Glossary entry

French term or phrase:

événementiel

English translation:

incidental / contingent /situational

Added to glossary by tatyana000
Mar 23, 2012 09:45
12 yrs ago
1 viewer *
French term

événementiel

French to English Art/Literary Art, Arts & Crafts, Painting
From an academic article about perfume as an art form:

Il existe dans la peinture un art de l’éphémère, de ***l’événementiel***, du fugitif, et le parfum pourrait à son tour s’inscrire dans ce cadre.

Proposed translations

+5
3 hrs
Selected

incidental / contingent /situational

One of these might work. There is a whole area of folk art or work that references folk art or other printed ephemera which has been recouped by artists over the years - starting in the late 19th century (Epinal prints and such like). Even earlier there is a whole category of art produced by even the most famous artists for particular occasions, parades, theatrical productions, celebratory events, etc. that did not generally survive (and was not intended to do so).

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Note added at 3 hrs (2012-03-23 13:32:38 GMT)
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Art ephemera are particularly likely to record transient and informal organizations and associated contingent strategies from the unstable and fugitive terrain of ‘alternative’ art activities, which have been a vital part of contemporary practice. Their qualities, as art ephemera, give them a value as a source of potential histories, which might otherwise remain obscure. I am most concerned in this project, with art practices which are not object-based, which are tactical and contextual and in which the idea of ‘alternative space’ remains operative, taking place London in the late 1990s.

http://eprints.gold.ac.uk/142/

Transformative art offers a different architecture. Sometimes this re-visioning is closely linked to a particular theory of perception (Seurat, Picasso/Braque, Baer, Turrell); sometimes it changes our experience of supposedly 'non-art' reality into an aesthetic moment (Cage, Warhol, Duchamp, conceptual art); sometimes art captures the poetry of moments that are otherwise so transitory as to escape notice entirely (Vermeer, Brueghel) or so sublime/terrible that they are reminders of the transcendent (German Romanticism, Picasso, Delacroix). And some art works purely symbolically-psychologically, involving our deep, emotional selves in a visual experience (Rothko, Pollock). In all of these cases, art is a form of contemplative practice, taking us out of mundane consciousness and into a mind-state in which the conventions of the quotidian may be seen as the contingent ephemera that they are.

http://www.zeek.net/art_03044.shtml

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Note added at 3 hrs (2012-03-23 13:34:35 GMT)
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I am tempted to suggest 'transient', not as a translation, but just because it would work well in the string of adjectives.

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Note added at 4 days (2012-03-27 17:36:46 GMT) Post-grading
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Glad to have helped, tatyana!
Peer comment(s):

agree philgoddard : These are all good, but I particularly like "transient" for the reason you suggest.
13 mins
Thanks, phil
agree Miranda Joubioux (X) : I quite like 'contingent', but would steer away from 'transient' which semantically is not quite the same.
2 hrs
Thanks, Miranda. Yes, I don't suggest 'transient' for the reasons you give, as I had hoped I'd made clear.
agree Evans (X) : I think 'contingent' is a good solution here. And I like the word :-)
2 hrs
Thanks, Gilla. I know what you mean! I think it is probably the best of my 3 suggestions.
agree B D Finch
3 hrs
Thanks, BDFinch
agree emiledgar
4 hrs
Thanks, emiledgar
Something went wrong...
4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "Thanks! I wound up using "situational.""
10 mins

marking an event

This really needs to be rephrased in English to work in the idea of 'événementiel'.

Something went wrong...
+3
25 mins

celebratory (in this context)

Another suggestion. Usually I would go with something like Miranda suggested, but here it seems to me that this is talking more about the tradition of commemorating a particular event with a painting and the parallels in perfumery.
Peer comment(s):

agree Miranda Joubioux (X) : Yes, I obviously didn't give this enough thought
5 hrs
Well it was only when I thought that your suggestion was perhaps not right in this context that I came up with my suggestion - sometimes a collaborative process is better!
agree Verginia Ophof
6 hrs
Thanks Verginia
agree Dr Lofthouse
6 hrs
Thanks
Something went wrong...
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