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Vol.2,No.2(2022)

When this journal was launched, it was stated that it would be focused on the period from 1800 to the present. No sooner was that stated than the journal broke its own rule, by including a round-table discussion ‘Globalizing Early Modern Central and Eastern European Art,’ which addresses the issues related to the historiography of art in east central Europe before 1800. However, we felt that the calibre of the discussion, and the importance of the issues it raised, made its inclusion in Art East Central a logical decision.

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Editorial

Editorial : Counter-narratives of east central Europe

Matthew Rampley

https://doi.org/10.5817/AEC2022-2-1

When this journal was launched, it was stated that it would be focused on the period from 1800 to the present. No sooner was that stated than the journal broke its own rule, by including a round-table discussion ‘Globalizing Early Modern Central and Eastern European Art,’ which addresses the issues related to the historiography of art in east central Europe before 1800. However, we felt that the calibre of the discussion, and the importance of the issues it raised, made its inclusion in Art East Central a logical decision.

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Articles

Globalizing early modern central and eastern European art : a discussion forum

Robyn Radway, Tomasz Grusiecki, Robert Born, Suzanna Ivanič, Ruth Noyes, Olenka Pevny

https://doi.org/10.5817/AEC2022-2-2

The following roundtable is the result of a conversation between six scholars who met in the summer of 2021 to share their views on the challenges and opportunities associated with tracing and popularizing central and eastern Europe’s global and transcultural histories with a focus on early modern art and material culture. The topics addressed include the long tradition of studying art from a global perspective in the region, groups of objects ripe for reinterpretation, preferred methodologies, and the unique contributions scholars of the region are poised to make to the global turn.

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Articles

Beyond national style : the innovative thinking and designs of the architect Ion Mincu (1852–1912)

Cosmin Minea

https://doi.org/10.5817/AEC2022-2-3

This article offers a critical reading of the works and thinking of the celebrated Romanian architect Ion Mincu (1852–1912) in relation to the broader cultural and political context of the new nation-state. It investigates the literature on him up until the present day to trace the formation of his image as 'creator' of the Romanian (also known as Neo-Romanian or National) architectural style before presenting Mincu's range of artistic interests, innovative ideas and designs. Even if famous in Romania, Mincu is little-known for an English-language audience and partly to blame is precisely his fame as national architect which has made him a central figure only in histories of Romanian art and architecture. However, the article shows that Mincu harboured a diverse range of artistic ideas and interests, not all related to Romanian national ideology. His understanding of the relation between local building traditions and contemporary architecture was multi-faceted and driven by attempts to reconcile ideas about artistic progress and modernity with those about traditions and cultural identity. Therefore, the article move beyond the connection between his work and ideas about national identity in order to discern his many artistic concerns and his complex relation to the Romanian architectural heritage.

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Articles

Four essays on modern architecture

Virgil Bierbauer

https://doi.org/10.5817/AEC2022-2-4

Virgil Bierbauer is known as perhaps the foremost champion of international modernism in architecture writing in Hungary between the wars. He was editor of the journal Tér és Forma (Space and Form) in the 1920s and 1930, which he used as a platform for disseminating awareness of debates and practices in contemporary architecture not only in Hungary but elsewhere in Europe and North America. Yet his work is almost entirely unknown, primarily because he wrote only in Hungarian. This group of four essays by Bierbauer from Tér és Forma has been translated into English to address this deficit of awareness. The essays are representative of different ideas and positions he took from 1928, the earliest he wrote, to 1946, when the latest of the four was published. The translations are prefaced with an Introduction that puts Bierbauer's work into an historical and intellectual context, as well as outlining some of his key ideas about architecture.

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Articles

Five essays on women's art and perception in interwar Austria

Hans Ankwicz-Kleehoven, Wolfgang Born, Liane Zimbler

https://doi.org/10.5817/AEC2022-2-5

The essays translated in this collection are representative of debates and views about women in art in Austria in the 1920s and 1930s. The texts are reviews of exhibitions of work by women artists, as well as discussions of ideas of design and gender by women critics. They also include contemporary reviews of the so-called Elida Prize of 1928, for the 'Most Beautiful Female Portrait.' The texts are accompanied with an Introduction that puts them into context, considering evolving ideas of women as designers and as artists. The Introduction demonstrates that while the focus of most research on gender and culture in the interwar period has been on the rise of the idea of the 'New Woman,' there were other, more conservative ideas of female identity.

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Reviews

A colourful atlas of artistic practice

A Review of: Karoline Majewska-Güde, Ewa Partum’s Artistic Practice: An Atlas of Continuity in Different Locations, Bielefeld: transcript, 2021. 336 pp. ISBN 978-3-8376-5524-7.

Petra Lexová

https://doi.org/10.5817/AEC2022-2-6

This critical monograph on the Polish-born conceptual and feminist artist Ewa Partum (1946 – ) written by the researcher, curator, and art critic Karolina Majewska-Güde, is an extensive exploration of Partum’s practice. The book critically analyses and evaluates her writings as well her artworks and approaches her work in different contexts and the different conditions she worked under. Ewa Partum was a pioneer of feminist art in central Europe and also the leading female exponent of conceptual art.

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Reviews

Navigating Czech art history after the Second World War

A Review of: Milena Bartlová, Dějiny českých dějin umění 1945–1969(The History of Czech Art History 1945–1969), Prague: UMPRUM, 2021. 552 pp. ISBN 978-80-88308-11-9.

Marta Filipová

https://doi.org/10.5817/AEC2022-2-7

How does one write the history of art history? And who is it that writes art history in different political, social and historic contexts, and the art history of what? These are some of the main questions posed by Milena Bartlová in a highly self-reflective book, Dějiny českých dějin umění 1945–1969.

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Reviews

Estonians, Germans and their heritage

A Review of: Kristina Jõekalda, German Monuments in the Baltic Heimat? A Historiography of Heritage in the ‘Long Nineteenth Century’ (Tallinn: Estonian Academy of Art, 2020). Paperback / PDF 365 pp. ISBN 978-9949-594-99-3 (print); ISBN 978-9916-619-00-1 (pdf).

Matthew Rampley

https://doi.org/10.5817/AEC2022-2-8

The subject of this book is the place of Germans in Estonia or, rather, the story of how the German-speaking inhabitants of modern-day Estonia developed a sense of local identity and artistic heritage during the nineteenth century, and how the art and architecture of the region developed into a field of study.

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Reviews

Red Army monuments in Poland from creation to destruction

A Review of: Dominika Czarnecka, ‘Monuments in Gratitude’ to the Red Army in Communist and Post-Communist Poland, trans. Julita Mastalerz. Paris / Budapest: L’Harmattan, 2021. 724 pp. ISBN 978-2-343-22941-6.

Mischa Gabowitsch

https://doi.org/10.5817/AEC2022-2-9

Dominika Czarnecka’s voluminous book about monuments in gratitude to the Red Army in Poland stands out both in its scope and in the level of historical detail she lays out. Other compendia tend to proceed phenomenologically, starting from extant monuments in their present-day shape. Czarnecka relies on a plethora of Polish archival sources, in addition to published materials, to present a meticulous account of the construction and subsequent uses of the most prominent type of Red Army monument found in Poland.

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Reviews

Beyond the Bauhaus

A Review of: Beate Störtkuhl and Rafał Makała, eds, Not Just Bauhaus. Networks of Modernity in Central Europe, Oldenbourg: De Gruyter, 2020.

Julia Secklehner

https://doi.org/10.5817/AEC2022-2-10

The edited volume Not Just Bauhaus offers a reconsideration of the Bauhas and its myths. It challenges the primary position usually given to the Bauhaus in creating modernist architecture in central Europe and shifts attention to the broader networks of architectural modernity in the region and its connections to other parts of the world.

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Reviews

Archiving performances as a dissident practice

A Review of: Corinna Kühn, Medialisierte Körper. Performances und Aktionen der Neoavantgarden Ostmitteleuropas in den 1970er Jahren, Cologne: Böhlau, 2020. 324 pp. ISBN 978-3-412-51422-8.

Christian Drobe

https://doi.org/10.5817/AEC2022-2-11

Focusing on one Czech artist, a Hungarian, a Romanian and two artists / groups from Poland, this publication provides a well-composed and multi-layered picture of artistic practices in central Europe during the 1970s. Kühn’s book rests on a complex theoretical framework that draws from figures such as Erving Goffmann, Erika Fischer-Lichte or recent ideas on praxeology.

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Reviews

The Great Book Theft

A Review of: Mária Árvai and Dániel Véri, A nagy könyvlopás: Francia könyvkiállítás a vasfüggöny mögött / The Great Book Theft: French Book Exhibition behind the Iron Curtain, Szentendre: Ferenczy Museum Center, 2020. pp. 200. ISBN 978-615-5860-16-4.

Nóra Veszprémi

https://doi.org/10.5817/AEC2022-2-12

On 24 October 1959 an exhibition of new French books opened at the Műcsarnok (Arts Hall) in Budapest. By the time the exhibition closed two weeks later, most of the books on display had been stolen by the visitors. The exhibition The Great Book Theft organised between 20 September 2019 and 1 March 2020 at the Ferenczy Museum Centre in Szentendre explored the event.