**English Translation of this thesis can be found at : https://hdl.handle.net/1887/3245181 **Deze dissertatie gaat over hoe schrijvers en beeldende kunstenaars uit Equatoriaal Guinea door middel... Show more**English Translation of this thesis can be found at : https://hdl.handle.net/1887/3245181 **Deze dissertatie gaat over hoe schrijvers en beeldende kunstenaars uit Equatoriaal Guinea door middel van hun werk aandacht vragen voor de huidige (politieke) situatie in hun land; een voormalige kolonie van Spanje die in 1968 onafhankelijk werd met tot op heden een dictatoriaal regime. Onderzocht is, vanuit een politiek-filosofisch kader (Jacques Rancière en Alain Badiou) en door middel van een narratieve en visuele analyse, waar zich in de werken van de uit het land afkomstige schrijvers Donato Ndongo Bydiogo, Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel en María Nsue Angüe, en de beeldende kunstenaar Ramón Esono Ebalé, breukvlakken en leegten bevinden. Mijn onderzoek toont aan dat het bijzondere en de kracht van hun werken niet zozeer gelegen is in de hierin naar voren komende historische aspecten of bepaalde binaire tegenstellingen (zoals veel onderzoekers tot nu toe veronderstelden), maar juist in het poëtische van wat de in de werken gevonden breukvlakken en leegten blootleggen en openen. Dat maakt dat met deze werken een procedure in gang wordt gezet die de gesloten waarheid van het huidige dictatoriale regime overstijgt, waarmee die dictatuur als het ware wordt opengebroken en geleegd. Show less
The starting point for this study is that for a large part of their existence, the paintings belonging to this genre have primarily been seen as export articles without intrinsic artistic value.... Show moreThe starting point for this study is that for a large part of their existence, the paintings belonging to this genre have primarily been seen as export articles without intrinsic artistic value. This fact, and the fact that they cannot be unequivocally classified, explains why this genre has, for a long time, not received the attention it deserves. The label ‘exportware’, though, does not exclude that these paintings can also be approached as ‘art’. They have an historic, an artistic, and a material value, which, as a result of their representative and social functions, over time formed an artistic phenomenon in its own right, and a shared cultural visual repertoire with its own (Eurasian) character. In order to draw conclusions about the appreciation of the extensive and historically valuable eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Chinese export paintings in Dutch public collections, this multidisciplinary research follows the entire trajectory of this specific transcultural painting genre in sixteen museums, from the production two centuries ago to the current position. At work in this trajectory are mechanisms between people, institutions and the paintings, which increase or, indeed, diminish the appreciation of this time- and place-specific art. Show less
Central to this research is the Urban Future-project, which consists of a large archive of artworks made from 2002 until now. The original question underpinning this project was: what... Show moreCentral to this research is the Urban Future-project, which consists of a large archive of artworks made from 2002 until now. The original question underpinning this project was: what influence do chaos, entropy and fragmentation have on the viability of the rapidly developing urbanizing world? In the course of the research project, the (literature and field) explorations led to the assumption that there is a demonstrable and necessary link between the quality of life in the city and vital social cohesion on the one hand and chaos, entropy and fragmentation on the other. In the artistic part of the research focuses on the question: is it possible to make the supposed connection between quality of urban life and chaos, entropy and fragmentation visible in artwork and, if so, how? In the written dissertation, working methods and strategies are contextualized and analyzed. The visual part derives from an artist's position which uses non-verbal, sensorial strategies to reach new insights. It mainly focuses on the visual and aesthetic possibilities of aspects of fragmentation, chaos and entropy because Scholten considers these aspects, as productive forces, to be the core of the experience of urbanization. Show less
The corpus of art from the Pleistocene has grown substantially in recent decades, and with it, the earliest evidence of visual art has become much older than previously anticipated, going back over... Show moreThe corpus of art from the Pleistocene has grown substantially in recent decades, and with it, the earliest evidence of visual art has become much older than previously anticipated, going back over 100,000 years. This new information has rendered some traditional ideas about the recent origins of visual art obsolete. Existing archaeological and evolutionary models that aim to explain the emergence of visual art should now be reassessed in light of current data. That is the aim of this book. First, it reviews the earliest examples of different forms of visual art in two important archaeological periods of human artistic innovation, the height of the African Middle Stone Age, and the European Early Upper Palaeolithic. It then takes a critical view at three influential origins-of-art models, namely, the sexual selection model, the social cohesion model, and the cognitive evolution model. Finally, it offers an alternative proposal that redefines visual art as a communication signal and, using the archaeological evidence, relates its emergence and development to the evolution of human cooperation strategies. This book will appeal to anyone interested in the debate of the origins of art and the evolution of modern human cognition, behaviour, and culture. Show less
