Posts

Showing posts with the label Reconstructivism

Feature Post.

The Slave Market and the Theatre of European Anxiety

Image
Author Brian Hawkeswood.                                                                                                   Nach unten scrollen für die deutsche Übersetzung https://artelbestudio.blogspot.com/2025/04/orientalist-beautiful-form-of-realism.html When Jean-Léon Gérôme exhibited The Slave Market in 1871, Europe was not an innocent observer of slavery. The Atlantic system had only recently been dismantled in parts of the Western world; Brazil would abolish slavery in 1888. European empires were expanding across Africa and the Middle East. Racial hierarchies were being codified in pseudo-scientific language. Anthropology, colonial administration, and academic painting shared an overlapping visual culture.         ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Reconstructivism: A Manifesto for the Return of Meaning in Art

Image
  Author- Brian Hawkeswood.                 Rekonstruktivismus: Ein Manifest für die Rückkehr der Bedeutung in der Kunst We have lived through the ruins long enough. Modern art, once the vanguard of feeling and form, has collapsed into a fog of obfuscation, self-reference, and cultivated alienation. We are told to admire the “idea,” not the execution; to look for the text beside the canvas, not the image itself. We are expected to revere the artist’s biography, identity, or trauma, but not their touch. In this cathedral of hollow gestures, beauty has been exiled, the figure banned, drawing forgotten, and sincerity rendered naïve.                               John William Waterhouse - "The Lady of Shalott" 1888. The group Waterhouse belonged to "The Preraphaelites " were the "Reconstructivists" of their day, wanting to return to the art produced before the time of ...
1 comment
Read more