Robert Tatin is a 20th century French painter, sculptor, ceramist and builder. On first impression, his work is unadorned, people often regard him as a naïve artist. Tatin devoted 21 years to creating the Strange Museum that combines the Eastern and Western artistic styles and spirits. There are 19 statues in the Alley of the Giants which is a path leading visitors to the museum. The statues represent famous peoples in French history, language, literature and art.
This paper focuses on the sculptures of the Alley of the Giants from an art history perspective. Robert Tatin was an autodidact, then learned from different craftsmen, and mixed with surrealists who were popular in that period. During his stay in South America, he was deeply impressed by the local prairie culture, which influenced his artist style towards primitivism. The Alley of the Giants acts as a bridge between secular life and the spiritual world. The features of these statues are geometrical, unadorned, decorative and significant. Tatin didn’t simply represent famous peoples as monuments for worships. The central theme of these statues is freedom which is the spirit of the surrealism. They reflect Tatin's life experiences and vision of the world.
Keywords
Robert Tatin, French Artist, Statue, Naïve Art, Surrealism
Yuan Goang-Ming is the pioneer of video art in Taiwan, who excels in using the filming technique and motion devices as a method to create. In these works, he mainly focuses on the possibilities of reversing daily life, creating the illusion and ambiguity of visual space. From his various visual symbols in works, this thesis tries to further analyze his cutting method, a kind of ghost approaching, which illustrates these specific images. Within this comprehension, the article also tries to deeply understand his inner meaning of the works from his life experience, emotion with family to the phenomenal description of society and environment. And how do these issues interact, composing Yuan Goang-Ming’s unique artistic style?
This article would re-evaluate and interpret his artistic installation and video art via a spectator’s point of view. Especially to the cutting and developing method, the author subjectively calls it as a “ghost view,” which seems to lead audiences into another space, covering or paralleling to the reality of life. In order to deeply comprehend the works of Yuan Goang-Ming, this paper would also focus on the issue of “image- reproduction”—the theory of disappearing aura to explore how the artist responds to this thought via his works, so as to discover the specificity in his works. Then, focusing on the visual aesthetics of his works itself, the article would also mention the related cinematic theory of Deleuze to analysis the shot of his video art. After that, the article discusses the cultural reflection within his works of visual images, attempting to reveal how the artist criticized the society through his works, and explores his method and social concerns toward the current issues. Finally, from the artist’s experience of the family to the society and the environment, the author summarizes the article by observing and analyzing the context. And what goes beyond the context of works itself is that he wants to express the aesthetics and cultural concerns of his works toward people.
Keywords
Yuan Goang-Ming, Video Art, Installation Art, Contemporary Art
以設計人類學反思學校設計過程初探：阿里山達邦國小個案研究A Preliminary Study on Design Anthropology and School Design Process: A Case Study in Cou, Tapangu Elementary School, Taiwan
Dabang elementary school located in Alishan established more than 110 years ago was the first elementary school established in the Japanese colonial period for the aboriginal settlements in Taiwan. The national education system in Taiwan first started during the Japanese colonial period. At that time, schools were closed and easy to control. People can still find some traces of the Japanese colonial period in schools’ architecture till now. However, during the KMT Dictatorship Era, schools were built continuing the characteristics of centralization of power. The national education system was used to assimilate Taiwan’s aboriginal tribes. Schools nationwide looked almost identical, no local features and cultural particularity at all. After the martial law lifted, Taiwan’s education system began to emulate the education systems in other advanced countries around the world. In 1999, the breakout of the 921 Earthquake brought about a sharp change to the design of campus architectures in Taiwan. This study uses the reconstruction of Taiwan’s first aboriginal elementary school as an example; explore how to apply the users-centered design concepts to the school architectural design in a globalization and post-colonial scenarios, and intend to suggest inheriting aboriginal culture through an environment design viewpoint for aborigines at primary school.
Keywords
Tsou Tribe, School Architecture, Public Arts, Design Anthropology, Participatory Design Process
