The portrait of the first poster artists of Spanish cinema: From the genre scene to the realistic portrait

The article, which is part of a more detailed piece of work, aims to highlight the use of the portrait on the film posters of the first Spanish poster artists before the Star-System was introduced in Spain. For this it is posed the evolution that occurs in the representation of the characters in the film poster from the second decade to the beginning of the thirties in the twentieth century, a historical period of profound influences of the artistic and advertising vanguards in our poster artists´ work. However, in the late twenties moving from the simple inclusion of the scene based on the picture of a film, to the chromatic and realistic representation of the star´s face. These were the years when the influence of the major North American studios began to show in Spain. Nevertheless, it highlights their technical and compositional freedom and their influence on subsequent poster artists, as many of them will integrate the portraits and settings on their posters, following the guidelines of the major studios or the independent ones. But without forgetting their own personal way of painting the film stars’ faces on their posters.

The conflict between realism and abstraction in the field of spanish art as an iteration of la "Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes"

Based on the analysis model favored by the study of the conditions in which the seventeenth century Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes took place, we examine the case of confrontation between realism and abstraction, which occurred in the context of Spanish art in the nineties of the twentieth century. Connections are established with other aesthetic conflicts which are considered part of a genealogy whose most explicit antecedent could be placed in the before mentioned complaint, such as the confrontation between realism and abstraction in the American art scene, which occurred in the fifties of the last century, and the more recent controversy on pluralism and the end of art.

Joaquim Mir y la tienda de juguetes: microhistoria de un retrato

¿Puede un retrato pictórico suscitar un ejercicio de microhistoria? Nuestra investigación tratará de aportar una respuesta positiva a esta cuestión, analizando para ello uno de los pocos retratos del pintor postimpresionista Joaquim Mir Trinxet, fechado en 1926. El protagonista representado no es otro que el suegro del pintor, Antoni Estalella i Trinxet, un insigne personaje de Vilanova y la Geltrú (Barcelona) que vivió entre dos siglos. La obra está ambientada en la tienda de juguetes de la familia, convirtiéndose así en una de las escasas pinturas que han captado el interior de una juguetería en la España anterior a la Guerra Civil. Gracias a los trabajos de archivo realizados, este artículo reúne diversos documentos inéditos que permiten reconstruir no sólo la vida del retratado, que llegó a ser corresponsal de Francisco Pi y Margall, sino también el ambiente social, artístico y comercial de Vilanova, en un período que abarca desde la década de 1870 a la primera mitad del siglo XX, en plena “Edad de Oro” de la industria juguetera. Es esta una propuesta de metodología historiográfica cuyo recorrido comienza en el oficio arcaico de la tonelería para desembocar al fin en los albores del comercio moderno de juguetes.

The practice of book illustration: Three examples by Norah Borges

This article focuses on three different examples of book illustration carried out by Norah Borges in the 1930s and 1940s (Canciones de mar y tierra by Concha Méndez, Platero y yo by Juan Ramón Jiménez, and Paul et Virginie by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre). Its purpose is twofold: to show how illustrations can shape our reading of texts and to examine how the artist's work can be assimilated to a current of neorromanticismo in Spanish letters dating back to the pre-Civil War period. Her work might serve as an illustration of what Ramón Gómez de la Serna termed the cursi bueno, a marginalized reaction to the dehumanization of art that speaks of sentiment, domesticity and, in women's case, of repressed longing.

Can Civil Society Succeed Where Elites Have Failed in the War on Sectarianism? Towards an infinitely demanding politics for the North

Caught between the well-armed imaginations of paramilitary organisations competing for the hearts and minds of a divided population, and state engineering of a liberal peace, civil society's impact on Northern Ireland's identity politics was limited during the thirty-year conflict. Specifically, the community and voluntary sector itself has tended to replicate as much as it challenged patterns of segregation in many of its own structures. With plans set out in the Northern Ireland Executive's Programme for Government (2008-11) to engage civil society in opening a new era of ‘good relations’ work to counter sectarianism and racism, civil society organisations will face a complex terrain, facing scepticism about their contribution to peace-making before the Good Friday Agreement, and working in a post-Agreement environment marked by continuing elite and communal antagonism demonstrated by the crisis at the turn of 2009 over devolution of justice and policing powers to the Northern Ireland Executive. A significant aspect of the resolution was a belated agreement by Sinn Fein and the DUP on a new community relation strategy, Cohesion, Sharing and Integration. This article suggests that civil society has a significant role to play in encouraging communities to confront the contradictions and tensions that continue to haunt the political architects of the Good Friday Agreement by affirming a radical and contingent vision of democracy as democratisation at a distance from the identity-saturated politics of the state-region of Northern Ireland. It draws on the work of Simon Critchley, Emmanuel Levinas and Wendy Brown, to offer an approach to identity politics in post-conflict Northern Ireland, focusing on the future orientation of civil society.