Aesthetics And Revolution

Staging Revolution refutes the deep-rooted notion that art overtly in the service of politics is by definition devoid of artistic merits. As a prominent component shaping the culture of the Cultural Revolution, model Beijing Opera (jingju) is the epitome of art used for political ends. Arguing against commonly accepted interpretations, Xing Fan demonstrates that in a performance of model jingju, political messages could only be realized through the most rigorously formulated artistic choices and conveyed by performers possessing exceptional techniques. Fan contextualizes model jingju at the intersection of history, artistry, and aesthetics. Integral to jingju’s interactions with politics are the practitioners’ constant artistic experimentations to accommodate the modern stories and characters within the jingju framework and the eventual formation of a new sense of beauty. Therefore, a thorough understanding of model jingju demands close attention to how the artists resolved actual production problems, which is a critical perspective missing in earlier studies. This book provides exactly this much-needed dimension of analysis by scrutinizing the decisions made in the real, practical context of bringing dramatic characters to life on stage, and by examining how major artistic elements interacted with each other, sometimes harmoniously, sometimes antagonistically. Such an approach necessarily places jingju artists center stage. Making use of first person accounts of the creative process, including numerous interviews conducted by the author, Fan presents a new appreciation of a lived experience that, on a harrowing journey of coping with political interference, was also filled with inspiration and excitement. “This fascinating study is ground-breaking and timely. Xing Fan masterfully demonstrates how the creative choices made by playwrights, directors, musicians, actors, and designers intersected with one another in creating an aesthetics of the model theater during the Cultural Revolution. A must-read for anyone interested in Chinese literature and drama, theater studies, and comparative literature.” —Xiaomei Chen, University of California, Davis “Though no longer in fashion, the model revolutionary operas of the Cultural Revolution are still occasionally performed. Xing Fan has done us a great service by analyzing them in detail and reminding us of their merits. I thoroughly enjoyed this engaging book and learned a lot from it. I recommend it strongly.” —Colin Mackerras, Griffith University

Refiguring Revolutions presents an original and interdisciplinary reassessment of the cultural and political history of England from 1649 to 1789. Bypassing conventional chronologies and traditional notions of disciplinary divides, editors Kevin Sharpe and Steven Zwicker frame a set of new agendas for, and suggest new approaches to, the study of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England. Customary periodization by dynasty and century obscures the aesthetic and cultural histories that were enacted between and even by the English Civil Wars and the French Revolution. The authors of the essays in this volume set about returning aesthetics to the center of the master narrative of politics. They focus on topics and moments that illuminate the connection between aesthetic issues of a private or public nature and political culture. Politics between the Puritan Revolution and the Romantic Revolution, these authors argue, was a set of social and aesthetic practices, a narrative of presentations, exchanges, and performances as much as it was a story of monarchies and ministries. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1998.

"What is indeed striking is the degree to which the essays reveal a shared set of interests and adopt languages and concerns that reflect back and forth in stimulating ways."--Richard W. Kroll, author of The Material World

This collection examines key aesthetic avant-garde art movements of the twentieth century and their relationships with revolutionary politics. The contributors distinguish aesthetic avant-gardes —whose artists aim to transform society and the ways of sensing the world through political means—from the artistic avant-gardes, which focus on transforming representation. Following the work of philosophers such as Friedrich Schiller and Jacques Rancière, the contributors argue that the aesthetic is inherently political and that aesthetic avant-garde art is essential for political revolution. In addition to analyzing Russian constructivsm, surrealism, and Situationist International, the contributors examine Italian futurism's model of integrating art with politics and life, the murals of revolutionary Mexico and Nicaragua, 1960s American art, and the Slovenian art collective NSK's construction of a fictional political state in the 1990s. Aesthetic Revolutions and Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde Movements traces the common foundations and goals shared by these disparate arts communities and shows how their art worked towards effecting political and social change. Contributors. John E. Bowlt, Sascha Bru, David Craven, Aleš Erjavec, Tyrus Miller, Raymond Spiteri, Miško Šuvakovic

The year 2018 marked the fiftieth anniversary of May ’68, a startling, by now almost mythic event which combined seriousness, courage, humor and theatrics. The contributions of this volume—based on papers presented the conference Does “la lutte continue”? The Global Afterlife of May ’68 at Florida State University in March 2019—explore the ramifications of that springtime protest in the contemporary world. What has widely become known as the movement of ‘68 consisted, in fact, of many synchronous movements in different nations that promoted a great variety of political, social, and cultural agendas. While it is impossible to write a global history of ’68, this volume presents a kaleidoscope of different perceptions, reflections, and receptions of protest in France, Italy, and other nations that share in common a global utopian imaginary as expressed, for example, in the slogan: “All power to the imagination!” The contributions of this collection show that, while all social struggles are political, many lasting changes in individual mentalities and social structures originated from utopian ideas that were realized first in artistic productions and their aesthetic reception. In this respect the various protests of May ’68 continue.

In this book, Anca Pusca seeks to extend the aesthetic and cultural turn in international relations to an analysis of post-communist transitions in Central and Eastern Europe. Building on the philosophy of Walter Benjamin and Jacques Ranciere, the work investigates how post-communist film, photography, theatre, art, museumization and architecture have creatively re-engaged with ideas of revolution, communism, capitalism and ethnic violence, and how this in turn has helped people survive and reinvent themselves amongst the material and ideological ruins of communism. The work illustrates how popular culture has effectively targeted and re-interpreted the classical representations of the transition in order to question: • The origin – focusing on practices of re-staging, memorializing and questioning the 1989 revolutions. • The unfolding – focusing on the human and material consequences of significant changes in processes of production and consumption. • The potential end – focusing on the illusions and disillusions surrounding the 'transition' process. A unique take on the influence that popular culture has had and continues to have on how we understand the post-communist transitions, this work will be of great interest to students and scholars of cultural and visual studies, eastern European politics and international relations.

Comintern Aesthetics shows how the cultural and political networks emerging from the Comintern have continued, even after its demise in 1943.

Examines art by over twenty-five artists to enable a greater understanding of the 'Arab Uprisings' and of the term 'revolution'.