„Sok szíves üdvözlettel régi barátos…”. Colegamenti di amicizia di Coriolan Petranu con storici magiari

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-126
Author(s):  
Nicolae Sabău
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Vernacular Architecture ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fine Art ◽  
General Category ◽  
Access To Higher Education ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
The University

"„Sok szíves üdvözlettel régi barátos...” (“With kind regards, your old friend...”). Coriolan Petranu’s Friendly Connections to the Hungarian Historians. Coriolan Petranu is the founder of modern art history education and scientific research in Transylvania. He had received special education in this field of study that is relatively new in the region. He started his studies in 1911 at the University of Budapest, attending courses in law and art history. During the 1912-1913 academic year he joined the class of Professor Adolph Goldschmiedt (1863-1944) at the Friedrich-Wilhelm University in Berlin. The professor was an illustrious personality from the same generation as art historians Emil Mâle, Wilhelm Vögte, Bernard Berenson, Roger Fry, Aby Warburg, and Heinrich Wölfflin, specialists who had provided a decisive impetus to art historical research during the twentieth century. In the end of 1913, Coriolan Petranu favored Vienna, with its prestigious art historical school attached to the university from the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. There he completed and perfected his education under the supervision of Professor Josef Strzygowski (1862-1941). The latter scholar was highly appreciated for his contributions to the field of universal art history by including the cultures of Asia Minor (Syria, Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Persia), revealing the influence that this area had on proto-Christian art, as well as by researching ancient art in Northern Europe. In March 1920 the young art historian successfully defended his doctoral dissertation entitled Inhaltsproblem und Kunstgeschichte (”Content and art history”). He thus earned his doctor in philosophy title that opened him access to higher education teaching and art history research. His debut was positively marked by his activity as museographer at the Fine Art Museum in Budapest (Szepműveszeti Muzeum) in 1917-1918. Coriolan Petranu has researched Romanian vernacular architecture (creating a topography of wooden churches in Transylvania) and his publications were appreciated, published in the era’s specialized periodicals and volumes or presented during international congresses (such as those held in Stockholm in 1933, Warsaw in 1933, Sofia in 1934, Basel in 1936 and Paris in 1937). The Transylvanian art historian under analysis has exchanged numerous letters with specialists in the field. The valuable lot of correspondence, comprising several thousands of letters that he has received from the United States of America, Great Britain, Spain, France, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Poland, the USSR, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Egypt represents a true history of the stage and development of art history as a field of study during the Interwar Period. The archive of the Art History Seminary of the University in Cluj preserves one section dedicated to Hungarian letters that he has send to Hungarian specialists, art historians, ethnographers, ethnologists or colleagues passionate about fine art (Prof. Gerevich Tibor, Prof. Takács Zoltán, Dr. Viski Károly, Count Dr. Teleki Domokos). His correspondence with Fritz Valjavec, editor of the “Südostdeutsche Forschungen” periodical printed in München, is also significant and revealing. The letters in question reveal C. Petranu’s significant contribution through his reviews of books published by Hungarian art historians and ethnographers. Beyond the theoretical debates during which Prof. Petranu has criticized the theories formulated by Prof. Gerevich’s school that envisaged the globalization of Hungarian art between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period and that also included in this general category the works of German masters and artists with other ethnic backgrounds, he has also displayed a friendly attitude and appreciation for the activity/works of his Hungarian colleagues (Viski Károly and Takács Zoltán). The previously unpublished Romanian-Hungarian and Hungarian-Romanian set of letters discussed here attest to this. Keywords: Transylvania, correspondence, vernacular architecture, reviews, photographs, Gerevich Tibor, Dr. Viski Károly "

Inca Aesthetics and Scholarly Inquiry

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Herring
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Art History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
Scholarly Inquiry ◽  
Andean Culture

This chapter discusses the interpretive challenges that art historians and anthropologists have faced in approaching Inca intellectual and artistic achievements, which do not fit comfortably in Western categories. George Kubler took up the question of Inca art in the mid-twentieth century, creating a space in art history for studying the Incas. This development occurred at a time when archaeologists such as John Rowe worked to place the Incas within the broader context of Andean civilizations, and structuralists like Tom Zuidema were beginning to challenge historical narratives in search of underlying elements of Andean culture. The scholarly interest in Inca art, material culture, and intellect was but one aspect of the Inca focus of that time, as artists found inspiration in Inca ruins and museum galleries in the United States, and other countries began to exhibit Inca artifacts as an art to be approached on its own terms.

Considering the future of art bibliography: the FAB initiative

2011 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 10-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Salomon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Art History ◽  
The United States ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
The Future ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
History Of ◽  
Review Current ◽  
Research Institute ◽  
Current Practices

The Future of Art Bibliography (FAB) initiative developed out of various conversations among colleagues in the United States and Europe. Events in the art historical community, including limited funding resources for art libraries and projects internationally, and the cessation of the Getty’s support for the production of the Bibliography of the history of art (BHA) provided the catalyst for the Kress Foundation grant to the Getty Research Institute. A series of international meetings of art librarians, art historians, publishers and information specialists ensued. The goal was to review current practices, take stock of changes, and seriously consider developing more sustainable and collaborative ways of supporting the bibliography of art history in the future.

scholarly journals To Play Many Parts: Reading Between the Lines of Charlotte Salomon/CS’s Leben? oder Theater?

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-80
Author(s):  
Nicholas Chare
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Fine Art ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
New Haven ◽  
Yale University ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
The University

This conversation with Griselda Pollock, Professor of the Social and Critical Histories of Art in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds, UK, focuses on her most recent book, Charlotte Salomon and the Theatre of Memory (New Haven and London : Yale University Press, 2018). The latter provides new readings of Leben ? oder Theater ? (Life ? or Theater ?), the artistic project of the German Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon (1917–1943), who painted as CS — the cipher the artist purposely used to disguise both her gender and her ethnicity — thus challenging previous interpretations that treat this remarkable intermedial work as straightforwardly autobiographical.

scholarly journals L’Imagination au pouvoir: historia sztuki w czasach kryzysu lat 60./70

2019 ◽  
pp. 399-413
Author(s):  
Andrzej Turowski
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
New Developments ◽  
Critical Thought ◽  
Academic Knowledge ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The University

The present paper is reminiscence and an attempt to reconstruct the intellectual heritage of art history as it was practiced at the University of Poznań in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s in the context of new developments in cultural theory and changing research interests. Besides, it includes the author’s account of his own academic work in that period, began in the 1960s and inspired in particular by the year 1968 that brought a social crisis and a cultural revolution, as well as introduced the element of imagination into academic knowledge and critical thought. The author draws a wide panorama of intellectual stimuli which contributed to an epistemic and methodological turn, first in his own scholarly work and then in the work of some other art historians in Poznań. Those turns opened art history at the University of Poznań to critical reading of artistic practices approached in relation to other social practices and subjects of power. As a result, four key problems were addressed: (1) the position of contemporary art in research and teaching, (2) the necessity to combine detailed historical studies with critical theoretical reflection, (3) the questioning of genre boundaries and ontological statuses of the objects of study and the semantic frames of the work of art, and finally, in connection to the rise of an interdisciplinary perspective, (4) the subversion of the boundaries and identity of art history as an academic discipline. Then the author reconstructs the theoretical background of the “new art history” that emerged some time later, drawing from the writings of Walter Benjamin, the French structuralism, Theodor Adorno’s aesthetic theory, and Louis Althusser’s interpretation of the concept of ideology. Another important problematic was the avant-garde art of Poland and other East-Central European countries, studiedin terms of artistic geography and the relations between the center and periphery. The conclusion of the paper presents a framework marked with the names of Aby Warburg and Max Dvořák, which connected the tradition of art history with new developments, took under consideration the seminal element of crisis, and allowed art historians to address a complex network of relations among the artist’s studio, the curator’s practice, the scholar’s study, and the university seminar, as well as the West, the Center, and the East. At last, the author remembers the revolutionary, rebellious spirit and the lesson of imagination that the Poznań art history took from March and May, 1968.

Erwin Panofsky

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Wagner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Art History ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Full Professor ◽  
New York University ◽  
Erwin Panofsky ◽  
The University

Erwin Panofsky (b. 1892–d. 1968) was a German art historian who, after immigrating to the United States in 1933, became one of the most influential figures in 20th-century art history. His method of reading works of art as historical documents and understanding their interpretation as intimately connected to the literary and philosophical currents of their times is called iconology. While his early writings reflect the theoretical problems of art historical analysis, his later writings aim more at applying than at justifying this procedure. Panofsky was born in Hanover. He went to high school in Berlin and subsequently studied art history at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau, where he completed his doctorate in 1913 with a prize thesis on Albrecht Dürer’s art theory. He worked as a Privatdozent from 1920 at the University of Hamburg, where he was appointed to the chair of art history in 1926 after defending his thesis on formal principles in the works of Michelangelo and Raffael. In his Hamburg years two important influences on Panofsky’s thought stand out: On the one hand, the neo-Kantianism of Ernst Cassirer and on the other, Aby Warburg’s iconological project of the afterlife (Nachleben) of Antiquity in Western art. Cassirer’s neo-Kantianism contributed to Panofsky’s project to define principles by which one may evaluate the artwork’s transhistorical aesthetic values. Aby Warburg’s concern for the shifts of meaning caused by the artwork’s relation to historical discontinuities contributed to Panofsky’s insight that a purely stylistic interpretive system, as proposed, for example, by art historian Heinrich Wölfflin would not do. Panofsky’s focus on the complex historical embeddedness of an artwork’s content in relation to its formal aspects, a focus influenced by his 1920 reworking of art historian Alois Riegl’s concept of Kunstwollen, facilitated the success of his iconological method. Panofsky taught in Hamburg as full professor until 1933, when he and his Jewish colleagues were dismissed. The new Nazi law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service excluded non-Aryans from teaching at universities. In 1934 Panofsky immigrated to the United States, where he had already taught at New York University as a visiting professor for alternate terms since 1931. In 1935 he became professor of art history at the newly founded Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. All of his later publications were written in English. Panofsky’s importance for art history rests as much on his groundbreaking work for this academic discipline as on his ability to popularize his research via public lectures and eloquent studies.

scholarly journals EDITORIAL

ARTis ON ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 4-7
Author(s):  
Rosário Salema de Carvalho ◽  
João Pedro Monteiro
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Research Network ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Theoretical Point ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
Glazed Tile ◽  
Arts And Humanities ◽  
Research Perspectives ◽  
The Future ◽  
The University

From the theoretical point-of-view, the azulejo has been studied in Portugal since the second half of the nineteenth century through a perspective that increasingly highlights the idea of originality and, more recently, the identity factor. Actually, today the azulejo is regarded as one of the arts that best identifies Portuguese heritage. However, is it truly so? Is it reasonable to associate identity narratives with azulejo or is this idea connected only to issues of national marketing?Included in the Month of the Azulejo and the European Year of Cultural Heritage, AzLab#42 special seminar, entitled Identity(ies) of the azulejo in Portugal [1], aimed at debating issues of identity related to glazed tiles, focusing its attention both on the historiographic construction of this (these) concept(s) and on the different points that distinguish the Portuguese usage of the glazed tile from how other countries understand this art form.Following a protocol signed between the Rede de Investigação em Azulejo (Azulejo Research Network – ARTIS-IHA/FLUL) and the Amigos do Museu Nacional do Azulejo Association (Friends of the National Azulejo Museum), AzLab#42 took place at Amphitheater III of the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon on October 4, 2018. The international call for papers had a significant number of proposals, from which, after a blind peer-review process, six were selected. To the latter, three other sessions were added with guest-speakers whose work has been acknowledged in this field of study, which in turn led to vigorous discussions in the several debates held during the seminar.For the reasons given, because it secures contributes of the several authors with different educational backgrounds and nationalities, the conference proceedings now published are enormously relevant for the future. In addition, this volume also fulfills one of the initial goals of this initiative: to introduce the scientific community’s perspective of this matter and contribute to the theoretical support of the Portuguese azulejo’s application to UNESCO World Heritage.ARTis ON’s special number mirrors AzLab#42 seminar’s program. As a result, it starts with a set of articles related to historiography, featuring studies dedicated to general themes which are followed by more specific ones. Nuno Rosmaninho’s article opens this volume with a study entitled “Portuguese azulejos and other national arts” in which the author seeks to “link the identity appropriation of the azulejo to a source common to most artistic discourse in the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries”.Focusing on differentiating issues, Alexandra Gago da Câmara and Rosário Salema de Carvalho list originality facts identified by European historiography until the mid-twentieth century, observing how these spring from seemingly diverse ideas to actually embody a set of well-defined points. From an even more funnelled perspective, Sandra Leandro explores Joaquim de Vasconcelos’ role in this context while João Pedro Monteiro addresses one of the most significant researchers in the glazed tile field of study – João Miguel dos Santos Simões.The appreciation of the convergent and divergent points between Portuguese and Spanish tiles, understood as focal loci for the azulejo’s universal reach, is presented by Jaume Coll Conesa. Following this study, there is a set of articles that, addressing the call for papers’ theme “azulejo: what identity(ies)”, considers certain distinctive characteristics. Fátima Rodrigues and Pedro J. Freitas analyse patterned tiles using mathematical models of classification; Cristina Carvalho examines advertising panels; Shelley Miller shows how her artistic interventions call the concept of identity into question and, continuing with contemporaneous studies, Inês Leitão ends this section by analysing how artists perceive identity issues associated with the azulejo.However, there is still plenty to debate and clarify. Indeed, one of the most interesting points concerning AzLab#42, and the articles now published, rests on the range of topics that arise as future research perspectives. Nevertheless, is the importance acknowledged to the azulejo today, how it distinguishes national landscape – whether by its physical presence or as a key element in the Portuguese collective imaginary – as well as its role as a reference to a broad set of other cultural and artistic displays, ranging from fashion to cuisine, enough to grant it the status of a culture’s identity defining art form? Or are we sometimes witnessing a discourse that aims to subordinate Portuguese tiles to a wider narrative, making them fit into a set of supposedly distinctive factors, which actually intends to build a national image for foreign consumption?Since we believe this volume is a contribution to the future and that from this initiative several others might be held, for the moment we must thank all participants and AzLab#42’s Scientific and Executive Committee. In addition, we would like to highlight the support given by Inês Leitão in terms of graphic design and organisation as well as by Rafaela Xavier and Fábio Ricardo.---[1] AzLab is a monthly seminar organised by the Az group – Azulejo Research Network, of ARTIS – Instituto de História da Arte da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa (Art History Institute of the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon), in collaboration with the National Azulejo Museum (https://blogazlab.wordpress.com). AzLab’s goal is to create new analysis perspectives on issues related to the azulejo, among which are research, inventory, collecting, safeguarding, creating or divulging. The idea of developing a research lab on azulejo, which addresses experimental procedure concepts associated with these spaces, is applied to the discussion AzLab wishes to promote. It also introduces a concept foreign to art history, aiming at developing a multidisciplinary research. Every month a theme is submitted to public debate, which may stem from research projects, masters’ dissertations, PhD thesis, among others. National researchers, who are connected to the most diverse institutions, are invited to participate as well as, whenever possible, foreign scholars. AzLab#42 special Identity(ies) of the Azulejo in Portugal was a one-day conference, which was co-organised by the Amigos do Museu Nacional do Azulejo Association and also supported by Centro Atlântico publisher.

scholarly journals L’Imagination au pouvoir: Art History in the Times of Crisis, 1960s – 1970s

2019 ◽  
pp. 243-256
Author(s):  
Andrzej Turowski
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
New Developments ◽  
Critical Thought ◽  
Academic Knowledge ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
The Times ◽  
The University

The present paper is reminiscence and an attempt to reconstruct the intellectual heritage of art history as it was practiced at the University of Poznań in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s in the context of new developments in cultural theory and changing research interests. Besides, it includes the author’s account of his own academic work in that period, began in the 1960s and inspired in particular by the year 1968 that brought a social crisis and a cultural revolution, as well as introduced the element of imagination into academic knowledge and critical thought. The author draws a wide panorama of intellectual stimuli which contributed to an epistemic and methodological turn, first in his own scholarly work and then in the work of some other art historians in Poznań. Those turns opened art history at the University of Poznań to critical reading of artistic practices approached in relation to other social practices and subjects of power. As a result, four key problems were addressed: (1) the position of contemporary art in research and teaching, (2) the necessity to combine detailed historical studies with critical theoretical reflection, (3) the questioning of genre boundaries and ontological statuses of the objects of study and the semantic frames of the work of art, and finally, in connection to the rise of an interdisciplinary perspective, (4) the subversion of the boundaries and identity of art history as an academic discipline. Then the author reconstructs the theoretical background of the “new art history” that emerged some time later, drawing from the writings of Walter Benjamin, the French structuralism, Theodor Adorno’s aesthetic theory, and Louis Althusser’s interpretation of the concept of ideology. Another important problematic was the avant-garde art of Poland and other East-Central European countries, studied in terms of artistic geography and the relations between the center and periphery. The conclusion of the paper presents a framework marked with the names of Aby Warburg and Max Dvořák, which connected the tradition of art history with new developments, took under consideration the seminal element of crisis, and allowed art historians to address a complex network of relations among the artist’s studio, the curator’s practice, the scholar’s study, and the university seminar, as well as the West, the Center, and the East. At last, the author remembers the revolutionary, rebellious spirit and the lesson of imagination that the Poznań art history took from March and May, 1968.

scholarly journals The studio as study: reflections on the establishment of doctoral programmes in fine art

2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (33) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katerina Reed-Tsocha
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Fine Art ◽  
Exact Nature ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
University Of Oxford ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Doctoral Programmes ◽  
The University ◽  
Art Schools

This article joins the debate on the exact nature of the doctorate in fine art, a well-established qualification in some countries but more recent venture across art schools in the United Kingdom and the United States. Taking as a starting point the experience of establishing and developing the doctoral programme of the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at the University of Oxford, I address questions of the overall rationale for the introduction of this research degree, the integration of fine art graduate programmes within the research environment of larger academic institutions, as well as the orientation and components of doctoral projects. A further question that is raised is the danger of loss of autonomy and the excessive academicization of artistic practice and its potential deterioration into illustration of theoretical ideas.

scholarly journals Academic emancipation of women. Scholarly careers of Polish female historians (nineteenth and twentieth century) – case study

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 56-69
Author(s):  
Jolanta Kolbuszewska ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Women In Science ◽  
Access To Higher Education ◽  
Scientific Autonomy ◽  
Scientific Reflection ◽  
Condition Of Women ◽  
The University

This article is an attempt to bridge the gap existing in the current scientific reflection. Unlike in the United States and Western Europe, in Poland and other countries of the region no comprehensive reflection on the historical condition of women in science, their contribution to the development of individual disciplines, or individual mechanisms that affect the course of women’s careers etc. has been undertaken. The author presents the struggles of Polish women fighting for access to higher education, outlines the obstacles that had had to be overcome before the university doors were finally opened to female-scholars (which only happened at the end of the nineteenth century). Next, the first scientific achievements of female humanists were presented in the field of history. The experience of Polish female historians could be generalized. Their careers reflected the experiences of other women in science from Central and Eastern Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth century. The text consists of three parts; an introductory part shows women’s struggle for higher education. A second is dedicated to women – pioneers of scientific autonomy in the field of Polish history. The author presents the problem in chronological order including two epochs: the interwar period and the period of so-called real socialism. The third part contains conclusions and refers to the contemporary situation in Polish science.

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