Inherited Memories

ABSTRACT

This article explores the creation and transmission of second generation memories concerning the 1947 Partition of British India. The research is based on oral interviews with Punjabi families who migrated because of Partition and now live in Lahore and Delhi. It explores how Partition memories have been transmitted across generations within these families, and also examines similarities and differences between how the second generation interviewees from Delhi and Lahore remember Partition. It demonstrates that the second generation have not passively accepted everything that the first generation, or the state, has told them about Partition. The second generation's memories are also shaped by their age, nationality, religion and class, and the nature of contemporary politics.     

Non-Descender and All-Cap Arabic Writing

Contrary to the common belief of Arabic language users that the Arabic writing system has descenders as an inherent quality, some historical examples demonstrate that there were some artistic attempts to create non-descender, all-cap calligraphic systems, but they have never been studied as a phenomenon. This article draws attention to the existence of these examples, and analyses and classifies them according to their form.

The article begins with an analysis of the current Arabic writing system in terms of descenders, differentiating between artistic and functional writing, defining the need for harmonious balance in artistic writing, and demonstrating that descenders do disrupt the balance in Arabic writing, which could be considered as an ascender-system.

Then, historical examples of the non-descender system are introduced, categorised into four visual stages, and the descender handling for each stage is described; all-capital letter examples are then introduced.

Finally, some historical texts describing the beauty of calligraphy in this specific system of writing are analysed.

Abbreviations: MET: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, www.metmuseum.org; LACMA: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, www.lacma.org; No. : Accession Number     

Introduction

ABSTRACT

This introductory essay identifies the major themes of the special issue, emphasizing both indigenous peoples' anticipation of how imperial modernity hailed them and their determination to work with as well as against it. The mobility, and restlessness, of the actors examined in the essays that follow helped to guarantee this defensive agency and to produce a shared grammar of engagement and resistance across disparate native communities in the nineteenth and twentieth-century worlds they travelled through.     

Recent and Forthcoming Events

AsiaChina and Pakistan Sign Memorandum on Translation and Publication of Classics China and Pakistan signed a memorandum on translation and publication of class...     

The consumption of contemporary visual art: identity formation in late adulthood

This paper examines the responses of older people to the British Art Show 6, which is an exhibition of recent developments in contemporary visual art in the UK. One group of respondents attended two “meet the artist talks” and a second group attended an artist-led workshop where they produced work that had been stimulated by the exhibition. The focus groups that resulted were analysed using theoretical frameworks related to identity construction. The analysis demonstrated that respondents were using the resources of the exhibition to construct identity positions in response to their social contexts. However, their ability to do this was governed by how the relationship between agency and structure played out for individuals in their engagement with contemporary visual art. It is suggested that wellbeing originates from the control such a process might give individuals over their social environment.     

Autogenous culture as political form: explorations through participatory art in Singapore

This paper presents the concept of autogenous cultural practices as a political form that is neither a subject of state practices, nor a means of resistive anti-state force. Through a study of three participatory art projects carried out by the author, this paper examines how and if autogenous culture can be presented and more importantly effect societal change. These projects were carried out in a governmental disciplinary facility, a local non-governmental organization supporting sex workers and an independent art project with three young women who were graduates of the Normal Technical stream in Singapore respectively.     

Xu Beihong and the New China: thoughts centered on the painting At the World Peace Congress

This essay analyses a politically tinged painting by Xu Beihong (1895–1953), a representative modern Chinese painter. He composed the work in 1949, just before the founding of the People’s Republic of China, or the New China. In this article’s discussion of the perplexing work, the author attempts to unveil Xu’s understanding of revolution and of the relationship between art and politics, in relation to his difficulties in exploring and practicing art in the early Republic period (1912–1949). Based on this, the author discusses the painter’s mindset in the social and political context of the New China. She also tries to reveal that Xu’s art practices were restrained by the realities he was in – a crucial point to understanding his achievements and predicaments. As an artist who resisted the western modernism in the course of modernization, and who idealistically pursued the highest good and beauty through “realist” approaches and historical expressions, Xu’s predicaments interestingly reflect the complicated relationship between art and revolution in China’s road to modernization, and provide a foundation for further explorations into the core issues and the particularity of modern Chinese paintings.     

Screen violence and partition

ABSTRACT

Recent film and television treatment of South Asia from UK producers have introduced new angles on the violent politics of colonial past, whether this be the activities of the East India Company in the early days of Empire, or about Partition, at the ostensible Raj’s end. The controversy over Gurinder Chadha’s 2017 film Viceroy’s House is taken as an opportunity to consider the new South Asian film and television studies and the emergent scholars that are challenging conventional media studies models. The co-constitution of here and there is given as an analytic lens through which to comprehend representation and stereotyping in films “about” politics in South Asia, and the view taken is that a debilitating divide and rule, via mechanisms of representation, remains strongly in place, despite the fighting efforts of the new South Asian media scholarship.     

The Power and Function of Images in Northern Europe During the Migration Period

ABSTRACT

In the fifth and early sixth centuries, numerous objects in northern Europe were decorated in a particularly consistent visual style (‘Germanic Animal Style I’). This article argues that we should treat these images not simply as representations of cultural notions, but as an active part in the process of creating a shared elite identity, formed during a particular period of historical crisis.     

Labour relations in Korea between crisis management and living solidarity

Abstract

This paper examines the ambiguous nature of Murakami's criticism toward the postwar Japanese condition – as the artist most effectively captured in his phrase ‘A Little Boy,’ which was also the title of his curated exhibition at the Japan Society of New York in 2005 Murakami, Takashi. 2005. “‘Earth in my window’”. In Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture, Edited by: Murakami, Takashi. 98–149. New York and New Haven: The Japan Society and Yale University Press. Linda Hoaglund (trans.) [Google Scholar]. As Murakami wrote in his introduction to the catalogue, demilitarized Japan after the Second World War underwent a collective sense of helplessness, and the metaphor of a little boy is intended to describe Japan's supposedly unavoidable reliance on its big brother, America. The name ‘Little Boy,’ in fact, originates from the code name used by the American military for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. The proliferation of ‘cuteness’ in Japanese contemporary art, which draws upon youth culture, especially otaku culture, evinces a common urge among the postwar generation in Japan to escape from their horrible memories and sense of powerlessness. Murakami's rhetorical analysis of Japan's self‐image seems, however, contradictory, given his extremely aggressive business tactics, which can find no counterpart in the Western art world – not even in the efforts of Murakami's predecessor, Andy Warhol. Like My Lonesome Cowboy (1998), whose hyper sexuality defies its pubescent and immature appearance, his art, theory, and art marketing indicate the paradoxical nature of his theory of impotence. By focusing on his manifesto and writings published on the occasion of his 2005 Murakami, Takashi. 2005. “‘Earth in my window’”. In Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture, Edited by: Murakami, Takashi. 98–149. New York and New Haven: The Japan Society and Yale University Press. Linda Hoaglund (trans.) [Google Scholar] exhibition and his style of managing Kaikai Kiki Ltd., this paper delves into the dual nature of Murakami's interpretation of postwar Japanese art and culture, particularly in relation to those of America.     

Carrying out research across the arts and humanities and social sciences: developing the methodology for Dementia and Imagination

This paper analyses how the methodological approach for a major Arts and Humanities Research Council and Economic and Social Research Council-funded project entitled Dementia and Imagination ¹1. http://dementiaandimagination.org.uk/View all notes was formulated. This multidisciplinary project brings together the arts and humanities with the social sciences with their different epistemological philosophies and subsequent understandings of research methods. The main objective was to determine how visual arts activities may change, sustain and catalyse community cultures, beliefs, attitudes and behaviours to create dementia-friendly communities. This project involves 6 different UK universities, 14 researchers, 10 formal partners, 7 project artists, 3 research artists and a large number of civil society organisations. The analysis presents a series of themes that have been identified as influencing the approach taken to develop methods which aimed to speak to different audiences in the social sciences, arts and humanities, policy/practice and public domains. It is concluded that a research project of this type needs to embrace a wide variety of epistemological positions if it is to successfully achieve its objectives. This paper contributes to knowledge about how the methodology of large-scale multidisciplinary projects may be constructed which will be of value to those building research consortia across different universities and between universities and community partners.     

Ways of Seeing: The First Medieval Islamic and Christian Depictions of Roderick,Last Visigothic King of Spain

In the early eighth-century palace of Qu.(s)ayr ‘Amra in Syria, an image survives of Roderick, last Visigothic king of Spain, whose passionate love affair with the beautiful La Cava precipitated the Muslim invasion of his country in 711. Startlingly, this Umayyad painting predates the earliest written historical source narrating the invasion, the Cronica mozarabe of 754, and of Hispanic origin, which recounts the barest details of the Muslim conquest. The written account was later developed by medieval Christian and Arabic historians who had opposing views of this momentous event, creating a legend of extraordinary power and longevity, which has evolved in many different artistic forms from the Middle Ages to the present day. This essay assesses current scholarly opinion regarding the interpretation of this Arabic visual image of the Visigothic king and considers its implications in relation to the development of the legend of Roderick and La Cava in written form during the medieval period.