Art Historiography Research Articles

Technology as Resistance: Pioneers of Korean Media Art from the 1960s to the 1990s

Abstract This paper calls for a reassessment of early-stage Korean avant-garde and experimental art as the cornerstone of Korean media art. The aim is to discern a new genealogy of media art in Korea by tracing and linking the activities of early avant-garde artists and media art pioneers who have been neglected in the dominant art historiography, which has shown a preference for painting and video art. My detailed analysis of the experimental artists of the 1960s and 1970s, small groups in the mid-1980s, and the Art Tech Group in the early 1990s demonstrates how they revealed and articulated their spirit of resistance against academism and the mainstream using technology, thus following a different trajectory from that of the avant-garde and media art in Europe and North America.

Historiography of the study of theatrical and decorative art in the theatrical culture of Transcarpathia in the 20th – first quarter of the 21st century

The purpose of the study is to review and systematise the source base of research on theatrical and decorative art, to consider the dynamics of the latter in the theatrical culture of Transcarpathia in the 20th and first quarter of the 21st century. The research methodology is based on the cultural-historical method. The article reveals for the first time the historiography of cultural studies of theatrical and decorative art, summarises, systematises and periodises sources that deepen the understanding of theatrical and decorative art of the theatrical culture of Transcarpathia in the period of the 20th – first quarter of the 21st century in the cultural dimension, outlines the state of scientific development of the topic; reviews publications on theatrical and decorative art, the work of scenography figures and their artistic achievements. The scientific works that study the theatrical culture of the region in the 20th and first quarter of the 21st century are analysed and its influence on the formation of the region’s scenic art is determined. The analysis of the historiography of theatrical and decorative art of the 20th – first quarter of the 21st century shows that the main problems faced by a modern researcher of this topic are the lack of a source base dedicated to the theatrical and decorative art of Transcarpathia of this period and the absence of its periodisation. Modern cultural studies and other researchers studying this issue can only rely on literary publications and other general sources, till april 2024 there is a lack of research on Transcarpathian theater and set design. The results of the study can be used in the preparation of generalised works on the history and theory of culture, the history of theater in Transcarpathia, as well as in the preparation of scientific seminars, lectures, advanced training courses

Historiography of the study of theatrical and decorative art in the theatrical culture of Transcarpathia in the 20th – first quarter of the 21st century

The purpose of the study is to review and systematise the source base of research on theatrical and decorative art, to consider the dynamics of the latter in the theatrical culture of Transcarpathia in the 20th and first quarter of the 21st century. The research methodology is based on the cultural-historical method. The article reveals for the first time the historiography of cultural studies of theatrical and decorative art, summarises, systematises and periodises sources that deepen the understanding of theatrical and decorative art of the theatrical culture of Transcarpathia in the period of the 20th – first quarter of the 21st century in the cultural dimension, outlines the state of scientific development of the topic; reviews publications on theatrical and decorative art, the work of scenography figures and their artistic achievements. The scientific works that study the theatrical culture of the region in the 20th and first quarter of the 21st century are analysed and its influence on the formation of the region’s scenic art is determined. The analysis of the historiography of theatrical and decorative art of the 20th – first quarter of the 21st century shows that the main problems faced by a modern researcher of this topic are the lack of a source base dedicated to the theatrical and decorative art of Transcarpathia of this period and the absence of its periodisation. Modern cultural studies and other researchers studying this issue can only rely on literary publications and other general sources, till april 2024 there is a lack of research on Transcarpathian theater and set design. The results of the study can be used in the preparation of generalised works on the history and theory of culture, the history of theater in Transcarpathia, as well as in the preparation of scientific seminars, lectures, advanced training courses

The Hindu Icon God Shiva as a Visual Communication of Interactions between the Hindus and the Buddhists at the Borobudur Temple in Indonesia

In vernacular settlements, it is a common practice to venerate religious icons. The figure of the God Shiva Mahadeva is one of the icons of Hinduism generally venerated in India. Interestingly, this figure is carved on the relief of the Buddhist temple, Borobudur in Indonesia. The visualization shows that the figure is God Shivam and its presence can be interpreted as a form of visual communication representing the interactions between the Hindu and Buddhist communities living in the surrounding vernacular settlements of the Borobudur temple. This article reviews the art historiography and raises several research questions regarding the visualization of Hindu icons in this Buddhist temple. The study examines the visualization of the figure of God Shiva in one of the relief panels of the Borobudur temple. The paper employs a case study method. It produces visual comparisons of approaches to artistic practice and art history delineated through the characteristics of the visual elements of God Shiva in the 104 Gandavyuha relief panels. Data was collected through photo documentation, visits to the Borobudur temple, photograph tracing, making lithography, and comparing visual findings with published literature. This is to ensure the accuracy of the visualization and investigate Hindu-Buddhist interactions in Java in the 8th—9th centuries. It concludes that the figure carved on panel 104 in the second gallery of the Gandavyuha reliefs is God Shiva, a Hindu icon as per the Gandavyuha Sutra text where God Shiva is mentioned as a spiritual guide who has carried out dharma as a bodhisattva.

In the beginning, there was the analogue. An alternative history of the beginnings of computer art

Since the late 1960s, the historiography of computer art has been developing a canon that is progressively broadening. However, this canon reveals significant blind spots, particularly due to the predominant success of digital computers leading to computer art being almost exclusively identified with digital technology. This identification overlooks other significant classes of computers, notably analogue and hybrid systems, leaving the contributions, artworks, and ideas of many early pioneers in the field unrecognized. Consequently, the history of art created with analogue and hybrid computers remains largely unexplored both in art history and media archaeology. This article seeks to illuminate this relatively obscure chapter of history by introducing the individuals and projects that utilized analogue computers, drawing on previously unknown historical sources. The aim is to underscore the historical significance of a technology that is currently experiencing a resurgence of interest in the field of computer science. The findings reveal that before the advent of artistic experiments with digital computers, analogue computers were the subject of pioneering exploration. The real-time intuitive operation of analogue computers was a unique advantage, foreshadowing a human-machine relationship now commonplace with digital technology. The narrative of the analogue computer constitutes an essential domain for understanding the diversity of computing technologies at the dawn of the computer age. Despite the scarcity of sources documenting these artistic endeavors, this article serves as a call to action for further research in this neglected area.

Navigating and Exhibiting Ambivalence: Yin Hua Artist Organization and Sino-Indonesian Relations in the 1950s to 1960s

Abstract: This paper interrogates the logic of inclusion and exclusion that foregrounds the ethnocentrism and spatial boundedness of the state project’s national identity construction and proposes critical terms of discussion that challenge the limiting nation-centric framework prevalent in the dominant modern art historiography discourse. Drawing on primary archival research, it describes accounts of Lembaga Seniman Yin Hua (Yin Hua Meishu Xiehui, 印華美術協會, Yin Hua Artist Organization), an art organization established in 1955 in Jakarta and analyzes it against the backdrop of the Sino-Indonesian diplomatic relationship during the Cold War era. By engaging with the ambivalent aesthetic and politic of Chinese Indonesian artists, this paper recognizes the active and strategic agency of Chinese Indonesians as both insiders and outsiders in China and Indonesia under the uncertain circumstances of their dual nationality status. It argues that Yin Hua ambivalently navigated between the political patronage of Indonesia and China, performed dual loyalty to Indonesian and Sino-centric art history, and exhibited multiple artistic lineages that disrupted the stabilized territory of postcolonial nation-state geographical and cultural border. Weaving exhibition history, diplomatic history, and critical ethnic studies through a thread of transnational perspective, this paper provides historical narratives that unsettle the roots of racializing logic in the political articulation of nationalism and pushes toward an epistemic shift in rethinking categories of national identity, ethnicity, and citizenship.

To Fill “a Gap in Indian History”

This essay examines the category of “Company” painting, shorthand for painting associated with the East India Company, which dominates the art historiography of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century South Asia. Using the archive of Mildred Archer (1911–2005), the British Library curator who formalized this approach in Western scholarship in tandem with scholarly commentaries by art enthusiasts P. C. Manuk (1873–1946) and Rai Krishnadas (1892–1980), we highlight the complexities of Company painting as both modality and practice. Providing insight into the little-recognized role of Ishwari Prasad (1870–1949), whom Archer and Manuk lauded as the last living artist of the Mughal tradition, we examine his vanguard formulation of a Kampani qalam (“Company style”), where he reframed Mughal art in the era of Company mercantilism and thriving exchange between European and Indian artists at Patna. Further, Prasad emerges as a key interlocutor between the critic and educator E. B. Havell (1861–1934) and the artist Abanindranath Tagore (1871–1951), integrating Mughal and Company lineages within the growing pan-Asian sensibility at the Calcutta School of Art. Foregrounding Prasad's obscured history illuminates how ideas of Mughal, Company, and Modern art belonged to a common intellectual ferment; yet these approaches took separate paths in post-independence India. In tracing the genealogy of Archer's Company painting, we recover multiple voices and strands of artistry informing its gestation in addition to its colonial legacy, complicating Archer's focus on it as an artistic inheritance of the British Empire.

Mute Painting: Deafness and Speechlessness in the Theory and Historiography of Dutch Art

The lives and careers of deaf and mute painters in the early modern Netherlands challenge the perception of disabled artists as self-taught outsiders and the assumption that a premodern experience of disability must have necessarily resulted in poverty and exclusion. Rather than approaching deafness and speechlessness as marginalizing “defects,” I propose to regard them as categories that allow us to reconsider how painting was understood in the seventeenth century. As part of that discourse, this article also examines the idea of sensory compensation, including its roots and impact on theory and historiography of art.

Ana Magalhães Rodrigues (1869-1937): A Descoberta de Uma Fotógrafa Portuguesa.

Gender studies are, in the historiography of art in Portugal, incipient and, as far as the History of Photography is concerned, still embrionary. However, several names of women who dedicated themselves to photography as amateurs are already known, many of them associated to their father, brothers or husband, following a similar tradition of female contribution to the artistic world, before the 19th century. Professional Portuguese photographer, self-designated the first, the name of Maria Reya Campos is known, operating in the south of Portugal. The circumstance of having identified, in 2019, a carte-de-visite with the label ANNA MAGALHÃES RODRIGUES, opened a new path for the study of the life and path of a woman-photographer working alone in the Portuguese countryside, in the early years of the 20th century. Based on written historical sources, photographs and a set of illustrated postcards, we developed some interpretations about her formation and trade.

Beyond the Paradigm of Post-1989 Feminist Art History: Researching All-women Exhibitions in Czechoslovakia, Poland and Croatia/Yugoslavia (1945–1989)

There have been some attempts in recent years to construct a global history of all women art initiatives, including those undertaken in Eastern Europe. These have succeeded in – slowly – redrawing a map of all-women art activities, and yet have revealed numerous limitations of revisionist attempts. In this text, we demonstrate how art historiography has developed in Eastern Europe after the political transformation in 1989 and how its anti-communist bias has contributed to the erasure of all-women art activities related to the socialist states’ politics from social memory and feminist art history. In the second part of the text, we develop parallel narratives – on Polish, Czech and Croatian/Yugoslav art scenes, respectively – about how this tendency is to be seen in the research on all-women exhibitions. These observations are a starting point for our histories of all-women exhibitions that include the activities of women artists and women’s organisations so far neglected in postsocialist feminist art historiography.

Yu. I. Kuznetsov — Investigator of the 17th Century Dutch and Flemish Art

The article is devoted to the scientific heritage of Yuriy Kuznetsov, the outstanding Soviet art historian, and aims to show his contribution into investigations of the 17th century Dutch and Flemish art, which was the main field in his professional interests. The author traces Kuznetsov’s path in the science for about 30 years, identifies and describes thematic lines of his researches and shows the importance of his works for the development of Netherlandish studies in Russia. Being a brilliant master of attribution, Kuznetsov established the authorship of many Dutch pictures in the state Hermitage (where he worked since 1947 until his death) and in the funds of regional museums. He published investigations about Nicolaus Knüpfer, Adriaen van Ostade, Jan Steen, Nicolaes Berhem and other figures of Italianized trend in Dutch school. His monograph about Rembrandt’s picture “Danae” in the Hermitage collection is a classic example of acomprehensive study of art work (1970). The combination of stylistic and iconographic analysis with results of technological examination and involvement of biographical data made it possible to definitively identify the plot of this picture and reveal its history, connected with the creative evolution and private life of the painter. Kuznetsov also studied Flemish and Dutch drawings with success. Works of Rubens’s graphics (1965, 1974) and the book covering the development of drawings in the Netherlands in the 15th–17th centuries (1981, sole in Russian science to now days) are the most important in this part of his legacy. Kuznetsov was the organizer of number exhibitions dedicated to the masters of Flanders and Holland, the author of guide-book to the Dutch exposition in Hermitage. The methodology of his researches combines close attention to every art work and broad cultural outlook, interest to creative connections and influences between masters. Kuznetsov’s scientific activity by its intensity, variety of subjects and outstanding results has to call one of the great pages in historiography of Flemish and Dutch art.

From Rio de la Plata to the Extreme West: Feminist Historiographies of Art and Artistic Activism in Argentina and Chile

The purpose of this article is to employ a comparative approach that allows us to understand the approaches towards art historiography articulated in two countries of South America. Although women artists had organised themselves early on in societies, in women’s exhibitions, and were one of the driving forces in art, when we look at how the art canon has been configured in these countries, we must move to the end of 20th century and the beginning of 21st to find consistent work that dissociates itself from dominant patriarchal perspectives. In this article, I propose to approach this process comparatively, looking at two periods: first, the eighties-nineties and the introduction of gender studies; and second, the exhibitions, research and books produced, above all, since 2000. In both periods, I shall also consider the artistic activism that generated historiography. In the two cases studied, Argentina and Chile, the tension between democracy and dictatorship will also be considered as a relevant factor that has interrupted a process that had begun in the 1970s and would be resumed with the return of democracy.

Lee Ufan's ambivalent otherness and art historiography

AbstractThis article aims to reexamine the relationship between the artist Lee Ufan and nationalist art history through his idea of “ambivalent otherness,” which he defined as both “suffering” and “power.” Traditional art history is established upon a nationalist framework that emphasizes the artists' nationality, leading to the marginalization of national others at the border. As a zainichi Korean, Lee has undergone the “suffering” of being excluded by the art world and art historiography. However, he transformed it into his source of “power” to challenge art historiography based on nationality. This study analyzes the art criticism of “Japanese Contemporary Art History” written by Minemura Toshiaki and Chiba Shigeo in the 1970s and 1980s and highlights the ruptures that the artist's in-between identity wrought on nationalist art history. This shows how both the Mono-ha movement and the artist were marginalized in the construction of “Japanese Contemporary Art History.” Furthermore, this study scrutinizes how Lee attempted to rewrite art history using Mono-ha art theory and a perspective committed to “overcoming coloniality” from the postcolonial in-between position, by reinterpreting Lee's article on Chosŏn minhwa, written amidst an aesthetic controversy across the border between Japan and Korea.

American Art Historiography, Slavery, and Its Aftermath

True to its cultural roots in the United States, the field of American art history has been slow to recognize centuries of slavery’s shaping of visual production and has only begun to address historiography’s persistent devaluation of Black lives. This article explores how scholars over the last decade are attempting to integrate discussions of slavery into studies of American art and reflects on the political implications of doing so. Their work invites us to look again at key moments in US history through the lens of art and slavery, holding out the possibility of reinventing the story of American art in relation to the African diaspora.

1876 and All That: the ‘Special Loan Collection of Scientific Apparatus’ as a case study in crowd-sourced international public science

Some historians of the ‘Special Loan Collection of Scientific Apparatus’ exhibited in 1876 interpret its principal significance as catalysing the eventual transformation of science collections in the (South) Kensington Museum into London’s present-day Science Museum. Debates about that nexus have not, however, noted that this exhibition was an international crowd-sourced venture in public science. Far from being collection-founding donations, most artefacts displayed were discretionary loans contributed by private citizens, learned societies, instrument makers, universities, engineering companies and state departments from across both the UK and Europe, with most displayed items later returned to their exhibitors. Our paper draws upon the art historiography literature of ‘loan exhibitions’ to consider the 1876 exhibit in (mostly) physical science as part of a growing democratic tradition of resource sharing. This exhibitor-focused approach is illustrated via case studies of two kinds of contributors that did not predominantly have their loans converted to donations: (male) instrument makers and women, especially widows. In that context, we can interpret apparatus lending in 1876 as forms of advertising, memorialising, and just occasionally offloading disused but historically important equipment. It is in such terms that we can better understand why only a small fraction of loaned 1876 apparatus become permanent parts of the South Kensington science collections via such means as state departments discarding obsolete technical equipment.

Magyar történelmi témák 18. századi bécsi festői: adatok Wenzel Pohl munkásságához és az August Rumelnek tulajdonított mohácsi csata-képhez

Media news made the name of Wenzel Pohl known in Hungary in the early 2000s, for the two large history paintings (The Battle of Mohács, Saint Stephen converting the Hungarians to the christian faith), which had cropped up in the art trade and which were purchased by the Hungarian state and deposited in the Hungarian embassy in Vienna, were attributed to him. Although more recent research has proposed that the painter of the cycle once consisting of six pieces was most probably August Rumel and not Pohl, it is worth knowing of Pohl’s artistic activity irrespective of the Hungarian relevance, too, because his person is gradually fading out of art historiography – for example, his name is missing from the 96th volume of the Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon published in 2017.The best-known Pohl portraits are the ones he painted of the noted Jesuit astronomer, mathematician and physicist Miksa Hell. A full-figure portrait shows the scientist in traditional Sami costume during his research trip to the North, and we know of a portrait showing Hell is a monk’s frock. His engraved copies of paintings in the Viennese imperial collection, real forerunners to the representative 19th century album of prints presenting the collection, probably belong to a series. In the cycle of paintings about the coronation of Joseph II as Holy Roman Emperor (Frankfurt, 1765) he was assigned the painting of architectural details, which is confirmed by the fact that he was sent on a study trip to Frankfurt to make drawn sketches of the venues of the event. After the representative painting of Martin van Meytens he made a small-scale version of the group portrait of Maria Theresa and her family. His chef d’oeuvre is the representative painting series showing the events of the coronation of Maria Theresa in Pozsony in 1741 painted for the Hungarian court chancellery in Vienna. He painted it with Franz Messmer in the second half of the 1760s. In contrast, the three portraits of monarchs in Riesensaal in Innsbruck so far attributed to him by researchers were actually painted by Jakob Kohl.The other part of the paper contributes a few new viewpoints to the examination of the painting about the battle of Mohács earlier attributed to Pohl. In addition to contemporaneous woodcuts of the tragic battle of 1526 in news-letters and pamphlets in German, to 16th century Turkish miniatures, and diverse 16–18th century European manuscript and book illustrations, a ceiling fresco in Garamszentbenedek and several large paintings – including Rumel’s work – also conjured up the battle in the 18th century. Since in the nation’s historical consciousness and cultural memory the battle of Mohács did not acquire its symbolic, mythic position represented to this day before the 19th century, the two works of art were way ahead of their time in anticipating the salient position of the tragic event, because, unlike, for example, István dorffmaister’s late 18th century pictures ordered in Mohács, they show the battle as a fatal even in the history of the entire nation. on the other side, by the terminating piece of the series ordered for the Transylvanian court chancellery being the battle of Mohács, the client departed from the 18th century imperial, dynastic outlook which presented as positive parallels to the battle of Mohács and the capture of Szigetvár by the Turks the victorious battles of the late 17th century liberating war led by the Habsburg Empire: the second battle of Mohács and the recapture of Szigetvár, partly as examples of divine justice and partly as legitimation of the Habsburg Empire’s territorial expansion “earned with blood”. It is noteworthy that the right side of central scene of Rumel’s Battle of Mohács resembles the composition of leonardo da Vinci’s Battle of Anghiari surviving in copies only. It is presumable that the renaissance battle scenes served as a model example for the painter.

‘WE WOULD TAKE THE SCREEN BY STORM’: FEMALE ANTIQUARIAN AGENCY AND THE CAPTURE OF ENGLISH MEDIEVAL PAINTING C 1830–50

This paper explores the work of Harriet Gunn (1806–69) who began making drawings of rood screens c 1830. With the help of her sisters Hannah and Mary Anne, Harriet produced approximately 250 drawings, a remarkable number considering that rood screens received very little attention at this period. This substantial body of work merits analysis not least because it constitutes the first serious attempt to visually document Norfolk’s painted rood screens and provides an opportunity to shed light on an overlooked episode of female antiquarian activity. Drawing on previously unpublished letters, this paper confirms the active role Harriet and her sisters played in recording, discovering and enhancing the understanding of English medieval painting in the mid-nineteenth century. It also considers the influence of Harriet’s father, Dawson Turner FSA (1775–1858), in encouraging a new appreciation of the art historical value of painted rood screens. Turner’s objectives are situated within the wider cultural context of emerging tastes for early Italian art and new developments in art historiography seen in the 1820s and 1830s. Harriet’s sophisticated understanding of rood screens is therefore interpreted as a response to the intellectual milieu in which she was immersed. The paper concludes by exploring how her work, and the knowledge it promoted, was disseminated through the cultural machinery of archaeological societies in the mid-1840s through printed publications, exhibition and display.

Between art and history: on the formation of Winckelmann’s concept of historiography

ABSTRACT Winckelmann’s work inhabits an ambivalent place in the history of historiography. His Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (1764) is often referred to as the foundational document of art history, but almost never without the obligatory mention of its rather unhistorical dimension. The aim of the following discussion is to evaluate Winckelmann’s position in the history of eighteenth-century European historiography, especially with regard to the early phase of his career as a historian, i.e. the decisive period between his studies in Halle and his stay in Nöthnitz (1738–1754). During these years, Winckelmann carefully excerpted historiographical literature and dealt intensively with the model of universal history, whose structural patterns deeply influenced his reflection on art historiography.

UKRAINIAN THEATER IN PEREMYSHLY (1941 – 1944): STRUCTURE AND ACTIVITIES

The aim of the research is to discover the organizational-administrative and creative-artistic aspects of the activity of the Ukrainian Theatre in Peremyshl in the years of the Hitlerite’s occupation of the town. The research methodology is based on the principles of historicism, system-formation, scientific character, verification, the author’s objectivity, moderated narrative constructivism, and the use of general scientific (analysis, synthesis, generalization) and specially-historical (historical-genetic, historical-typological, historical-systemic, etc.) methods. The scientific novelty of the article consists in the argumentation of the fact, that, for the first time, in the historiography of the Ukrainian theatrical art on the basis of the previously unknown archival documents, the genesis, organizational development, repertoire, administration, and actors’ staff of the Ukrainian Theatre in Peremyshl in the years of its occupation by the Hitlerites are clarified. Conclusions. Summing up, the fact that the historical genesis of the Ukrainian Theatre in Peremyshl was connected with the activity of “Lesia Ukraіnka theatrical society” (1925 – 1939) and the Soviet State regional drama theatre (1940 – 1941). The history of the Ukrainian Theatre in Peremyshl can be divided into three stages: 1) the stage of the formation of the theatre in a form of the Theatrical circle and Drama section of UAC (1942 – first half of 1943), 2) the stage of the theatre’s reorganization into a professional establishment (August‑October, 1943), 3) the stage of the theatre’s vigorous activity on professional bases (November of 1943 – July of 1944). The Ukrainian Theatre’s artistic experience was manifested by several dozens of first-night performances and almost one hundred of other productions in Peremyshl and the neighboring villages and towns.

Boundaries and Connections. Producing, organizing and sharing knowledge on medieval Iberian art

To what extent and how are today's increasingly interconnected and porous real and virtual worlds conditioning and even determining research in Art History? Several art historians have pointed out that, as the globe becomes hyper-connected, the discipline is shifting its focus from local and national questions to global or worldwide issues. This paper aims to analyze this shift in the historiography of medieval Iberian art. I argue that research is indeed being reshaped by the removal or the crossing of physical, epistemic and virtual boundaries as well as by pushing forth an increasing interest in connectivity. Additionally, I propose to cross or remove surviving rigid boundaries still further, to construct more flexible and fluid epistemic limits, and to establish additional connections at several levels.