Art, Ethics and Provocation

The main purpose of this volume is to look into a wide spectrum of artistic ventures which cross boundaries and challenge habitual thinking, consequently involving an element of provocation. While it is true that not all great art is provocative, the most memorable artefacts are these which have confounded our aesthetic expectations or stirred our moral imagination. However, as the turn of the millennium witnessed ever more shocking artistic gestures of provocation, the question arises if there are any limits to artistic freedom. The essays collected in this book offer a truly interdisciplinary perspective and deal with creative acts of transgression from a broad range of fields: literature, theatre, visual art, film, anthropology, and others. This volume will appeal to readers interested in artistic and academic pursuits that are subversive and irreverent.

Autorentext

Anna Suwalska-Kolecka is a Senior Lecturer at the State School of Higher Professional Education in Plock, Poland. She has published in the areas of modern British and American drama, with a particular emphasis on Beckett, Albee, Stoppard, and Churchill. Her research interests include the construction and representation of space, the surreal flights from realism on contemporary stages, and physical theatre.
Izabella Penier studied American literature and works as Post-doc at the University of Lódz, Poland. Her research focuses on African American and postcolonial scholarship. It particularly concerns the transformations that Black studies have recently undergone due to critical interventions from global frameworks of analysis such as postcolonialism, cultural studies, Black Atlantic, and diaspora studies.

Inhalt

Contents: Izabella Penier/Anna Suwalska-Kolecka: Art, Ethics, and Provocation - Katarzyna Smyczynska: Circling Around the Clock Tower: A Visual (Her) story of People through Time - Agata Sitko: Cut and Paste. Dreamscapes of Joseph Cornell - Zbigniew Maszewski: Tomás Rivera's Vignettes and the Tradition of American. Modernist Fiction: Hemingway and Faulkner - Beata Lisowska: Cinema and Anthropology. Film as a Source of Knowledge - Jakub Ligor: The Coen Brothers' Fargo as a Transgressive Comedy - Izabela Lapinska/Kaja Lapinska: A Creative Act of «Expropriation» - Justyna Stepien: «Beyond the Edge of the Frame.» Transgression and the Aesthetics of Nostalgia in Derek Jarman's Caravaggio - Izabella Penier: Black Is, Black Ain't: Isaac Julien's Looking for Langston - Katarzyna Piotrowska: Demystifying Common Pain in Linda Hogan's The Woman Who Watches Over the World: A Native Memoir - Andrzej Dorobek: Polish Acid Rock Approximations - Jadwiga Maszewska: Ellen Glasgow as a Short Story Writer - A Feminist Rebel or a Southern Conservative? «Between Two Shores» (1897) and «Dare's Gift» (1917) - Anna Frackowicz: Crossing the Boundaries of the Body. Transgression or a Continuum - Anna Suwalska-Kolecka: Warlikowski Provokes. Gender in Theatrum Mundi in his Production of The Taming of the Shrew at the Dramatic Theatre in Warsaw.