Academic literature on the topic 'Gothic Narrative painting'

AbstractIn an article now three decades old, I suggested that the Paintings of the Hall of Justice of the Alhambra used Arthurian iconography as part of a fashionable admiration for Gothic style and the language of chivalry in the Nasrid court, one which was subverted by the polarizing imagery of a Muslim and a Christian fighting. However, I failed at the time to take into full account the extraordinary hunting cycle of the Hall of Justice paintings, discrete groups of hunters and their prey that were interspersed with surprising episodes from romance narratives. These images picture Christians and Muslims as polarized and opposed. In fact, I believe it is in these very images of domination and apparent differentiation that a deep interconnectedness can be found. This study uses the painting cycle from the Hall of Justice of the Alhambra as a means of exploring, not just common styles and motives, but artistic meanings that were held in common between courts. In particular, hunting as an attribute of lordship and sovereignty is key here, in a world in which relationships between Nasrids and Castilians were still largely feudal and many meanings shared, allying the parties we once supposed to be 'other.' There, hunting as iconographic shorthand for ownership of the land appears in surprising and deflected ways. Through a discussion of the Palace of Pedro I at the Alcázar of Seville, contemporary literary evocations of the courtly tradition and of the practice and meaning of the hunt, as these were known on the Iberian peninsula, and the exploration of narrative and emblematic languages of form, I hope to reveal an imagery which suggests domination but masks a complicit, symbiotic interaction. Hunting imagery becomes the means by which both Nasrids and Castilians act out a ceremonial opposition to another with whom they are socially and culturally intertwined.

Gothic stories and fictionalized travel accounts featuring dangerous exotic plants appeared throughout the nineteenth century and were especially prevalent at the fin de siècle. As the century progressed and the public's fascination with these narratives grew, fictional plants underwent a narrative evolution. By the end of the Victorian period, deadly plants had been transformed from passive poisoners into active carnivores. Stories about man-eating trees, among the most popular of the deadly plant tales, reflect this narrative progression. The trope of the man-eating tree developed out of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century accounts of a much less dangerous plant: the Javanese upas. Tales about the upas described the tree as having a poisonous atmosphere which killed every living thing within a several mile radius. The existence of this plant was first reported by a Dutch surgeon named Foersch in a 1783 article published in the London Magazine, and the story was recounted several times throughout the century (“The Valley of Poison” 46). A typical account of the popular tale would highlight the exotic location and the mysterious power of the tree: Somewhere in the far recesses of Java there is, according to Foersch, a dreadful tree, the poisonous secretions of which are so virulent, that they not only kill by contact, but poison the air for several miles around, so that the greater number of those who approach the vegetable monster are killed. Nothing whatever, he tells us, can grow within several miles of the upas tree, except some little trees of the same species. For a distance of about fifteen miles round the spot, the ground is covered with the skeletons of birds, beasts, and human beings. (“The Upas Tree of Fact and Fiction” 12) Even though more credible adventurers revealed the inaccuracies of Foersch's report and thoroughly discredited the fantastic powers attributed to the upas, the story nonetheless took hold of the Victorian imagination. As a result of Foersch's widely-circulated narrative, the word “upas” was rapidly incorporated into the English lexicon; writers such as Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Carlyle, Charlotte Brontë, and Charles Dickens use the upas as a metaphor for a person, object, or idea that has a poisonous, destructive atmosphere. The upas was even a subject for nineteenth-century art, as evidenced by Francis Danby's 1820 gothic painting of a solitary upas tree in the midst of a desolate rocky landscape. Although the myth of the upas focuses on the tree's lethal powers, it is important to note that the upas is, relatively speaking, a very passive “vegetable monster.” The plant is potentially dangerous, but stationary; extremely isolated, it is only harmful to those who rashly ignore the warning signs and wander within the area of its poisonous influence. Even in these exaggerated accounts, the upas is a non-carnivorous monster that grows in a remote, uninhabited area of Java.

The Westminster Retable is the most important thirteenth-century panel painting to survive from northern Europe and, quite arguably, from all of western Europe (pl. XXVIa). An oak panel measuring approximately 0.95m high by 3.33m wide, it is divided vertically into five compartments. In the centre is the figure of Christ, standing, blessing and holding in his left hand an orb or globe upon which is painted a delicate miniature landscape (pl. XXVIb). He is flanked by the Virgin Mary and St John the Evangelist who both hold palm fronds. Iconographically this grouping is unique in medieval art. Each figure stands in an architectural niche of high Gothic design. To either side of the central group are four medallions arranged in the Islamic star-and-cross pattern. Each of these eight-pointed star medallions contained a narrative scene, of which three on the left survive: the Raising of the Daughter of Jairus, the Healing of the Blind Man and the Feeding of the Five Thousand (pl. XXVIc). Such miracle scenes from the adult life of Christ were but rarely depicted in the Middle Ages. At either end of the panel are niches for standing figures of saints; only St Peter on the left survives, although ghostly vestiges of his counterpart, presumably St Paul, on the right remain visible.

Introduction. The images of Demetrius, Borys and Hlib, Archangel Michael, St. George constitute the largest number of monuments in the Ukrainian icon painting of the Late Middle Ages, which can be enlisted as a rank of holy warriors. Problem Statement. In icon painting of the Late Middle Ages the figures of warrior saints are presented with the added scenes of life and their activities. A detailed analysis of the iconographic, artistic and stylistic features of the icons of holy warriors in the context of the development of national culture will allow to analyze the images of the saints, to reveal the content of the works. Purpose of the article is to ostend of artistic-stylistic, compositional, iconographic, figurative-content content of works of icon painting of the second half of XIV – beginning of XVI century, in which the image of holy warriors are present with the life scenes and scenes of their deeds. Methods. In the article were uses general scientific methods: historical – in the reconstruction of the cultural situation of XIV – beginning of XVI century in the context of sacred art; systematic, with which it was possible to trace the dynamics of changes in the icon-painting canon of the holy warrior on the territory of Ukraine; comparative – in revealing stylistic tendencies in painting traditions on the basis of canonical plots of Orthodox icon painting; iconographic – in revealing the sign stability of images in the system of stylistic coordinates of the icon-canon, as well as stylistic changes that took place in the iconography of the studied period; art studies – to study the compositional-stylistic features of icon-painting monuments of this period. Results. On example of memorials of Ukrainian art with the depiction of warriors saints with the scenes of life revealed the images of holy warriors, analyzed compositional construction, iconography, artistic-stylistic features. Payed attention to the iconographic plot "Killing the dragon" presented in "expanded" and "laconic" variants, as a reflection of the scene of life and miracles of St. George. Conclusion images of life cycles of holy warriors in the art of the Late Middle Ages are a significant thematic group among the complex of Ukrainian icons. In the meanwhile, holy warriors portrayed frontal, full-length (iconographic type of foot soldier), with ascetic gaze, monumental interpretation of the image, expressive drawing. Since in the medium the artists depicted the soldiers in a severe static image, the figures of the saints in the stamps were more free and dynamic to reveal the narrative of the plot of their acts. Artistic-style features of icons depicting holy warriors late XIV-early XV centuries. continue the principles of painting Kievan Rus in combination with the traditions Paleologicheskogo icon-painting style. From the XV century in the icons there are elements of Gothic that manifested itself in the image of an elongated figure of soldiers, helmets, and weapons – a sword. Among the most common images of holy warriors is the figure of the Archangel Michael. In the mediator in the figure of a warrior, we see the embodiment of the image of the head over all angels, the military guard of the gates of paradise, the hero, who is the mediator between God and his people. Among the important attributes that appear in the art of the Late Middle Ages in the images of the Archangel is a symbolic stand, twisted in eight, symbolizing infinity and protecting from the dark forces of evil (Uroboros's image is a snake). In the figure of Demetrius of Thessalonica we see a popular Christian hero ready to defend his native land. In the images of the brothers Borys and Hlib, in the images of the living icon there are features of patriotism and asceticism. In the Ukrainian art of theXIV-XVІ centuries. The iconography of St. John became the most popular. George in the plot "Miracle of the Snake", which is known in two versions: "Expanded" and "Laconic". At the end of the fifteenth century. the iconic motif "Miracle of the Snake" is complemented by the scenes of the life of St. George On the icons of St. George is presented on a horse, piercing through a long thin spear the snake's mouth served in an amorphous form. The very image of the warrior is not endowed with features of courage and militancy, but rather interpreted as a manifestation of spiritual struggle between the monster and the saints. The composition reads the folk principle, which manifested itself in such attributes as keys, horns, profile of the Moon on the wings of the snake and associated with the holiday of spring.

<p>One poem by the nineteenth-century Russian poet Fedor Tiutchev begins with the line ‘Я помню время золотое’ (or ‘Ia pomniu vremia zolotoe’) [I remember a golden time]. It is about the poet’s early youth, a meeting with a young woman, a spring outing to castle ruins on the Danube. The poem has led to many attempts to determine the exact time and place of this moment and the identity of the young woman. The aim of the article is to show the complex relationship that exists between fiction, reality, and the scholars’ or critics’ meta-level narrative about fiction and reality. I will attempt to demonstrate<br />how three distinct narratives (a romantic, a Gothic, and a visual) can originate in this poem, thereby illuminating and perhaps changing our aesthetic appreciation of the poem. The first two narratives have been established by literary historians. The third and last narrative emerges from a compilation of the paintings and photographs preserved by the woman presumed to be the subject of the poem.</p>

Horace Walpole (1717–97) is well known for two important Gothic projects: his villa, Strawberry Hill, Twickenham (1747/8–80), and his novel,The Castle of Otranto(1764). These two manifestations of Walpole’s ‘Gothic imagination’ are frequently linked in critical literature on the Gothic Revival and medievalism more broadly; the relationship between Strawberry Hill,Otrantoand manuscript illustrations visualisingOtranto’s narrative has, on the other hand, received far less attention. This paper brings together a number of important and hitherto overlooked sources that help address this imbalance. In particular, it examines two large-scale watercolours by John Carter (1748–1817) that narrate some ofOtranto’s pivotal scenes, allowing critically overlooked subtleties in their iconographies to emerge. The work establishes how Carter’s pre-existing interests – in particular, in Gothic architectural forms and heraldry – are harnessed to govern his representations ofOtranto. These paintings, together with Carter’s other illustrations, demonstrate Walpole’s authorship ofOtranto, expressed through codes hidden in plain sight. Unlike the frequently touted link between Strawberry Hill andOtrantoin secondary criticism, Carter’s illustrations, the argument reveals, do not explicitly make this connection.

This article begins with a review of studies in perception and depth psychology concerning the experience of exposure to sacred artworks in Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox contexts. This follows with the results of a qualitative inquiry involving 45 Roman Catholic, Eastern and Coptic Orthodox, and Protestant Christians in Canada. First, participants composed narratives detailing memories of spiritual experiences involving iconography. Then, in the context of a darkened room evocative of a sacred space, they viewed artworks depicting Biblical themes and interpreted their meanings. Stimuli included “Western” paintings from the Roman tradition—a selection from the Gothic, Northern Renaissance, and Renaissance canon—and matched “Eastern” icons in the Byzantine style. Spiritual experience narratives were analyzed in terms of word frequencies, and interpretations of sacred artworks were analyzed thematically. Catholics tended to utilize emotional language when recalling their spiritual experiences, while religious activity was most often the concern of Protestants, and Orthodox Christians wrote most about spiritual figures and their signifiers. A taxonomy of response styles was developed to account for participants’ interpretations of Western and Eastern artworks, with content ranging from detached descriptions to projective engagement with the art-objects. Our approach allows for representation of diverse Christians’ interpretations of sacred art, taking into consideration personal, collective, and cultural-religious sources of meaning. Our paradigm also offers to enrich our understanding of the numinous or emotional dimension of mystical contact.

Three cinquecento polychrome wood-carved altars have been preserved on the island of Lopud near Dubrovnik, the most monumental of which is situated in the parish church of Our Lady of Šunj. Its retable was constructed to resemble a classical aedicule, with an intricately carved frame and a central figural depiction of the Assumption of the Virgin, complemented by a complex iconographic programme in the symmetrically arranged adjoining scenes. Filling the small cassettes of the predella are reliefs of the Annunciation and Christ as the Man of Sorrows, together with perspectively rendered narrative scenes of the Last Supper and the Washing of the Feet, while in the pediment is a frontal depiction of the Coronation of the Virgin by the Holy Trinity. In the narrow side wings between the columns and pilasters are four bas-reliefs of local patron saints depicted half-turned towards the central image, and thus achieving an overall plastic harmony for a demanding content. In terms of space, the main scene is well-developed through a pronounced sculptural modelling of the figures of the eleven apostles in the round, the most prominent of which is that of St Peter, placed in the foreground and turned to face the nave of the church, while the others are consumed by the miraculous assumption of the Virgin into heaven. She is followed high up by a pair of small angels and several tiny symbolical cherubim heads, all of which helps to achieve an extremely convincing religious scene. Its attractiveness is significantly heightened by the all’antica realism and pedantic Roman-inspired modelling which highlight the skill of a highly trained and talented master wood carver, which leaves no doubt that this is a special work of art, and indeed, the most beautiful carved wood retable in the east Adriatic which has survived to date. In this first complete study of the altar, the author traces historical records in which it is mentioned without the exact year of its creation, origin or carver being cited. He dispels the tradition that the altar was brought from England, supposedly from the Chapel of Henry VIII, and explains this tradition as having been based on the discovery of an alabaster altar, a typical product of late Gothic workshops at Nottingham, several examples of which exist in Dalmatia. From the seventeenth-century records, on the other hand, we learn that the altar in the church of the „Madonna del Sugni” (a vernacular Italo-Croatian transformation of the word Assunta) was dedicated in 1572. An examination of comparative material establishes that the altar’s compositional scheme draws upon altarpieces painted by Alvise Vivarini around 1480, while its morphological features find their closest parallel in the activities and mannerisms of the Venetian workshop of Paolo Campsa, who worked from the 1490s to the early 1550s, and who sold his works in the wide area under the government of La Serenissima. The Republic of Venice profited a great deal from this export, while its urban centre’s innumerable wooden altars disappeared following subsequent changes of fashion. A group of securely attributed works shows that Paolo Campsa frequently borrowed formulas and idioms from Venetian painters of the older generation; analogies with two of Vivarini’s altar paintings confirm that he repeated this technique on the Lopud altar, even though altars as complex as this are not found in the surviving oeuvre of this artist. An overview of the extremely numerous works attributed to this fecund wood carver has not led to a secure attribution of this scenically developed altar to his hand. However, an analytical observation points to significant similarities with individual figures considered by scholars of Renaissance wooden sculpture to be products of his workshop - more a factory, in fact - or of his circle which, without a doubt, Paolo stamped with his mark. Apart from the assumption that there are master wood carvers who have not been identified, or formally and clearly differentiated, who followed his teachings and mannerisms, this paper opens the possibility of locating more exactly the place of the altar’s creation. Since Campsa’s workshop was active even after his death, it can be assumed that the altar was made in the 1560s or 1570s, and that it was transported and assembled on the island of Lopud for its dedication of 1572. Furthermore, the author observes the meaning of the subsequent addition of the background, which was painted once the altar reached its destination; it shows a summarized depiction of the scenery of Lopud and a tiny settlement with a precisely and proportionately drawn sailing ship docked at the island’s bay. The background reveals that the nature of the work was votive and, by identifying the layers of local historical circumstance and by combining them with the relevant written sources, it can be connected to the activities of the distinguished ship owner Miho Pracat, the richest citizen of the Republic of Dubrovnik during the cinquecento. Two more wooden sculptures can be added to Miho Pracat’s donation to his home island: the figures of St Catherine and St Roch which were also made in Venice and which had originally belonged to a small altar of his family in the local church of St Francis, known from archival records. This altar was composed of an older polychrome triptych, now unfortunately lost, and which, together with a pair of side statues, formed a piece resembling a number of altarpieces from Paolo Campsa’s workshop. Thus, the analysis of these works of art reveals key components of visual culture, and a peculiar mosaic of sixteenth-century artistic production in a peripheral community of the small island of Lopud under the government of the Republic of Dubrovnik.

In this essay, I explore my latest series of digital collages titled Notes and Narratives. These works utilize additive, subtractive, and substitutive remix strategies to integrate Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque paintings with visages of Donald Trump and his associates. The series appropriates historical masterworks to interrelate the theologico-political foundations of the original paintings with the political turbulence experienced under the Trump administration. Notes and Narratives foregrounds remix as a powerful and potent tool for disruption, change, and communication in the continuum of pedagogic praxes and remix studies. My previous artistic work was dedicated to creating political remix videos, and this body of work represents a fork in my creative practice. The immediacy of the collages draws upon intertextuality and remix strategies to reveal passionate polemical positions, positing contentious criticisms of the political leadership in the United States.

In February 2021, during the third COVID-19 lockdown in the state of Victoria, Australia, artist Shaun Wilson used the teleconferencing platforms Teams and Skype to create a slow cinema feature length artwork titled Fading Light to demonstrate how innovative creative practice can overcome barriers of distance experienced by creative practitioners from the limitations sustained during the COVID-19 pandemic. While these production techniques offer free access to develop new methodologies through practice, the wider scope of pandemic lockdowns mediated artists with teleconferencing as a tool to interrogate the nature of life during our various global lockdowns. It thus afforded a pioneering ability for artists to manufacture artwork about lockdowns whilst in lockdown, made from the tools commonly used for virtual communication. The significance of such opportunities, as this article will argue, demonstrates a novel approach to making artwork about COVID-19 in ways that were limited prior to the start of 2020 in terms of commonality, that now are “turning us all into broadcasters, streamers and filmmakers” (Sullivan). However, as we are only just becoming familiar with the cultural innovation pioneered from the limitations brought about by the pandemic, new aesthetics are emerging that challenge normative traditions of manufacturing and thinking about creative artefacts. Teleconferencing platforms were used differently prior to 2020 when compared to the current pandemic era. Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, there were no global gigascale movement restrictions or medical dangers to warrant a global shutdown that would ultimately determine how a person interacts with public places. In a pre-pandemic context, the daily use of teleconferencing was a luxury. Its subsequent use in the COVID-19 era became a necessity in many parts of day-to-day life. As artists have historically been able to comment through their work on global health crises, how has contemporary art responded since 2020 in using teleconferencing within critical studio practice? To explore such an idea, this article will probe examples of practice from artists making artworks with teleconferencing about pandemics during the COVID-19 pandemic. Discussion will purposely not consider a wider historical scope of teleconferencing in art and scholarship as the context in this article explicitly addresses art made in and commenting on the COVID-19 pandemic using the tools of lockdown readily available through teleconferencing platforms. It will instead concentrate on three artists addressing the pandemic during 2020 and 2021. The first example will be There Is No Such Thing as Internet from Polish artists Maria Magdalena Kozlowska and Maria Tobola, “performers who identify as one artist, Maria Małpecki” (“Pogo”). The second example is New York artist Michael Mandiberg’s Uncle Bob 85th Birthday via Zoom 3:00-4:00PM, August 16, 2020 (#24), from the series Zoom Paintings. The third example is Australian artist Shaun Wilson’s Fading Light. These works will be discussed as a means of considering teleconferencing as a contemporary art medium used in response to COVID-19 and art made as pandemic commentary through the technology that has defined its global social integration. Figure 1: Maria Małpecki, There Is No Such Thing as Internet, used with permission. There Is No Such Thing as Internet was presented as a live stream on 7 May 2020 and as an online video between 7-31 May 2020 in the “Online Cocktail Party with Maria Małpecki” at Pogo Bar, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin by Maria Małpecki and curator Tomek Pawlowski Jarmolajew (“Pogo”). The work represents a twenty-minute livestream essay created in part by a teleconferencing video call performance and appropriated video streams. This includes video chat examples from Chomsky and Žižek, compiled together through intertextual video collages which The Calvert Journal described as a work “that explore[s] identity and different modes of communication in times of isolation” (De La Torre). One of the key strengths of this work in terms of teleconferencing is how it embraces the medium as an integral part of the performative methodology. To such an extent, one might argue that if it was removed and replaced by traditional video camera shots, which do feature in the video but are not the main aesthetic driver, the Metamodernist troupe of Małpecki’s videos would not perform the same critique of the pandemic. So, for Małpecki to comment on isolation through the Internet requires video calls to be central in the artwork in order for it to hold the cultural value it embeds through the subject. The conceptual framework relies on short segments to create episodic moments reliant on philosophical laments relating to each part of the work. For example, the first act unfolds with a montage of short video clip collages reminiscent of the quick-clip YouTube browsing habit culture from the pandemic to expedite an argument that indeed, there really is no singular internet. Rather, from this, what we are experiencing is arguably something else entirely. From here we move to the second act titled “We wake up in a different room every morning. We wander in a labyrinth where most doors are already open” (Małpecki); but as Małpecki comments, “sometimes our job is to shut them”. The sequence evolves into a disorientating dual screen sequence of the artists panicking to what they are viewing on screen. What this is exactly remains unclear. It may be us as the audience or something else as Malpecki holds their webcam devices upside down to provide an unnerving menage amidst the screams and exacerbations that invites spatial disorientation as a point of engagement for the viewer. As we recognise that video call protocols during the pandemic are visually static and that normative ‘rules’ of video calls require stabilised video and clean sound, Małpecki subverts these protocols to that of an uncomfortable, anarchic performance. It's at odds with the gentility of video call aesthetics which, in the case of this artwork, is more like watching a continuous point of view shot from a participant on a roller coaster or an extreme fairground ride. As the audience moves through each of the eclectic acts, this randomness laments a continuity that, sometimes satirical and at other times sublime, infuses the silliness and obliqueness of habitual lockdown video viewing. Even the most mundane of videos we watch to pass the time have become anthems of the COVID-19 era as a mixture of boredom, stupidity, and collective grief. Małpecki’s work in this regard becomes a complex observation for a society in crisis. It eloquently uses video calls as a way to comment on what this article argues to be an important cultural artefact in contemporary art’s response to COVID-19. Just as Goya subverted the Venetian pandemic in the grim Plague Hospital, Małpecki reflects our era in the same disruptive way by using frailty as a mirror to reveal an uneasy reflection masked in satirical obscurity, layered with fragments of the Internet and its subjective “other”. Figure 2: Michael Mandiberg, Uncle Bob 85th Birthday via Zoom 3:00-4:00PM, August 16, 2020 (#24), used with permission. Conversely, the work of New York artist Michael Mandiberg uses teleconferencing in a different way by painting the background of video calls onto stretched canvases mostly over the duration of the actual call time. Yet in doing so, the removal of people from inside the frame highlights aspects of isolation and absence in lockdown. At the Denny Dinin Gallery exhibition in New York, The Zoom Paintings “presented in the digital sphere where they were born” (Defoe). Zoom provided both the frame and the exhibition space for these works, with “one painting … on view each day [on Zoom], for a total of ten paintings” (“Zoom”). Describing the works, Mandiberg states that they are “about the interchangeability of people and places. It’s not memorializing a particular event; it’s memorializing how unmemorable it is” (Mandiberg; Defoe). This defines an innovative approach to teleconferencing that engages with place in times when the same kinds of absence experienced in the images of peopleless Zoom video calls mirror the external absence of people in public places during lockdown. Uncle Bob 85th Birthday via Zoom 3:00-4:00PM, August 16, 2020 (#24) is time stamped with the diaristic nature of the Zoom Paintings series. These works are not just a set of painting subjects interlinked through a common theme of paintings ‘about Zoom backgrounds’. They, rather, operate as a complex depiction of absence located in the pandemic, evidently capturing a powerful social commentary about what the artist experienced during these times. In doing so, it immediately prompts the viewer into tensions that conceptually frame COVID-19, whether that be the isolation of waiting out the pandemic in lockdown, the removal of characters through illness from the virus, or even a sudden death from the virus itself. The camera’s point of view illustrates an empty space where we know something is missing. At the very least the artist suggests that someone nearby once inhabited these empty spaces but they are, at present, removed from the scene or have vanished altogether. On 16 August 2020, the day that the painting was made, the New York Times estimated that 514 people in the United States died from COVID-19 (“Coronavirus”). When measured against a further death rate peaking at 5,463 people in the United States who died on 11 February 2021, the catastrophic mortality data in the United States alone statistically supports Mandiberg’s lament as to the severity of the pandemic, which serves as the context of his work. Based on this data alone, the absence in Mandiberg’s paintings intensifies a sense of isolation and loss insofar as the subjectivity embedded within the video call frame speaks to a powerful way that contemporary art is providing commentary during the pandemic (“Coronavirus”). Art in this context becomes a silent observer using teleconferencing to address both what is taken away from us and what visually remains behind. This article acknowledges the absence in Mandiberg’s paintings as a timely reminder of the socio-devastation experienced in the pandemic’s wake. Therein lies a three-folded image within an image within an image, not unlike what we see in Blade Runner when Deckard’s Esper Machine investigates the reflection in a mirror of someone else, and no more vivid than in Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait. From a structural point of view, we witness Mandiberg’s images during its exhibition on Zoom in much the same conceptual way. In this case though, it is a mirrored online image of an image painted from a video call interpreted online from a recorded image transmitted online through teleconferencing. Through similar transactions, Shaun Wilson’s utilisation of video calls is represented in Fading Light as a way to comment on COVID-19 through the lens of Teams and Skype. The similarities of Fading Light to There Is No Such Thing as Internet stem obviously from the study of figuration used as the driver of the works but at the same time, it also draws comparison with Mandiberg’s stillness as represented in the frozen poses of each figure. At a more complex level, there is, though, a polar opposite in the mechanics that, for Mandiberg, uses video to translate into painted subjects. Fading Light does the opposite, with paintings recontextualised into video subjects. Such an analysis of both works brings about a sense of trepidation. For Mandiberg, it is the unsettling stillness through absence. In Fading Light it is the oppressive state of the motionlessness in frame that offers the same sense of awkwardness found in Mandiberg’s distorted painted laptop angles, and that makes the same kind of uncomfortableness bearable. It is only as much as an audience affords the time to allow before the loneliness of the subject renders the Zoom paintings a memorial to what is lost. Of note in Fading Light are the characteristically uncomfortable traits of what we detect should be in the frame of the subject but isn’t, which lends a tension to the viewer who has involuntarily been deprived of what is to be expected. For a modern Internet audience, a video without movement invites a combination of tension, boredom, and annoyance, drawing parallels to Hitchcock’s premise that something has just happened but we’re not entirely sure exactly what it was or is. Likewise, Małpecki’s same juxtaposition of tension with glimpses of Chomsky and Žižek videos talking over each other is joined by the artists’ breaking the fourth wall of cinema theory. Observing the artists lose concentration while watching the other videos in the video call scenario enact the mundane activities we encounter in the same kinds of situations of watching someone else on Zoom. However, in this context, we are watching them watching someone else whom we are also watching, while watching ourselves at the same time. Figure 3: Shaun Wilson, Fading Light, used with permission. The poses in Fading Light are reconfigured from characters in German medieval paintings and low relief religious iconography created during the Black Death era. Such works hang in the Gothic St. Michael’s Church in Schwäbisch Hall in Germany originally used by Martin Luther as his Southern Germany outpost during the Reformation. Wilson documented these paintings in October 2006, which then became the ongoing source images used in the 51 Paintings Suite films. The church itself has a strong connection to pandemics where a large glass floor plate behind the altar reveals an open ossuary of people who died of plague during the Black Death. This association brings an empirical linkage to the agency in Fading Light that mediates the second handed nature of the image, initially painted during a medieval pandemic, and now juxtaposed into the video frame captured in a current pandemic. From a conceptual standpoint, the critical analysis reflected in such a framework allows the artwork to reveal itself at a multi-level perspective, operating within a Metamodernist methodology. Two separate elements oscillate in tandem with one another, yet completely independent, or in this case, impervious to each other’s affect. Fading Light’s key affordance from this oscillation consolidate Wilson’s methodology in the artwork in as much detail as what Małpecki and Mandiberg construct in their respective works, yet obviously for very different motivations. If the basis of making video art in the pandemic using teleconferencing changes the way we might think about using these platforms, which otherwise may not have previously been taken serious by the academy as a valid medium in art, then the quiet meaningfulness throughout the film transcends a structured method to ascertain a pictorial presence of the image in its facsimile state. This pays respect to the source images but also embraces and overlays the narrative of the current pandemic intertwined within the subject. Given that Fading Light allows a ubiquitous dialogue to grow from the framed image, a subjective commonality in these mentioned works provide insight into how artists have engaged innovation strategies with teleconferencing to develop artwork made and commenting about the current pandemic. Whether it be Małpecki’s subversive pandemic variety show, the loneliness of Mandiberg’s Zoom call paintings or Wilson’s refilming of Black Death era paintings, all three artists use video call platforms as a contemporary art medium capable of social commentary during histo-trauma. These works also raise the possibility of interdisciplinary Metamodernist approaches to consider the implications of non-traditional mediums in offering socio-commentary during profoundly impactful times. It remains to be seen if contemporary video call platforms will become a frequented tool in contemporary art long after the COVID-19 pandemic is over. However, by these works and indeed, from the others to follow and not yet revealed, the current ossuary provides an opportunity for artists to respond to their own immediate surroundings to redefine existing boundaries in art and look to innovation in the methods they use. We are in a new era of art making, only now beginning to reveal itself. It may take years or even decades to better understand the magnitude of the significance that artists have contributed towards their own practices since the beginnings of the pandemic. This time of profound change only strengthens the need for contemporary art to preserve and enlighten humanity through the journey from crisis to hope. References Blade Runner. Dir. by Ridley Scott, Warner Brothers, 1982. “Coronavirus US Cases.” New York Times, 27 Mar. 2021. 28 Mar. 2021 <http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html>. Defoe, Taylor. “‘It's Memorializing How Unmemorable It Is’: Artist Michael Mandiberg on Painting Melancholy Portraits on Zoom.” Artnet News 10 Nov. 2020. 19 Mar. 2021 <http://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/mandiberg-zoom-paintings-1922159>. De La Torre, Lucia. “Art in the Age of Zoom: Explore the Video Art Collage Unraveling the Complexities of the Digital Age.” The Culvert Journal, 5 May 2020. 19 Mar. 2021 <https://www.calvertjournal.com/articles/show/11788/online-performance-art-polish-artist-maria-malpecki-digital-age>. Goya, Francisco. Plaga Hospital. Private Collection. 1800. Małpecki, Maria. There Is No Such Thing as Internet. Vimeo, 2020. <http://vimeo.com/415998383>. Mandiberg, Michael. Uncle Bob 85th Birthday via Zoom 3:00-4:00PM, August 16, 2020 (#24). New York: Denny Dinin Gallery, 2020. “Pogo Bar: Maria Małpecki & Tomek Pawłowski Jarmołajew.” KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 7 May 2020. 19 Mar. 2021 <http://www.kw-berlin.de/en/maria-malpecki-tomek-pawlowski-jarmolajew/>. Sullivan, Eve. “Video Art during and after the Pandemic: 2020 Limestone Coast Video Art Festival.” Artlink, 2020. 19 Mar. 2021 <http://www.artlink.com.au/articles/4885/video-art-during-and-after-the-pandemic-2020-limes/>. Van Eyck, Jan. Arnolfini Portrait. Canberra: National Gallery, 1434. Wilson, Shaun. Fading Light. Bakers Road Entertainment, 2021. “The Zoom Paintings.” Denny Dimin Gallery, 12 Nov. 2020. <http://dennydimingallery.com/news/virtual_exhibition/zoom-paintings/>.