Medieval contexts and modern realities of a Genocide-survivor artwork

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-130
Author(s):  
Gohar Grigoryan Savary
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Exhibition History ◽  
Cultural Genocide ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Difference Of Opinion ◽  
Miniature Painting ◽  
History Of

Abstract This article is a critical review of Heghnar Watenpaugh’s monograph The Missing Pages, which traces the history of the thirteenth-century Zeytun Gospels from its creation to the 2010s, when several of the manuscript’s illustrated folios became subject to a restitution claim through a lawsuit filed by the Armenian Church against the Getty Museum. It highlights the importance of Watenpaugh’s publication on assembling and clarifying the impressive itinerary of the Zeytun Gospels, the manuscript’s sociocultural functions, as well as the historiographic research on Cilician miniature painting conducted by the author in the framework of this book. In the present article, several issues raised in the book are critically explored from different angles, expressing a partial or significant difference of opinion when it comes to some of the interpretations and contextualizations proposed by Watenpaugh. These include: Watenpaugh’s nonexhaustive consideration of the Zeytun Gospels’ colophons, which stand as the most authentic documentations on the manuscript’s history prior to the twentieth century; her tracing of parallel examples of artifacts that survived the Genocide based not on scholarly research but on popular narratives (and on contemporary literary writings); the discussion of bilingual coins minted by the Armenian king Hetum I and the Seljuk sultan Kaykhusraw II as cases of “complex identities of the period”, without delving into these complexities, and, thus, not doing justice to the nuances of the medieval context of their rule; some aspects of the history of scholarship on Cilician miniature painting; and the way Watenpaugh presents two of the most prominent historians of Armenian art, Sirarpie Der Nersessian and Karekin Hovsepian, and their attitudes toward the ownership and acquisition of Armenian cultural heritage by western art institutions, which appear to be less than balanced in The Missing Pages. Finally, some reflections on contemporary exhibition practices of survivor artifacts, whose current locations of preservation are often a consequence of (cultural) genocide and dubious acquisition practices, require clearer and more in-depth presentation, at least as far as the exhibition history of the Zeytun Gospels and its separated folios is concerned.

Rewriting or Reaffirming the Canon? Critical Readings of Exhibition History – Editorial

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Boersma ◽  
Patrick van Rossem
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Art History ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
The Public ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
Exhibition History ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
History Of

In 2010, Afterall Publishers launched a series of exhibition histories wholly devoted to the study of landmark exhibitions.[1] The aim was to examine art in the context of its presentation in the public realm. In this way, research into art history shifted from the artistic production of one individual artist to the context of the presentation, and to the position, views, and convictions of the curator. In the introduction to the book, published in 2007 with its contextually pertinent title, Harald Szeemann: Individual Methodology, Florence Derieux stated: “It is now widely accepted that the art history of the second half of the twentieth century is no longer a history of artworks, but a history of exhibitions.”[2] Not everyone agrees with this, however. For example, art historian Julian Myers justifiably criticized this statement when he wrote that the history of art and exhibitions are inextricably linked.

scholarly journals The Music Room: Betty Freeman's Musical Soirées

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 391-409
Author(s):  
JAKE JOHNSON
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Interaction Rituals ◽  
Salon Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Western Art Music

AbstractFor over ten years, Los Angeles arts patron Betty Freeman (1921–2009) welcomed composers, performers, scholars, patrons, and invited guests into her home for a series of monthly musicales that were known as ‘Salotto’. In this article, I analyse Freeman's musicales within a sociological framework of gender and what Randall Collins calls ‘interaction rituals’. I contextualize these events, which took place in a space in her Beverly Hills home known as the Music Room, within a broader history of salon culture in Los Angeles in the twentieth century – a history that shaped the city's relationship with the artistic avant-garde and made Los Angeles an important amplifier for many of the most important voices in contemporary Western art music of the last sixty years.

scholarly journals An Electronic Сatalogue of Slobozhanshchina Icons of the Late 18th – Early 20th Centuries: Prerequisites for Creation, Purposes, Functions

2021 ◽  
pp. 109-117
Author(s):  
И.В. Краснова
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Significant Part ◽  
History Museum ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
Great Patriotic War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Private Collections ◽  
The Way

В статье обосновывается необходимость создания виртуального каталога слобожанских икон и ставится цель разработки основных характеристик проектируемой электронной коллекции. Проведен анализ документальных источников, использованы результаты исследований российских и украинских ученых. Исследована история музеев Слободской Украины, собиравших произведения иконописи, изучено влияние событий ХХ в. на иконописное наследие Слобожанщины, которое вследствие атеистической кампании 1930-х гг. и действий оккупантов в период Великой Отечественной войны утратило единство и оказалось раздробленным между многочисленными музейными и частными коллекциями. Данный фактор, а также несомненная уникальность региональной иконописной традиции стали предпосылками к разработке концепции электронного каталога, который призван объединить все сохранившиеся на сегодняшний день произведения слобожанской иконописи. The article substantiates the need to create a virtual catalogue of Slobozhanshchina (Sloboda Ukraine) icons and sets the aim of developing the main characteristics of the projected electronic collection. Based on the use of systemic-historical and historical-genetic methods, documentary sources were analysed, the results of research of Russian and Ukrainian historians and culture scientists were studied. The history of museums in Sloboda Ukraine, which collected works of icon painting, is considered; special attention is paid to the Historical and Church Museum. Until the revolutionary events of 1917, this museum’s collections were constantly replenished with new exhibits. The history of the creation of the Museum of Ukrainian Art and the Central Art and History Museum named after Gregory Skovoroda (Museum of Sloboda Ukraine) is analysed. The influence of the events of the twentieth century on the icon-painting heritage of Sloboda Ukraine is considered. This heritage, as a result of the atheistic campaign of the 1930s and the actions of the occupiers during the Great Patriotic War, lost unity and was fragmented between numerous museum and private collections. The consequences of the German fascist invaders’ plunder of the museums of Sloboda Ukraine were especially grave: hundreds of thousands of exhibits were destroyed or taken out of the country. The fact of huge and often irreparable losses in the cultural heritage of Sloboda Ukraine by the middle of the twentieth century is stated. At present, the museums of Sloboda Ukraine have already collected a significant part of icon-painting works (about 500), but this number is not comparable with the richest heritage of Sloboda Ukraine of the beginning of the twentieth century. The author emphasises that a certain number of Slobozhanshchina icons continue to remain in churches and private collections in both Ukraine and Russia. Information about icons received from individuals is insufficient for attribution and museum documentation compilation, so many of the icons have not yet been fully introduced into museum circulation. The way out of this situation, according to the author, is to create an electronic catalogue of Slobozhanshchina icons, which will be a database of icon-painting works from museum and private collections with texts and images. The concept of the electronic catalogue has been developed. The catalogue is designed to unite all the works of Slobozhanshchina icon painting that have survived to date.

Academician S.A. Zhebelev and State Hermitage

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-70
Author(s):  
Vitaliy Gennad’evich Ananiev ◽  
Mikhail Dmitrievich Bukharin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
The State ◽  
Scholarly Activity ◽  
Research Institution ◽  
History Of

This article analyzes the relations between the State Hermitage Museum and Sergei Aleksandrovich Zhebelev, one of the most important ancient historians working in Russia in the first half of the twentieth century. Based on previously unpublished archival sources in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the article enlarges our knowledge of Zhebelev’s biography and scholarly activity, describes his position on preserving Russia’s cultural heritage, and sheds new light on the history of the Hermitage – in particular, on its evolving structure as a research institution.

scholarly journals Technology and The North American Forest

2009 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-212
Author(s):  
Marian K. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Technological Change ◽  
North American ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Pulp And Paper ◽  
History Of Technology ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of

ABSTRACT This paper is a critical review of recent historical literature relating to nineteenth and twentieth-century European-based technology in the North American forest. My discussion is limited to the industrial technologies of logging, sawmilling, pulp and paper milling, and forestry. These technologies will be discussed with reference to three issues in the history of technology: first, the nature of technological change; second, the environmental and social impacts of technology; and finally, the role of social values in determining choices of technology. Throughout, there will be an attempt to compare Canadian and American perspectives, when these diverge.

scholarly journals The history of the creation of the Lipetsk lacquer miniature (the problems of the school and production crisis)

2021 ◽  
pp. 202-208
Author(s):  
Ольга Ивановна Мальцева
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Culture ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Scientific Study ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
Modern Development ◽  
Miniature Painting ◽  
History Of ◽  
Unique Experience ◽  
The Creation

Рассматривается и анализируется ранее не изученная часть истории русской лаковой миниатюрной живописи, которая началась более двухсот лет назад, но не все её страницы изучены и освещены. В статье выявляется уникальный опыт и проблема кризиса школы и производства. Данные, полученные в рамках представленного научного исследования, основанного на изучении истории возникновения и развития производства художественного промысла, анализа кризиса и причины упадка школы в их стереотипных и индивидуальных ассоциативных связях, закрепленных конкретными выводами об уникальном опыте создания художественного промысла в отрыве от мест бытования и причинах его утраты, позволяют понять, как избежать многих проблемных моментов внутри системы художественных промыслов и тенденции их современного развития. Исследовательский характер работы выражается в предложенных взглядах и выводах, опирающихся на архивную базу. В целом, выводы данного научного исследования содействуют систематизации анализа исторического опыта, результаты которого могут представлять интерес в пространстве русской национальной культуры и быть использованы как в учебных курсах в области декоративно-прикладного искусства, так и в художественно-производственной деятельности. This work analyzes a previously unexplored part of the history of Russian lacquer miniature painting, which began more than two hundred years ago, but not all of its pages have been studied and elucidated. Few people know that from the seventies of the twentieth century until 2000 there was an artistic craft of the Lipetsk miniature lacquer painting, the founders of which were the miniaturists of Kholui. The paper reveals the unique experience and the school and production crisis. The data obtained in the framework of the presented scientific research were based on the study of the history of the emergence and development of the production of artistic handicrafts, analysis of the crisis and the reasons for the decline of school in their stereotypical and individual associative connections, fixed by specific conclusions about the unique experience of creating artistic handicrafts in isolation from the places of existence and the reasons of its loss. The obtained data make it possible to understand how to avoid many problematic moments within the system of artistic crafts and the tendencies of their modern development. The research nature of the work is expressed in the proposed views and conclusions that draw upon the archival base. In general, the conclusions of this scientific study contribute to the systematization of the analysis of historical experience, the results of which may be of interest in the space of Russian national culture and be used both in educational courses in the field of decorative and applied arts and in artistic and production activities.

scholarly journals Toward a Political History of Capital?

2015 ◽  
Vol 70 (01) ◽  
pp. 45-56
Author(s):  
Nicolas Delalande
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Political History ◽  
First Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Changes Over Time ◽  
Over Time

Abstract The interaction between economic analysis and political action is one of the major issues raised by Capital in the Twenty-First Century and by any work of political economy. However, the way this interaction works and changes over time is not always clear in Thomas Piketty’s book. This critical review, informed by history and political science, aims to open up three areas of discussion. Are redistributive tax policies a mere accident, produced by the chaotic history of the twentieth century, and, if so, what might their future be? On what grounds could capitalism’s tendency to create inequality be regulated in the absence of any alternative system? Finally, can deliberative democracy offer any solution, or has it already been profoundly weakened by the very economic processes that Piketty’s brings to the fore in his book? A political history of capital seems more essential than ever.

Intellectual Trajectories in the Twentieth Century: Circles, Lines and Detours

2003 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-371
Author(s):  
EMMANUELLE LOYER
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
History Of

The history of intellectuals, as developed in France, is now venerable enough to have a history of its own. From the early 1980s its development signalled the end of the heroic age of the French intellectual and the beginning of a critical review of French intellectual practice, hitherto overshadowed by a ‘history of ideas’ stigmatised as inclining towards abstraction and idealism. Debray, Bourdieu, Hamon, Rotman and others have variously rhapsodised over the beauty of the intellectual ‘corpse’. At the beginning of the decade the tragic fading of the revolutionary adventure, the bitter retreat into a recrudescent professionalism and the surrender to the perceived invasion of mass culture were together bringing about fundamental changes in intellectual attitudes and created a new set of circumstances which the optimistic could interpret as a redefinition, and the pessimists as a laying to rest, of the function and figure of the intellectual.

Rediscovering Afghan Fine Arts: The life of an Afghan student in Germany, Abdul Ghafur Brechna

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
MARJAN WARDAKI
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Technical Schools ◽  
Weimar Germany ◽  
European Universities ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Intellectual Milieu ◽  
History Of

Abstract In 1919, Afghanistan embarked on a series of reforms that led to the presence of Afghan students at various European universities, facilitating the circulation of peoples, ideas, and goods. Focusing on one of these cases, this article examines how an Afghan student engaged critically with ‘Western’ art and translated artistic ideas and technologies through the grid of Afghanistan's own history of the fine arts. Through an exploration of the work of Abdul Ghafur Brechna (1907–1974)—artist, music composer, poet, and writer—I argue that, despite his desire to train at German technical schools, Brechna translated, then connected, his Western training to restore Afghanistan's traditional visual and literary arts, making it problematic to define his oeuvre as purely ‘modern’ or ‘traditional’. The first aim is to situate Brechna within the intellectual milieu of Weimar Germany, placing emphasis on how he curated the course of his education to support his aims. By tracing out the evolution of his artistic knowledge to Afghanistan, the second part of this article connects his earlier training to the newly emerging scholars in Kabul who also grappled with national renewal and an ‘Aryan’ literary and cultural heritage. Lastly, I discuss his attempt to rewrite the history of the arts by closely analysing his visual and literary work, emphasizing in particular his attempt to reconnect to themes and genres that had previously been lost or neglected.

Exhibition History and the Institution as a Medium

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Collicelli Cagol
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Art History ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
The Past ◽  
Exhibition History ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Recent Debate ◽  
The Relationship

The recent debate on the relationship between histories of exhibition and art history tends to consider the former as supplementary to the latter. While it is certainly not the case that art history of the second half of the twentieth century should be reduced to a history of exhibitions—given the variety of contexts in which artists have operated—exhibition histories should likewise not be addressed only to enrich art historical narratives, or be selected according to their relationship to an art historical canon. In fact, exhibition histories provide critical tools to approach history in itself: by revealing cultural debates of the past, they help retracing histories of ideas; their expanded field highlights the connections between art and other realms, such as commerce, and they reveal politics and policies of an institution, stressing the latter in order to create a narrative to understand the present and imagine the future.

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