FUNDAMENTALS OF ARTS

The benefit of art and creativity in improving health and well-being across all age groups is being increasingly recognized. This study reports on the logistics and evaluation of an outdoor art project within a residential care home in Scotland that aimed to involve residents, their families, and staff in a creative experience to benefit their well-being. Initial designs were developed by a professional artist with the final design being chosen by residents and titled the “Tree of Many Colours.” The design encompassed 57 individual clay tiles; the artist led the creative process over a period of a month. Project evaluation was undertaken using a combination of qualitative and video-based observational research (VOR) through questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and video capture. The evaluation highlighted five key themes and demonstrated the main benefits derived by residents: learning new skills; self-belief; surprise at their own creative ability; excitement and fun. As a result of the project, staff were more confident and eager to use creative activities. The project has provided a focal piece of art for the home and engendered intergenerational community spirit, bringing staff, residents, and their families together. The model can be replicated and has the potential to be adopted in other settings.

Much light has been shed on the poetic dexterity and awe-inspiring aesthetic sensibility of Faiz (1911–1984) but his literary, cultural, aesthetic, artistic and social concerns, lucidly exposed to view in his prose writings, both in Urdu and English, have hardly been focussed on. Sheema Majeed's compilation of his Culture and Identity, Selected English Writings of Faiz (2005) and a few pieces on his Urdu prose (see also ‘Faiz Ek Naser Nigar: Afkar Fair Number’ by Saher Ansari, ‘Faiz Ke Tanqueedi Ravaiyye’ by Ali Ahmad Fatmil, ‘Faiz Ahmad Faiz Bahaisiyat Naqqad’ by Shafeeq Ahmad Ashrafi.) aside, seldom does one come across any discernable attempt to sift through the whole corpus of his prose writings, available in the form of a number of articles, reviews, laconic essays, prefaces, blurbs or short introductions to books, reviews, letters, speeches, discussions, radio talks, TV discussions, lectures and presidential remarks. These writings unfailingly prove that Faiz was certainly more than an aesthete who takes delight in conveying impressions in a florid style that a piece of art may evoke.

Response to Catherine Madsen—God as Criterion of Jewish Liturgy Steven Kepnes Catherine Madsen has brought up important issues regarding a renaissance of Jewish liturgy in liberal Jewish communities of the twenty‐first century. Certainly, we are seeing great creativity in Jewish liturgy. There are many sparks flying and many new songs being sung. Yet Madsen seems to worry whether or not the sparks are strange fires and the new songs mere jingles of the moment rather than soulful melodies that arise from the struggle to contact God and that, once heard, cannot be forgotten. Madsen asks whether these liturgical innovations can have staying power since they seem to be invented anew with each liturgical occasion and the central criteria for the liturgy is the sincerity of the liturgist and the intensity of the liturgical experience. She juxtaposes these criteria with more traditional Jewish ones: “knowing before whom you stand” and doing the liturgical act to fulfill a mitzvah or divine command whether one fully understands it or not. By reminding us of the form and goals of Orthodox liturgy, Madsen is not calling for a return to Orthodoxy. I think that she truly shares the goals of contemporary liturgical renaissance in liberal Judaism that will make more space for women and others that the old rite excludes. She also knows that when liturgy is done only as rote with no passion, as we often see in Orthodoxy, it can be deadly boring and spiritually vacuous. What Madsen does seem to want in the contemporary renaissance in Jewish liturgy is more serious Jewish and liturgical thinking beforehand, more respect for the scope and ultimate religious goal of liturgical acts, and more continuity to the traditions of the past. In my terms, what I see Madsen doing is to bring theological concerns to liturgy. Therefore, what is central for me in Madsen’s critique of the frivolousness of much contemporary liberal Jewish liturgy are the words. Da lifnei mi atah omed, “know before whom you stand.” Knowing that you stand before the One God of Israel, before the Holy One and God of the Universe, clarifies what is central to all Jewish liturgy, be it the ritual breaking of bread by the individual or the complex choreography surrounding the taking out and reading the Torah in the synagogue. In liturgy, the liturgist stands before God. In liturgy, the liturgist praises, thanks, blesses, and asks forgiveness and mercy from God. Everything is done in Jewish liturgy for the sake of God and before God and God is the ultimate criteria and judge of the quality, sincerity, and intensions of liturgy. God, not mom and pop, not grandma and zeidi, not one’s friends, and not even the Rabbi, are the judges and bestowers of mercy that one seeks in Jewish liturgy. The contemporary Jewish liturgist, Cantor Tamar Havilio of Hebrew Union College Jerusalem, has summed up the central problem with much contemporary progressive Jewish liturgy nicely. She traces the problem back to the time when the Rabbi and Cantor placed themselves up front of the synagogue and turned around to face the congregation instead remaining in the middle of the congregation and praying with them toward the ark that represents God. When the Rabbi and Cantor pray toward the congregation, the symbolism is clear. Rabbi and Cantor are praying to the congregation and not God. Rabbi and Cantor are there to serve the congregation and not to lead the congregation to serve God. Rabbi and Cantor are there to entertain the congregation. And the synagogue service becomes a kind of a concert or lecture rather than a collective ritual of service of the heart to God. Since the Rabbi and Cantor represent God to the community, we could easily draw out a further implication. God, himself, must serve the congregation; the congregation does not serve God. Like the Rabbi, God is always chasing and searching for Jews; Jews need not search for Him. The synagogue service then becomes a kind of consumerist fare to be tried out and judged by how it meets certain vague spiritual and esthetic sensibilities of congregants. Jews, then, through their own wishes, desires, and money, judge the...

This paper considers legal aspects of grotesque imagery in Northern Mannerism by examining the illustrations in Joos de Damhouder’s Praxis Rerum Criminalium from 1554. The Bruges jurist advocated for the disciplinary control of the community through the exercise of criminal law, which would deter the public from future deviance. The intended fear of punishment is not so much demonstrated but enforced through the accompanying images, which show scenes of crime and criminal procedure framed by haunting grotesque settings. Popularised in Italy, the grotesque in the Low Countries developed distinctly individual forms and connotations. Rather than embodying creativity or aesthetic refinement, ornamental prints reveal intensely phobic qualities. I argue that the ambivalent characteristics of furore and terribilita, attributed to grotesques by art theory, appeal to a general sense of crisis that also permeated political discourse. Seeking to contain the upheavals of the time, theorists envisioned fear as the emotional basis and primary tool of power. Wrapped in grotesque armour, the Sovereign issued law by playing on the same politics of affect. Such images, both printed and on armour, acted on specific aesthetic sensibilities and political strategies laid out by contemporary thought. They transcend the pure logics of legal reasoning and pinpoint the irrational infrastructure of law. The grotesque does not elicit rational judgment, but, on the contrary, imposes on the beholder physically. Framing the law, the iconology of the grotesque thus sheds a different light on the visual culture of law and the constitution of normativity in the sixteenth century.

The rapid progress of generative art has democratized the creation of visually pleasing imagery. However, achieving genuine artistic impact, a nature that can resonate with viewers on a deeper, more meaningful level, requires a sophisticated aesthetic sensibility. This sensibility involves a multi-faceted reasoning process that extends beyond simple visual appeal, has often been overlooked by current computational models. This talk presents an initial endeavor to capture such a complex process by investigating how the reasoning capability of Multimodal LLMs (MLLMs) can be effectively elicited for aesthetic judgment. Our recent research reveals a critical challenge: MLLMs exhibit a tendency towards hallucinations during aesthetic reasoning, characterized by subjective opinions and unsubstantiated artistic interpretations. We shall demonstrate that these limitations can be overcome by employing an evidence-based, objective reasoning process, as substantiated by the proposed baseline algorithm, ArtCoT. MLLMs prompted by this principle produce multi-faceted and in-depth aesthetic reasoning that aligns significantly better with human judgment. These findings have direct applications in areas such as AI art tutoring and as reward models for generative art. We hope the proposed aesthetics reasoning framework can ultimately pave the way for constructing AI systems that can truly understand, appreciate, and contribute to artistic pieces just like the human aesthetic judgment.

This paper contains a spiritual crisis that is running rampant in modern times. Because modernization not only encourages economic progress, technology and science but also creates a spiritual crisis that makes life feel empty, and meaningless. The purpose of this paper is to understand what are the main problems that caused the spiritual crisis and how Islamic psychotherapy comes from the teachings of the Qur'an and the Traditions of the Holy Prophet. and a life of Sufism that continues to strive to draw closer to God Almighty can be a solution in overcoming the spiritual crisis suffered by modern humans today. Sufism with its zuhud attitude will eliminate the fetters of love of the world that undermine the human soul and Islamic psychotherapy will be able to fill the empty human heart and empty with spiritual values that have been lost from him.