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SMArt Talks: Raně avantgardní instituce ve střední Evropě: Infrastruktury umění mezi impérii
SMArt Talks: Early Avant-Garde Institutions in Central Europe: Art Infrastructures Between Empires
Event by: Centre for Modern Art & Theory
Location: HUDYsport, Veveří 460, Brno-střed
About event
We cordially invite you to the last lecture of the autumn semester from the SMArt Talks series, which will be presented by Professor Marie Rakušanová this time. Prof. Marie Rakušanová, Ph.D., is a full professor at the Department of Art History, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. He specializes in the history of European modern and avant-garde art and the methods of art history. She received her professorship in 2023, her habilitation in 2011, and her doctorate in art history in 2006 at Charles University in Prague. She published a number of books and articles at home and abroad. She was the curator of several exhibitions, among others at the Gallery of the Capital City of Prague, the West Bohemian Gallery in Pilsen and the Moravian Gallery in Brno. She was and is part of the research teams of a number of international projects.
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The avant-gardes had an ambivalent relationship to the institutional infrastructure, which was related to their anti-system focus. Also in the area of Central Eastern Europe, we encounter loud calls from avant-gardists to reform or destroy art institutions. However, it is clear that when the Serbian artist Petar Dobrović called for the destruction of museums in 1919, his appeal had a different cultural framework than Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's similar call in the Futurist manifesto published in 1909 in the Paris Figaro. The lecture will reflect on the specifics of the institutional infrastructure of the Central and Eastern European avant-gardes in the first third of the 20th century. Although politically the region of Central Eastern Europe went through a major political transformation after the First World War, which manifested itself mainly in the emergence of a number of new nation-states, culturally it still had to come to terms with the geopolitical position "between empires" and their competing interests and ambitions. The Central and Eastern European avant-garde also had to face the "inter-imperial" instrumentalization of the cultural infrastructure when establishing their institutions, even in cases where its absence was the starting point. It navigated a space of constant tension and often subversively used the clashing policies of different empires to advance its own avant-garde agenda. Avant-garde institutions in Central and Eastern Europe, however, cannot be idealized and their activities interpreted purely as the result of an effort to raise voices that were silenced in the framework of "inter-imperial" competition. After all, this was not the essence of the cultural and political program of the Central and Eastern European avant-gardes, and their institutions thus brought both positive changes to the existing order and infrastructure in favor of previously marginalized groups of society, as well as the preservation of the status quo, or even its consolidation through the specific appropriation of theories of eugenics, racism, misogyny or in certain segments of the functioning of avant-garde institutions due to the use of creative and labor power in liberal or authoritarian capitalism.
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The avant-gardes had an ambivalent relationship to the institutional infrastructure, which was related to their anti-system focus. Also in the area of Central Eastern Europe, we encounter loud calls from avant-gardists to reform or destroy art institutions. However, it is clear that when the Serbian artist Petar Dobrović called for the destruction of museums in 1919, his appeal had a different cultural framework than Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's similar call in the Futurist manifesto published in 1909 in the Paris Figaro. The lecture will reflect on the specifics of the institutional infrastructure of the Central and Eastern European avant-gardes in the first third of the 20th century. Although politically the region of Central Eastern Europe went through a major political transformation after the First World War, which manifested itself mainly in the emergence of a number of new nation-states, culturally it still had to come to terms with the geopolitical position "between empires" and their competing interests and ambitions. The Central and Eastern European avant-garde also had to face the "inter-imperial" instrumentalization of the cultural infrastructure when establishing their institutions, even in cases where its absence was the starting point. It navigated a space of constant tension and often subversively used the clashing policies of different empires to advance its own avant-garde agenda. Avant-garde institutions in Central and Eastern Europe, however, cannot be idealized and their activities interpreted purely as the result of an effort to raise voices that were silenced in the framework of "inter-imperial" competition. After all, this was not the essence of the cultural and political program of the Central and Eastern European avant-gardes, and their institutions thus brought both positive changes to the existing order and infrastructure in favor of previously marginalized groups of society, as well as the preservation of the status quo, or even its consolidation through the specific appropriation of theories of eugenics, racism, misogyny or in certain segments of the functioning of avant-garde institutions due to the use of creative and labor power in liberal or authoritarian capitalism.