Exhibition Catalogue Research Articles

AI-based generative image production systems in the artistic problematisation of the past: the thematisation of memory and temporality in "AI art"

Abstract This text analyses how generative AI systems are being employed in current artistic practice to question certain historical visual narratives, creating representations that challenge some conventional perceptions of the past and thus opening up new perspectives on the experience of temporality. In this regard, special emphasis will be placed on some artistic projects based on generative historical photography practices. These are works that develop new ways around ‘archival aesthetics’ (Sekula in October 39:3–64 1986; Buchloh in Deep storage. collecting, storing and archiving in art [Exhibition catalog]. P.S.1, Nueva York, 1999; Guasch in Arte y archivo, 1920-2010. Genealogías, tipologías y discontinuidades. Akal, Madrid, 2015, etc.) by producing visual archives that do not exist or are alternatives to others. We will therefore analyse works that critically examine how these generative systems can contribute to a revision and re-evaluation of the past, as well as to the problematisation of the ways in which photography has been used for the historical record. These poetics invite subtle reflections on the role of the visual archive in the processes of shaping subjectivity and personal and communal identity. In the final part of the text, we will deal with the study of some artists who, through appropriationist strategies and remakes assisted by generative AI models, revise artistic works from the past, specifically from the photoconceptualism of the 1970s. In these strategies, the thematisation of the relations between photographic register and temporality also plays a leading role.

Selected Bibliography of Publications on Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Librarianship and Collections, 2018–2023

ABSTRACT The Bibliography column documents scholarly communication in English for the interdisciplinary fields of librarianship and Slavic, East European and Eurasian (SEEE) studies. While the bibliography includes books, articles, exhibition catalogs, reports, etc. that were published in paper or digital form from all over the world, the vast majority of entries represents works published in North America and Europe (especially countries of the SEEE region, for obvious reasons).

Блюдо Сергея Чехонина «Ужас» 1922 года — аллегория революции, уничтожающей православие

The article continues the author’s series of publications about the works of the early Soviet porcelain. As it is known, after the October Revolution of 1917, the themes of the porcelain works produced were gradually reduced to agitation and propaganda for the new government. The dish The Horror, created by the master of propaganda porcelain, ‘miriskusnik’ Sergey V. Chekhonin, already carries the opposite statement of ‘anti-agitation’. The plot of the dish is a great field for imagination and reflection. The unique dish created in a single copy fell out of the cultural context for 95 years and was unknown to the general public. In the article, the author aims to systematize the information of the anti-religious time and study the artist’s interpretation of the plot, as well as the interpretation of the image hiding behind the mask of the red monster. The dish has not been adequately described and studied to date. The published essay by E.F. Gollerbach (1922) gives only a superficial description of the image on the dish. The author of this article for the first time attempts to analyse the painting of the dish in a brief essay on the exhibit in the catalogue of the Hermitage exhibition The Voice of Time (2017). The purpose of this article is to complement the existing ideas about the works of the early Soviet porcelain. The relevance of the research is seen in the growing interest in the art of the 1920s and their reinterpretation in the 21st century, as well as in the fact that the chosen research object was included in the fundamental exhibition of the State Hermitage Museum entitled The Voice of Time, which directly corresponds to the dish by Chekhonin.

Review of the exhibition and catalog: Girlfriends. For the anniversary of Varvara Stepanova. Exhibition catalog. Moscow: Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (2024)

The exhibition "Girlfriends. To the anniversary of Varvara Stepanova", (curators A.A. Danilova, A.A. Savinov, A.N. Lavrentiev), which opened in July 2024 at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts reveals the contribution of Russian avant-garde artists to the formation of constructivism as an influential global trend in architecture and design, the development of domestic fashion design, graphic design, theater. The exhibition presents the works of A.I. Akhtyrko (students of A.M. Rodchenko in VKhUTEMAS), E.A. Ignatovich (a photojournalist and journalist who worked with V.F. Stepanova), L.S. Popova, O.V. Rozanova, V.F. Stepanova, G.D. and O.D. Chichagov (artists of children's books). The cultural and educational foundation "Magic of Fashion" under the leadership of N.B.Kozlova provided reconstructions of clothing models according to the projects of N.P.Lamanova, V.I. Mukhina, L.S.Popova and V.F.Stepanova. 15 museums and private collections provided works from their collections for the exhibition: paintings, graphics, photographs, drawings for fabric and theatrical costume designs (Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, GTG, RGALI, Theater Museum, museums of St. Petersburg, Saratov, Ulyanovsk and other collections). The unifying historical and documentary space of the exhibition was excerpts from the diaries of V.F.Stepanova about the avant-garde exhibitions held in 1915-1920, where artists participated, documents and articles by O.V. Rozanova. The exhibition catalog, prepared by a team of authors (design by the ABCdesign publishing group), reflects the main sections of the exhibition: "Acquaintance", "The Birth of constructivism", "Theater", "Fashion", "From a futuristic book to a new layout". The publication was recognized as the "Book of the Year" by experts of the Annual National Competition 2024. The exhibition and catalog reflect the bright innovative nature of the art of the artists of the 1920s, who boldly invaded new areas of the designer's activity, such as cinema, photography and mass media, poetry and fashion. They have left a significant mark on Russian art, pedagogy and art criticism.

Schaár Erzsébet ifjúkora és korai szobrászművészete (1908-1931)

The present paper is a subchapter of my doctoral dissertation titled The Oeuvre of Sculptor Erzsébet Schaár (1908– 1975). The paper discussing a period of her life’s path sofar only tangentially touched on by special literature divides into three parts: the first is concerned with the artist’s family background, childhood and adolescence, the second with the initial phase of the career, the academy years, and the third looks at works created in the 1920s and the early 1930s, as well as exhibitions of that period.Schaár was a veritable “child prodigy”. She began her studies as Zsigmond Kisfaludi Stróbl’s private pupil at the age of sixteen and a year later, in 1925 she was admitted to the Royal Academy of Art where her tutor was again Kisfaludi Stróbl. She debuted with her works publicly in 1926, first of all in exhibitions of the Szinyei Society and the KÚT (=new society of artists). Though several of her that-time works got lost or are latent, an approximately authentic overview of her art in that period can be had from exhibition catalogues, receptions, materials in archives and private collections – first of all the Vilt estate in the King St Stephen Museum in Székesfehérvár and the mostly unprocessed written and photography documents, correspondence in the Schaár estate, as well as from recollections by her contemporaries, first of all Tibor Vilt. A few nudes are known from this period, but her early artistic activity centred on portrait sculpture. This is also the clew along which the phases Schar’s artistic development, the modifications of her style, the influences exerted on her can be demonstrated from the earliest known portraits of her mother to the series of children’s portraits in the late 1920s, early 1930s. The studied period is characterized by a search of her own idiosyncratic style: in the 1920s she created both realistic portraits and works displaying features of art deco and cubism, she was interested in modelling with simple forms, experimented with facial casts – a procedure that returned in later phases of the oeuvre.In sum, the earliest period of Schaár’s sculptural activity displays such singularly powerful idea of plasticity and creative outlook that compare with the later phases of the oeuvre in talent and quality, but with the help of which posterity can discern the trends that were to unfold in full later. Studying this early period may contribute to a more profound understanding and comprehensive interpretation of the entire oeuvre.

‘The Cultural Mediator between the North and the South, the East and the West’: The 1930 Official Exhibition of Austrian Art in Warsaw

This article explores the official exhibition of Austrian art held in May 1930 at The Society for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts in Warsaw. Showcasing 474 artworks by 100 artists, the exhibition spanned the years 1918–1930, a period marked by Austria’s efforts to overcome post-war political isolation. The article examines the exhibition’s rhetoric and its critical reception in Warsaw within the broader context of Polish–Austrian diplomatic relations, influenced by Austria’s challenging political and economic situation and the priorities of the Second Polish Republic. The introductory essay in the exhibition catalogue, authored by Hans Tietze, emphasized Vienna’s seminal role as a cultural center at the crossroads of European artistic trends. This approach aligned with the cultural diplomacy of Johannes Schober’s government, which aimed to underscore a rhetoric of openness to the cultures of other nations, particularly the successors of the Habsburg Empire. This contrasted with the later identity policy of the Bundesstaat Österreich, which elevated Tyrol as emblematic of the core German–Austrian identity constructed in the new state. The analysis reveals that the exhibition represented the peak of Polish–Austrian cultural relations during the interwar years, suggesting the potential for broader engagement. However, this potential was short-lived, ultimately thwarted by the Anschluss of Austria to Germany in 1938.

Female landscapes

The aim of this article is to reflect on the presence of colonized women in photographs and other representations, such as drawings, posters, postcards, exhibition catalogues, newspapers and magazines, which were disseminated in the context of the Portuguese colonial expositions, and in exhibition spaces conceived by the Portuguese with a colonial component. Generally speaking, the exhibitions sought to put forward the progress, taking into account land, rail and sea transport, but also roads, communications, trade, industry, arts, architecture, culture, and the most recent advances in science and medicine. The exhibitions were also places where the logic of colonial models was staged, showing a clear relationship between colonial domination and gender representation. The research includes several materials produced throughout the 1930s (a fertile period regarding the Portuguese participation in this kind of international events) intended to publicize these exhibitions or serve as a complement to them. These materials may include art works or merely propagandistic works, or works that combine both components. The analysis will include materials associated with several exhibitions between 1931 and 1940, such as the International Colonial Exhibition of Paris (1931), the Lisbon Industrial Exhibition (1932), the Portuguese Colonial Exhibition in Porto (1934), the Exhibition of the Portuguese World in Lisbon (1940), and the Portugal of the Little Ones (Portugal dos Pequenitos) in Coimbra (1940). The contexts in which women appear and the way they are represented — as active beings (performing tasks), as contemplative beings (as in natural landscapes) or as objects of sexual desire, revealing the context of power (legislative, administrative, male and colonial) in which the images and the representations were produced — will be analyzed.

Cabbages, Crumble and Sky Talk: Environmental and Planetary Issues in Art – Aotearoa New Zealand

The article describes changed approaches to environmental art in the face of our changing environment. Susan Ballard’s Art and Nature in the Anthropocene: Planetary Aesthetics (2022) and Janine Randerson’s Weather as Medium: Toward a Meteorological Art (2018) propose that changed environmental conditions require, and are generating, new subject matter and new ways of making art. Their ideas are discussed in relation to an early example of public art, Barry Thomas’s Vacant Lot of Cabbages (1978), and works chosen from the oeuvre of Marilynn Webb (1937–2021), who saw her art as acts of spiritual and political protection of the land. The writing of Bridget Reweti in the recent exhibition catalogue Marilynn Webb: Folded in the Hills (2024) casts new light on Webb’s engagement with Māori understandings of the land.

International Exhibitions of Architecture and Selective Cross-Histories

A review of Helen Thomas, ed. Architecture in Islamic Countries: Selections from the Catalogue for the Second International Exhibition of Architecture Venice, 1982/83. Zürich: gta Verlag, 2022, 120 pages, 55 illus. ISBN 978-3-85676-436-4. Gta Verlag’s 2022 reissue of the 1982–83 Venice Biennale Architecture in Islamic Countries catalogue is a timely invitation to reevaluate its history. This review assesses both the new catalogue’s original content and the newly commissioned essays, highlighting criticisms of Pier Paolo Porteghesi’s curatorial approach, primarily driven by a postmodernist methodology rather than a decolonization commitment. Its significance notwithstanding, the new catalogue replicates some of the original’s limitations in thoroughly engaging with the Islamic world’s architectural cultures during the 1980s, reflecting ongoing challenges in integrating these histories into Western-dominated architectural discourse.

Hand Embroidery and Visual Communication Nexus: Analysis of Temitayo Taofeek Badru’s Embroidered Works

Art has passed through a series of changes right from the first man in the cave, and artists through the ages have also explored different methods and materials. Such an aspect is the art of hand embroidery. Hand embroidery is a form of decorative stitches for embellishment on worn apparel and garments that was widely used in the past. This paper examines selected embroidered works by Temitayo Taofeek Badru. These artworks are coded with African philosophy, especially Yorùbá proverbs, sayings, myths, folklore and aphorisms, and social issues in society. This is to establish the development of creativity in embroidery works and artist's contributions to contemporary Nigerian art. The paper also discusses the biography and artistic development of the artist, classifies the selected works into expressionistic and Realistic styles, and analyses the symbolic forms of the works. Data were collected through oral interviews with the artist and participant observation method. Data were also gathered from journal articles and art exhibition catalogues of the artist. Descriptive and formal methods of art historical studies were used to analyse the data. The study revealed that Badru grew up in an environment that encouraged his artistic development. It was found that the artist mostly uses expressionistic and realistic styles in his embroidered works and that he sometimes combines the use of threads and acrylic paints for the realistic style he adopts. The paper concludes that Badru has taken Textile Art to a new dimension through the use of hand embroidery for artistic innovations, which has equally contributed to the development of contemporary Nigerian art.

Синтез иконографического и формально-стилистического методов в музейных ретроспективах Росэцу Нагасавы

The paper presents an analysis of the materials of the largest museum programs of recent years and the latest publications devoted to the creative work of Rosetsu Nagasawa. The research aims to identify the content of the exhibition catalogs and the articles representing Rosetsu Nagasawa’s individual works and collections. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the following: the synthesis of the iconographic and the formal stylistic method chosen by the curators of the exhibitions and the related academic events allows us to consider the trends of the artist’s spiritual life and the historical and cultural context of his creative work. As a result of analysing the museum programs “Nagasawa Rosetsu: The Legendary Edo Master of Eccentric Painting” (2023) and “Rosetsu – Ferocious Brush” (2018), as well as the articles covering the artist’s life and creative work published in the last ten years, the meaning of the works, significant trends in the spiritual life of Rosetsu Nagasawa and the historical and cultural context of his creative work have been revealed.

Piloting creative engagement strategies to explore themes of parenthood with fathers.

The role of the arts in health is increasingly recognised, with participatory arts-based approaches facilitating public engagement. However, little is known about men's involvement in art-based participatory research. We aimed to investigate how men who are fathers may be engaged creatively to explore experiential aspects of fathering and parenthood. Fathers collaborated with an artist, sharing individual perspectives around fatherhood by telephone and email, leading up to creative representations of fatherhood. Initial conversations were prompted by images from a 2020 exhibition catalogue entitled "Masculinities" (Barbican Centre, London) inviting participants' responses to the photographic curation. The catalogue served as an artistic reference to gauge a sense of participants' creative predispositions, as well as a foundation to facilitate spontaneous dialogue about personal meanings of fatherhood. Fathers' experiences of contemporary arts varied greatly; yet all fathers confidently shared responses ranging from photographers' representation of masculinity and fatherhood and perceptions of what was excluded or privileged within this very specific curation. These discussions further led to conversations around representations of fatherhood and highlighted particular areas of interest in terms of fathers' involvement in research and public engagement. The artist provided reflections to each participant by email with links to arts resources building on the initial conversations. Two further shorter sessions followed as fathers' key messages emerged, and the final forms of their own creative expressions crystallised. The final pieces included a musical composition around sharing vulnerability as a new father, a word cloud to represent gendered language of parenthood, an animated graphic image representing the bond between father and child, a combination of short poetic stanzas highlighting assumptions around fatherhood, an experiential photographic record of a father and a son in the early years, and a cartoon strip around emotional intelligence in parenting. Arts-based participatory engagement enabled to capture deep-rooted experiences of being a father in modern society, illuminating common cultural and intergenerational perspectives, while also tapping into unique individual experiences. The richness and diversity of these unique responses suggest that arts-based methodology can facilitate public engagement with men and lead to deep reflections on complex and socially constructed phenomena such as fathering and parenthood.

«Салоны» Дидро. Выставки современного искусства в Париже XVIII века. М.: ГМИИ им. А.С. Пушкина, 2023

Review: Denis Diderot’s Salons. Exhibitions of Contemporary Art in Eighteenth-century Paris. Exhibition catalogue. Moscow: Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, 2023.

The Theme of the High North in the Art of Krasnoyarsk Artist Stepan Fedorovich Turov

Stepan Fedorovich Turov was drawing artist who has served an important purpose of the development of book illustration at the Krasnoyarsk Krai, he was an artist who has been famous in his own lifetime at home and abroad. Works of art on the theme of the North forms a large part of Turov’s heritage but no one research that characterized specificity of realization of the North at Turov’s creative work has been published until the present. There is very small amount of published works about the artist. I. M. Davydenko’s opening chapter of the catalogue of posthumous exhibition of Turov of the 1983 is only one attempt to bring comprehensive analysis of the art of the artist. At books and papers of T. M. Lomanova, E. D. Getmanski and V. Averikhin only a few artworks made by Turov are examined. The aims of this scientific paper are to summarize data about graphic works made by Turov and devoted to the North and to find specific pictorial patterns that are used at these works. At the paper the key aspects are contemplated where the theme of the North in the art of Turov was found out: book illustration, series of easel etchings, linocut landscapes, ex-libris. There was made a connection between book illustration and easel graphic works made by Turov on the theme of the North. This paper not only brings a coherent picture of the development of the theme of the North in art of Turov for the first time. It also put into scientific circulation an information about unpublished artworks made by Turov and new facts of the artist’s biography connected with the North. It was identified that the theme of the North is essential in art of Stepan Fedorovich Turov. Often he tried out new genres and composition patterns specifically within the theme of the North. There were denoted characteristic features of works of art made by Turov on the theme of the North such as individual method of describing a space and keen perception of the culture of indigenous northern people.

"Aber wer denkt im Ausland an Sammler irgendwo in Brünn!" : Hugo Hanak und der Sammeleifer im Brünn der Zwischenkriegszeit

Based on the catalogues of exhibitions organized between 1930 and 1938 by the Moravian Art Association (Mährischer Kunstverein), contemporary journalism and sporadically preserved archival documents, this contribution attempts to present and evaluate the results achieved in Brno by nowadays mostly forgotten German, mainly Jewish, art lovers and collectors. It devotes attention to the genre and artist make-up of the picture collections they created, as well as the fates they shared after 1939. Above all, however, it focuses on the reconstruction of one of them, the small but carefully selected collection of the textile manufacturer Hugo Hanak (1880–1957), whose focus was the works of French landscape painters of the second half of the 19th century (Gustave Courbet, Eugène-Louis Boudin), in particular representatives of the Barbizon school (Pierre Etienne Theodore Rousseau, Constant Troyon, Charles-François Daubigny) and their German and Austrian fellow travellers (Heinrich von Zügel, Tina Blau, Olga Wisinger-Florian, Jacob Emil Schindler and Eugen Jettel). [Appendix II]

Images that translate

Abstract The connection between translation and contemporary art is a hitherto under-researched avenue. Some scholars have analyzed the translation of exhibition catalogue essays (Krein-Kühle 2021) or the museum as a translation site (Sturge 2007; Neather 2008, 2012, 2021; Liao 2018, 2021). Although these are important and necessary research avenues, my aim here is different. I intend to study translation beyond the verb-centric tradition, looking at how artworks have been using translation for decades and how the images used by artists communicate through nonverbal semiotic systems. This will be done by (1) examining the artworks that use words as images (with special emphasis on John Baldessari, Lawrence Weiner, and Robert Barry), (2) by studying how many contemporary artists use translation in their artworks (Ghada Amer, Danica Dakić, Nalini Malani, Mona Hatoum, among others) and (3) by concentrating on exhibitions which deal with translation as a way of looking at the world.

Conquered by the North: creative trips of the artist V.A. Igoshev of the 1950s and 1960s

The northern creative trips of the People's Artist of the USSR Vladimir Alexandrovich Igoshev (1921-2007) represent important and vivid pages in his creative biography. The object of this research is the creative heritage of the artist V.A. Igoshev. The subject of the study is the creative trips of the artist V.A. Igoshev to the North (Sverdlovsk and Tyumen regions) of the 1950s and 1960s. The purpose of this study is to reconstruct the overall picture of the northern creative trips of the artist V.A. Igoshev of the 1950s–1960s on the basis of paintings and graphic works of the early "northern cycle", archival materials, exhibition catalogues, Soviet periodicals, individual scientific articles and information from informants. The novelty of the research lies in the most complete and detailed consideration at the moment of the issue of the northern creative trips of the artist V.A. Igoshev in the 1950s and 1960s. Previously, this topic has not received special coverage. Modern researchers of the creative heritage of the artist V.A. Igoshev in their review articles practically did not touch on this problem, limiting themselves to mentioning individual episodes from the creative biography of the master. The author of the study provides historical facts related to specific dates of trips, introduces a list of paintings and graphic works, with all the circumstances of their creation and further exposure at major art exhibitions of the 1950s and 1960s.

Кросскультурные интерпретации философии Янаги Соэцу

The aim of the research is to shed light on cross-cultural interpretations of mingei, a philosophy developed in the 1920s by the Japanese collector and art historian Yanagi Soetsu. This concept recognises aesthetic value in utilitarian objects and their unique harmony. The mingei movement emphasises anonymous, handmade production of functional objects in large quantities. The study comments on fragments from the exhibition catalog “MINGEI: The Beauty of Everyday Things” and provides examples of incorporating mingei objects into the cross-cultural process. The scientific novelty of the research lies in identifying conflicting viewpoints among researchers of the mingei movement regarding the relationship between mingei undo (the folk crafts movement) and the British Arts and Crafts movement. As a result, the research materials allowed the author to examine Yanagi Soetsu’s activities in the context of the cross-cultural interaction and the mutual influence of Japanese and European folk-art movements in the late 19th and the early 20th centuries.

Evaluating Purchase Plans for Niche Collecting Areas

Many academic libraries collect art exhibition catalogues and juvenile books to support the curriculum, but academic library review sources and book vendors have limited coverage of these niche areas. For more than a decade, Wichita State University has used purchase plans from Worldwide Art Books and Junior Library Guild to acquire print books. This paper discusses the assessment of both plans, how experience with this assessment has influenced development of an assessment plan, and reasons other libraries may want to assess their own niche collecting plans.

Two Bronze Waterfowl Figureheads from Thonis-Heracleion

An intact bronze waterfowl figurehead, SCA1592, was found in the city of Thonis-Heracleion in 2014 and received only brief comments in an exhibition catalogue. A fragment of a similar piece, SCA1561, has not been previously published. This article contains a detailed analysis of both pieces and cites the available comparanda from ancient Egypt. It also addresses the religious and aesthetic aspects of these figureheads.