Preface

"„Sok szíves üdvözlettel régi barátos...” (“With kind regards, your old friend...”). Coriolan Petranu’s Friendly Connections to the Hungarian Historians. Coriolan Petranu is the founder of modern art history education and scientific research in Transylvania. He had received special education in this field of study that is relatively new in the region. He started his studies in 1911 at the University of Budapest, attending courses in law and art history. During the 1912-1913 academic year he joined the class of Professor Adolph Goldschmiedt (1863-1944) at the Friedrich-Wilhelm University in Berlin. The professor was an illustrious personality from the same generation as art historians Emil Mâle, Wilhelm Vögte, Bernard Berenson, Roger Fry, Aby Warburg, and Heinrich Wölfflin, specialists who had provided a decisive impetus to art historical research during the twentieth century. In the end of 1913, Coriolan Petranu favored Vienna, with its prestigious art historical school attached to the university from the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. There he completed and perfected his education under the supervision of Professor Josef Strzygowski (1862-1941). The latter scholar was highly appreciated for his contributions to the field of universal art history by including the cultures of Asia Minor (Syria, Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Persia), revealing the influence that this area had on proto-Christian art, as well as by researching ancient art in Northern Europe. In March 1920 the young art historian successfully defended his doctoral dissertation entitled Inhaltsproblem und Kunstgeschichte (”Content and art history”). He thus earned his doctor in philosophy title that opened him access to higher education teaching and art history research. His debut was positively marked by his activity as museographer at the Fine Art Museum in Budapest (Szepműveszeti Muzeum) in 1917-1918. Coriolan Petranu has researched Romanian vernacular architecture (creating a topography of wooden churches in Transylvania) and his publications were appreciated, published in the era’s specialized periodicals and volumes or presented during international congresses (such as those held in Stockholm in 1933, Warsaw in 1933, Sofia in 1934, Basel in 1936 and Paris in 1937). The Transylvanian art historian under analysis has exchanged numerous letters with specialists in the field. The valuable lot of correspondence, comprising several thousands of letters that he has received from the United States of America, Great Britain, Spain, France, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Poland, the USSR, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Egypt represents a true history of the stage and development of art history as a field of study during the Interwar Period. The archive of the Art History Seminary of the University in Cluj preserves one section dedicated to Hungarian letters that he has send to Hungarian specialists, art historians, ethnographers, ethnologists or colleagues passionate about fine art (Prof. Gerevich Tibor, Prof. Takács Zoltán, Dr. Viski Károly, Count Dr. Teleki Domokos). His correspondence with Fritz Valjavec, editor of the “Südostdeutsche Forschungen” periodical printed in München, is also significant and revealing. The letters in question reveal C. Petranu’s significant contribution through his reviews of books published by Hungarian art historians and ethnographers. Beyond the theoretical debates during which Prof. Petranu has criticized the theories formulated by Prof. Gerevich’s school that envisaged the globalization of Hungarian art between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period and that also included in this general category the works of German masters and artists with other ethnic backgrounds, he has also displayed a friendly attitude and appreciation for the activity/works of his Hungarian colleagues (Viski Károly and Takács Zoltán). The previously unpublished Romanian-Hungarian and Hungarian-Romanian set of letters discussed here attest to this. Keywords: Transylvania, correspondence, vernacular architecture, reviews, photographs, Gerevich Tibor, Dr. Viski Károly "

The article discusses transcultural art history with Danish examples about Japanese art. This includes an introduction to the concept of transculturation, and how the concept is used in art history research. The core of the argument concerns two interrelated aspects of Danish art historiography: the role of ethnography and the myth of modernism as a Western phenomenon. For the first of these aspects, I analyse the only existing Japanese art history in Danish language, published in 1885. For the other aspect, I analyse recent interpretations of the Danish painter Anna Ancher and her alleged use of formal elements from Japanese woodblock prints. I thereby wish to connect the theoretical issues of transculturation with analyses of transformative and constituent exchange of objects, phenomena and ideas, and point out the potential of the concept of transculturation as both theory and method. An investigation of transcultural connections between Japan and Denmark will contribute to writing a new art history on global interactions.

The aim of the project Meta-Image , funded by German Research Foundation (DFG), is to provide a network-based research environment for art history and other sciences concerning visual culture. It consists of the two components prometheus and HyperImage . Meta-Image combines the distributed digital image archive prometheus , which consists of a very large pool of images, with HyperImage ( http://www.hyperimage.eu ), a tool for image annotation. prometheus provides over 700,000 images in nearly 60 connected image databases; Hyperimage facilitates collaborative work directly on the image. The numerous users, the secure legal context for use and the existing technologies for collaborative research make prometheus a perfect subject for HyperImage . This image annotation tool serves as an instrument to support research in art history. It allows the identification of motifs, the creation of linked image networks as well as the addition of metadata. This synthesis creates the ability to reorganise, juxtapose and annotate images in a way that can lead to new conclusions concerning image-based research. Art history and other cultural studies can finally realise the potential of the network based and collaborative analysis of images.

Cinema as a form of composition

The creative component of the design process is fundamental, as it is associated with the search for innovative solutions. In the creative process, the designer’s imagination plays a leading role – it serves as the foundation for shaping and transforming the vision of the functional and aesthetic image of the future object. This study was aimed to identify and systematise the main strategic directions and techniques that stimulate the creative process in generating innovative solutions within modern design practice. The research methodology included the analysis of information sources on design methods; tools for form development in architectural, industrial, and environmental design; structural and systematic analysis; and synthesis of research results. It has been demonstrated that human imagination operates on the basis of previously formed visual images through perception. The strategic approach to reativity development is shaped by visual-operational experience. It has been established that the main method of generating new ideas is creative experimentation. To stimulate the creative process during the ideation stage, it is advisable to apply techniques such as decomposition, alteration of visual modelling tools, combinatorics, the use of simple and flexible tools, references and analogies, brainstorming, and design heuristics. The practical significance of these findings lies in their application to design practice, the education and training of specialists in artistic and creative fields, and further research in art history, cultural studies, architecture, and design.

Proposing Bakhtin’s dialogical principle as a guiding light for cross-cultural studies in art historical research on the diasporic formation of Afro-modernism, Kobena Mercer’s discussion essay highlights the value of his postformalist outlook as he responds to commentaries by Eddie Chambers and Huey Copeland on his edited series Annotating Art’s Histories. Examining interactions among artists, artworks, and artworlds as a dialogical circuit facilitates close attention to art’s aesthetic agency without the pitfalls of biographical reduction to identity or sociological reduction to context.

Araştırmanın ilgilendiği sanat işleri, sanat tarihi çalışmalarında “duvar resmi” terim anlamının içine dâhil olmaktadır. İncelenen resimler, “geçiş döneminin” artık fotoğraf teknolojisinin de bu uygulamada rolü olduğu 19. yy. ‘ın son çeyreğine aittir. Edirne’de konak maliki merhum Şücaattin Dumlu ismi dolayısıyla Dumlu Konağı olarak geçen günümüzde metruk halde bulunan tarihi konaktaki toplamda 4 adet duvar resmi, estetik değerleri, mekânla kurduğu ilişkileri ve sanat tarihsel özellikleriyle incelenmektedir.

As we contemplate the future of forest landscapes under changing climate conditions and land‐use demands, there is increasing value in studying historic forest conditions and how these landscapes have changed following past disturbances. Historic landscape paintings are a potential source of data on preindustrial forests with highly detailed, full‐color depictions of overstory and understory environments. They display key details about forest community composition, microhabitat features, and structural complexity from a time well before the advent of color photography. Despite these paintings' potential, their scientific applications have been impeded by questions of validity.How truly accurate are the images portrayed in these paintings? How much of an image is an artist's manipulation of a scene to best illustrate an allegory or romanticized view of nature?Following an established assessment model from historical ecology for evaluating resource validity, we demonstrate how scholarship on art history can be integrated with ecological understanding of forest landscapes to follow this model and address these questions of image veracity in 19th century American art. Further, to illustrate the potential use of these historic images in ecological studies, we present in a case study assessing microhabitat features of 10 different paintings. While this paper explores 19th century landscape art broadly, we focus our art historical review in particular on Asher Durand, a prolific and influential artist associated with the so‐called “Hudson River School” in the mid‐1800s. Durand left clear records about his perspectives on accurately depicting nature, and from a review of images and writings of Durand, we find support for the potential use of many of his paintings and sketches in historic forest ecology research. However, we also identify important caveats regarding potential ecological interpretations from these images. More broadly, because 19th century landscape paintings are not always directly transcriptive, and because regional art cultures differed in the 1800s, we cannot within this paper speak about landscape image veracity across all 19th century landscape art. However, in following established methods in historical ecology and integrating tools from art history research, we show that one can identify accurate historic landscape paintings for application in scientific studies.

Scenography and Art History reimagines scenography as a critical concept for art history, and is the first book to demonstrate the importance and usefulness of this concept for art historians and scholars in related fields. It provides a vital evaluation of the contemporary importance of scenography as a critical tool for art historians and scholars from related branches of study addressing phenomena such as witchy designs, Early Modern festival books, live rock performances, digital fashion photography, and outdoor dance interventions. With its nuanced and detailed case studies, this book is an innovative contribution to ongoing debates within art history and visual studies concerning multisensory events. It extends the existing literature by demonstrating the importance of a reimagined scenography concept for comprehending historical and contemporary art histories and visual cultures more broadly. The book contends that scenography is no longer restricted to the traditional space of the theatre, but has become an important concept for approaching art historical and contemporary objects and events. It explores scenography not solely as a critical approach and theoretical concept, but also as an important practice linked with unrecognized labour and broader political, social and gendered issues in a great variety of contexts, such as festive culture, sacred settings, fashion, film, or performing arts. Designed as a key resource for students, teachers and researchers in art history, visual studies, and related subjects, the book, through its cross-disciplinary frame, does consider, implicitly and explicitly, the roles of both scenography and art in society.

This article focuses on two problems – the first is connected to the methodological side of art writing and the philosophical background thereof, and the second to the work of Michel Sittow, an artist who was born and died in Tallinn, and was court artist to Isabel of Castile and several other grand courts. The author’s point of departure is provided by a pair ofconcepts – the genius and the myth that has been composed about him.On the one hand, the latter becomes a means of expression for the artist’s subjective will, which is often difficult to put in words, and on the other, provides a period-related and verbal context to surround him. Oneof the expressions of this context is art history, along with its possibilities,methods and traditions. Since Giorgio Vasari, art history has been accompanied by a longing for a single great narrative. This has often been attacked within the framework of 20th century analytical philosophy and a deconstructive approach to myth has been given priority over a myth-creating approach, which science has labelled as speculative and romantic. Under the cover of exposing the myth of the artist, those doing the exposing often do not recognise their subconscious yearning to create new narratives and new myths. The increasing attention that Sittow and his work have started to receive in recent years provides some of the most telling evidence of this way of thinking.In this essay-type article, the author pays tribute Sittow, Morros, Juande Flandes. Drei maler aus dem Norden am Hof Isabellas von Kastilien (Kiel: Verlag Ludwig, 2011), a monograph by Matthias Weniger published in 2011. However, in addition to the path of reasoning presented by Weniger, the author also presents another approach, which along with and instead of the formal analysis of the works of one of the Renaissance-erageniuses, focuses on the possible preconditions and sources for the development of the artist’s talent. However, it is not the ambition of theundersigned to construct a complete picture but to set forth the connections between the artist’s spiritual “ego” and the intellectual “ego” ofthose writing about his work, which thereby contributes to intuitively conceptualistic and cognitive rather than empirical knowledge. One of the reasons for this approach is clearly the rather limited range of enlighteningfacts, which have been analysed many times over by Weniger and several others (Max J. Friedländer, Paul Johansen, Jāzeps Trizna, Chiyo Ishikawa), and that have become the cornerstone of Sittowiana, and therefore do not need to be repeated here in detail.When writing about the life and activities of an artist in his era, we are inevitably writing about ourselves and the positions that prevail in today’s scientific discourse and provide our knowledge with both content and an unavoidably restrictive framework. A cornerstone of the author’s approach is knowing that all knowledge is limited and has an imaginary (visionary) nature. And as such within the framework of phenomenological philosophy includes the opportunity to see behind the “visible”; and along with skills, style and social context, to deal with possible psychological and religious aspects, the subjectively contemplative nature of which science usually excludes – often because science cannot manage to describe them. Repeating an eternal truth, a dominant source for all knowledge is aperson’s eyes, the role of which, even alongside the most accurate technical measurement tools (X-rays and pigment investigations), is timeless and essential. The best microscope can only expand the scope of the human eye, but not assume the role of decision maker, or operate outside the range of a person’s senses. The information on the picture reaches us through the contact between the information carrier (artefact) and the recipient. Art as truth places a stake on fantasy, the criterion of which is language and its innately characteristic search for new corresponding verbal metaphors for the scope of a work’s poetic imagery.The equivalent of the picture is the word; using words, the scientistinterprets the material that becomes known to him, and provides a reason,in addition to the work’s revelational nature, to speak about the work’s recurring appearance in the viewer’s eyes and consciousness. And each one of us has our own conception and fantasy. Thus, it is also possible to view Sittow’s work from different angles, by amplifying the common positions and neutralising others, using the limited facts that are known about the artist.The undersigned wishes to provide a place for all the possible positionswithin the framework of art history – the special “tenderling” of the humanities – and on these pages. By providing an opportunity for the old positions to live on and for new opinions to be born, by gathering various theories and facts that do not preclude, but rather complement, each other into a hermeneutic circle ennobled by history that helps to expand and enrich our understanding of a topic called Michel Sittow and his body of work. The more colourful the dress worn by art history, the richer it is. The goal of the article’s author is convince the reader of the inexhaustible depth of art history as a paradigm, which the diversity of themes and colours characteristic of art can, in our scientific approach, turn into new and many-sided knowledge, and thereby create an opportunity to bring images (pictures) to life and give them the chance to perform miracles once again.By providing a survey of Sittow’s body of work – as the undersigned sees and assesses it – the main task of the article to speak about the immeasurable along with the measurable. To speak about that indefinablesomething, which, when communicating with art, can help us not only find out or learn something, but to become someone. In order to understandSittow, it is necessary to understand his place in the world where he acted among and alongside dozens and hundreds of colleagues, while carrying within him a calling for free and creative self-expression that, by exceeding the power of tradition and routine, gave birth to miracles – artistic miracles. In order to recognise a miracle, we have to open our eyes. And this especially under circumstances when other tools (both technical and literary) are currently inadequate or totally missing. All knowledge has its limits. Thus, the theses about Sittow’s work in this article are far from complete, but rather direct the reader to the start of a long and interesting journey, to lines to which all subsequent writers are invited to add their thoughts. And as such to a milestone on the road leading from the past to the future that will lead us to the answer for the most important question posed in the article – quo vadis art history? NB! Just as every work of art appears as something new to the viewer, so too all writings on the topic of art are new and interesting up to the point to where the reader is ready to accompany the writer. Today we know both a lot and a little about Sittow. Documental data about his work is scarce, just as it is for most of the other Netherlandish artists during this exceptional era. At a time when, alongside the Italian geniuses, Netherlandish artists emerged who, compared to their colleagues born south of the Alps, were motivated by totally different ideas and practices; who were still artisans as much as they represented the creators of a new era in the world; and whose art meant succeeding in lifeand in a career in their profession. In order to research Sittow further we require even broader knowledge, which on the one hand, assumes new developments in scientific methods, and the expansion of the basis of laboratory research; and on the other, the utilisation of art history’s secret weapon – intuition and a sharp eye – which can become of key importance in the instrumentarium. What I want to say in the broader sense is – trust your own vision and also take others into account.

The image plates that Aby Warburg produced during the closing years of his life and his complex use of photographic reproductions were a completely new, experimental medium in art-history research. The essay deals with the visual rhetoric of this medium, with its both polyphonic and multifocal argumentation structure. Warburg’s plates are arranged into compositions whose distinct syntax does not follow any linguistic models and in many of the plates Warburg’s notion of polarity in art history is expressed through utterly conflicting, inversive perspectives on the pictorial material. They document how deeply devoted the art historian was to pictures in which humanity had sought to exorcise inexplicable and hence threatening phenomena, the emotions of the inner and the demons (‘monstra’) of the outer world. The specific impact of his series of pictures and exhibitions shows that Warburg developed a demonstration procedure that was highly performative.

This article examines the art practice of a group of professors and students—who later came to be known as Group 57—at the Fine Arts College of the University of Tehran during the revolutionary period of 1978 to 1980. Through interviews with artists and art historical research, the authors describe the artists’ workshop where they produced posters against the Shah, the United States, and imperialism. Their posters drew on the bold colors, clear text, symbolic imagery, and easy reproducibility of international radical poster art and the early Russian revolutionary avant‐garde. The authors recover these aesthetic and intellectual connections in the academic and professional training of the artists and in the art historical context of the posters themselves, examining the posters’ recent and more distant influences, and reinscribing the artists in the history of Iranian art and international art history. The authors also point toward connections between Group 57 and protest art in Iran today.

This project studies the patterns in which the Medusa myth shapes, constructs, and transforms new meanings of women today, correlating portrayals in ancient Greek myth, nineteenth- century Symbolist painting, and new, controversial, visions of women in contemporary art. The myth of the Medusa has long been the ultimate symbol of woman as monster. With her roots in classical mythology, Medusa has appeared time and again throughout history and culture and this book studies the patterns in which the Medusa myth shapes, constructs, and transforms new meanings of women today. Hedgecock presents an interdisciplinary and broad historical “cultural reflections” of the modern Medusa, including the work of Maria Callas, Nan Goldin, the Symbolist painters and twentieth-century poets. This timely and necessary work will be key reading for students and researchers specializing in mythology or gender studies across a variety of fields, touching on interdisciplinary research in feminist theory, art history and theory, cultural studies, and psychology.

Rune-stones have been a major field of research in philology, archaeology, art history and history during the 20th century. Most of these studies have been based on the thorough editions of rune-stones published in Scandinavia during the century. The aim of this article is to question some of the fundamental principles of these editions, and to initiate a new type of interpretation based on the complex interplay between images and texts on the rune-stones. Elements of a more visual understanding of the monuments are presented, as well as some examples of a new contextual reading, which sometimes alter the philological interpretations in the rune-stone publications.

Reviewed by: A Global History of Child Death: Mortality, Burial, and Parental Attitudes by Amy J. Catalano Lydia Murdoch A Global History of Child Death: Mortality, Burial, and Parental Attitudes. By Amy J. Catalano. New York: Peter Lang, 2015. xi + 175 pp. Cloth $81.95. In the past decade, historians have published important—often lengthy—new books on death, several of which extend beyond individual national contexts: Peter Stearns’s Revolutions in Sorrow: The American Experience of Death in Global Perspective (2007); Erik Seeman’s Death in the New World: Cross-Cultural Encounters, 1492–1800 (2010); and Thomas Laqueur’s The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains (2015). These and other national histories by Drew Gilpin Faust, Pat Jalland, and Julie-Marie Strange, among others, mark a renewed interest in death studies, but, like Philippe Ariès’s classic The Hour of Our Death (1981), tend not to concentrate primarily on the particular issues related to child mortality. Catalano’s Global History of Child Death addresses this gap in the literature, taking the broadest possible coverage from prehistoric to modern times, extending from the cremated body of a three-year-old child buried some 11,500 years ago in the North American Arctic to the 2012 Sandy Hook school shootings. Catalano’s survey draws upon research in archeology, history, anthropology, psychology, literary studies, and art history. The book is divided into two main sections, the first on “Mortality and Burial Practices through History,” and the second on “Indicators of Parental Attitudes toward Child Death.” Specific topics cover the causes of child mortality, funeral and burial practices, gravestones and other monuments, social directives for grieving parents, parental expressions of grief, and mourning practices. Both sections also include significant, arguably disproportionate, material on child sacrifice and infanticide. Given the far-reaching scope of A Global History of Child Death, there are understandable limitations on what it can accomplish. Yet, for a number of topics the literature review is dated and, at least from a historian’s view, often idiosyncratic. There is an entire chapter on “America and England in the 17th to 20th Centuries,” for instance, but Catalano, an expert in children’s literature, does not include books by Faust, Jalland, or Strange in the bibliography. A conclusion and more overall historical contextualization of case studies would help readers [End Page 123] navigate the quick transitions between different times and places. The lack of contextualization leads to some surprising statements, including the idea that ancient Romans “thought that the regular practice of killing abnormal children removed a defective gene from the evolutionary process” (40). The scholar with whom Catalano engages most directly is Ariès, but even in this case readers would benefit from more direction in terms of the author’s position on key debates. While A Global History of Child Death includes case studies from across the world, the greater emphasis is on Europe and America. At times, the portrayal of non-Western histories lapses into a kind of Orientalist narrative. For example, Catalano blithely recounts, “One of the first efforts in the Eastern hemisphere to put an end to female infanticide was in 1789 by the British government” (47). Along with this wholesale treatment of “the Eastern hemisphere,” there is no mention of the extensive work by scholars, such as Padma Anagol, Satadru Sen, Daniel Grey, Lata Mani, and Antoinette Burton, explaining how British campaigns against infanticide, like the debates over sati, age of consent legislation, and widow remarriage, cannot simply be described as humanitarian efforts without understanding the colonial projects that such reforms sought to advance. In other examples, readers learn that “the Papuans practice cannibalism” (note the present tense) and that the Japanese routinely ate child victims of the 1783 famine, only to discover, through the footnotes, that the sources for these statements were published in 1912 and 1916 respectively (98, 135). The strength of A Global History of Child Death is the way in which it models, in an accessible format, the myriad of sources and methodologies scholars use to understand social and individual responses to the death of a child. Catalano prompts readers to ponder the limitations as well...