bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Existentialism
Authors: Taylor Simon
Published: September 2018

Existentialism is the term given to an interdisciplinary school of thought that focuses on the lived experience of human beings. Existentialism was especially popular in Western Europe and the United States in the decades immediately before and after World War II, where it was seen to reflect the popular mood of the time. Although precursors to Existentialism can be found in the earliest philosophical and religious texts of classical antiquity—the work of St. Augustine is of particular relevance in this regard—the modern incarnation of existentialism can be traced to mid-19th-century Europe. While there is considerable controversy regarding the genesis of Existentialism, a plausible beginning can be found in the series of lectures delivered by the German philosopher and theologian F. W. J. Schelling in Berlin in 1841. Among other prominent 19th-century intellectuals in attendance was the Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard, whose 1843 works Either/Or and Fear and Trembling formalized many of Schelling’s key themes, above all an emphasis on the radical dimensions of human freedom. In this regard, Existentialism can be understood as a rejection of the metaphysical system building of German idealism. Kierkegaard’s philosophy was especially directed against the work of G. W. F. Hegel, who held that human actions must be understood as an expression of the historical unfolding of spirit [Geist] in the pursuit of freedom. In response, Kierkegaard argued that the everyday practices and lived experiences of individuals ought to form the basis of philosophical inquiry, rather than metaphysical abstractions.
Feminism and Suffragism
Authors: Jovanovich-Kelley Monica
Published: September 2018

Originating from the French word féminisme, feminism’s first appearance in 1837 is attributed to the social theorist Charles Fourier (1772–1837). Denoting a principle that argues for the rights of women and the equality of the sexes, it grew increasingly popular as a term in the second half of the 19th century, and first appeared in the Oxford Dictionary of English in 1895. As a reform movement with a network of activists comprising both sexes across the Americas and Europe, the championing of political, financial, and social equality for women had its roots in abolitionist and temperance movements of the early 19th century. Roughly divided into three waves, the first began in the mid-1800s and peaked in the United States and Europe between 1890 and 1920. The second took place from the late 1960s to the 1980s, and was followed by a third in the mid-1990s.
Indian National Congress
Authors: Poore Benjamin
Published: September 2018

The Indian National Congress is one of the largest and oldest democratic political organizations in the world, and one of two major parties in Indian political life. In 1885 the Congress was founded by middle-class intellectuals and professionals, including journalists, civil servants, lawyers, and teachers. The most notable early members of the organization included Lala Lajpat Rai, Allan Octavian Hume, Surendranath Banerjea, Dadabhai Naoroji, Sarojini Naidu, and Annie Besant.

The period of the Congress’ foundation occurred within what is known as the Moderate Phase of emergent Indian nationalism. Secular and liberal in character, this political period was highly critical of racism and discrimination in professional life, and the economic disempowerment of Indians by the imperial project. The national organization of the Congress hinged on not only the national network of railways—especially vital for campaigning in later years—but also contact between the intelligentsia and commercial communities.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844–1900)
Authors: Pecora Vincent P. , La Shot Derek
Published: September 2018

Friedrich Nietzsche, the son of a Lutheran minister, was a German philologist, philosopher, and iconoclast. He is best known for his controversial but powerful reevaluation of traditional Western morality, epistemology, and theology.

His early academic career was devoted to philology, and he secured a professorship at Basel University at the age of twenty-four despite having failed to obtain his doctorate at Leipzig. He obtained most of his philosophical training outside of his speciality. His principle resources were Arthur Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation, followed by Richard Wagner’s revolutionary music. Although he admired Schopenhauer’s stark premise that existence was a chaotic affair guided by a will to life, Nietzsche later replaced Schopenhauer’s embrace of ascetic "will-less-ness" as the only response to suffering with the "will to power": the idea that man "will rather will nothingness than not will" (Genealogy of Morals, III: sec. 1; emphasis in the original). His first book was The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music (1872; title altered in subsequent editions), which explained Greek tragedy by revealing the wrestling of two intellectual energies within it.
Albers, Josef (1888–1976)
Authors: Saletnik Jeffrey
Published: September 2018

A student, and later instructor, at the Bauhaus, Josef Albers introduced aspects of the German design school’s curriculum to the United States upon his emigration from Germany in 1933. Although he designed furnishings, worked in stained and etched glass, and made prints, Albers is known particularly for his "Homage to the Square" series of paintings of which he completed several hundred beginning in 1950. In these, three or four painted squares of different hue, color value, and saturation are nested within one another, thereby creating various optical effects as one square appears to float above another or as color differentiation is neutralized. How the chromic context in which any one color is situated contributes to its relative appearance also corresponded to Albers’s teaching of the topic and the important publication Interaction of Color in 1963. Albers taught at Black Mountain College near Asheville, North Carolina, between 1933 and 1949, and at Yale University from 1950 until 1958.
Haidar, Kadhim (1932–1985)
Authors: Shabout Nada
Published: September 2018

Born in Baghdad, Iraq, Kadhim Haidar studied art at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad after receiving a degree in Arabic Studies from the Higher Institute for Teachers in 1953. Later, in 1961 and 1962, he pursed a BA in theatre design and graphics at the Royal School of Art and Graphics in London. After his return from London, he taught at the Institute of Fine Arts in 1962 and the Academy of Fine Arts in Baghdad in 1968. He founded the Design Department at the Academy of Fine Arts in Baghdad in 1974 and chaired the Visual Arts Department there in 1981 and 1982. He was a contributing writer and a poet for various publications including Al-TakhtitwalElwan [Sketching and Colors], which became a standard textbook at the academy.

Haidar’s work explored key political shifts in Iraq during the 1950s and 1960s through a re-imagination of popular religious symbolism, which was seen in opposition to the new secular modern thought favored by his generation of artists, and thus had been absent from the work of modern Iraqi artists. His most noted series of work is Melhamet al-Shahid [The Martyr’s Epic], which is based on a poem he wrote in Baghdad in 1965. Through his negotiation of the martyrdom of the Prophet Mohammed’s grandson, al-Hussayn, at the battle of Karbala, Haidar’s work gained added significance for contemporary Iraqis within the turbulent political years of coups d’état and unsettled affairs.
Asai, Chû (浅井忠) (1856–1907)
Authors: Loh Kazuhara Eve
Published: September 2018

Asai Chû was a leading Yôga (Western-style painting) artist during the Meiji period. Asai began learning Kachô-ga (花鳥画, Japanese bird and flower paintings) from the age of thirteen, but turned to Western-style painting after entering Kunisawa Shinkurô’s (国沢新九郎) private school. In 1876, Asai was among the first group of students to study at the Technical Art School. There, he trained under the Italian painter Antonio Fontanesi, who was hired by the Meiji government to teach drawing and Western painting techniques. Under Fontanesi’s tutelage, Asai started painting landscapes with a darker palette similar to the Barbizon school. In 1889, Asai established the Meiji Art Society (明治美術会) aimed at promoting Yôga. In 1900, wanting to develop his skills further, Asai left for France, where he studied for two years at an Impressionist school. Upon his return to Japan, it was noted that his dark palette had lightened as a result of his time in France. In the same year, Asai took up a post as professor at the Kyoto Municipal Painting College and also inaugurated the Kansai Art Institute (関西美術院). A leading expert on Yôga, Asai held various teaching positions and served at the country’s first government-sponsored exhibition, the Bunten.
Belkahia, Farid (1934--)
Authors: Powers Jean Holiday
Published: September 2018

Born in Marrakesh, Morocco, Farid Belkahia is one of the foremost Moroccan modernist artists and the director of the École des Beaux-Arts in Casablanca from 1962 to 1974. In the early 1960s Belkahia turned from oil painting and easels and began working primarily with large-scale hammered copper. The copper was meant to be hung on walls and was used to create multidimensional bas-reliefs. Since the 1970s Belkahia is best known for his work with leather, which he treats using traditional techniques, employing shaped supports and paints made of naturally occurring dyes. The process of the work is an important aspect for Belkahia, and his pieces typically highlight both the organic shapes that make up the content of the work, and the texture and dimensionality of the materials themselves. He often employs Tifinagh letters and symbols that are culled from traditional Moroccan rugs, tattoos, and architecture. Belkahia has had multiple solo exhibitions at major locations in Morocco, including the national gallery, the Galerie Bab Rouah in Rabat, the Galerie L’Atelier in Rabat, and the Cultural Moussem of Asilah. He has also had international solo exhibitions at Darat al-Funun in Amman, Jordan and the Musée d’art modern et contemporain in Nice, France.
Boucherle, Pierre (1895–1988)
Authors: Gerschultz Jessica
Published: September 2018

Pierre Boucherle was a French artist born in Tunisia. After serving in World War I, he became a student of André Derain in Paris. His experiences with the École de Paris in Montparnasse influenced his subsequent relations with artists in Tunis. Boucherle organized successive groups of French, Italian, and Tunisian artists under the French Protectorate: the Groupe des Quatre in 1936, the Groupe des Dix in 1947, and the École de Tunis in 1948. He was the president of the École de Tunis until Tunisian independence in 1956 and was succeeded by Yahia Turki (1903–1969). Boucherle painted landscapes, still lifes, and nude figures. He designed three tapestries executed in the Ateliers Tabard in Aubusson, France, initializing an important link between the École de Tunis and French modern tapestry. In 1950 Boucherle served on a government committee that oversaw the decoration of Protectorate buildings under the 1% law. This committee established an institutional partnership between the colonial artisanat and the École des Beaux-Arts. Boucherle designed the decorative programs for the Lycée Carthage in Tunis and the Maison de la Tunisie in Paris between 1951 and 1954. He taught painting at the École des Beaux-Arts from 1958 until 1967. Boucherle left Tunis for France in 1978.
Cheong, Soo Pieng (1917–1983)
Authors: Chuah Kelvin
Published: September 2018

Cheong Soo Pieng was a Chinese-born artist who became well known for his contributions to Singapore’s modern art. In Nanyang, Cheong’s Chinese art training was integrated with the lush tropical landscape and the arresting allure of local communal practices. Cheong was part of a group of artists who visited Bali, Indonesia, in 1952 in search of the Nanyang Style, which involved Southeast Asian themes visualized with Western art techniques. The resulting imagery in the works created by the artists was exhibited back in Singapore the following year in the hugely lauded exhibition Four Artists to Bali. This provided the stimulus for these artists to develop further this particular genre of art. For Cheong, his artistic excursions were not confined to Singapore. He also traveled to Sarawak, Borneo, in 1959 and resided in Europe from 1961 to 1963, where he held solo and group shows, and where he also dabbled with abstraction in his works. Cheong is recognized for his development of distinctive figural types known as "elongated figures": female bodies with elongated limbs. The figural types he developed in the 1950s were reassessed and reworked in the 1970s. These later works reflect a matured handling and refinement, reinforcing his personal stylization of the subject matter.
Enani, Salah (1955–)
Authors: Dwider Sarah
Published: September 2018

Salah Enani is best known for his painted compositions, which depict playfully rendered figures that have exaggerated caricatured features. His works often present recognizable Egyptian cultural figures such as Umm Kulthum and Naguib Mahfouz. Born in Egypt, Salah Enani was trained at the Faculty of Art Education in Cairo and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1977. Early in his career, Enani worked as a commercial illustrator, which significantly influenced his painting style. After shifting to working as a painter, Salah Enani served as an instructor at the Faculty of Arts Education at Helwan University in Cairo. As an artist, Enani represented Egypt at the 1986 Netenberg Drawing Biennale in Germany as well as the Egyptian Cultural Week held in Sharjah in 2000. His work is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Egyptian Modern Art in Cairo.
Enas, Hoessein (1924–1995)
Authors: Abdullah Sarena
Published: September 2018

Mohd Hoessein Enas was born in Bogor, Indonesia, migrated to Singapore in 1945, and became a citizen of the Federation of Malaya in 1956. Largely self-taught, Enas is best known for using acrylic and oil paint to portray his subjects in the style of European academic portraiture.

In 1956 he spearheaded the Majlis Kesenian Melayu [Malaysian Arts Council] and was the founder and president of Angkatan Pelukis Semenanjung [The Peninsular Artists Force, or APS]. He played a distinct role in Malaysian art by introducing modernity and Western art through his figurative drawings influenced by the European academic style. Under Enas, the APS promoted the idea that local painters should produce artwork that stemmed from their emotional identification with Malaya by depicting Malay ideals of beauty and character.

Enas is widely acclaimed as the father of Malaysian portrait painting, and was appointed Royal Portrait Painter to the Sultan of Selangor in 1990. His later works include portraits of several sultans and members of Malaysian royalty. Enas was a fellow of London’s Royal Society of Arts, and was also the head of Design and Staging Services at Radio and Television Malaysia.
Ensor, James Sydney Edouard (1860–1949)
Authors: Todts Herwig
Published: September 2018

Prior to the outbreak of World War I, James Ensor (b. 1860 Ostend, Belgium–d. 1949 Ostend, Belgium) worked during the summer months in a souvenir shop owned by his family in the Belgian seaside resort of Ostend. His artistic career took place in the political, financial and cultural capital of Brussels, which was a train ride away from his home. From 1877 to 1880 he attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, where he participated in Les XX group, La LibreEsthétique artistic society, and the Galérie Georges Giroux. He took part in the cultural life and nightlife of Brussels, where he met literary friends, art lovers, and his mistress Augusta Boogaerts.

Ensor believed that the capital sin of producing aesthetic banality could be successfully combated by constantly exploring new subject matter, genres, techniques, materials, styles, and artistic disciplines (he wrote articles and composed music as well). Ensor explored the possibilities of any specific artistic project usually by radicalizing an existing model. His desire to experiment with Realism, Symbolism, Impressionism, Rembrandt’s light, the grotesque repertoire of Hiëronymus Bosch and Francisco Goya, or the farces of Pieter Brueghel resulted in iconographic and stylistic incoherent drawings and paintings with a surreal character. Occasionally Ensor used line, form, brush strokes, and color in an almost autonomous manner. He often employed one of his favored images, the mask, as an ambiguous and psychologically affecting motif (usually as an instrument of unmasking).

Since the 1960s, scholars have investigated the subversive function of Ensor’s combination of social and political satire, religious subject matter and a highly private iconography.
Gharbaoui, Jilali (1930–1971)
Authors: Powers Jean Holiday
Published: September 2018

Jilali Gharbaoui was a sculptor and painter born in Jorf El Melh, Sidi Kacem region in Morocco. Along with Ahmed Cherkaoui, Jilali Gharbaoui is considered one of the founders of modernism in Morocco. He played a major role in furthering the debates around Moroccan modernism, and his work focuses on the gesture of painting itself.

Although Gharbaoui worked with both sculpture and painting, he is best known for the striking colors and violent brush strokes of his gestural abstractions on canvas, paper, and wood. Very early works by Gharbaoui are relatively representational or focus on geometric abstraction, but later works are identified by a consistent style of loose abstract work that emphasizes the movement of the brush itself. The paintings deliberately highlight the hand of the artist and often build up texture through thick layers of paint, showcasing both the interplay of colors and lines as well as the materiality of the paint itself.

He was introduced as part of the groupe des informels at the Salon Comparaison in Paris in 1959 by art critic Pierre Restany. Gharbaoui suffered from severe mental illness, and was hosted on multiple occasions by Father Denis Martin at the monastery of Toumliline in the Middle Atlas mountains. He committed suicide and his body was found on a public bench in the Champ de Mars. His body was repatriated to Morocco by André Malraux, and he is buried in Fes.
Halaby, Sophie (1906–1998)
Authors: Sherwell Tina
Published: September 2018

Sophie Halaby was born in 1906 in Jerusalem to a Palestinian father and Russian mother. She pursued her higher education in France and Italy between 1928 and 1933 before returning to the city of her birth, later fleeing from West Jerusalem to East Jerusalem during the 1948 Palestine War. In the 1950s she opened a small shop on Zahra Street where she sold handcrafted goods and her watercolor paintings. She also participated in several exhibitions in the 1980s. Halaby often portrayed the landscape surrounding Jerusalem, one of her primary inspirations, in watercolor and oil. Often painted from the perspective of a window or balcony view, many of her works are absent of human presence and have a melancholic and foreboding atmosphere. Unlike European painters of the Holy Land, Halaby did not focus on religious sites and grand panoramas in orientalist traditions, expressing instead a more intimate relationship to the land and its details in her landscape watercolors, which moved increasingly towards abstraction over the course of her life.

Her domestic sketches are some of the few images of Palestinian women working in the home during the period, and they reveal a facet of upper-class life during her time rarely seen or documented, recalling sketches of Impressionist artists. Halaby passed away in 1998 at the age of 92. Several Palestinian collectors, including Mazen Qupty, purchased her work. The significance of Halaby’s work was discovered in the late 1990s, and she is now considered one of Jerusalem’s pioneering female artists.
Hartley, Marsden (1877–1943)
Authors: Palm Regina
Published: September 2018

Marsden Hartley was a modernist painter and writer who worked in a variety of styles, from abstract to still life. After leaving school at fifteen to work in a factory, Hartley moved to Ohio where, in 1898, he received a scholarship to attend the Cleveland School of Art. It was there, after receiving a copy of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essays (1841), that Hartley became acquainted with the American spiritual and philosophical movement Transcendentalism. The following year Hartley enrolled at the New York School of Art, and in 1909 he received his first solo exhibition at Alfred Stieglitz’s 291 gallery. Hartley’s fascination with mysticism manifested itself in his paintings of grandiose mountains, Native American motifs, and religious iconography. In addition to his home state of Maine, Hartley came to love Germany. Berlin’s vibrant cultural scene, in conjunction with the city’s historical tolerance of homosexuality, may have contributed to the city’s appeal to Hartley, whom scholars believe to have been gay. Two of his most famous series, Amerika and War Motif, were both produced in Berlin in the 1910s. In addition to publishing treatises on art, Hartley wrote an autobiography, Somehow a Past (1933).
Hsiao Chin (Xiao Qin) [蕭勤] (1935--)
Authors: Seiz Natalie
Published: September 2018

Hsiao Chin is an abstract painter who was born in Shanghai, China, to an affluent Christian family. His father Hsiao Yu-mei [蕭友梅] founded the Shanghai Conservatory of Music in 1927. His parents died when he was young, and he moved to Taiwan where, in 1951, he entered the Department of Art Education at the Provincial Taipei Normal School. There he met his mentor Li Chung-sheng [李仲生] (1912–1984). In 1956 Hsiao became a founding member of the Ton Fan Art Group [東方畫會] (also known as the Dongfang huahui or Eastern Painting Group). Hsiao Chin had moved to Spain in 1955, by which time his painting was rich in calligraphic marks made in oil. He moved to Italy in 1958 and lived there for forty years, establishing the Punto movement in 1961 with painters Antonio Calderara (1903–1978), Azuma Kenjiro (1926--), and Li Yuan-chia [李元佳] (1929–1994).

Throughout his life, Hsiao investigated Taoism and metaphysics, Zen, the energy of the sun, Tibetan tantrism, and Indian mandalas, and represented this in his non-figurative works through pure bold colors. While in New York from 1967–1971, he was further influenced by the work of Mark Rothko. Hsiao also wrote for Taiwanese newspapers from abroad, communicating art news and trends directly to a Taiwanese audience.
Lahham, Rafiq (1932--)
Authors: Rogers Sarah Ann
Published: September 2018

Born in Damascus in 1932, Rafiq Lahham went on to become a pioneer in Jordan’s modern art movement. His body of work is characterized by a diverse approach to choice of style, media, and subject matter. Working in oil, gouache, watercolor, collage, printmaking, and silk screens, Lahham depicts portraits, landscapes and cityscapes, Arabic calligraphy, and semi-abstract compositions. During the 1960s, Lahham was among the first artists in Jordan to incorporate calligraphy into his compositions and also one of the first painters to experiment with complete abstraction. Lahham is considered, along with Muhanna Durra, to be a member of the first generation of Jordanian artists to receive government scholarships to train abroad. He studied at Ente Nationale Addestramento Lavoratori Commercio and St Giacomo Instituto in Rome, graduating in 1962. He continued his studies in painting and etching at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. Upon his return to Amman, Lahham worked as a cultural advisor for the Ministry of Tourism until his retirement in 1995. He is a founding member of the Artists Association. He lives and works in Amman.
Laubser, Maggie (1886–1972)
Authors: Peter Judy
Published: September 2018

The painter Maggie Laubser occupies an important space in South African art history. Her evolution as an artist was greatly influenced by her initial European-style academic training in South Africa and her later travels in Europe, which included London, Belgium, Italy and Germany. Laubser’s contact with the German Expressionists from 1922 to 1924 had the most profound impact on her artistic practice. The influence of German Expressionism was readily recognized in her paintings. The naïve, apolitical and impersonal treatment of subjects in her paintings exposed her to a hostile audience at home in South Africa. In 1936, Laubser’s paintings were included in the Large Empire Exhibition; her work had become more acceptable as the South African audience grew less conservative. Her inclusion in this exhibition marked her entrance into the South African scene as an established artist. Throughout her prolific career, Laubser remained true to the rural South African landscape in paintings of farmsteads, ducks, and Cape Dutch architecture—speaking clearly of her rural beginnings in the Boland region.
Melehi, Mohammed (1936--)
Authors: Powers Jean Holiday
Published: September 2018

Mohammed Melehi is known as one of the leading modernist figures in Morocco. Since the 1960s, Melehi has produced a body of work based around a recurrent motif of waves. His canvases are consistently hard-edged and feature optic abstractions—the lines are clean, the colors clearly delineated, and the brushstrokes and movements of the paintbrush are not visible. The waves have been linked to the waves of the beaches of Asilah (Melehi’s hometown), the gesture of writing Arabic calligraphy, and to transcendence and prayer. Beyond his painting, Melehi’s career has been prolific: he has taught, published, produced policy, and worked as a graphic designer. He was a professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts of Casablanca (1964–1969), and was an active member of the group surrounding the leftist cultural journal Souffles from 1966 to 1969, designing its iconic original cover. From 1972 to 1977, Melehi was founder and director of the cultural journal Intégral. In 1974, he co-founded and became the director of the publishing house Shoof. In 1978, Melehi and Mohammed Benaïssa co-founded the Al Mohit association and the annual cultural Moussem of Asilah, an arts festival known for its outdoor murals which remains active to this day. Melehi was arts director at the Ministry of Culture from 1984 to 1992.
Nagdi, Omar el- (1931--)
Authors: Dwider Sarah
Published: September 2018

Omar el-Nagdi began his art education at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1953. He received a second bachelor’s degree in 1957 from the Faculty of Applied Arts in Cairo. In addition to his studies in Egypt, El-Nagdi studied abroad in Russia, Italy and Holland. Beginning in 1957, El-Nagdi served as an instructor at the Faculty of Applied Arts in Cairo. Omar el-Nagdi’s early works were primarily figural paintings inspired by Egyptian folk traditions. In the 1960s, he shifted to full abstraction and the calligraphic Arabic letters became a prominent theme in his work. El-Nagdi also created a running series of sculptural works that translated the angular figures from his early paintings into three-dimensional forms.
The National Gallery of Zimbabwe
Authors: Hellman Amanda H.
Published: September 2018

The National Gallery of Zimbabwe is an art museum in Harare dedicated to collecting, preserving, and promoting Zimbabwean visual culture. Though the collection focuses on contemporary artists from Zimbabwe, its holdings are diverse, containing traditional and contemporary African along with European Old Master paintings—a reflection of the acquisition interests of the first director.

Sir James Gordon McDonald (1867–1942), a friend and biographer of Cecil Rhodes, gifted £30,000 to found an art gallery in 1943. Ten years later in 1953 a board was established to raise funds, build the museum, and select a director. In 1956, Scotsman Frank McEwen (1907–1994) was appointed to the post of director. The Rhodes National Gallery was opened on 16 July 1957 in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (renamed Harare, Zimbabwe in 1980). The institution changed its name to the National Gallery of Rhodesia in 1972, one year prior to McEwen’s resignation. One of McEwan’s projects was the Rhodes National Gallery Workshop School. Artists who participated in this early workshop, such as Thomas Mukarobgwa and John and Bernard Takawira, helped define Zimbabwean modern art. After Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980 the National Gallery developed the BAT Workshop, which became the National Gallery School of Visual Art and Design in 2012.
Black Bottom
Authors: Stroik Adrienne
Published: September 2018

The Black Bottom dance began as an early twentieth-century African American social dance in the Southern United States. It later entered the American mainstream via Broadway productions, and underwent significant alterations during transmission. The Great Migration, urbanization, and industrialization resulted in the Black Bottom being brought into urban black communities and theaters in the Northeast and Midwest. In the 1920s, white directors and performers went into the predominately black neighborhood of Harlem and witnessed the dance performed by black performers in segregated theaters, and later received private instruction from black dancers. These performers and directors took their knowledge of Black Bottom out of the black community and onto the stages of Broadway. This transmission into theatrical performance ignited the widespread popularity of the Black Bottom, and led to its presence in white social entertainment venues (the dance, however, was drastically simplified). Black Bottom became part of modernist American society, which in itself was drawn to white appropriation of black practices. The Black Bottom established that dancing modern often meant adopting, adapting, and performing black dances.
Nirand, Pichai (1936--)
Authors: Baker Catherine
Published: September 2018

Pichai Nirand is a Thai painter who worked using expressionist and surrealist styles in his depiction of Buddhist themes. In 1956 Pichai attended a local art school, the School of Fine Arts. Between 1956 and 1959 he conducted his training at the Faculty of Painting and Sculpture at Silpakorn University, later gaining an international reputation and winning many awards. Pichai has been involved in teaching since graduating and continues to the present day in this capacity. The media Pichai employs are varied, including oil on canvas as well as mixed media. His works are influenced by a Buddhist philosophy and his practice aims to bring personal inner serenity via an exploration of Buddhist doctrine. Many themes are explored in his works, including the cycle of life, the Buddhist concept of personal self-enlightenment, and the idea of impermanence. In many works he uses symbolism to reflect the ethereal presence of a Buddha. Buddha footprints, which are often traditionally portrayed on the walls of Thai Buddhist temples, denote this presence. Images of lotus flowers in different stages of bloom are delicately detailed to depict cycles of life. Nature, in the form of trees and butterflies, is represented as part of a complex and in-depth expression and reflection on the nature of life and spirituality within a Buddhist ideology.
Roy, Jamini (1887–1972)
Authors: Xaviers John
Published: September 2018

Jamini Roy is considered one of the most important modern artists of pre-independent India. While proficient in Western academic realism, he completely rejected the style to adopt folk traditions such as the Kalighat patua. He mass-produced his folk-like paintings in a guild or kharkhana in order to reject the uniqueness of the modern art object, and to democratize the art collection process (he rejected bourgeois taste and buying habits). Roy invented his own folk-inspired form as an anti-colonial visual idiom. While an agnostic, he deliberately painted Indian religious or mythological themes as an antidote to the ideas of colonial art education. Adamant about the use of homegrown art materials, Roy often used tempera with tamarind glue as a binder. Roy painted Christian themes to test his ideas, and to see if the folk schema that he developed in his workshop could be used successfully in non-Indian religious contexts. Roy simplified his curvilinear painting method to such an extent that the indexical mark of his brush strokes could be replaced with the reproducibility of a schema in an art workshop. Such simplification has resulted in an upsurge of Jamini Roy replications. This, however, is a problem largely in the eyes of collectors, who hold the very bourgeois art ethos that Jamini Roy rejected while mass-producing multiple copies of his works.
Soonponsri, Kamchorn (1937--)
Authors: Galloway Charlotte
Published: September 2018

Born in Lopburi, Thailand, Soonponsri graduated from Silpakorn University in 1962, and completed a Master of Fine Arts in sculpture and painting at the Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles in 1971. Throughout his career he has pushed the boundaries of institutional convention. While abstraction was popular with younger Thai artists such as Soonponsri in the 1960s, the National Exhibition of Art and Silpakorn University still favored more traditional works and approaches. Breakaway exhibitions arose, and Soonponsri was involved in one of the early shows held at the privately owned Bangkapi Gallery in 1964. He took on a politically active role following the pro-democracy student protests of 1973. Soonponsri became chairman of the Artists’ Front of Thailand, founded in 1974 with the aim of harnessing art in the quest to obtain democratic government. He was an organizer of the first Open Art Exhibition of Thailand, held in 1979 as a further challenge to the National Exhibition of Art. His activism contributed to significant change, and he later became a jury member for a revitalized National Art Exhibition. Soonponsri’s works are abstracted and emotive. In the early 1990s he was a lecturer at Silpakorn University with other well-known artists such as Ithipol Thangchalok.
Steichen, Eduard Jean (1879–1973)
Authors: Goley Mary Anne
Published: September 2018

Photographer, painter, curator and horticulturalist Eduard Jean Steichen was born in Luxembourg and immigrated to the US in 1881. He was self-taught, favoring soft, harmonious tones in both paintings and photographs. In 1905 he and Alfred Stieglitz collaborated to launch the Little Galleries of the Photo Secession (known as "291") for which Steichen curated the first exhibits in the US by modern French artists. The international success of his double-negative portrait, Rodin—Le Penseur (1904) and sales from an exhibit of paintings at Eugene Glaenzer & Co. led Steichen to Paris in 1906, where his work was influenced by the Fauves and experimentation with autochromes, an early color photography process. Subsequently inspired by the concept of the fourth dimension, his work became hard edged. Steichen returned to New York in 1923, where he was appointed the chief photographer for Condé Nast . He was the first director of the Museum of Modern Art’s Department of Photography (1947–62). In 1955 his photographic essay, The Family of Man, toured internationally and he began a film essay of a Shad Blow tree, which was never completed.
Ithipol Thangchalok (1946--)
Authors: Galloway Charlotte
Published: September 2018

Ithipol Thangchalok has established an international reputation as both a leading contemporary Thai artist, and a respected art educator. While studying at Silpakorn University he was exposed to abstract art and print techniques through Chalood Nimsamer, who had recently returned from the Pratt Graphic Center in New York. Thangchalok excelled at Silpakorn and subsequently received a scholarship to study fine art at the University of Washington, completing his Master’s degree in 1975. Subsequently, he received another scholarship to travel to Australia in 1983.

In his work, Thangchalok favors abstraction and demonstrates great confidence in managing line and texture. He has explored a number of diverse themes as a conceptual artist, including contemporary concerns related to the old and new in urban environments. He exhibits his work regularly, often representing Thailand internationally; moreover, he continues to maintain a strong local following. In addition to being a significant figure in the Thai art scene, Thangchalok is an assistant professor in painting at Silpakorn University, and is actively involved in arts organizations in Thailand including the National Gallery, Bangkok. While he has worked with a variety of media, he is considered an expert printmaker. Thangchalok experiments with various printmaking techniques and through his teaching has helped popularize the medium among a new generation of Thai artists.
Wanly, Seif (1906–1979)
Authors: Radwan Nadia
Published: September 2018

Born in Alexandria, Egypt, Seif Wanly is a leading figure of Egyptian modern art. Together with his younger brother, Adham Wanly, he was among the first Alexandrian artists to depict international subjects, such as circus, ballet, opera, music concerts, theater performances, and bull fighting. The Wanly brothers studied under the Italian painter Ottorino Bicchi (1878–1949) in 1929 before they established their own studio in Alexandria in 1935. During the 1950s, they traveled regularly to Europe and visited France, Italy, and Spain. In 1957, they were appointed professors at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Alexandria. Seif Wanly was a prolific artist and his work shared an affinity with the École de Barbizon, as well as with Cubism and Fauvism. When his brother Adham passed away in 1959, he went through a difficult period of his life, which was reflected in his work.
Yoshihara, Jiro
Authors: Robinson Joel
Published: September 2018

Jiro Yoshihara was the founder—with Shozo Shimamoto and a younger generation of students—of the Gutai Art Association (1954–72). He organized the association’s events, such as Outdoor Exhibition to Challenge the Midsummer Sun in 1955, promoting the event with his manifesto of 1956, and then a journal. He first showed his work with the Nika Society but, after World War II, rejected its orientation toward salon painting, and turned to a bolder, gestural abstraction, which accommodated his interest in calligraphy. His oils on canvas from the 1950s exemplify exchanges taking place at this time between the Japanese—proponents of Tachisme (Art Informel)—and Abstract Expressionism. This exchange may be seen in such works as Yoshihara’s White Painting, shown at New York’s Martha Jackson Gallery in 1958. Under the leadership of Yoshihara, Gutai (meaning "concrete embodiment") picked up on the performative nature of these tendencies, taking a multimedia approach that encompassed happenings, installation, new media, everyday materials, and eliciting audience participation. With the exception of interactive works such as Room and Please Draw Freely, both shown at the second outdoor Gutai exhibition of 1956, Yoshihara was chiefly a painter, remembered today for his Zen-inspired minimalist rectangular and circular forms on black, red, or white ground, to which he devoted himself through the 1960s.
Geometric Abstraction and Concrete Art in South America
Authors: Saavedra David Fernando Cortés
Published: September 2018

Nonfigurative painting based on structural and geometric principles in South America can be traced back to 1923 in the works of Argentine painter and theoretician Emilio Pettoruti (1892–1971), the 1925 paintings of Italian-Argentine artist Juan del Prete (1897–1978), and in the dynamic abstract canvases of Chilean artist Luis Vargas Rosas in the 1920s. However, it was only in 1935 with the creation of the Asociación de Arte Constructivo (AAC) by the Uruguayan painter and ideologist Joaquín Torres-García (1874–1949) that systematic experimentation with geometric and architectural principles came to dominate the pictorial and sculptural production of a cohesive artistic sector. Both the Argentinean Asociación de Arte Concreto Invención and the MADI group, which both dominated the concrete art scene in Argentina after the 1940s, were clearly influenced by AAC and the Taller Torres García, although they criticized the latter’s metaphysical preoccupations. In Colombia and Venezuela, the creation of geometric concrete sculptures was boosted by a minimalistic approach to the use of industrial materials, allowing artists to create cutting-edge compositions at a relatively low cost. In the 1950s, concrete visual art and poetry gained momentum in Brazil, largely thanks to the work of the antagonist Ruptura and Frente groups, which linked Latin American art to a larger international modernist artistic trend.
Contemporary South Asian Dance
Authors: Katrak Ketu H.
Published: September 2018

Contemporary South Asian Dance is performed in the geographical territories of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and in the diaspora of South Asians in the global North and South. In the early twentieth century, migrations into Southeast Asia, parts of Africa, and the Caribbean originated from British colonization. Later, South Asians relocated to Canada, Britain, Europe, Australia, and the U.S.

Contemporary South Asian choreography is inspired by indigenous traditions, Indian classical dance styles, and is at times hindered by political and religious restrictions repressing dance expression in public.
Falla (y Matheu), Manuel de (1876–1946)
Authors: Payne Alyson
Published: September 2018

Spanish composer Falla was the central figure of his generation, eclipsing composers such as Joaquín Turina and Joaquín Rodrigo. He blended Spanish musical nationalism, cultivated by Felipe Pedrell, Isaac Albéniz and Enrique Granados, with modernist techniques to create a style heralded as both universal and Spanish. After his death, he became a legendary national figure. Later Spanish composers, such as Cristóbal Halffter and Luis de Pablo, cite Falla as having the most profound effect on their esthetics.

Falla received his early musical training from his mother, who taught him piano in addition to the basics of music. As a boy, Falla had literary aspirations, creating several short-lived magazines with friends, such as El Burlón (1889) and El Cascabel (1890). His talent for writing would serve him well as he later authored articles on music and fashioned his own libretti. He eventually turned his creative energies toward music and, in 1896, Falla began taking trips to Madrid to study piano with José Tragó, who also taught the young composer Joaquín Turina. The two composers would eventually meet and form a mutually beneficial friendship. Taking up residence in Madrid, Falla enrolled in the Madrid Conservatory and graduated in 1899. He also began premiering piano compositions and works for small chamber groups.
Ferrari, Luc (1929–2005)
Authors: Drott Eric
Published: September 2018

French experimental composer Luc Ferrari was one of the key figures in the development of electroacoustic music in France during the late 1950s and 1960s. In 1958 he was invited by Pierre Schaeffer, the pioneer of musiqueconcrète, to join the Groupes de recherches musicales (GRM). Ferrari developed his own distinctive approach to electroacoustic composition, which he dubbed "anecdotal music." Although he is best known for his electroacoustic compositions, Ferrari worked in a wide variety of media and techniques throughout his career.

Some of Ferrari’s early tape pieces such as Etude aux accidents (1958) and Etude aux sons tendus (1958) were consistent with the research objectives promulgated by Schaeffer, abstracting sounds from their sources in order to direct attention to their phenomenological characteristics. However, Ferrari soon developed his own distinctive approach to electroacoustic composition, which he dubbed "anecdotal music." Inaugurated in his composition Hétérozygote (1963–64), "anecdotal music" exploited the referential character of recorded sound to reintroduce a narrative dimension hitherto absent in musiqueconcrète.
Iturriaga (Romero), Enrique (1918--)
Authors: Junchaya Rafael Leonardo
Published: September 2018

Enrique Iturriaga is a Peruvian composer and music pedagogue. He is one of the lead representatives of the so-called Generación del 50, a Peruvian composers’ group that introduced modernist ideas to the musical life of Peru during the mid-twentieth century. Although Iturriaga’s production is not vast, it has been awarded several composition prizes and has been performed and published extensively. As a music teacher, he was a leading personality at the National Conservatoire of Peru, where he taught for over fifty years and was appointed twice as General Director. Iturriaga has experimented with diverse techniques depending on the demands of each individual work, which are always solidly constructed. His music shows the influence of Stravinsky and Bartók, and his style is close to that of other Latin American composers of the first half of the twentieth century, such as Alberto Ginastera and Juan Orrego Salas. Iturriaga is deeply concerned with his Peruvian musical heritage, aiming to reconstruct it through a modern musical language.
Kagel, Mauricio Raúl (1931–2008)
Authors: Heile Björn
Published: September 2018

Mauricio Raúl Kagel was an Argentine-German composer. One of the most influential composers of the post-war European avant-garde, Kagel was instrumental during the development from the serial composition of the 1950s into the radical experimentalism of the 1960s and ‘70s. A tireless and prolific innovator and polymath, Kagel often transcended traditional genres and artistic media, incorporating films, radio plays, experimental music theatre, and hybrid or mixed-media works. In addition, he created compositions in most traditional musical genres, from piano pieces and string quartets to operas. Many of his works deal with cultural, social, and political issues in allusive ways and derive their interest more from their conceptual nature than from their immediate esthetic effect, suggesting an intellectual kinship with similar tendencies in conceptual or performance art, among other genres.
Katunda, Eunice de Monte Lima (1915–1990)
Authors: Soares Luciana
Published: September 2018

Eunice de Monte Lima Katunda was a Brazilian pianist, composer, conductor, and educator. She was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1915 and died in the state of São Paulo in 1990. Catunda began her piano studies at the age of five with Mima Osward and later studied piano with Branca Bilhar and composition with Oscar Guanabarino. At the age of twelve she gave her debut recital at the Salão Nobre of the Instituto Nacional de Música in her home town, and five years later entered the concert scene performing Moskowsky’s Concerto in E Major, Op. 59 with the Orquestra Sinfônica Municipal do Rio de Janeiro, to critical acclaim. In 1934 she married Omar Catunda and the couple moved to São Paulo, beginning a new and important chapter in Mrs. Catunda’s artistic career.
Live Electronic Music
Authors: Bertolani Valentina , Sallis Friedemann
Published: September 2018

Defining live electronic music is a problematic and increasingly difficult critical task (Emmerson, 2007, 89–90; see also Collins, 2007, 38–54; Radford, 2008, 158–166). Attempts at pinning down the term are marked by the "plurality and hazy definitions" generally encountered in the analysis of electronic music (Peters, 2012, 3). The term and the musical concepts that it entails are moving targets: new developments in technology and organology continue to redefine the genre. For the purposes of this article, live electronic music is performance in which the electronic element influences or is influenced by the performers in some interactive way. This definition is informed by the notion that live electronic music can best be understood as a performance strategy rather than a compositional technique.