Can Molecular Biology Inspire Visual Artists?

The introductory text presents “Common Space and Individual Space: Comments on a Group Task from the First Half of 1993,” a document translated into English from Polish and published here. The original document was first published in Czereja, a magazine created by the students of Kowalnia, a studio for diploma art students run by Grzegorz Kowalski in the Department of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. “Common Space” compiles the students' accounts of a performative group activity entitled Pierożek drewniany, zimnym mięsem nadziewany (translated as Wooden Dumpling, Filled with Cold Meat) from the 1992–93 academic year. The introduction analyzes “Common Space” as a part of the very creative process within the Wooden Dumpling activity and describes its meaning within the socio-political contexts of post-1989 Poland. It explains the role of Kowalnia's practices as a unique pedagogical experiment anomalous within the fairly traditional art education systems of Central and Eastern Europe of the time. The introduction argues that the document is not only relevant for our understanding of Polish art in the 1990s, but also provokes broader questions about the feasibility and efficacy of socially engaged art practices as well as the communicative strategies employed within them.

In 1972, Andrzej Klimowski quit his painting and sculpture studies at St. Martin School of Art in London and moved to Warsaw to study at Henryk Tomaszewski’s poster studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Jean Paula Sartre, Jean Luc Godard, Andrzej Munk are only some of his literary and movie fascinations. His works are soaked with the style of the silent cinema, film noir or paintings of René Magritte. Being under the strong influence of i. a. Jan Lenica and Roman Cieślewicz, he designs posters brimming with references to the history of art. Over time, he has created his own individual, signature style and Taxi Driver, Dead Man or The Godfather are only a part of his impressive portfolio. Klimowski explains that it is better for the final effect, if the content of works is more expanded and full of iconographic elements.The article presents and analyzes the works by Andrzej Klimowski, taking into account his inspiration, composition structure and execution of the design of movie posters.

The methods of teaching art history in The Academy of Fine Arts in the 20th century always were based mainly on a concept of a connoisseur art science. The students of the Academy of arts must deeply understand the nature of creativity, so in addition to studying theoretical and historical disciplines. The art historian students at the Academy of arts spend many hours drawing and painting. They have a unique opportunity to study the technique and technology of art materials in academic laboratories and production workshops. Traditionally, an art historian who graduated from the Academy of arts works in a museum, teaches, works as an art critic, art expert, or deals with attribution of works of art. Now the boundaries of the profession have expanded, thanks to the emergence of curatorial institutions, art dealers, gallery business, the expansion of virtual space, and contemporary art strategies. Modern art history education is influenced by postmodern aesthetics and cultural studies, philosophy, the innovative technologies, the demands of an information and communication constantly changing market society, and so on. The problem of understanding the authenticity of an art work in the conditions of total reproduction and improvement of virtual technologies has also become one of the most significant. The need to switch to full distance learning in connection with the pandemic had both its negative sides and contributed to the development of new educational ideas, gave rise to interesting and unexpected projects that cover a wide audience. In the modern world, there is a process of threatening discommunication associated with the gap between representatives of mass and elite culture, between different layers of the society. The difference is not so much between cultures, but rather there is a lack of understanding between social stratums of society, between age and social groups. In particular, the gap between the previous links in the author-critic-artist chain has increased. The situation in the modern world and art, associated with the collapse of traditionalism and the emergence of non-traditional structures, the time of re-evaluation, the search for new ways to translate cultural experience poses a problem for researchers and teachers to understand and adequately explain the latest processes and phenomena occurring in the artistic space, which should be reflected in art education. The theoretical concept of criticism and its special functions is being developed in the Russian visual art of the 21st century. It performs a special type of artistic, analytical, and creative activity. In different periods of the existence of art criticism, certain features of it came to the fore, depending on the paradigm of the era. Often in modern artistic activity, the functions of critic and curator are combined, the functions of these spheres of activity merge together. It is the critic and the curator who become the interpreters of a work of art and sometimes the perception of an artistic phenomenon or event depends on their interpretation. In the modern world, critics and curators often act as the creators of an artistic concept or a specific art event, and as analysts who evaluate the phenomena. Сriticism and curatorship are creative professions that perform not only the tasks of expertise and evaluation, they are the field of artistic creativity, they have their own creative role. The basis of such professional qualities can be an academic art school, which has all the necessary conditions to achieve the modern level of art studies. Moreover, modern criticism, penetrating the field of art, becomes a part of art itself. Therefore, in the modern cultural space, critics and curators can be more in demand, and sometimes more vividly realized, than even artists trained within the traditional academic system.

The Academy of Fine Arts in Saint-Petersburg and the organization of the Russian artistic sections at the World Exhibitions between 1862 and 1900. The Academy of Fine Arts in Saint-Petersburg was called upon to choose the works selected for the artistic sections of the World Exhibitions of 1862, 1867, 1878 and 1900, a choice whose aim was to show the existence of a Russian school. Though there was no response in London in 1862, French criticism in 1867 noticed such painters as, for example, Vassili Perov. The creation of a Society for travelling art exhibitions (called « les Ambulants » in French), and the action of collector Paul Tretiakov strengthened the realistic characteristics of Russian painting by imposing these paintings, welcomed by French critics en 1878. However, this selection of realistic works did not prevent the emergence of more moderate personalities like Serov or Korovine and the landscape painter Levitan, who paved the path for Diaghilev’s « Russian Ballets ».

A 'counter-discourse' of speculative approaches to art historySituated at the interface of philosophy, aesthetics and art history, this collection brings together a series of creative responses to the recent speculative turn in Continental philosophy. It gives you both a genealogy of speculative art history and a provocatively experimental counter-discourse of new speculative art histories.The contributors include philosophers, art historians, architects and art practitioners who go beyond the mere complementarity of philosophy and art history. They are generous with the types of art they examine, including architecture, cinema, dance and new media, and the philosophical trajectories they engage with.Published in association with Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, RotterdamContributorsArmen Avanessian, Free University Berlin, Germany. Erik Bordeleau, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. Adi Efal, University of Cologne, Germany. Francis Halsall, National College of Art and Design, Dublin, IrelandFleur Courtois-l'Heureux, National Fund for Scientific Research, ULB and INSAS, Belgium. Bram Ieven, Leiden University, Netherlands. Vlad Ionescu, University of Hasselt, Belgium. Sarah Kolb, University of Art and Design in Linz and Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria.Bertrand Prévost, University of Bordeaux, France. Andrej Radman, TU Delft, Netherlands. Elisabeth von Samsonow, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria.Lars Spuybroek, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA. Kerstin Thomas, Johannes Gutenberg-University in Mainz, Germany. Sjoerd van Tuinen, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands. Kamini Vellodi, Kingston University, London, UK.

In the XIX century, photography gave an interesting integration – optically and camera based- to the drawing descriptive procedure, supporting with inhedited accuracy, speed of execution and shareable results the representation of monuments for the researchers of that age. The Academies of Fine Arts – the Schools dedicated to Architecture, Scenography and Painting studies- are amongst the institutions where these innovations have been acknowledged and discussed since their beginnings. Camillo Boito (1836–1914), former student of Selvatico who moved to Brera as a young lecturer, would inherit an interest in this method and its legitimation in didactic use; he became an active and conscious promoter of the acquisition of these images, with the precise aim of constructing an atlas of historical-stylistic models, coming to form the Funds of the photographic archives of the Academy. This fund expresses a strong critical purpose: not only in its intention to compile and catalogue, but also as an operation aimed at forming a visual archive that would be useful in the construction of a single body of stylistic references and elements. The purpose of Boito Collection clearly seems to be the demonstration of monumental foundaments for the development of the “national style”: this was the commitment to which Boito dedicated all his intellectual and academic itinerary, a divulgative and critical activity that started in the Brera Academy and would become a topic of the national style debate.

In its archives, “Pietro Vannucci” Academy of Fine Arts has an imaginary Perugia consisting of drawings. The educational material, mostly unpublished, drawn up in the centuries by the students of the Schools of Architecture and Perspective regarding the Umbrian capital, depict views of a Calvinian city that does not exist. But at the same time they reveal an imaginary city that could have existed. Because they represent a series of interventions that radically transform their aspect from time to time, according to the cultural temperament of the execution period. These graphic exercises testify to the deep attention to the drawing experience intended as a tool of knowledge and prefiguration which took shape within the institution; their subject is a Perugia which serves as a scenario for a series of experiments aimed at determining its urban image.

Self-esteem and the location of the sense of control are extremely important areas in the specific profession of an officer of the Polish Army, and even more so in the educational process as a student of a military university. Teaching is an inseparable element of officer service both in professional work, where the process of training troops takes place, and in developing one’s own competences during the implementation of various forms of education at a military university. Therefore, it is worth taking a closer look at this issue, especially due to the moral aspect of the officer’s professional service, which is undoubtedly reflected in the areas studied. For this purpose, an in-depth analysis of the individual dimensions of self-esteem and the sense of control was carried out, mainly in terms of possible dependencies, as well as in relation to socio-professional factors. Empirical research among students of a military university made it possible to diagnose the situation in this respect and to formulate appropriate conclusions. The results of the analyzes were presented on the basis of a diagnostic survey carried out in 2021 on a research sample consisting of officers, students of the Academy of Martial Arts in Warsaw, using standard measurement tools and selected elements of descriptive and correlation statistics.

The article is an analysis of life stories of female visual artists connected with the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow (Poland). It explores the specificity of women’s experiences and constitutes an attempt to examine the role models and gender hierarchies which dominate the artworld. The article emphasises two analytical categories – uncertainty and struggle – to demonstrate how they organise the life stories of female artists, and tries to explain how such life stories can lead to re-evaluation of the perception of art as a male profession and contribute to a greater appreciation of women’s activity in the artworld.

Wojciech Kaniowski is a creator of ironic assemblages, which have much in common with severe journalistic commentary or cabaret; a creator whose raison d’être is to have an opinion on social, political and cultural reality and to express it emphatically, often mockingly, not only to look for sensations or aesthetic experiments. For over four decades of his creative work, started in 1972 at the Faculty of Painting, Graphic Arts and Sculpture of the State Higher School of Fine Arts (today’s Academy of Fine Arts) in Wroclaw, the artist has been creating paintings similar to small stories and filling them with peculiar pieces of strange devices, scraps of newspapers, fabrics and old letters, pieces of wood and metal, which may well be parts of machines, toys or furniture. The peculiarity of this conglomerate leads the viewer, looking for a key to it, into confusion. In his visual narratives, Kaniowski uses the contemporary literary paradigm: the changeability of expressive textures, alinear composition, fragmentation and focus on the physical aspect of reality. Equipped with the experience of 20th-century artists – happeners, performers, eccentric painters, or designers – he treats self-creation as a work of art. He himself becomes a work of art, built according to Marshall McLuhan’s “The medium is the message” formula, but above all, according to Tadeusz Kantor’s model, he enters the stage of his visual performances in order to stage their happening and at the same time build his own role as a master of ceremony. In this respect, he reaches quite freely to the Romantic tradition, modernist tradition, and even to the concept of “post-” (although his art, with a clear historical consciousness, places him in modernism). As a protagonist and spritus movens of his assemblages, he dresses in a variety of costumes, ranging from a coat and a dark hat, similar to the ones he uses every day, to colourful T-shirts, gallabiyas, baseball caps and dark glasses. The latter seems so necessary in his image generated for artistic narration as the stock tie was once, without which the romantic ancestors of the painter did not dare to leave home. The artist’s compositions are designed as something between a comics, a living image and a role-playing game, i.e. forms in which the literalness of things and people has a great power of impact. Kaniowski fills them with objects from the past and allows them to play a role in the buffo convention once again. And all this within frames constructed spatially or quasi-spatially. They take on the shape of windows, doors or wardrobes, shop windows, TV screens or tombstones. They often become something similar to a box scene, and sometimes they are also medieval altars, whose open wings show a miniature but full world of beings and objects. They intensify the impression that an extraordinary, surprising reality reveals itself in front of us, a fragment of a ritual to which we have been allowed with special rights by a demiurgeon artist.

Nicholas I and the Academy of Fine Arts

The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts - Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation held a one-day conference discussing the design concept on 26 August 2016. This is Jude Chua's presentation of his article, "Design Without Final Goals: Getting Around Our Bounded Rationality."

Francois-Guillaume-Leon Du Tillot, thanks to its leading role in the government of the Duchy of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla and the interest aroused in Europe by his reform activity during the seventh decade of the 18th century, wove multiple and complex relationships with the nobilities of the Italian peninsula. He made use of the grants of offices and dignities in the court, in the diplomacy and in the army of the infant duke of Parma to cement the loyalty of the ancient aristocracy, primarily those of the State, to the Bourbons and to consolidate his own personal power. At the same time, the foundation of the Academy of Fine Arts in Parma and the establishment of a prize for tragedies and comedies in Italian promoted the direct involvement of noblemen, even foreigners, in the political and cultural projects of the prime minister. In addition, the contacts with the ducal court provided to the members of the aristocracy the suited opportunity to take advantage of the close relationship between Parma and Paris, for example visiting, in the French metropolis, important personalities from the diplomatic, financial and intellectual world. Nevertheless, the drastic jurisdictionalistic measures of the government caused increasing misunderstanding and hostility of the noble class against Du Tillot, which played an important role in creating the political conditions to the fall of the minister, in 1771.

The paper gives an overview of children’s book design and illustration in Poland around the year 1968. Considering the number, variety and quality of books addressed to young readers of this time, one can judge how important this sector of the reading audience was for the policymakers in the times of Polish People’s Republic (1952-1989). The graduates from academies of fine arts (predominantly from Warsaw) were responsible for illustrations and design of the released titles. 1968 seems to be the peak year of the internationally recognized Polish School of Illustration. More than 400 artists were active in the field of book illustration at that time. Among the published books there were many avant-garde and original designs. However, this tendency was already present in Polish graphic design in the 1950s, with a sort of a turning point in 1956. The year 1968 was very important in Polish history and brought some political and social changes, although these were not reflected that much in fine and applied arts. The paper discusses artistic quality of Polish illustration for children published around the year 1968. The short analyses of the relevance of graphic layout and illustrations to the verbal contents of the selected books comprises the main part of the paper.

Before becoming the famous antiquarian of Renaissance Art, Stefano Bardini (1836-1922) was a painter. He moved to Florence from Pieve di Santo Stefano (Arezzo) in 1853 to study at the Academy of Fine Arts with Giuseppe Bezzuoli, Benedetto Servolini and Antonio Puccinelli. In his early years, Bardini participated in several competitions with paintings of Florentine Renaissance subjects . He also exposed his works to the Promotrice in Florence and Turin was awarded at the Ricasoli Competition in 1859-1860. Towards the end of the Sixties, Bardini interrupted his artistic career. He enlisted in Garibaldi’s Army and, back in Florence, began restoring and selling old master's art. He thus became the well-known 'Prince of Antiquaries'.