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South African Journal of Art History Volume 23 (2008): Recent submissions

  • Selected study of architectural envelopes controlling sun radiation - the integration of nature into design 
    Jekot, Barbara P. (Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2008)
    This article investigates light control devices in architecture and nature searching for possible improvements and inspirations in architectural design. The article will briefly evaluate sun breakers and louvers as well ...
  • Editorial 
    Mare, Estelle Alma (Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2008)
    Design as a theme.
  • Design and empathy 
    Kruger, Runette (Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2008)
    The relationship between design and empathy is not unproblematic. Consideration of this relationship brings several questions to mind, including whether it is possible for design to be practiced in a predominantly empathetic ...
  • Nature and design: thoughts on sources and subjects 
    Stevens, Ingrid (Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2008)
    This article takes the theme ‘Is nature the best designer?’ and, in order to show that nature was historically and remains today a viable, valid and relevant source of design, particularly surface and pattern design, looks ...
  • From flatness to centeredness : defining empathy in design and why nature is the best designer 
    Van Bergen, Jan Willem (Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2008)
    In this article I will be elaborating a position first articulated by R. Buckminster Fuller. This position is that the geometry we rely on to inform and motivate our acts is central to our being in the world, and hence our ...
  • Women’s ‘nature’ and architectural design 
    Olivier, Bert (Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2008)
    In this article I examine the startling work of Leonard Shlain on the provenance of certain ‘natural’,cortico-neurally based predispositions on the part of women as opposed to men, and offer an interpretation of his work ...
  • Tribute to a special woman, Abigail Nosapho Ncokazi: 1930-2001 
    Ncokazi, Litha; Steele, John (Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2008)
    This tribute to maternal grandmother of co-author Litha Ncokazi is based on his childhood memories of growing up in the Transkei, Eastern Cape, in South Africa. Aspects of these recollections have in turn served as a ...
  • Empathy as perception in downtown Los Angeles and the Walt Disney Concert Hall as an act of architecture 
    Geldenhuys, Daniel G. (Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2008)
    The present article suggests that empathy is not the sole preserve of human beings, and that a city or buildings can also relate with empathy to people and the environment. The Walt Disney Concert Hall, designed by the ...
  • Distilling an image of nature from Japanese Zen gardens 
    Van Tonder, Gert J. (Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2008)
    Humans are not only adapted to nature, but also adapt their domestic environment to suit their own needs. Here, I suggest that Japanese Zen gardens uniquely bridge these different formative spheres of our perceptual evolution ...
  • Space as ritual: contesting the fixed interpretation of space in the African city 
    Van Rensburg, Rudolf Johannes; Da Costa, Mary-Anne (Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2008)
    Drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s quotidian theories, space making is explored as an expression of a society’s collective mind. Spatial understanding is a function of culture. Spatial ability is the capacity to interpret knowledge ...
  • Mnesikles : the second architect on the Athenian Acropolis 
    Mare, Estelle Alma (Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2008)
    Mnesikles was a Classical Greek architect, active circa 440, whose life cannot be reconstructed in detail. He was the architect of the Propylaea on the Athenian Acropolis, while adjacent buildings there, the Erechtheum and ...
  • A comment on 'Servant pouring milk' (Milkmaid) by Jan Vermeer 
    Gluskin, Emanuel (Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2008)
    The assumption is expressed that two very different, strongly mutually contrasting places are shown in ‘Servant pouring milk’, and this is the “hidden” dynamic of thought of this picture by a genius, which amazed, despite ...
  • The political significance of ‘presentism’ in Annaud’s 'The Name of the Rose' (1984) 
    Konik, Adrian (Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2008)
    Against the backdrop of Laclau and Mouffe’s perspectives on radical democracy, this article focuses on the way in which the phenomenon of ‘presentism’, or the retrospective historical projection of the axiology of the ...
  • Architecture, hybridities and post-apartheid design 
    Noble, J.A. (Jonathan) (Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2008)
    This chapter develops a methodological discussion on questions of hybridity in architectural theory and design, in the context of post-apartheid South Africa. Reference is made to differing ideas of hybridity; from early ...
  • Detotalising or meaninglessness : on the continued relevance of poststructuralism for postmodern art and culture 
    Potgieter, Frikkie (Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2008)
    This article analyses how the poststructuralist deconstruction of fixed knowledge and universal experiences, presents itself in two opposing ethical positions in postmodernist art and culture. On the one hand the deconstruction ...
  • For 'A Girl Asleep' by Jan Vermeer : the first movie 
    Gluskin, Emanuel (Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2008)
    A love-story, in the form of a movie scenario, built around the impression formed by the painting “A Girl Asleep” (or “A Woman Asleep at Table”) by Johannes Vermeer, is presented.
  • Jean Sibelius and his “monument” by Eila Hiltunen 
    Steyn, Carol; Mare, Estelle Alma (Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2008)
    Finland regarded the composer Jean Sibelius as a national hero from his youth until the end of his long life, although he composed nothing during his last thirty years. Outside Finland his reputation as a composer has been ...
  • Editorial 
    Bakker, Karel Anthonie (Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2008)
    Editorial.
  • Postmodernism, postsocialism and beyond, Aleš Erjavec : book review 
    Mare, Estelle Alma (Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2008)
    Aleš Erjavec is the Director of Research in the Institute of Philosophy of the Center of Scientific Research of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Ljubljana) and professor of Aesthetics at Ljubljana University ...
  • Meetings with others: a critique of multiculturalism 
    Munro, Allan; Stevens, Ingrid (Art Historical Work Group of South Africa, 2008)
    Multiculturalism can be celebrated from a positive perspective or criticized from a negative perspective. The postcolonial writings of Edward Said (1978) and Ziauddin Sardar (1998), although separated by some twenty years, ...