Books by Donato Loia
B-Side Editions, 2024
Here's my first book, 1095 Short Sentences. It will be published on August 28, 2024 by B-Side Edi... more Here's my first book, 1095 Short Sentences. It will be published on August 28, 2024 by B-Side Editions.
The book is a collection of 1095 aphoristic thoughts, observations, and notes-to-self that shift through the times of a day over the course of a year.
From the back cover: "You could consider this a motivational (or anti-motivational) guide, but this book is more searching than prescriptive. Statements that initially seem authoritative ultimately produce questions and doubt, in a tone more contemplative than instructive, with a seriousness that doesn’t take itself too seriously. (You might even laugh?) There’s a circular and, at times, contradictory nature to these sentences. They are paradoxical – like life, often enough. And as they touch on time and memory, they become quite moving, encompassing the subjects – love, friendship, work, ambition, desire – that drive and often confound us all."
The book is available here: https://www.bsideeditions.com/shop/p/1095-short-sentences
If you are a student, please feel free to use the student discount code: "STUDENT."
Book Contributions by Donato Loia
This chapter considers the abundance of religious references in Theaster Gates’ oeuvre, analyzes ... more This chapter considers the abundance of religious references in Theaster Gates’ oeuvre, analyzes the artist’s engagement with his own religious background, and focuses on a particular work: a procession-like performance organized by the artist for the opening of the 2010 Milwaukee Art Museum exhibition, To Speculate Darkly: Theaster Gates and Dave the Potter. Gates’ religious and cultural upbringings inform his creative motivations and reveal an implicit critique of the museum space and art historical traditions expressed by this performance. Finally, this chapter asks, “What does it mean, today, to talk about religion and spirituality in the context of the utterly reified world of contemporary art?”
Journal Articles by Donato Loia
New Blackfrairs, 2022
Top Gun: Maverick is a film about the American Empire: its ethos and hopes, its illusions and con... more Top Gun: Maverick is a film about the American Empire: its ethos and hopes, its illusions and contradictions. This essay considers the propaganda content of the movie, and reflects on what it reveals and conceals about the wider political and social context of America's imperial project. The film provides insights on the shifting expectations, and troubles facing the American Empire in 2022. In reflecting upon the sequel and comparing it with the original, it is possible to notice changes and new prerogatives in the self-perception of the United States, as well as an overall imperial fatigue and tension. In particular, this essay evaluates the use of missionary language and metaphors in the film, and considers that empires have a chronic incapacity, or maybe impossibility, in abdicating their power. Top Gun: Maverick shows that an empire, any empire, would simply cease to be such if it would not believe in its own myth of perennial youth. Ultimately, this essay considers the burden of the American Empire: its damnation is its immortality, its illusion of eternity.
Full Article Here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nbfr.12776
Journal of Literature and Trauma Studies, 2018
Scholars of film studies and trauma studies have dedicated much thinking to "Waltz with Bashir" (... more Scholars of film studies and trauma studies have dedicated much thinking to "Waltz with Bashir" (2008) by Israeli director Ari Folman. This essay examines Waltz with Bashir as a reflection on the possibility of mediating or repressing a traumatic memory.
Full article here: https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/43502
Mise-En-Scène. The Journal of Film & Visual Narration, 2018
Three figures stare at us standing at the centre of the cinematic image. The shape of the screen ... more Three figures stare at us standing at the centre of the cinematic image. The shape of the screen is metaphorically doubled by the frame of a crumbling architectural aperture. Behind the figures, a patchy wall obscures the horizon. In the "space-in-between" the figures and the material limit of the screen where the filmic image is projected, rain showers down on the ground. In this paper, I will investigate the metaphorical dimension of a still from Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker without considering the overall narrative of the movie. In particular, I will reflect on the still’s different levels of multiplicity and their possible significance while looking at the structural and compositional strategy of this image. Building on Michel Foucault’s “heterotopia,” Roland Barthes's and Laura Mulvey's reflections on still's ontological status, and Robert Bird's previous studies on the Russian director, I will propose the articulation of an "ethics of spaces-in-between," intersubjective and dialogical in its dimensions.
Athanor XXXVII, 2019
In this paper, I focus on Gerhard Richter’s Cologne cathedral window (2007) which engages a relig... more In this paper, I focus on Gerhard Richter’s Cologne cathedral window (2007) which engages a religious context by adopting abstract patterns. Richter’s window was inspired by his chance-generated Color Charts. As Richter himself clarified, the use of unplanned patterns of colors in the Color Charts meant to create “meaningless” forms. Similarly, the window is filled with seventy-two color hues randomly chosen by a software. Scholars have not considered the compositional strategy and have focused on rather canonical interpretations. For instance, Friedhelm Mennekes interprets Richter’s window as a “membrane” for the transubstantiation of the material into the spiritual. Dorothee Brill, instead, considers Richter’s desire “to create an image of something that we cannot picture [...] .” Richter’s interpretation itself has mostly stressed the window’s “beautiful” quality. Beyond these interpretations, I argue that this window might be seen as a materialization of religious and secular discourses. “Every religion,” says Jürgen Habermas, “is originally a ‘conception of the world’ [...] in the sense that it claims the authority to structure a form of life in its entirety.” But if every religion is a meaningful “conception of the world,” Richter’s “meaningless” form makes us consider that modern impossibility to detach belief from doubt.
Studies in Philosophy and Education, 2019
This paper is part of a broader project in which I investigate autobiographical experiences and t... more This paper is part of a broader project in which I investigate autobiographical experiences and transcribed memories. Specifically, this essay analyzes the potential linkages between philosophical ideas and everyday social existence. First, I consider the correspondence between an anecdote from my own lived experience and the concept of Bildung—a multidimensional notion loosely translated as “formation,” “self-formation,” “cultivation,” “self-cultivation,” “self-development,” “cultural process,” and so on. Building on Hegel’s and Gadamer’s contributions to Bildungstheorie, I introduce readers to the concept. Then, in analyzing my anecdote, I destabilize the concept and demonstrate that any act of Bildung can be trivialized easily by Rückbildung (reverse-Bildung). The general scope of this essay is neither to contribute to the systematization of the concept of Bildung nor to discuss potential commonalities within the realm of interpretative contributions to this notion. Instead, I demonstrate that thinkers cannot measure this concept with a set of fixed criteria and, finally, I propose a critical understanding of Bildung through a dialogue of theoria and praxis.
Visual Studies, 2019
At the end of 1917, during a conference at Munich University, the German sociologist Max Weber (1... more At the end of 1917, during a conference at Munich University, the German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) made a bold announcement: ‘The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the “disenchantment of the world”.’ In this article, I provide an interpretation of the notion of ‘disenchantment of the world.’ Subsequently, I present visual material that might further illuminate Weber’s idea. In the third part, I strictly concentrate my attention on one argument suggested by Weber: in ‘disenchanted’ societies ‘mysterious incalculable forces do not come into play anymore.’ Through two exemplary sculptures by the Danish artist Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1884), I continue my visual excursus on the ‘disenchantment’ thesis by connecting Weber’s account on the intellectualisation of religious world-views with the autonomisation of the aesthetic sphere. The overall ambition of this article lies in providing an introductory account to an important intellectual problem and historical process through visual and textual analysis.
Language, Literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies (LLIDS), 2019
This paper argues that it is impossible to cleanly separate the category of the subject from a di... more This paper argues that it is impossible to cleanly separate the category of the subject from a dimension simultaneously autonomous and non-autonomous. After starting with a brief introduction to the notion of the autonomous subject, this paper describes some crucial arguments that have validated the decentering of the subject-centered paradigm. Each section identifies the limits of both autonomous and non-autonomous paradigms, illustrating these paradigms with visual case studies. As this article will argue, critical contributions have narrowed down their perspectives to an overtly rigid antagonism between “vaporization” or “centralization,” considering non-autonomy and autonomy of the subject as two mutually exclusive realms. In doing so, critical studies have often been neglectful to notice that vaporization and centralization are in a dialectical tension; both co-participate in the formation of the subject.
Catalogue Essays and Interviews by Donato Loia
Visual Arts Center, The University of Texas at Austin , 2022
Bill Morrison's films often source rare footage in various states of decomposition from early twe... more Bill Morrison's films often source rare footage in various states of decomposition from early twentieth-century silent films and newsreels. A central feature of Morrison's extensive filmography is his reuse of 35mm nitrate film-the unstable, combustible material used for photographs and motion pictures until the 1950s-which imbues the artist's work with a sense of entropy. Film reels have been rescued and reused by Morrison in such a way that these filmic documents from cinema's past have become his own documentaries, expressive re-elaborations of the nature of decay, reflections on the history of cinema itself, and much more. For Cycles & Loops, Morrison selected a number of clips from his entire filmography. The exhibition presents nine loops of different lengths varying from a few seconds to five minutes. Though stripped of their contexts-that is, their original filmic source or their remediated presence in his own movies-each loop offers a semblance of a narrative. This catalog is published in conjunction with the exhibition Bill Morrison: Cycles & Loops, organized by the Visual Arts Center at The University of Texas at Austin and on view January 28 - March 12, 2022. A new version of the exhibition is presented by Colby College Museum of Art August 18 - December 23, 2023.
Visual Arts Center, The University of Texas at Austin, 2022
Bill Morrison's films often source rare footage in various states of decomposition from early twe... more Bill Morrison's films often source rare footage in various states of decomposition from early twentieth-century silent films and newsreels. A central feature of Morrison's extensive filmography is his reuse of 35mm nitrate film-the unstable, combustible material used for photographs and motion pictures until the 1950s-which imbues the artist's work with a sense of entropy. Film reels have been rescued and reused by Morrison in such a way that these filmic documents from cinema's past have become his own documentaries, expressive re-elaborations of the nature of decay, reflections on the history of cinema itself, and much more. For Cycles & Loops, Morrison selected a number of clips from his entire filmography. The exhibition presents nine loops of different lengths varying from a few seconds to five minutes. Though stripped of their contexts-that is, their original filmic source or their remediated presence in his own movies-each loop offers a semblance of a narrative. This catalog is published in conjunction with the exhibition Bill Morrison: Cycles & Loops, organized by the Visual Arts Center at The University of Texas at Austin and on view January 28 - March 12, 2022. A new version of the exhibition is presented by Colby College Museum of Art August 18 - December 23, 2023.
Glenn Heim Paintings. Lawrence Markey Gallery , 2020
Puzzling geometrical forms stand at the center of pictorial landscapes. The abstract shapes often... more Puzzling geometrical forms stand at the center of pictorial landscapes. The abstract shapes often have a sculptural quality that recalls the modernist tradition. But the emotional expressivity of Heim’s painterly marks transfigures the modernist references and imbues the apparently detached combination of geometrical forms with feeling.
Shed-shows, 2023
"The Remaining Time" is an exhibition featuring works by photographer Helen Jones and video-insta... more "The Remaining Time" is an exhibition featuring works by photographer Helen Jones and video-installations by Ania Safko with a soundscape by Eduardo VC. The exhibition explores the intimate connection between time and weather. Jones and Safko highlight the perilous state of the environment, and remind us of our own vulnerability in this era of climactic turmoil.
The exhibition and the public program are organized by Donato Loia, Helen Jones, and Ania Safko. The publication was designed and printed by Logan Larsen.
Founded by artists Mai Snow and Greg Valentine in 2022, Shed-Shows has quickly become one of the leading alternative art spaces in Austin, Texas.
Lead support for this exhibition is provided by the University of Texas at Austin College of Fine Arts and the Fine Arts Diversity Council’s Student Project Grant.
Review Essays by Donato Loia
Religion and the Arts, 2023
In his monumental and informative work, Incomprehensible Certainty, Thomas Pfau starts with a que... more In his monumental and informative work, Incomprehensible Certainty, Thomas Pfau starts with a question taken from Dostoevsky’s The Idiot: “Can something that has no image come as an image?” This important question also applies well to Giorgio Agamben’s and Niklaus Largier’s works, since all three works share a common interest in the challenges of metaphysics: the unspeakable in Largier, Being (to on), or “The One” in Pfau, and the relation between being and language, or being and thinking in Agamben.
Full article here: https://brill.com/view/journals/rart/27/1-2/rart.27.issue-1-2.xml
Religion and the Arts`, 2021
Secular societies need religion and spirituality. These four books collectively make this claim—e... more Secular societies need religion and spirituality. These four books collectively make this claim—each in a different way, at times in radical contrast with traditional religious heritages. Yet, each one shows an intellectual dependency, if not a deliberate defense. Why is this the case? Is it because religion and spirituality might be not only an option in today’s secular age, as the Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor has suggested, but also a necessity? Perhaps, what the philosopher Jürgen Habermas claims is true: modern society might risk losing contact with an understanding of its own humanity without the lessons, normative principles, and questions that are secured by religious and spiritual traditions. These are open, complicated questions, and I suspect that only the historians and philosophers of the future might better grasp the significance and destiny of religion and spirituality in the early twenty-first century. Per now, I consider, in a more limited way, how these recently published four books offer four different paths to their study of religion and spirituality.
Full article here: https://brill.com/view/journals/rart/rart-overview.xml
Book Reviews by Donato Loia
Visual Studies, 2024
Rosemary Cohane Erpf presents an accessible exploration of the painting movements that defined th... more Rosemary Cohane Erpf presents an accessible exploration of the painting movements that defined the 1980s in the United States and Europe, with a particular focus on Germany and Italy. Throughout the book, a central theme emerges: the rejection of any overarching classification of the artists under discussion and a general denial of the usefulness of various labels such as ‘Neo-Expressionism,’ ‘Italian Trans-Avanguardia,’ ‘NeoGeometric Conceptualism,’ and so on. Cohane Erpf argues that these terms, which merely identified trends, have obscured the diverse stylistic approaches of individual artists.
Full article here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1472586X.2024.2375071?src=exp-la
Brooklyn Rail, 2023
In the field of art history, scholars who prioritize understanding artists' perspectives over imp... more In the field of art history, scholars who prioritize understanding artists' perspectives over imposing their own interpretations are rare. Joseph Masheck is one of these exceptional scholars, distinguishing himself by his commitment to unraveling what artists thought about themselves, their work, and the world in which they lived. Faith in Art: Religion, Aesthetics and Early Abstraction proves Masheck's dedication to historical truth, and his work challenges the discipline's all too common conflation of art criticism-how writers value, judge, interpret and ultimately theorize artworks-and art history, that is, an attempted description of what happened in the history of art.
URL: https://brooklynrail.org/2023/12/books/Joseph-Mashecks-Faith-in-Art-Religion-Aesthetics-and-Early-Abstraction
Religion and the Arts, 2022
This anthology of essays considers modes of retelling and the adaptation of religious narratives ... more This anthology of essays considers modes of retelling and the adaptation of religious narratives emptied of or unconventionally related to any original religious meaning. The volume’s subtitle indicates two distinctive features around which the contributions seem to be organized. First, these essays collectively contend that the persistence of religious thought, stories, and inspiration are connected to a larger “collective memory,” a concept notably thematized by Maurice Halbwachs. Second, they consider such persistence across a variety of cultural products, from poetry to literature, visual arts to film studies, and from tv series to video-games.
Full Review URL: https://brill.com/view/journals/rart/rart-overview.xml?contents=latestarticles-57511
Marginalia Review of Books, 2022
The last forty years have seen a boom in academic studies. There are thousands of specialist book... more The last forty years have seen a boom in academic studies. There are thousands of specialist books and articles on global contemporary art, divided by region and by particular practices, including monographic studies of individual artists. For all the insightful details, this has left behind a bewildering fragmentation of knowledge. David Joselit’s Heritage and Debt: Art in Globalization is an attempt to put together some of these scattered pieces to create a comprehensive picture. In his book, Joselit tries to provide an assessment of contemporary art’s role within globalization, and its possible capacity to reshape certain dynamics of globalization. Joselit asks: how do museums, individual artists and works of art act as agents of globalization?
URL: https://themarginaliareview.com/arts-progressive-politics-a-new-public-sphere/
Genealogies of Modernity Blog, Aug 24, 2021
Museums, like hospitals, banks, sport stadiums, apartment complexes, airports, and train stations... more Museums, like hospitals, banks, sport stadiums, apartment complexes, airports, and train stations, are part of our modern imaginary. In the twenty-first century we may take their presence in our world for granted, but it was not until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that people first thought to dedicate spaces exclusively devoted to the celebration and advancement of the arts. They are historical institutions that, like any other, are subject to change. In looking back over the developments of the last one hundred years, Charles Saumarez Smith’s new study, The Art Museum in Modern Times, asks: how and why have art museums changed?
URL: https://genealogiesofmodernity.org/journal/2021/8/23/art-museum-modern-imaginary
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Books by Donato Loia
The book is a collection of 1095 aphoristic thoughts, observations, and notes-to-self that shift through the times of a day over the course of a year.
From the back cover: "You could consider this a motivational (or anti-motivational) guide, but this book is more searching than prescriptive. Statements that initially seem authoritative ultimately produce questions and doubt, in a tone more contemplative than instructive, with a seriousness that doesn’t take itself too seriously. (You might even laugh?) There’s a circular and, at times, contradictory nature to these sentences. They are paradoxical – like life, often enough. And as they touch on time and memory, they become quite moving, encompassing the subjects – love, friendship, work, ambition, desire – that drive and often confound us all."
The book is available here: https://www.bsideeditions.com/shop/p/1095-short-sentences
If you are a student, please feel free to use the student discount code: "STUDENT."
Book Contributions by Donato Loia
Journal Articles by Donato Loia
Full Article Here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nbfr.12776
Full article here: https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/43502
Catalogue Essays and Interviews by Donato Loia
The exhibition and the public program are organized by Donato Loia, Helen Jones, and Ania Safko. The publication was designed and printed by Logan Larsen.
Founded by artists Mai Snow and Greg Valentine in 2022, Shed-Shows has quickly become one of the leading alternative art spaces in Austin, Texas.
Lead support for this exhibition is provided by the University of Texas at Austin College of Fine Arts and the Fine Arts Diversity Council’s Student Project Grant.
Review Essays by Donato Loia
Full article here: https://brill.com/view/journals/rart/27/1-2/rart.27.issue-1-2.xml
Full article here: https://brill.com/view/journals/rart/rart-overview.xml
Book Reviews by Donato Loia
Full article here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1472586X.2024.2375071?src=exp-la
URL: https://brooklynrail.org/2023/12/books/Joseph-Mashecks-Faith-in-Art-Religion-Aesthetics-and-Early-Abstraction
Full Review URL: https://brill.com/view/journals/rart/rart-overview.xml?contents=latestarticles-57511
URL: https://themarginaliareview.com/arts-progressive-politics-a-new-public-sphere/
URL: https://genealogiesofmodernity.org/journal/2021/8/23/art-museum-modern-imaginary
The book is a collection of 1095 aphoristic thoughts, observations, and notes-to-self that shift through the times of a day over the course of a year.
From the back cover: "You could consider this a motivational (or anti-motivational) guide, but this book is more searching than prescriptive. Statements that initially seem authoritative ultimately produce questions and doubt, in a tone more contemplative than instructive, with a seriousness that doesn’t take itself too seriously. (You might even laugh?) There’s a circular and, at times, contradictory nature to these sentences. They are paradoxical – like life, often enough. And as they touch on time and memory, they become quite moving, encompassing the subjects – love, friendship, work, ambition, desire – that drive and often confound us all."
The book is available here: https://www.bsideeditions.com/shop/p/1095-short-sentences
If you are a student, please feel free to use the student discount code: "STUDENT."
Full Article Here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nbfr.12776
Full article here: https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/43502
The exhibition and the public program are organized by Donato Loia, Helen Jones, and Ania Safko. The publication was designed and printed by Logan Larsen.
Founded by artists Mai Snow and Greg Valentine in 2022, Shed-Shows has quickly become one of the leading alternative art spaces in Austin, Texas.
Lead support for this exhibition is provided by the University of Texas at Austin College of Fine Arts and the Fine Arts Diversity Council’s Student Project Grant.
Full article here: https://brill.com/view/journals/rart/27/1-2/rart.27.issue-1-2.xml
Full article here: https://brill.com/view/journals/rart/rart-overview.xml
Full article here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1472586X.2024.2375071?src=exp-la
URL: https://brooklynrail.org/2023/12/books/Joseph-Mashecks-Faith-in-Art-Religion-Aesthetics-and-Early-Abstraction
Full Review URL: https://brill.com/view/journals/rart/rart-overview.xml?contents=latestarticles-57511
URL: https://themarginaliareview.com/arts-progressive-politics-a-new-public-sphere/
URL: https://genealogiesofmodernity.org/journal/2021/8/23/art-museum-modern-imaginary
Full Article Here: https://brill.com/RART
URL: https://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/donato_loia_reviews_philosophy_screens/
In 2017, the Blanton Museum of Art received a promised gift of 28 video artworks from internationally recognized collectors and Blanton National Leadership Board Members Jeanne and Michael L. Klein, with Ezawa’s The Simpson Verdict being one of the major gifts.
On March 29th, 2023, I visited Kota Ezawa in his studio in Oakland, California, and conducted an interview with him about his work. The interview was filmed and edited by videographer Tariq Stone.
Link to the video: https://blantonmuseum.org/2023/05/22/studio-visit-kota-ezawa/
"Genealogies of Modernity" is a project in collaboration with the Collegium Institute, based at the University of Pennsylvania and supported by the University of Pittsburgh’s Special Initiative to Promote Scholarly Activities in the Humanities, the Early Modern Worlds Initiative, and the University of Pittsburgh’s Humanities Center Collaborative Research Initiative.
In this paper, I want to reflect on a more contained aspect of his artistic practice: the role played by traditional African arts as a source of inspiration, and in what ways we can talk about “spirits” and “spirituality” in relation to his work.
What does it mean for a twenty-first century artist to reposition objects that are connected to spiritual traditions within the spaces of the contemporary art world? What is “spiritual” in Gates’s work?
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a40BHWcR-WI&t=103s