Czech Academy of Sciences, Institute of Art History

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the tradition of lighting six candles in memory of the six million Jewish victims of the Shoah. Combining the approaches of religious studies and art history, this interdisciplinary research seeks to enhance understanding of the six-candle ritual. It explores its impact in architecture and the visual arts, universalist adaptations, and evolving symbolism in response to regional practices and customs. It traces the origins of the ritual, its promotion by influential organizations, its impact on architecture and the liturgy, and concludes with a case study of the return of the Six-Candle Ceremony to the Czech Republic, from the ‘diaspora of remembrance’ to Holocaust-era countries culturally isolated by the Iron Curtain.

Prince Klemens von Metternich-Winneburg was not only a prominent Austrian politician, but also a passionate collector and supporter of science and new technologies. One of the inventions that particularly interested him was the daguerreotype. Today, it is mainly the famous still life he received as a gift from the French artist and inventor Louis J. M. Daguerre in 1839 that is mentioned in this context. However, many other indices show that Metternich’s interest in the daguerreotype extended beyond the gift. This is clearly evidenced by a large collection of early daguerreotypes and written documents preserved at Kynžvart Chateau in Bohemia. Drawing on visual and written sources, the article examines not only the original scope and form of the daguerreotype series but also its present-day composition, which has not previously been studied in detail, and which is a fragment of the former collection. Additionally, the article sheds light on the place of the daguerreotype in the context of Metternich’s other interests and collections.

The Austro-Hungarian monarchy in the middle of the 19th century not only strengthened its defensive line toward the Ottoman territories in the hinterland of the Bay of Kotor, but also constructed a network of shoreline defences to safeguard its newly acquired territories from naval attacks. As part of the same initiative, the sea entrance to the Bay of Kotor, strategically very important part of the Adriatic coast at the time, was also fortified. Three forts were built as the first defensive line, one on the cape Ostro, one on the islet Žanjica, called Mamula, and the third one on the Cape Arza. Their bases were stone-built casemates with flanking guns and open mercer batteries placed on platforms. Unfortunately, they became obsolete very quickly because they could not meet modern defensive requirements. Given that they were very visible and therefore an easy target for increasingly sophisticated naval weapons, a number of minor and major adjustments were made over time that resulted in changes and adjustments to the building structure. With the end of the importance and political influence of Austria-Hungary, the fortification systems it built lost their value and deteriorated over time. Today, they not only reflect an important historical and political moment, the way of warfare and defence at that time, but also the monarchy's need for the appearance of forts to be a combination of certain architectural taste and military needs.

Contemporary art, reflecting present-day realities, adapts to the evolving social, technological, and societal changes in developed and capitalist-oriented countries. This adaptation involves breaking down disciplinary boundaries and embracing trans-tactics, where knowledge from diverse fields informs artistic creation. Art becomes a multifaceted endeavor, engaging with political, social, and ecological issues, contributing to deeper creativity and consumer engagement. The fusion of science, technology, and art raises ethical and aesthetic questions, particularly regarding the use of sustainable materials and environmental impact. Meanwhile, artists explore natural and cultural complexities, emphasizing political dimensions like ecology, sustainability, and social justice. Projects such as Silenthio Pathologia and Haruspex by Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva exemplify these themes, inspiring discussions on eco-social crises and sustainable practices.

U članku se na temelju dosad neistraženoga gradiva pohranjenoga u Hrvatskom državnom arhivu u Zagrebu prvi put donosi detaljna povijest gradnje i prenamjene zgrade podignute u formi stiliziranoga antičkog hrama u sklopu zagrebačkog kompleksa srednjih škola 1895. godine, čiji je idejni začetnik Izidor Kršnjavi. Prati se geneza forme i funkcije ove građevine od prvih zamisli do prenamjene već gotovog projekta muzeja sadrenih odljeva antičke skulpture u gimnastičku dvoranu – gombaonu. Autorice na temelju istraživanja sačuvanih nacrta i podataka o izgradnji ujedno rasvjetljavaju atribuciju gombaone.

This article aims to present sixteenth-century costume books as a phenomenon that was one of the ways of getting to know the world in the modern era (both in micro and macro perspective), accompanied by emphasizing and even exaggerating features and elements of appearance considered to be characteristic of given societies. In order to characterize this phenomenon in detail, the genesis, function and reasons for the popularity of costume books are also given. The text also includes their interpretation in the broader context of socio-cultural changes taking place in 16th-century Europe – these collections of representations were the European visualization of time and space, however they did not reflect reality, but created the way the world was perceived by the use of non-obvious means. They made it possible to show in a compact collection a large number of images of representatives of various nations in clothes typical for a particular region of the world, in a way making it symbolically smaller and more accessible. For this reason, it is possible to point out analogies between the operation of costume books and Kunst- und Wunderkammer, which is emphasized in the article. Thus, these collections of representations can also be considered from the perspective of a specific kind of collecting – the collecting of human images (human types) through their appropriation. Therefore, one of the hypotheses presented in the article is to delineate the relationship between costume books and the centurieslong process of perpetuating the claim of colonialism in certain countries which took place not only in the political-economic sphere, but also in the field of visual arts.

Studie zkoumá Ostrčilův význam pro šíření Fibichova díla. Fibich svého žáka Ostrčila pověřoval revizemi svých partitur před vydáním, a dokonce mu svěřil části některých svých děl k instrumentaci. Vedle toho Ostrčil již tehdy upravil několik Fibichových skladeb pro klavír. Poté, co Ostrčil nastoupil svou vlastní kariéru skladatele, dirigenta a uměleckého ředitele, věnoval i nadále svou pozornost hudbě svého učitele. Ostrčil byl upravovatelem a korektorem Fibichových skladeb vydávaných u F. A. Urbánka, dirigentem jeho oper v Národním divadle včetně dramaturgie fibichovských cyklů, věnoval se propagaci Fibicha v zahraničí, kdy například provedl předehru k opeře Pád Arkuna ve švédském Göteborgu.

A book review of Christopher Wood, A History of Art History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019. 459 pp. ISBN 978-0-691-15652-1.

The article is the first introduction to the garden city movement in the Czech lands. The dynamic transformations of its trajectory are highlighted by selected upheavals. It spans from its cautious beginnings in the first decade of the twentieth century to its climax in the 1920s, and a singular appropriation of the urban vision by the Czechoslovak government in the 1930s. Encompassing the turbulent era, the way in which the garden city utopia was approached exposes not only implementation of the modern urban concept but also the constant response to political transformations underlined by Czech and Germans conflicts in what was to become interwar Czechoslovakia.

As a documentation material, the text is often overshadowed by photography – but unlike photography, it can mediate the processual character of performance art. In terms of form, it is possible to discern a typology of texts and assign each type to a particular literary genre. This paper is concerned with the description of an art event, which can be defined as the literary genre of “ekphrasis” (the discipline of art pieces description). Depending on the nature of the artwork, both ekphrasis and descriptions of art events are produced in between narration and description, as well as oscillate between interpretation and pure description. To illustrate this, several examples from the Czech scene of the 1960s to 1980s will be presented. Not only the content of the text but also its form determines our “reading” of the described artwork – in this case, the reception of art events of the last decades.