Tag Archives: Art Historiography

Maartje Stols-Witlox, Review of Matthew Hayes, The Renaissance Restored. Paintings Conservation and the Birth of Modern Art History in nineteenth-century Europe

Changing images: reciprocity between nineteenth-century paintings conservation and art history

Maartje Stols-Witlox (University of Amsterdam) 27/MSW1

Review of:

Matthew Hayes, The Renaissance Restored. Paintings Conservation and the Birth of Modern Art History in nineteenth-century Europe, Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute, 2021, 208 pp., USD 65,00, ISBN 9781606066966 (paperback).

Abstract: Matthew Hayes’ volume examines the influence of nineteenth-century scholarship on the activities of contemporary paintings restorers, and, vice-versa, investigates how the visual effects of conservation treatments impacted contemporary scholarship. This reciprocal relationship is explored in four case studies, two situated in Italy (Giottesque frescoes and paintings by Titian), on in the United Kingdom (National Gallery London) and one in Germany (the Berlin museums). Hayes focuses on the treatment of paintings from the Renaissance, a period that knew strong interest from nineteenth-century scholars. He weaves together historical archival material (personal notes, correspondence, restoration records, historical photographs, etc.) and period texts (a.o. by Jacob Burckhardt, G.B. Cavalcaselle, Joseph Crowe), into a rich and accessible account, interspersed with examples of historical restoration treatments of well-known paintings and with restorer biographies. The resulting volume provides an entertaining and very accessible entry into the topic, whether the reader comes from (art) history or has a background in conservation.

Key words: conservation history, Italian Renaissance, art historiography, nineteenth century, Giotto, Titian, Charles Eastlake, Wilhelm Bode, Aloïs Hauser Jr., Jacob Burckhardt, G.B. Cavalcaselle, Joseph Crowe

Preview the book’s illustrations here.

A new book on Periodization in the Art Historiographies of Central and Eastern Europe

1st Edition

Periodization in the Art Historiographies of Central and Eastern Europe

Edited By Shona Kallestrup, Magdalena Kunińska, Mihnea Alexandru Mihail, Anna Adashinskaya, Cosmin Minea

ISBN 9781032013848. Published May 27, 2022 by Routledge. 290 Pages 41 B/W Illustrations

Book Description

This volume critically investigates how art historians writing about Central and Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries engaged with periodization.

At the heart of much of their writing lay the ideological project of nation-building. Hence discourses around periodization – such as the mythicizing of certain periods, the invention of historical continuity and the assertion of national specificity – contributed strongly to identity construction. Central to the book’s approach is a transnational exploration of how the art histories of the region not only interacted with established Western periodizations but also resonated and ‘entangled’ with each other. In their efforts to develop more sympathetic frameworks that refined, ignored or hybridized Western models, they sought to overcome the centre–periphery paradigm which equated distance from the centre with temporal belatedness and artistic backwardness. The book thus demonstrates that the concept of periodization is far from neutral or strictly descriptive, and that its use in art history needs to be reconsidered.

Bringing together a broad range of scholars from different European institutions, the volume offers a unique new perspective on Central and Eastern European art historiography. It will be of interest to scholars working in art history, historiography and European studies.

Table of Contents

PART 1: INTRODUCTION

Introduction

The Editors

1. Linear, Entangled, Anachronic: Periodization and the Shapes of Time in Art History

Matthew Rampley

PART 2: WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN BYZANTINE

2.Renaissances in Byzantium and Byzantium in the Renaissance: the International Development of Ideas and Terminology in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Europe

Anna Adashinskaya

3. From Byzantine to Brâncovenesc: The Periodization of Romanian Art in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century

Cosmin Minea

4. Regional Variations of the Byzantine Style. Canonization/Nationalization of Art and Architecture in South-Eastern Europe

Timo Hagen

5. Bulgarian versus Byzantine: The Unrealized Museum of the Bulgarian Revival and National Style Debates in Architecture ca. 1900

Ada Hajdu

PART 3: OUR ART IS IN TEXTBOOKS

6. Sztuka. Zarys jej dziejów (Art. A Survey of its History, 1872): The Disciplinary and Political Context of Józef Łepkowski’s Survey of Art History

Magdalena Kunińska

7. German Medievalism and Estonian Contemporaneity: Centre, Periphery and Periodization in the Histories of Baltic and Estonian Art, 1880s–1930s

Kristina Jõekalda

8. Periodization of Architecture in Croatian Art History: The Case of the ‘Renaissance’ and ‘Transitional’ Styles

Dubravka Botica

PART 4: TRADITION WAS INVENTED BY MODERNITY

9. The European and the National in Imperial Historiography and Periodization of the Russian School of Painting

Andrey Shabanov

10. Magmatic Foundations: The Emergence and Crystallization of Early Ideas of Periodization in Polish Painting in the Nineteenth Century

Natalia Koziara-Ocęduszko

11. Problematizing Periodization: Folk Art, National Narratives and Cultural Politics in Early Twentieth-Century Romanian Art History

Shona Kallestrup

12. Beyond the Provincial: Entanglements of Regional Modernism in Interwar Central Europe

Julia Secklehner

PART 5: TURNING POINTS

13. Disaster and Renewal, 1241–42: The Transition from Romanesque to Gothic in the Historiography of Medieval Art in the Kingdom of Hungary

Mihnea Alexandru Mihail

14. Modernism Versus Modernism: Socialist Realism and Its Discontents in Romania

Irina Cărăbaș

Editor(s)

Biography

Shona Kallestrup is Associate Lecturer in the School of Art History at the University of St Andrews. She was formerly Senior Researcher at New Europe College, Bucharest.

Magdalena Kunińska is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Art History at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. She was formerly Senior Researcher at New Europe College, Bucharest.

Mihnea Alexandru Mihail is Assistant Professor at the National University of Arts, Bucharest, and a research fellow at New Europe College, Bucharest.

Anna Adashinskaya is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Laboratory for Medieval Studies of the Higher School of Economics, Moscow. She was formerly a postdoctoral fellow at New Europe College, Bucharest.

Cosmin Minea is a postdoctoral researcher for the Chair of the History and Theory of Architecture Prof. Dr. Maarten Delbeke at ETH Zürich. He was formerly a postdoctoral fellow at New Europe College, Bucharest.

Support Material

Open Access Content

Open Access content has been made available on our eBook platform.
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Notice of a new book on André Chastel

Hervier, Dominique ; Renzulli, Eva: André Chastel. Portrait d’un historien de l’art (1912-1990), Paris: La documentation française, 2020

ISBN 978-2-11-157248-5

Eur 24,00

Jean-Marie Guillouët (Professor of medieval art history at the Université de Bourgogne and Scientific secretary of the Comité international d’histoire de l’art – CIHA)

Rarely has the personality of an art historian been so in tune with a moment in the history of the discipline as that of André Chastel (1912-1990). Chastel began his long career after the Second World War as an assistant at the Sorbonne, where he defended his thesis in 1950. Elected directeur d’études at the École Pratique des Hautes Études the following year and professor at the Sorbonne in 1955, he joined the Collège de France in 1970 and the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres in 1975. This brief cursus honorum scarcely reflects the eminence of André Chastel in art history during this period. Indeed, one cannot overemphasize his role in giving the discipline a hitherto unknown importance in French public policies. He was a major public figure, known to a broad audience through his articles in Hubert Beuve-Méry’s Le Monde right after the War, and later, by a regular column in the same newspaper. He enjoyed undeniable international recognition, due not only to his scientific activity but also to the constant support of the French État culturel represented by the Ministry of Cultural Affairs and the administration of Higher Education. In that sense, the career and activity of André Chastel offer an extraordinary perspective on the discipline of art history in France during the “Trente Glorieuses” and the following decades.

Following the 2012 colloquium dedicated to the activity, methods and causes of André Chastel[1], Dominique Hervier and Eva Renzulli deliver in this monography a very thoroughly documented portrait of the art historian himself and a detailed report of the dialogue he engaged with his society. Having been André Chastel’s graduate student in the late 1960s, Dominique Hervier was ideally suited to lead this undertaking, conjointly with a researcher of a following generation. The first chapter of their book deals with the methodological issues of their documentation: the authors draw on many direct sources, both oral and manuscript, as well as some thirty interviews of actors in the discipline who worked with André Chastel. The solid introduction contributed by Pierre Vaisse draws some very useful and synthetic lines of analysis for the post-War history of the discipline, which, along with all the above-mentioned testimonies, paints an enlightening picture of the field during Chastel’s career, that is to say during the years 1950s to 1980s.

The second section of this book deals with the activity of André Chastel as a teacher and a director of research. The authors rightfully place these pedagogical experiences in the continuity of Chastel’s activity as a secondary school teacher, right after he left the École normale supérieure. This part highlights his contribution to the founding and development of the Centre de recherches sur l’histoire de l’architecture moderne (Crham). The third section is entirely devoted to the activity of André Chastel in the construction of the French patrimonial institutions and policies during the “Trente Glorieuses”. There, the authors bring together an important documentation and different testimonies to highlight how Chastel took part in the administration of the Monuments Historiques, and the momentum he gave to such important endeavors as the Secteurs sauvegardés and, in particular, the Inventaire général des richesses d’art de la France, the great project (his grand dessein) for French artistic heritage that Chastel shared with André Malraux. Indeed, the fourth section of the book deals with the role played by A. Chastel in the international and political dynamic of the discipline, as well as the place he had as a well-known columnist or editor. In this regard, the authors do not fail to mention the mandate of A. Chastel as scientific secretary of the Comité International d’histoire de l’art (CIHA). Indeed, as George Kubler recalls, “André Chastel was for years the central figure [of the CIHA]”, and not only because “he was important scholastically but also because he had the French government behind him[2]”.

These last lines confirm that, for those who want to understand the history of post-War art history in France, the figure of André Chastel constitutes an irreplaceable point of observation. Dominique Hervier and Eva Renzulli thus provide a precious source of documentation for historians who wish to study this critical moment in French intellectual and political history.

[1] Frommel, Sabine ; Hochmann, Michel ; Sénéchal, Philippe (ed.), André Chastel. Méthodes et combats d’un historien de l’art, Paris: Picard, 2015.

[2] P. 331.

A Reader in East-Central-European Modernism 1918–1956: Courtauld Open Access

Edited by Beáta Hock, Klara Kemp-Welch and Jonathan Owen
Courtauld Books Online· A Reader in East-Central-European Modernism 1918–1956

Introduction: Minor Modernisms?

Beáta Hock, Klara Kemp-Welch, and Jonathan Owen

  1. In the Currents of the International Avant-Garde Movements

Krisztina Passuth

  1. Is the Cubism that is Czech Also Universal? Czech Art Theory (1921–1958) and Cubism as a Cultural and Transcultural Phenomenon

Marie Rakušanová

  1. Parasitism

Andrzej Turowski 

  1. Palimpsest – A Possible Language for Interpreting Twentieth-Century Art History (As Illustrated by Košice Art of the 1920s)

Zuzana Bartošová

  1. Zdeněk Rykr and the Chocolate Factory

Vojtěch Lahoda

  1. A(bs)traction: The Czech Lands Amid the Centres of Modernity 1918–1950 (‘(Not Only) on the Relationships Between the Fine and Applied Arts [Introduction]’ & ‘The Decoration of Decorative Art’)

Hana Rousová

  1. The Magazine Formiści and the Early International Contacts of the Polish Avant-Garde (1919–1921)

Przemyslaw Strożek

  1. Balancing ‘Absolute Painting’ and Reality: Ľudovít Fulla and the Paradoxes of Slovak Modernism

Katarína Bajcurová

  1. Biomorphism as Avant-Garde Deconstruction

Andrzej Turowski

  1. Rytm, Sanacja, and the Dream of Modern Art Patronage in Poland (1922–1932)

Małgorzata Sears

  1. The Poverty of the Matriarchal Ornament and the Gleam of the Civilised Woman

Martina Pachmanová

  1. Modernity, Indifference, and Oblivion: Katarzyna Kobro and Maria Jarema

Waldemar Baraniewski 

  1. The Hungarian Prinner

Júlia Cserba

  1. Old Worlds and the New Vision: The Ethnographic Modernism of Karel Plicka’s The Earth Sings (1933)

Jonathan Owen

  1. Derkovits: The Artist and his Times

(‘Introduction’ & ‘Fade-ins: The Art of Gyula Derkovits and Interwar Hungarian Social Photography’)

Katalin Bakos and András Zwickl

Ágnes Kusler and Merse Pál Szeredi

  1. Modernism and the School of Arts and Crafts in Bratislava

Iva Mojžišová

  1. Looking Forwards or Back? Shifting Perspectives in the Venice Biennale’s Hungarian Exhibition: 1928 and 1948

Kinga Bódi

  1. Cyprián Majerník: From the Grotesque to the Tragic

Zsófia Kiss-Szemán

  1. ‘Do You See Anything?’ Asked Poussin: The Informe, Bataille, and the Czech Surrealists

Lenka Bydžovská

  1. A ‘Modern’ Official Art: The School of Rome

Julianna P. Szűcs

  1. Two Important Czech Institutions, 1938–1948

Lucie Zadražilová and Milan Pech

  1. Strzemiński’s War

Luiza Nader

  1. ‘The Joy of New Constructions in Times of Homelessness’: Marian Bogusz’s Art of the 1940s

Agata Pietrasik

  1. Artist Among the Ruins. Art in Poland of the 1940s and Surrealist Subtexts

Dorota Jarecka

  1. Film Montage and the Principle of Montage in Non-Cinematic Media, A Case Study: The Early Collages of Jiří Kolář

Tomáš Pospiszyl

  1. The European School and the Group of Abstract Artists (‘Between the Ramparts: The Critical Reception of the European School and the Gallery of the Four Directions’ & ‘Broken Dolls: Central European Parallels and Connections’)

Péter György and Gábor Pataki 

  1. The Embodiment of Communist Utopia: Socialist Realism in Slovakia, 1948–1956

Zora Rusinová

New book: Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions Since 1990

Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions Since 1990 By 

Eva Kernbauer

Copyright Year 2022 Hardback
£120.00

ISBN 9780367763251 Published September 7, 2021 by Routledge 260 Pages 53 Color Illustrations

Format Hardback QuantityGBP£120.00 Add to Cart Add to Wish List

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Book Description

This book examines contemporary artistic practices since 1990 that engage with, depict, and conceptualize history.

Examining artworks by Kader Attia, Yael Bartana, Zarina Bhimji, Michael Blum, Matthew Buckingham, Tacita Dean, Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujica, Omer Fast, Andrea Geyer, Liam Gillick and Philippe Parreno, Hiwa K, Amar Kanwar, Bouchra Khalili, Deimantas Narkevičius, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Walid Raad, Dierk Schmidt, Erika Tan, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions since 1990 undertakes a thorough methodological reexamination of the contribution of art to history writing and to its theoretical foundations. The analytical instrument of anachrony comes to the fore as an experimental method, as will (para)fiction, counterfactual history, testimonies, ghosts and spectres of the past, utopia, and the “juridification” of history. Eva Kernbauer argues that contemporary art—developing its own conceptual approaches to temporality and to historical research—offers fruitful strategies for creating historical consciousness and perspectives for political agency.

The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, historiography, and contemporary art.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 license.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1. Art as Historiography 2. Ready for History: The Explosion of the Documentary 3. The Crux of Authorship 4. Archiving, Recording 5. Showing, Telling, Picturing 6. Performing 7. Counterfactual History, Parafiction, and the Critical Ends of Utopia 8. Testing Truth: Tribunal, Script, Trial 9. Anachronism and Anachrony 10. No End of History: Art and History in the Anthropocene

Author(s)

Biography

Eva Kernbauer is Chair of Art History at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna.

Support Material

Open Access Content

Open Access content has been made available on our eBook platform.
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CFP: Studying Byzantium in the interwar years,

CFP: Studying Byzantium in the interwar years, workshop at the XXIV International Conference of Byzantine Studies, Venice/Padua, August 22–27, 2022
Submissions due March 31, 2021

Byzantine studies have not generally tended to be at the cutting edge of theoretical or methodological innovation. Nevertheless, in recent years, new critical studies of the plural entity that is “Byzantium” and its critical reception throughout the centuries have finally emerged, pinpointing the history of Byzantine studies and its relationship with cultural and geopolitical issues.

The present workshop aims to explore how Byzantine art history has developed at a key moment in European history, during the 1920s and the 1930s, focusing on the individual stories of Byzantine art historians in that period. Formed by pioneers of the field, scholars working on the art of the Eastern Roman Empire during the interwar period pursued their research in a world radically transformed by the First World War. Socio-political events such as the escalating nationalism in Italy and Germany, the collapse of the Russian Empire and the subsequent formation of the Soviet Union and waves of emigration, or as the end of the Μεγάλη Ιδέα in Greece, to cite only few examples, profoundly impacted their activities. At the same time, the restoration of Hagia Sophia under the direction of Thomas Whittemore, the foundation of new scholarly journals dedicated to the field (Byzantion, Seminarium Kondakovianum, Byzantinoslavica, etc.), the first ever international exhibition of Byzantine art (Paris 1931) as well as the raising of an international network of collectors and dealers changed knowledge and access to Byzantine art. 

The workshop intends to explore the theoretical and methodological innovations which emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, and how the latter intertwined with the geopolitical and cultural context of that time. We especially seek short papers deepening the biography of pivotal scholars of Byzantine art and to compare how they approached the discipline in different context, such as in Western and Central Europe, in the United States, and in the USSR. When it comes to émigrés, we are especially interested to understand their impact on the transformation of the field as vectors of different scholarly traditions.

We invite proposals for presentations of 20 mins on ongoing research on Byzantine art historiography, with a focus on individual art historians and their contribution to the field during the Interwar period. We will look into the possibility of publishing the papers from the workshop. Please send a title and short abstract (max. 300 words) of your proposed presentation to the conveners, together with five key words and your affiliation, by March 31, 2021. 

Questions and proposals may be addressed to Francesco Lovino (francescolovino@hotmail.com) and Adrien Palladino (palladino.adrien@gmail.com)

Giuseppe Barbieri on Gombrich in an Italian context

Immagini e parole, a new Italian collection of essays by E.H. Gombrich, brings a significant contribution to a seventy-year long debate in Italy and abroad

 Review of:

 Immagini e parole by Ernst H. Gombrich, edited by Lucio Biasiori, Roma: Carocci Editore, collana “Saggi”, 2019, 224 p., 73 b. & w. illus., 20.40 €, ISBN 9788843086115

Giuseppe Barbieri (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice) 21/GB1

Abstract: This Italian edition of a collection of essays (hitherto unpublished in Italian) by E.H. Gombrich allows us to rethink the connection between words and pictures from a sensibly different perspective from the discussions of the early 2000s. The focus is neither on the insurmountable conflict between the now prevailing visual code and the verbal one, nor on the pictorial and iconic turns: Gombrich invites us to re-examine this relationship starting from history and art history. In Italy, this perspective has remained marginal until the emergence of “micro-history” in art, accompanied by a series of exhibitions that focused no longer on the artist but rather on the context. A perspective that deserves to be rediscovered…

Key words: E.H. Gombrich, interdisciplinarity, focus on context, words and pictures, visual syntax

Annamaria Ducci on Kubler and Focillon at Yale

Annamaria Ducci (Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA), Département des études et de la Recherche) just uploaded a paper on Academia.edu:

“Layer-Cake History”. Kubler and Focillon at Yale, January 1940 (starting from some manuscript notes)

By Annamaria Ducci

The paper highlights Kubler’s relation to Henri Focillon (under whom Kubler studied at Yale University from 1933), on the basis of lecture notes.

Book received: Debating German Heritage: Art History and Nationalism during the Long Nineteenth Century

Current issue of Estonian journal of art history and visual culture, Kunstiteaduslikke Uurimusi / Studies on Art and Architecture 2014, vol. 23, no. 3/4

Debating German Heritage: Art History and Nationalism during the Long Nineteenth Century

The Special Issue Debating German Heritage, fully in English, addresses the German culture and its afterlife in the multiethnic Eastern and Central Europe. The volume offers insights into various cases of art historiography, which was often written in German during the nineteenth century. Introductory article by the editors of the Special Issue (Kristina Jõekalda, Krista Kodres) is accompanied by two contributions that frame the rest of the articles both historically and conceptually: Hubert Locher on the idea of cultural heritage and the canon of art, and Winfried Speitkamp on the history of German heritage preservation and nationalism. These are followed by five more focused case studies concerned with questions of heritage and identity from multiple angles: Heimat as a Baltic German space of belonging (Ulrike Plath), the German heritage of architecture as a cornerstone of Baltic identity (Kristina Jõekalda), the activity of the Society for History and Antiquities Research of the Eastern Provinces of Russia (Mārtiņš Mintaurs), the construction of national identity via grand exhibitions in Bohemia and Austria-Hungary (Marta Filipová), and finally the Kunstschutz campaigns during World War I that provided the context in which the notion of heritage primarily began to develop (Beate Störtkuhl).

More information.

Ashgate sale

Dear reader of the Journal of Art Historiography

I am very pleased to be sending you this additional email update to advise you that the Ashgate Sale 2014 has launched! Over 1000 Ashgate, Gower and Variorum books have been reduced to just £25.00 / $45.00 from now until 30 September 2014 and if you order online you will benefit from a further 10% online discount. Visit www.ashgate.com/sale2014 for full information (or see the attached Art and Visual Studies pdf). If you are entitled to author/editor discounts you can use these in addition to benefiting from the sale reduction. If you do not have your online author discount code, please contact Elaine Hill (ehill@ashgatepublishing.com).

For an even greater saving remember that your current, exclusive free postage offer is also valid until 1 August 2014 (details in your July update).

With these two offers running in tandem there are some significant savings to be made if you’d like to add to your personal library.

With very best wishes.

Ashgate Publishing
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