青海古代邮驿考述

青海古代新闻传播活动属于中华文明发展的有机组成部分,青海民和县新石器遗址中出土的陶制喇叭筒一直被新闻史家视为中国先民开展原始信息传播活动的重要物证之一.本文借助众学科已有研究成果,考证青海古代信息传播活动中的邮驿发展,为进一步展开中国新闻史研究提供资料和个案.     

文化生态与艺术传承——以热贡艺术为例

本文结合田野调查资料,根据热贡文化生态特点,从文化生态学、艺术人类学角度,探讨了热贡艺术的文化生态,及生态系统中的文化特质,并时热贡艺术产业化发展进行了思考.     

Complexity: Some Remarks about a Classical Aesthetic Concept

The connection between autonomous art and complexity has been extensively and deeply studied in literary theories in the 20th century. The rise of aesthetic autonomy implies the complexity of literary work as the concept of a sealed container arises from the relationship between the parts that make it up. In this model, the interpretation subject works to directly face literary texts. Instead of pursuing the author’s intention, it aims to reproduce the richness and subtlety of the aesthetic state, and consider the richness and subtlety revealed in the maximum amount of text details in literary works, even if procedurally deviating from the way of mainstream understanding. There is increasing skepticism about the consequences of the autonomous aesthetics, which has been coerced by the development of contemporary capitalism, and it is necessary to develop new forms of aesthetics to reflect the changing social situation.     

Between hagiography and historiography: Chabad,scholars of Hasidism,and the case of the portrait of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady

The portrait of Shneur Zalman of Liady is one of the most popular images in modern Jewish iconography. Published at the end of the nineteenth century, the portrait has quickly gained popularity both within and without the Chabad community. However, unlike the religious audience, which reveres the portrait as a faithful representation of the founder of Chabad, the secular, academic audience rejects it as fraudulent, together with all the supporting evidence provided by Chabad. This article revisits the history of the portrait’s creation and publication, paying particular attention to Russian documentation produced by Chabad in the 1930s, which has so far been entirely ignored by the scholarship. It identifies the portrait’s alleged painter and owner as well as other characters mentioned in these documents, with the aim of verifying Chabad’s version of events. Although this article does not answer conclusively whether the portrait is authentic or not, it proffers corroborating evidence for the Chabad point of view, and briefly discusses future research possibilities for the topic. Furthermore, the article considers the ways in which the leadership of Chabad used the history of the portrait to consolidate the movement and discusses the challenges that Chabad partisan historiography poses for the academic study of Hasidism.     

Jia’s The Chinese Version

Abstract

The Chinese Character Simplification Programme of 1955–1957 that remains a national standard by force of law in the People’s Republic of China, not only degraded the aesthetic properties of the Chinese written character, but also hindered literacy by means of a haphazard formal reduction of the number of strokes, and by eliminating two-thirds of characters from the lexicon of those allowed for publication. In The Chinese Version painting series by Jia (b.1979), the artist arranges Chinese characters according to formal rather than semantic criteria, in order to generate by means of their juxtaposition, abstract or figurative patterns. Each character may retain its individual meaning, but not its function as a sequential syntagm. This strategy invests the characters with a formal aspect to ‘return’ that which was mutilated by the Simplification Programme. As the Simplification Programme’s formal changes ended characters’ role as image-signs, the artist’s choice to present each work as a painting alludes to their lost image capacity while appearing to imitate the outward aspect of printed characters, thereby implicitly turning against itself the pretext of character simplification for the sake of efficiency.     

China’s modern image – contemporary Chinese art

Abstract

As a worldwide cultural phenomenon, contemporary art in China has not only been used as a diplomatic language but also a reflection of contemporary Chinese culture. Contemporary Chinese art, as an emerging field to display China’s global role, provides an important perspective to study China’s self-position in global relations, China’s diplomacy in exercising its soft power, contemporary Chinese culture, and the reinvention of China’s cultural/national identity in post-Mao China. Using the 2000 Shanghai Biennale and the Chinese pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale as case studies, this article investigates how the fluid construct of Chineseness is successfully promoted and demonstrated through the government’s support of contemporary Chinese art.     

Sometimes Words Just Ain't Enough – Enhancing the Contribution of Children in Therapy through Creative Expression

The meaningful inclusion of children in family therapy is an ideal that therapists readily align with and yet struggle to implement effectively. Within a practice that relies heavily on verbal expression, young children provide a unique challenge for therapists, who require developmentally appropriate opportunities for the child to express, document, and share his or her experience in all its richness and colour. In this paper the author utilises art therapy to support greater inclusion of children in family therapy by capitalising on their creative talents and facilitating the child's visual story within the family dialogue. This can assist in the formulation and treatment of systemic issues.     

In search of African history: the re-appropriation of photographic archives by contemporary visual artists

The digital revolution has fundamentally changed our relationship to archives, by accelerating their “dusting off” and their re-appropriation, particularly in the art world. This article will show the ways in which some contemporary visual artists use new digital technologies to provide new ways of storing, reading and retrieving contemporary African history. Such artists do so by revisiting diverse forms of archives that are mainly photographic, and which were produced during the colonial and independence eras.     

论转型期中国大众文艺中的知识分子形象

20世纪90年代以来,中国社会进入全面转型期。在精神领域,大众文艺的发展不断地消解社会的精英文化情结,这导致了知识分子话语的失落和知识分子角色的边缘化,甚至使知识精英成为市场经济时代的"多余人"。1990年代以来大众文艺中的知识分子形象大都以世俗化、平民化的面目出现,其生活方式、行为方式、情感趣味、思想趣味日趋向大众看齐,曾经以"化大众"为己任的知识分子精英成为生活中的孤独者或沉沦者。世纪转型期大众文艺中的知识分子形象已处于深刻的危机之中,他们精神上营养不良,人格萎缩困顿,趣味世俗粗劣,已然丧失了对个人、人类和世界的存在意义的把握,知识精英群体集体陷入沉默状态。这在一定程度上折射出当下现实境遇中知识分子角色的尴尬处境。这种状况值得我们深入关注。     

西方文化和文论中的Image——从比较文化和比较文论的角度看Image(形象/意象/图像)(之一)

Image(形象/图像/意象)是全球化时代文化对话和美学对话中的一个重要主题.从比较文化的角度来看,其在西方主要与三个方面相关:由主客互动而来的影像,主体心理运行的意象,由主体外化而成的艺术形象.这三个方面为image在中国的三种不同译法奠定了基础.