Art and Design in Romania 1866-1917: Local and International Aspects of the Search for National Expression by Shona Kallestrup (review)

Abstract

7l8 SEER, 86, 4, OCTOBER 2008 suggests that sanctioned popular literature and culture barely existed in Communist countries. He uncritically repeats many myths about the period cultivated after the Changes by natives and visitors, and quotes jokes and internet forums where these myths are sustained ahead of serious scholarship from the region.Wachtel emphasizes socio-political readings ofwriters' works, consequendy many literary allusions or features pass without comment and occasional errors inplot details appear. In chapter seven he links the name of Petrovich, the central character inVladimir Makanin's Andegraund Hi Geroi nashegovremeni(Underground, orA Hero ofOur Time, 1998) (the title ismistrans literated throughout) with one of the narrators of Lermontov's A Hero ofOur Time, none ofwhom is called Petrovich (p. 170). I sympathize with Wachtel's efforts to maintain wider interest in East European writing, though I am not convinced he knows itall sufficientlyto pass the kinds of judgements he does. Perhaps, as for some writers he describes, the desire to maintain relevance inevitably necessitates method ological compromises, leading to a superficiality thatEast European literature needs least. Department ofRussian Studies Rajendra Chitnis Universityof Bristol Kallestrup, Shona. Art andDesign inRomania 1866-igiy: Local and International Aspects of the Searchfor National Expression. No. 684. East European Monographs, Boulder CO, 2006. 320 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Select bibliography. $50.00: ?32.50. Telling a historian now that there ismuch new interest in the countries of East and South Eastern Europe would sound banal. Not so among art histo rians. Their geographical horizon used to be, until not long ago, that ofMr Everyman, and the number of English-language specialists (not counting the occasional foraysby an architect, a folkloristor a Byzantinist) into any of these areas was close to zero. Even in Vienna itwould have been near impossible to find an art historian capable of reading the publications of any ofAustria's Eastern Bloc neighbours. There were of course the numerous books in Western languages brought out by the countries themselves, but their some how anaemic texts and summary pictorial coverage could not foster any kind of specialized studies.However, the art historians' neglect was not only due to the impenetrable Iron Curtain, but also to theway inwhich all art East of the axis ofRome, Florence, Paris and London had always been deemed inferior. And this estimation predominated among the connoisseurs of the very coun tries in question. Itwas only between thewars that each of them put itsown art history into place, which then blossomed under state tutelage after 1945. Today, the new wave of art historical interest from the West falls broadly into two kinds, first,the 'lookwhat each of those countries has to offer', and secondly, the study of how closely 'East' and 'West' are intertwined. Shona Kallestrup's titlevery succinctly addresses both aspects; in actual fact itdeals with the quadruple amalgam of Romanian culture: its actual 'Romanian folk' reviews 719 traits, Byzantinism, the stress of being different from its Slav neighbours because of itsLatin origins, and the straightforward import and practice of foreign culture. To begin with, most manifestations of art and architecture in Romania were generated, in quite a singular way for its date, by aristocratic patronage which, even more exceptionally, carried on well afterWorld War I. Castel Pele?, the royal summer residence, was the work of South German and Austrian architects and interiordesigners, mainly in the styleof the 'German' (orNorthern European) Renaissance. In fact its interiors in their splendour of carved and polished wood represent by far the richest extant example of this important phase of Central European design, a phase which followed, and was pardy a reaction to, the fairy-tale designs of Ludwig II of Bavaria. This Germanness was then flanked by some Parisian Belle Epoque-inspired decorative paintings by the young Gustav Klimt and by theMunich-trained Dora Hitz. By 1900 Crown Princess Marie began to dominate the scene. Granddaughter of both Queen Victoria and Tsar Alexander II and thus intertwined with most German dynasties, she rates as one of the 'most glam orous, unconventional and vibrantly charismatic royal consorts' (p. 43) of the period. By now English Arts and Crafts had become fashionable in some high European circles and M. H. Baillie Scott designed...