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- Brändén, Irina
(författare)
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Bilder och berättelser om Sankt Nikolaus : Några vitaikoner studerade mot bakgrund av text och liturgi
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation concerns the pictorial language and communicative aspects of the vita icons of S Nicholas. The starting point is three vita icons of the saint of Russian origin in Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, dated to the end of the 15th century to the middle of the 17th century. Studies of the textual vitas of S Nicholas and texts of the services on the saint’s feast days leads to an understanding of the selection, sequence and location of episodes from the saint’s life in icons. The narrative and structural strategies of a number of S Nicholas vita icons are studied in comparison with vita icons of other saints (bishops, martyrs and monastic persons). These analyses reveal common narrative strategies and paradigmatic relations. Furthermore, attention is put on the spatial and semantic interactions between scenes within the cycle of S Nicholas vita icons, and their interplay with elements in the central part of the icons. The dissertation also discusses the possible connections between the pictorial language of S Nicholas vita icons, the structure and pictorial program of an iconostasis and some elements in the flow of liturgy. General patterns are noticed concerning the location of different themes in the narrative cycle of vita icons. The results show how the themes, colours and elements in the environment can link scenes together and help the viewers gaze through the pictorial landscape. A number of paradigmatic relationships between liturgy and vita icons of S Nicholas are identified, notably the scene with the translation of the saint’s relics, where the coffin is carried through or toward a passage. Central to the liturgy is carrying of the Gospel Book and the Holy Gifts through passages in the iconostasis. Rectangularity unites the coffin of the saint, the altar and the Gospel Book, in the vita icon, and in the church. Thus, various theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of icons, texts and liturgical context have resulted in a more nuanced understanding of the pictorial narrative program of S Nicholas vita icons.
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| 3. |
- Granath Lagercrantz, Mari, 1966-
(författare)
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Terrakottaföremål från Ghana på British Museum : Materiella och immateriella assemblage
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of the thesis is to identify, describe and interpret two series of terracotta objects from southern Ghana originally donated by Robert P. Wild to the British Museum in London between 1933 and 1936. The dissertation does not seek to answer questions of origin, intention and meaning, but seeks instead to show how phenomena such as production, distribution and consumption may better be understood as processes and situations that the object passes several times in its “social life”. The terracotta items donated by Wild to the British Museum can be related to what is commonly referred to as “Akan terracottas”, “Memorial terracottas” or “Terracotta funerary sculptures” in art- and cultural history-literature. These names identify a group of terracotta objects (mainly sculpture heads but also vessels) from southern and central Ghana, which have come to hold iconic positions in global cultural history, but also in the international art trade. As many researchers have shown, such terracotta objects are likely to be linked to some kind of funeral tradition, but they may also have had a number of other functions throughout their history. The dissertation is based on the study of a variety of materials relating to the institutional practices at the British Museum, and analyzes both material impressions left on the objects and also intangible aspects of them. By examining and analyzing the museal ethnographic object, the study highlights and discusses how such concepts as time, geographical space and institutional space have been materialized throughout history. In the study, the aim is related to Deleuze and Guattari’s thoughts about assemblage, rhizom and agency, which also assume that each body or object is a combination of different materials, ideas, and their abilities to connect to other bodies, objects, categories and concepts. The investigation also turns to the contemporary artist El Anatsui. The aim here is to show how El Anatsui’s work allows for a new interpretation of the terracotta objects. In the dissertation, it is shown that the circulation of the terracotta objects leaves its marks on them, transforming them, and that it is this ongoing process which creates the objects over and over again.
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