Periodization in the Art Historiographies of Central and Eastern Europe

Description

This volume critically investigates how art historians writing about Central and Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries engaged with periodization. At the heart of much of their writing lay the ideological project of nation-building. Hence discourses around periodization – such as the mythicizing of certain periods, the invention of historical continuity and the assertion of national specificity – contributed strongly to identity construction. Central to the book’s approach is a transnational exploration of how the art histories of the region not only interacted with established Western periodizations but also resonated and ‘entangled’ with each other. In their efforts to develop more sympathetic frameworks that refined, ignored or hybridized Western models, they sought to overcome the centre–periphery paradigm which equated distance from the centre with temporal belatedness and artistic backwardness. The book thus demonstrates that the concept of periodization is far from neutral or strictly descriptive, and that its use in art history needs to be reconsidered. Bringing together a broad range of scholars from different European institutions, the volume offers a unique new perspective on Central and Eastern European art historiography. It will be of interest to scholars working in art history, historiography and European studies. Cover Half Title Series Title Copyright Dedication Contents List of Contributors List of Figures Foreword Acknowledgements Part I Introduction Introduction 1 Linear, Entangled, Anachronic: Periodization and the Shapes of Time in Art History Part II We Have Always Been Byzantine 2 Renaissances in Byzantium and Byzantium in the Renaissance: The International Development of Ideas and Terminology in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Europe 3 From Byzantine to Brâncovenesc: The Periodization of Romanian Art in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century 4 Regional Variations of the Byzantine Style: Canonization/Nationalization of Art and Architecture in South-Eastern Europe 5 Bulgarian versus Byzantine: The Unrealized Museum of the Bulgarian Revival and National Style Debates in Architecture, ca. 1900 Part III Our Art Is in Textbooks 6 Sztuka: Zarys jej dziejów (Art: A Survey of Its History, 1872): The Disciplinary and Political Context of Józef Łepkowski’s Survey of Art History 7 German Medievalism and Estonian Contemporaneity: Centre, Periphery and Periodization in the Histories of Baltic and Estonian Art, 1880s–1930s 8 Periodization of Architecture in Croatian Art History: The Case of the ‘Renaissance’ and ‘Transitional’ Styles Part IV Tradition Was Invented by Modernity 9 The European and the National in Imperial Historiography and Periodization of the Russian School of Painting 10 Magmatic Foundations: The Emergence and Crystallization of Early Ideas of Periodization in Polish Painting in the Nineteenth Century 11 Problematizing Periodization: Folk Art, National Narratives and Cultural Politics in Early Twentieth-Century Romanian Art History 12 Beyond the Provincial: Entanglements of Regional Modernism in Interwar Central Europe Part V Turning Points 13 Disaster and Renewal, 1241–42: The Transition from Romanesque to Gothic in the Historiography of Medieval Art in the Kingdom of Hungary 14 Modernism versus Modernism: Socialist Realism and Its Discontents in Romania Index