In the following text I provide my response to the three reviewers of my book titled “Reviewing the Past. The Presence of Ruins”. First I list a few elements that all the reviewers highlighted. Then, I answer the insightful comments and detailed observations brought forward by them, organised in thematic structures. In this part I start with the three main criteria and the agency of Nature in ruination. Then I investigate the issues regarding the so-called “contemporary ruins”. Ruins’ environmental character, (...) context and sitedness are put into focus in the next section, to finally arrive to the equally inspiring questions of picturesque, sublime and to the issues of representation. (shrink)

Aesthetic attraction and artful execution of the object, careful design and seemingly blatant falsification by the creator, voluntarily accepted counterfeit imitation and celebration of a melancholy-filled illusion – these, and many other, often contradictory, particularities can describe one of the most complex aesthetic phenomena, that of fake ruins. Questions of perfection and mistake, accurate planning and permissive randomness, genuineness and authenticity – or the convincing justification of aesthetic experience despite the complete lack of them – profound references to the nature (...) of decay, the transience of all human creation and nostalgia can all be found around this object of art. In this article I analyse the fakeness of fake ruins with regard to the multiple consequences that this type of fake can contribute to the better understanding of both their aesthetics and the concept of mistake. (shrink)

Contemporary artworks are primary sources for a better understanding of the most important issues in our current reality. The complexities of cultural interactions are often thematized in pieces of art using the artistic means of code-switching, and where the investigation of these questions is pursued in and with regards to the issues of the broader context, including the built and the urban setting. In this paper I examine some aspects of these questions, with the help of some inspiring examples, through (...) artworks by creators coming from five different parts of the world: hence in the works by Manit Sriwanichpoom, Nandipha Mntambo, Michael Rakowitz, Yinka Shonibare, and Marja Helander. In this way I aim to emphasize the global relevance of these issues, as well as what we can thus learn from and about our own origins, current standpoints, and further possibilities. (shrink)

Romanticism was the first period in art history that explicitly started to question the possibilities of a direct understanding of Nature and of achieving concrete and exact knowledge of it or of the “outside” world. In many cases, it can even be interpreted as a direct counter-tendency to the Enlightenment¢•s concept of domestication and domination of Nature. In this paper it is argued that many window- and cave representations of Romanticism, especially in Northern Romanticism, are strongly connected with the differentiation (...) of inside and outside, thus the main affirmation and message of these pictures is the inaccessibility of Nature, and this influences the composition, appearance and interpretation of the works. (shrink)

The appreciation, conservation, and reconstruction of ruins, deteriorating buildings, and archaeological sites of historical, religious or cultural value, as well as their safeguarding, lead to a complex set of issues and considerations. This brief paper suggests that a deeper understanding of the various models of heritage management can enhance acceptance of the different practices of heritage care. The fragility of heritage sites and of heritage models urges us to look for viable answers to global ethical and aesthetic questions regarding the (...) management of heritage sites. *. (shrink)

One of the primary and most typical features of a piece of architecture is its stability, its fixed and anchored state. It is therefore surprising and, at the same time, aesthetically inspiring and intellectually exciting when buildings are moved. In the present study I examine the agency of transportation and the aesthetic consequences of such translocations in three art projects. First, I analyse the work of the Norwegian Marianne Heske, the Georgian Vajiko Chachkhiani, and the Finn Anssi Pulkkinen. I lay (...) out the aesthetic implications of the transformative decontextualization caused by the relocation of the original structure. In the second part of the paper, I present the main aspects that connect these otherwise different projects and explain why the complex and costly transportation of these pieces of architecture is relevant and justified. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine some of the various ways, spaces, and situations in which one can currently encounter aesthetic content and have an aesthetic experience. By focusing on examples coming from the world of fine arts, my survey will tackle a double question: I will try to investigate where to search for aesthetics and where aesthetics may have something to search. Considering the novel forms of art presentation that are related to the spread of alternative exhibition spaces, I will (...) examine the emergence of new audiences, the rising power of the art market and art commerce, and their dubious influence on the creation of new standards and canons of art. (shrink)

Poetry, painting, park. Goethe and Claude Lorrain KempfFranz R.legenda. 2020. pp. 260. £75. hbk.

Combining the methodologies of art history, aesthetics and cultural history, this book opens up new ways of looking at the phenomenon of ruins.

In this study I investigate several questions related to adaptive restoration, i.e. when a functioning piece of architecture operates with a different purpose to its original one, as well as the role of aesthetics in re-purposing, and the importance of the special forms of experience such a conversion provides. The questions connected to these architectural projects are not only theoretically inspiring, leading to diverse and broad fields of research in architecture, art and aesthetics, but are also crucial on a practical (...) level, and hence require caution and precise consideration, given the impact the final results of such projects may have, as well as in terms of the effect and efficiency of the new space. Creative and adaptive re-purpose, modification or complete change of function can have wonderful potential, as well as, obviously, presenting serious hazards to avoid. What is equally important, however, is that this will also contribute to a strengthening of awareness of architecture and its aesthetic qualities, hence further promoting the idea of safeguarding and care of edifices and of tangible heritage. (shrink)

In this paper I am proposing to investigate some possible connecting points between art, aesthetics and the urban experience, more precisely how the perception and experience of the city as well as the features of urban life can inspire artists. At the same time, I am also curious how artworks can be used to understand this urban experience, as well as how they can be interpreted as not only simple descriptions and depictions, but also as active contributions and modes of (...) suggesting solutions to the most pressing issues of contemporary cities and of city life. Hence my primary aim is discussing some approaches towards the aesthetic analyses of urbanity through modern and contemporary examples. In this way I am focusing less on how the city appears as a mere motive in artworks, or how it is used as main object or background element indicating the context in representations; and I am also not aiming to provide a survey analyses of the numerous ideas of the aesthetics of urbanity. Instead of these, here I am concentrating on how urbanity and the experiencing of the city in itself as well as its multifaceted aspects can become a source of inspiration and at the same time a critically analysed subject, i.e. a concept that is examined through the work itself. (shrink)

There is a fascinating—both an aesthetically and an intellectually pleasing—parallel between the infinite variety of forms of ruins and the almost just as infinite ways in which their history, appe...

In this article Zoltán Somhegyi investigates the aesthetic qualities of Northern landscape representations, with a special focus on how contemporary examples are connected to classical ones. First he examines the history of the aesthetic appreciation of these sites, starting from their early modern reception and from the differentiation of “Northern” and “Mediterranean” landscapes: while the Mediterranean ones were highly valued already from the 15th–16th centuries on, the “wilder” Northern landscapes were admired mainly from Romanticism onwards. This has, among others, an (...) aesthetichistorical reason, namely the birth of the category of the sublime; and in this case the harmonious Mediterranean landscapes and the irregular yet impressive Northern ones relate to each other as the category of beautiful does to the sublime. This is why from Romanticism on Northern landscapes became not only aesthetically valuable, but even more capable than the Southern ones to move the spectator. This is especially because, from a gnoseological point of view, the landscape might be a place – and the landscape representation a means – of self-interpretation. The historical overview is then used to better understand some of the most important characteristics of contemporary Northern landscape interpretations and representations from leading artists of the region, which are analysed in the second part of the article. (shrink)

In the following text I provide my response to the three reviewers of my book titled “Reviewing the Past. The Presence of Ruins”. First I list a few elements that all the reviewers highlighted. Then, I answer the insightful comments and detailed observations brought forward by them, organised in thematic structures. In this part I start with the three main criteria and the agency of Nature in ruination. Then I investigate the issues regarding the so-called “contemporary ruins”. Ruins’ environmental character, (...) context and sitedness are put into focus in the next section, to finally arrive to the equally inspiring questions of picturesque, sublime and to the issues of representation. (shrink)

Volume 6, Issue 1, May 2019, Page 89-93.