Russian Modernism as Fascism. The Case of Nikolay Punin (original) (raw)
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Attempts to explore and define in more detail, both diachronically and synchronically, relationships and mutual influences between state bodies and art production, communication, education and reception have for decades formed an important part of numerous explorations in various academic disciplines such as art history, history, anthropology, sociology, education etc. The conference aims to provide insights into the current knowledge and interpretations of these relations from the 18th century to the present day, i.e. from the period in which Europe states went through intense centralization, leading to the growth of their influence on artistic production, public cultural and artistic institutions and education. In all these contexts, the term “state” is taken to stand for a politically organized body of people usually occupying a definite territory and the political organization of such a body of people (Merriam Webster Dictionary). Regardless of whether they were monarchies, republics, federations or centralized states, state bodies played an extremely important role in the production of art and in the institutionalization of knowledge, culture and art in all parts of Europe and throughout the aforementioned period. By fabricating its visual identity, commissioning works from artists whom it considered close, and censoring those segments of art production that it judged potentially dangerous to its survival, the state has largely been shaping the art scene in all parts of Europe. Additionally, states’ cultural and educational policies have influenced (and still does) the shaping of knowledge about the arts and teaching content in the field of art (history) on all educational levels. The conference therefore welcomes contributions that deal with approaches to interpretation of these phenomena and various topics in the broad field of art history (painting, sculpture, applied arts, graphic design, photography, architecture, urban planning, curricula and study programmes in art history, etc.) but also other humanities disciplines.
The artwork as counter-monument. Nazi period commemoration and memory in contemporary art.
This paper is framed within the practice of Contemporary art and its links with Cultural Memory. This paper will explore the notion of James E. Young’s ‘counter-monument’ by way of identifying common features of contemporary artworks that address the issue of memory from Nazi period. Such artworks have developed some of the commemorative features that are frequently associated with the monument and commemorative practices in the civic ceremonies. James Young defines the counter-monument as the display of new monuments, initially in Germany, which ascribe to a range of patterns and characteristics, both formal and conceptual, that challenge the iconography of the traditional monument. In this paper I will present some counter-monuments and identify three such patterns; the first related to the concept of dematerialisation and banal, seen in the work of artists who use discarded objects to evoke the absence left by victims of traumatic historical events. The second feature related to reconstructing history, where the counter-memory and counter-histories of victims serve to question the official and hegemonic versions of history. The third aspect I will consider is the artists’ approach to temporality, often used as an agent to activate memory in the viewer. The works of Christian Boltanski, Rachel Whiteread, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Shimon Attie or Miroswla Balka are just some examples of contemporary artists working in this field and will be used to explore the counter-monument in this paper. A formal and conceptual analysis concluding in an iconographic examination of these artworks will enable me to assess their social, cultural and aesthetic value, and the role and function of contemporary art regarding history, memory and the commemoration of the German wartime.
Attempts to explore and define in more detail, both diachronically and synchronically, relationships and mutual influences between state bodies and art production, communication, education and reception have for decades formed an important part of numerous explorations in various academic disciplines such as art history, history, anthropology, sociology, education etc. The conference aims to provide insights into the current knowledge and interpretations of these relations from the 18th century to the present day, i.e. from the period in which Europe states went through intense centralization, leading to the growth of their influence on artistic production, public cultural and artistic institutions and education. In all these contexts, the term “state” is taken to stand for a politically organized body of people usually occupying a definite territory and the political organization of such a body of people (Merriam Webster Dictionary). Regardless of whether they were monarchies, republics, federations or centralized states, state bodies played an extremely important role in the production of art and in the institutionalization of knowledge, culture and art in all parts of Europe and throughout the aforementioned period. By fabricating its visual identity, commissioning works from artists whom it considered close, and censoring those segments of art production that it judged potentially dangerous to its survival, the state has largely been shaping the art scene in all parts of Europe. Additionally, states’ cultural and educational policies have influenced (and still does) the shaping of knowledge about the arts and teaching content in the field of art (history) on all educational levels. The conference therefore welcomes contributions that deal with approaches to interpretation of these phenomena and various topics in the broad field of art history (painting, sculpture, applied arts, graphic design, photography, architecture, urban planning, curricula and study programmes in art history, etc.) but also other humanities disciplines.
2019
This volume compiles a selection of papers that were originally presented at the international conference, Art and Politics in Europe in the Modern Period, held at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb from June 29 to July 2, 2016. The main aim of the conference, and therefore of this volume as well, was to establish a comprehensive perspective on the intricate relationships between art and political regimes as seen from various vantages and based on different discourses (governmental, social, economic, religious, gender, ethnic and the like) in the period from the 15th century until the present.
The Social and Political Life of Propagandist Monuments in the Soviet Union: 1918 and 1956
This article looks at two Soviet monuments at two different periods of Soviet history and compares the social and political life of these public objects. One monument portrays Karl Marx in a modernist style erected in 1918 as a tribute to the Russian Revolution in Petrograd and the other is a colossal statue of Stalin in Budapest that was dismantled during the Hungarian Uprisings in 1956. Both monuments were built with propagandist intentions and the general audience perceived both differently. By taking a critical approach to these visual materials, this article considers how the images were perceived as opposed to their initial appearance. Gillian Rose suggests that objects pass through phases of cultural contexts where their meaning and interpretation transforms, and the evidence presented will agree with her theory of recontextualization. Socialist monumental architecture came into the spotlight during a series of group collaborations in and out of class. I chose propagandist monuments as the subject for my research after working with another colleague during a group presentation where we both looked at the significance of socialist design in the post-socialist era. From the initial idea, I condensed my subject further and during my research discovered two interesting monuments with significant historical context. The two monuments discussed in this article were chosen by myself and presented with my own further research into the topic.