Anneka Lenssen
Biographic Data
| ID | 1636058 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Anneka Lenssen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Anneka |
| FAMILY NAME | Lenssen |
| SIGNATURE | LENSSEN A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Berkeley |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0752-044X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 7 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 7 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The Particulars of Particulate
December 1973 brought the comet of the century, billed as a spectacular astral display. Yet the comet named Kohoutek seemed to fizzle, revealing itself only in dim smudges of light. When the writer and artist Etel Adnan set about writing a column to ring in the 1 January 1974 issue of al-Safa, a newly founded French-language newspaper in Beirut for which she was culture editor, the disappointing comet was on her mind.1 Had it helped make visible …
Baghdad Kept on Working
This article explores the late-colonial context for a wartime encounter between Polish and Iraqi artists during a period of British military reoccupation, 1941–45. Linking E. L. T. Mesens’s propaganda work for the Allied cause to the activities of Polish painters stationed in Baghdad, particularly Józef Czapski (1896–93) and Józef Jarema (1900–1974), and to those of Iraqi artists Jewad Selim (1919–1961) and Jamil Hamoudi (1924–2003), it demonstra…
On Language and Modern Art
This essay, written collectively by the co-editors of the publication Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents (2018), provides an account of the book's conception, institutional backing, and multi-year process of research and editing. The authors reflect in particular on the translational politics that obtain in the global art world and the museum sector as well as the academic study of the modern Middle East
The Filmmaker as Artisan
In this interview, the members of Abounaddara, a collective of self-taught and volunteer filmmakers from Syria, discuss their work in relationship to their commitment to an artisanal mode of production. Topics considered include self-teaching versus professional training, Syrian histories of craft production and of film, and the limits of amateurism as a model
Adham Ismaʿil’s Arabesque
The essay explores how the Syrian artist Adham Ismaʿil (1922–63) linked his modernist painting strategies to the activism of the Baʿth political movement during Syria’s independence decade through a conceptual reworking of the “arabesque”—the rhythmic pattern of unending line and pure color that Orientalist scholars considered a product of the Arab and Muslim episteme and French modernist painters adopted as a fresh compositional device. It draw…
Reflections on Durational Art
These short reflections, from UC Berkeley faculty in a variety of disciplines, respond to the following question: "What does the phrase 'time-based art' mean to you? What are the central stakes, conventions, challenges, and opportunities of durational art in the contexts in which you work?" Collectively, they probe a wide range of practices and contexts, including, for example, Mexican festivals and midwestern American carnivals, Syrian documenta…
“Muslims to Take Over Institute for Contemporary Art”
The terms “Islamic” and ‘Arab” are not ideal instruments for classifying modern or contemporary art, for they are meta-categories that can variously encompass Muslims and non-Muslims, and Arabs and non-Arabs. Nonetheless, as historians of modern art in Islamic regions, we seem to have inherited a longstanding commitment to Islamic art as an epistemologically unique practice that produced limitless abstract patterns and other “non-Western” visual …
The Filmmaker as Artisan
In this interview, the members of Abounaddara, a collective of self-taught and volunteer filmmakers from Syria, discuss their work in relationship to their commitment to an artisanal mode of production. Topics considered include self-teaching versus professional training, Syrian histories of craft production and of film, and the limits of amateurism as a model
“Muslims to Take Over Institute for Contemporary Art”
The terms “Islamic” and ‘Arab” are not ideal instruments for classifying modern or contemporary art, for they are meta-categories that can variously encompass Muslims and non-Muslims, and Arabs and non-Arabs. Nonetheless, as historians of modern art in Islamic regions, we seem to have inherited a longstanding commitment to Islamic art as an epistemologically unique practice that produced limitless abstract patterns and other “non-Western” visual …
Reflections on Durational Art
These short reflections, from UC Berkeley faculty in a variety of disciplines, respond to the following question: "What does the phrase 'time-based art' mean to you? What are the central stakes, conventions, challenges, and opportunities of durational art in the contexts in which you work?" Collectively, they probe a wide range of practices and contexts, including, for example, Mexican festivals and midwestern American carnivals, Syrian documenta…
Adham Ismaʿil’s Arabesque
The essay explores how the Syrian artist Adham Ismaʿil (1922–63) linked his modernist painting strategies to the activism of the Baʿth political movement during Syria’s independence decade through a conceptual reworking of the “arabesque”—the rhythmic pattern of unending line and pure color that Orientalist scholars considered a product of the Arab and Muslim episteme and French modernist painters adopted as a fresh compositional device. It draw…
On Language and Modern Art
This essay, written collectively by the co-editors of the publication Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents (2018), provides an account of the book's conception, institutional backing, and multi-year process of research and editing. The authors reflect in particular on the translational politics that obtain in the global art world and the museum sector as well as the academic study of the modern Middle East
The Filmmaker as Artisan
In this interview, the members of Abounaddara, a collective of self-taught and volunteer filmmakers from Syria, discuss their work in relationship to their commitment to an artisanal mode of production. Topics considered include self-teaching versus professional training, Syrian histories of craft production and of film, and the limits of amateurism as a model
Baghdad Kept on Working
This article explores the late-colonial context for a wartime encounter between Polish and Iraqi artists during a period of British military reoccupation, 1941–45. Linking E. L. T. Mesens’s propaganda work for the Allied cause to the activities of Polish painters stationed in Baghdad, particularly Józef Czapski (1896–93) and Józef Jarema (1900–1974), and to those of Iraqi artists Jewad Selim (1919–1961) and Jamil Hamoudi (1924–2003), it demonstra…
The Particulars of Particulate
December 1973 brought the comet of the century, billed as a spectacular astral display. Yet the comet named Kohoutek seemed to fizzle, revealing itself only in dim smudges of light. When the writer and artist Etel Adnan set about writing a column to ring in the 1 January 1974 issue of al-Safa, a newly founded French-language newspaper in Beirut for which she was culture editor, the disappointing comet was on her mind.1 Had it helped make visible …
Art (6 works) · History (6 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Visual arts (4 works) · Aesthetics (3 works) · Archaeology (3 works) · Art history (3 works) · Civilization (2 works) · Islamic Studies and History (2 works) · Law (2 works)