化的整合,实施对＂下里巴人＂的重建,实现群众文化的转型和繁荣。     

Contemporary art and unconditionality: ‘the genus of art’ in the art criticism of Chiba Shigeo

This article examines art criticism of the 1980s that sought to address the context and continuity of postwar Japanese avant-garde art. The emphasis is placed on the notion of ‘the genus of art [rui to shite no bijutsu]’, which the art critic Chiba Shigeo discussed in his Gendai bijutsu itsudatsushi (1986). Chiba argued for an autonomous current of postwar Japanese art separate from Western art history but the argument has been largely overshadowed by his ostensible nihonjinron. The term ‘the genus of art’, therefore, has not yet received an adequate critical treatment. The article rephrases this notion as a call for a more inclusive definition of art designed to challenge the conditions that regulate non-Western art. Rather than simply being a nationalist polemic against Western art history from a marginalized place, Japan, ‘the genus of art’ was intended to revitalize and redefine the aims of the avant-garde within the context of ‘contemporary art’. By fleshing out the textual details of ‘the genus of art’ and situating the notion within a larger discourse that interrogated the semiotic role of ‘Japan’ in a global exhibition context, the study repositions Chiba's writing as a potential argument for unconditional acceptance, or unconditionality, as one important ethical contribution of contemporary art.     

Paradigms in South African cinema research: Modernity,the New Africa Movement and beyond

Abstract

The history of theoretical approaches about South African cinema is discussed from the turn of the twentieth century period of the New Africa Movement, through various other theoretical moments, up to the early 1990s. These include conservative cultural theory, liberal humanism, workerist, Althusserian and Gramscian Marxisms. The discussion examines theoretical interventions either promoting or opposing modernity in the work of Thelma Gutsche, Hans Rompel, John Grierson and various Afrikaner cultural organisations during the first half of the twentieth century. Post-1970s cinema theory is critically examined in relation to discursive contestation occurring within both academia and the industry.     

Traumata on Screen: Cinematic Views from Southern Africa

ABSTRACT

This special themed issue of Communicatio explores the profound transformation of the political, cultural and intellectual contours of Africa from the vantage point of African film and grounded within the theoretical and epistemological discourses of trauma studies, memory studies, postcolonial studies, and decolonial studies. The contributors are particularly interested in exploring the relational flows between African cinematic works and the social and imaginary circumstances of their production, engagement and representation. Through an explication of the screen and viewing cultures from Africa, this themed issue wishes to make three contributions. The first is to the already established but on-going scholarly work of trauma studies, but specifically from an African, cinematic vantage point. The second contribution is to the theoretical body of work on African cinema (and in this context, “cinematic” includes both film/television). And the last contribution is to the emerging view that culture is a “two-way street,” to put it colloquially: a reversal of the dominant “Western” direction of culture, with an emphasis on different tones of social values and contexts, that have been marginalised in mainstream popular culture discourses.     

A TURNING POINT FOR GUOHUA?: XU BEIHONG AND TRANSFORMATIVE ENCOUNTERS WITH THE SOCIALIST SPIRIT, 1933–1953

Abstract

This article investigates a transformative encounter between the Chinese artist Xu Beihong (徐悲鴻 1895–1953) and audiences in the Soviet Union during his 1933–1934 exhibitions of Chinese art in Europe. While Xu was exchanging perspectives and addressing questions about Chinese painting, a misreading of one of his paintings sparked in him a reconsideration of content and form that eventually led to the creation of some of the earliest Socialist realist ink-and-color paintings in China. This addition to his repertoire is arguably more significant to his legacy than his most popular works because of the way it heralded the coming Socialist realist evolution in guohua (國畫 national painting) and the manner in which Xu’s choices would meet the ideological needs of the Communist Party well before it secured authority over the direction of China’s arts. Special attention is paid to situating Xu’s personal work vis-à-vis Republican and revolutionary art and explaining how the concurrent political milieu paved the way for both the prestige of his art in popular and cultural memory and the unprecedented stature of his art education methodologies in China’s revolutionary times.     

Desire,Misogyny, and Official Power in Mark Dornford-May's U-Carmen eKhayelitsha

As the most frequently adapted narrative in film history, the story Carmen – based originally on Proper Mérimée’s 1845 novella and George Bizet’s 1875 opera of the same name – offers differing response to various intertextual debates concerning feminism, sexual freedom, interracial relations, high versus low art, and urbanism versus ruralism. This paper situates a recent Xhosa language, cinematic adaptation of the Opera, Mark Dornford-May’s U-Carmen e-Khayelitsha (2005), in response to these various cultural critical debates, while invoking previous critical discussions of American Carmen adaptations, by Charles Vidor and Otto Preminger respectively, as templates for furhter analysis. I argue that Dornford-May’s film offers a self-reflexive, and indeed progressive, response to the Carmen narrative’s contradictory ideological stance on issues of female sexual empowernment and misogny. U-Carmen also downplays the themes of interracial romance and rural nostalgia present in previous Carmen adaptations, so as to hone in on the various intra-township dynamics at work within the Khayelitsha communiy that the film depcitrs. U-Carmen offers a cynical depiction of the post-apartheid township society in which romantic and sexual freedom are presumed to be at odds with the forces of official power. When placed within the context of the post-apartheid Khayelitsha mileau, the failure of Carmen’s rebellious, anti-authoritarian, and romantic disposition comes to symbolize the unfullfilled promises of the post-apartheid era.