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Alexandru Plămădeală (1888–1940) is one of the most outstanding personalities, who undoubtedly contributed to the promotion of modernist cultural-artistic values, as well as to the formation and development of the national art school.A valuable heritage is the artist’s plastic creation in the genres: sculpture, drawing, graphics, painting. In this article we tend to present the creation of master Al. Plămădeală in the field of easel graphics. The collection of the National Museum of Art of Moldova and the funds of the National Archive have numerous study drawings of the human figure, several dozen portraits and just a few landscape compositions. The works show the high artisticculture of the plastic artist, manifested both by the manner of composing the drawing on the sheet, and by the graphic interpretation of the imaging. Made in pencil, charcoal, sanguine or ink, pen – these highlight the artistic sensitivity of the author in order to capitalize on formal expressions in nude drawings or in rendering individual character traits, subtle emotional states of the characters represented in the artist’s portraits.
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The figurative painting from 1975–1980 outlines the fourth and last tab in the evolution of the general stage of national treatment of form. The period marks a new sub-stage with a unique character, specific to the socio-cultural environment of the time. Artists print a series of new creative implementations that change the plastic and semantic formula of works through an experimental approach. The plastic and semantic character of figurative painting acquires a series of distinct peculiarities, interested in searches in the area of romantic expressionism and irrational surrealism, gradually opting for schematic modeling that advances towards a decorative syntax. At the same time, the experiment with the plastic-coloristic invoice increases the dematerialized perception of the figurative image, thus adjusting the affective sensitivity of the contemporary environment to anassociated metaphorical image. At the same time, the semantic message focuses on noticing the qualitative features of the figures and pronouncing the values of the inner universe of man. Sometimes the message emits the depth of thought and spiritual-affective valences, through inverted plastic suggestions, with a sensitive connection to the perceptual imaginary. The new intentions predispose the figurative painting to a process of reanalysis of theusual relationship between image and idea, in the intention of expressing the pure unidealized and unwritten values of the social environment. These reduce the well-known data of the form to a pure schematism, intensely directed after a theatrical dramaturgy, in order to obtain the metaphorical perception of the subject. Through these implementations, Moldovan figurative painting manages to overcome the stage of national treatment of form, placing itself on the platform of the modern course of international painting
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This article aims to describe the city of Chișinău as a true center of artistic metal processing. Here there were jewelry making workshops, the Jewelry Factory, the Jewelry Workshops of Plastic Fund, most of the notorious jewelers worked here. Chișinău, rightly, was and remains the core of the development of metal art in the current space of the Republic of Moldova. From a chronological point of view, four stages of development of the city from the perspective of the metal art were outlined: 1812–1917; 1918–1940; 1945–1991 and the period after the proclamation of the independence of the Republic of Moldova. Both fine artists and those who practiced metal art viewed the Chișinău city not only as a socio-economic and cultural center, but also as a source of inspiration to pay a well-deserved tribute to the city (A. Marco, enameled plaque Măzărache Church in Chișinău; V.Vasilkov, set of articles for the Civil Status Office, Central Sector, Chișinău, Gh. Cojușnean, the pendant The Cityin the Evening and the small sculpture Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin in Chișinău).
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Review of: Icoana pe sticlă... timp de credinţă în spaţiul Transilvaniei – catalog, Sibiu, Editura “Atra Museum”, 2011, 40 p.
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This paper focuses on colour as a physical phenomenon and on the other side as a tool of meaning-making. Different theoretical approaches to the essence and the meaning of colour are discussed, from the works of Vassily Kandinsky, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Fernande Saint-Martin. The role of color in visual arts is special – color is undeniably one of the main means of visual expression and therefore one of the main units of visual creation and perception. When analyzing a visual sign system as a language in a semiotic sense, it is inevitable that the same basic units are used for both the creation and the interpretation of this language.
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Disco Elysium demonstrates many hallmarks of the Gothic through its storyline and representational elements, particularly its emphasis on the instability of its protagonist, the sense of decline and decay conveyed through its setting, and the interconnected secret histories that are revealed through exploration. Furthermore, many of the game’s stylistic and ludic features, such as its dense description and emotive language, and its overwhelming array of options, interactions, and responses, can be understood as engagements with the uncanny and disorienting excess of the Gothic tradition. These Gothic elements manifest most frequently through the game’s attempt to represent psychological complexity within its role playing system, its depictions of urban spaces, and its approach to questions of unresolved memory and history. The presence of these Gothic features in Disco Elysium work to contest the game’s categorization as a ‘detective role playing game.’ While the genres are closely connected, detective fiction typically follows a trajectory in which the history of the central mystery becomes progressively clearer through the accumulation of information and detail, whereas the Gothic traditionally seeks to maintain and heighten a sense of disorientation. Exploring the tension between Disco Elysium’s Gothic elements and its status as a detective game allows for a richer appreciation of the political and social commentary that emerges from both its narrative and gameplay.
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This paper looks at Disco Elysium as a model for a better understanding of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s concept of the rhizome when applied to video games. It analyses the use and implementation of the many forms of expressing multiplicity that are present in Disco Elysium and that are manifested through the configuration of the avatar, the use of the player’s choice, and representations of space and time in the game. Ultimately, this paper also serves as a coalescence of existing Game Studies scholarship on rhizomic relations, multiplicities and affect to create a common ground for future conversations on these topics.
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The article presents an analysis and interpretation of Disco Elysium, an award-winning videogame published by ZA/UM studio in 2019. The main problem explored in the research concerns the ontological basis upon which the game builds the complex personality of its protagonist and his relationship with the story world. The main theoretical works utilized in the analysis and interpretation are Object-Oriented Ontology by Graham Harman and Existence and Hermeneutics by Paul Ricoeur. My thesis is that Disco Elysium presents time, events and history as the effects of various tensions between the protagonist and the objects. In doing so, the game offers a non-anthropocentric perspective on human being and gives rise to questions about objects as a basis for rethinking the human condition. The article concludes with the formulation of a possible new hermeneutical approach founded on Object-Oriented Ontology.
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I suggest in this article, drawing upon Francesca Ferrando, Karen Barad and N Katherine Hayles, that Disco Elysium illustrates the human through the mode of a ‘posthuman multiverse’. Per Ferrando, humans and other beings act as nodes in a material multiverse while what we think, eat,our behaviours and relations, create part of a rhizomatic ecology that can be understood as who and what we are. This, I illustrate, overcomes a complicated tension in existing posthuman theory, particularly as it relates to game studies. Although theorists have detailed the entanglement of players and machines, and the new materialist nature of becoming, it is unclear to what extent human-machine assemblages can be said to be a singular ‘thing’. This is tackled in Disco Elysium as the seemingly mundane and often invisible actions the player takes, all play a role in constructing Harry Dubois and the world that is also endlessly producing him. Game actions, therefore, can be viewed as ‘technologies of the multiverse’, the ontological functions through which beings come to exist in a dimension. The game positions the player in a ‘relational intra-activity’ not only with the actions and outcomes of play, as discussed in previous scholarship, but also with the hypothetical outcomes of choices they have not made. When read through the lens of Ferrando’s philosophical posthuman multiverse, Disco Elysium represents a valuable resource for bridging gaps in contemporary posthuman scholarship.
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When approaches to the notion of the ‘self’ as it exists in the game have been discussed in game studies – for instance, through work in existential ludology or through discussions of agency – the ‘self’ in question, explicitly or implicitly, has tended to be the rational, stable, unified and coherent self of the humanist tradition. By fracturing the ludic subject into a set of contrasting and conflicting voices, each with their own apparent motivations and goals, Disco Elysium presents a challenge to this singular and unified understanding of selfhood. That this challenge is situated within the representation of a figure who, at face value, seems to represent the very locus of the authoritative, self-possessed subjectivity of humanism – not only a straight, middle-aged white man, but also a figure of police and colonial authority – strengthens the game’s critical slant. Drawing on theories of ludic and virtual subjectivity, this paper will approach Disco Elysium with a focus on this undermining of stable and unitary understanding of subjectivity. First, the game will be considered in relation to the tradition of film noir, and the way the genre both established and subverted the figure of the detective as the avatar of stable, rational, authoritative masculine selfhood. Next, its treatment of the theme of amnesia will be considered, drawing a parallel to Jayemanne’s (2017) reading of Planescape: Torment to examine how the loss of memory creates structures of discontinuity and rupture in the represented ludic self. Finally, Bakhtinian notions of polyphony will be invoked to address the game’s plurality of different voices not (as it is usually present) in a dialogue between individual subjects but within a single, fragmented subjectivity.
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Le sondage realise en 1999, sur la colline situee ă la peripherie de sud-ouest du village Trinca, dans l'endroit La Şanţ, departement d'Edineţ, Republique de la Moldavie, lâ ou le promontoire, delimite par la vallee du ruisseau Draghiştea, devient un peu plus etroit, a ete effectue pour etablir la periode de construction de l'ancienne fortification encore visible. Pendant les fouilles des premieres couches, tout comme pendant la recherche du rempart et du fosse, on decouverte beaucoup d'objets et une ceramique cucutenienne nombreuse de la categorie fine peinte, mais aussi sans peinture.
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Review of: "Ambigues Polen. Diskurse zu sztuka ludowa und polnischer naiver Kunstin der Volksrepublik Polen und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland.", Uta Karrer,(Münchner Beiträge zur Volkskunde, Bd. 47.) Waxmann. Münster –New York 2020. 416 S., Ill. ISBN 978-3-8309-4136-1.
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Canonically defined, the theme of the icon, as well as its symbolism, is not within the competence of the artist. Unlike profane art, the icon spontaneously reveals the mystery it represents. Moreover, she lives from this reality and can only be perceived from within. In sacred painting its basic features are provided by the canons. Thus, the position of the body, the attire of the characters, the gestures and other details are invariable. According to the requirements of the Church of the East, icon painters must conform to a set of canons, guides, which guarantee continuity and doctrinal unity. In profane art, valuable work reflects the personality of the artist. It is, in a way, an attempt to materialize his thinking and vision of the world. Audience recognition involves new creations, and the artist's effort constantly tends towards innovation and overcoming. The iconographer, however, feeds his art from the Tradition and the teaching of the Church. His personality must be eclipsed in front of the represented character. Despite this fidelity to Tradition, it is amazing to find that there can be counted dozens of iconographic schools, in which we do not find two identical icons. But, also in this context, we notice that the icon with a certain subject is immediately recognized by everyone. The topic of this paper is the liturgical textile representations that we can see in Byzantine Art, the meanings of the colors and symbols that enrich them.
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The review of: Mitja Velikonja, Post-Socialist Political Graffiti in the Balkans and Central Europe [Southeast European Studies] (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), 226 pp.
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This article seeks to deepen knowledge about how education that integrates dance and visual arts has had an impact on supporting resilience among children in a primary school in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa. The authors have for four years run a project in which the value of integrating dance and visual arts in different ways has been explored. The last workshop week took place in 2020 once schools had reopened after a long period of lockdown. The week included a focus on illuminating the children’s experiences of schooling during and after the lockdown. Through a hermeneutic phenomenological analysis of data collected using methods involving multi modal means of expression, it comes forth that the impact that this work has had, is that the children have learned to not just accept what is, but to question and be critical based on what they feel. They learned techniques to assist them to let go of tension and to feel and be aware of embodied sensations. They also had experiences of relating to their peers in new ways and used their imagination to create and express ideas. Based on this study it is concluded that when an embodied perspective is included in a theoretical understanding of the notion of resilience, and this perspective is implemented to guide educational practice, schools may be able to better promote environments that support resilience.
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This paper discusses the role of artists engaged in live-work property guardian schemes and their potentials to act in a dignifying way at sites of struggle over the regeneration of council housing in London; through the lance of artwashing. To gain this understanding, I will describe how artists are embedded in this context by looking at the interaction between artists and property guardian artistic enterprises working on housing estates in London. I will critically examine the artist role through the lance of artwashing critical method, namely allyship of the art world with the real estate industry in the process of social cleansing of housing estates in the UK. Following this, I will discuss the potential of artists to act in a dignified way, drawing on interviews with artists that have lived as property guardians. I will talk about the frustration of artists that stems from their circumstances, namely torn between the necessity to survive within an unaffordable housing market in London and the wish to make art in an uncompromised way. Studying the instrumentalization of artists employed by real-estate industry property guardian enterprises and the artists' attempts to resist this instrumentalization is vital for any understanding of the recent mutations in the capitalist management of housing and art and vital for the attempt to establish new sites of artistic urban struggle for housing justice.
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This article discusses the works and writings of Brazilian visual artist Hélio Oiticica (1937–1980) as a way to rethink the notions of global art, especially through the lens of the artist’s unique vision of a decolonial avant-garde, against the background of Arthur Danto’s and Hans Belting’s theories concerning the end of art history. Oiticica's entire work is set against the double trap that haunts artists in the geopolitical silent zones of the art world: submission to the international art trends, at risk of becoming mere epigones following the footsteps of what is current in the art world’s centers, or the equally melancholic condemnation to a nativist art that doesn’t transcend it’s local status and can only come in to the international spotlight as the object of some form of “white savior” primitivism.
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