DOI Artikel:
Orišková, Mária: Re-writing history, re-drawing maps: Central Europe in the global story of art
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.52534#0287
today by following the nineteenth-century European
practice.15 In the Atlas in different periods different
nation States or empires within continents played an
important political, économie and cultural role.
The spatial and the chronological dimensions of
the Atlas when compared with the World Wide Web
look of course old fashioned. Electronic library gives
endless links and cross-referencing while traditional
maps are limited and highly sélective. Cartography
and mapmaking must be able to communicate by
using more or less pre-given systém of signs. The Atlas
of World Art as a kind of topographie art historical
survey puts together very disparate information be-
cause the traditional cartographie symbolic systém/
agenda of graphie codes does not differentiate between
invasion, expansion, traveling, import, export or trans-
fer of artistic styles and movements (everything is
marked by an arrow). The resulting compromises do
not satisfy: maps seem to be reductive and leveling
out such different discourses as the slave trade and
the art trade. So, even if we appreciate depiction of
circumstances, social, political and économie context
in the map of arts, a sort of misunderstanding keeps
going on in a sense of strategie essentialism. Never-
theless by doser reading the maps disclose how “in-
tercultural dialogue” has been made through com-
modity flow. For example the map of Netherlands
ca. 1750 depicts the export of goods — tapestries,
paintings, prints, books, altars, sculptures and cabi-
nets of curiosities objects meanwhile the import com-
prises goods like ebony, ivory, gold, silver, diamonds,
tortoiseshell and marble. The map of Africa from the
same period (1500 - 1800) reads the export of slaves,
gold, ebony, ivory, fur, spices, oil and the import of
textiles, clothing, horses, wine, glassware, ironware/
products, sculptures of saints and crucifixes.
Talking about Crossing borders by trade routes,
export, import of Commodities also implies so-called
transfers — as a kind of very neutral term. Within the
Atlas we can find, for example transfer of American
native people’s objects (kachina dolls, masks, quilts,
beadworks, baskets and totems) from the US West
coast and Southwest coast to International World
Expositions (Pan American Exposition, 1901) and to
natural history muséums on the East coast (Smithso-
15 See ERRINGTON, S.: The Death of Authentic Primitive Art
and Other Tales of Progress. Los Angeles — London 1998.
nian Institutions, 1858). At the same place — in the
wealthiest part of the world, the US East coast — Eu-
ropean art, purchased from France, Netherlands,
Germany and Italy (Vermeer, Botticelli, Tizian, Raf-
fael, Barbizon school or European avant-garde), has
been accumulated or “transferred” because of Invest-
ment of money into art and foundation of private
collections, muséums and galleries. Here — in the Atlas
of World Art — art flow means money flow.
The Atlas of World Art
and Central Europe
Writing the global story of art in terms of space
and time (or geohistory on the map) is not an easy
task. In the Atlas, Central or Eastern Europe is on
the map, too. There is the map of Eastern Europe
and Southeast Asia from 600 to 1500, Europe from
1500 to 1800, Southeast Europe and separately Po-
land and Lithuania from 1500 to 1800, Austria-Hun-
gary and Southeast Europe from 1800 to 1900 and
Eastern Europe from 1900 to 2000.
When we focus only on Central Europe in the last
two centuries the maps seem to be interesting read-
ing. The artistic map of Austria-Hungary and South-
east Europe from 1800 to 1900 is based on the idea
of the European metropolis. This is a precondition of
modern civil society, culture, cultural contacts, ur-
ban infrastructure and the lifestyle of the West. With-
in the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy there are five
metropolises: Vienna, Budapest, Prague, Krakow and
Lvov. The map also depicts several provincial towns
which hâve an opera house, theatre or a museum.
Within this multi-ethnic state we can read ethnie lan-
guages, different religions and folk art (Volksfors-
chung). There is almost no “high art” just ethnicity
and smaller régions. As Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann
has noted in his book, especially in the chapter “Ar-
tistic régions and the problém of artistic metropolis-
es: questions of (East) Central Europe”: “There Prague
or Budapest might readily corne to mind. But it is difficult
to find any such metropolises much before the First World
War. It is even more difficult to discover, especially in east-
ern Central Europe, any artistic metropolises, as they hâve
been defined, before the nineteenth Century.”16 In this sense
16 DACOSTA KAUFMANN 2004 (see in note 6), p. 158.
283
practice.15 In the Atlas in different periods different
nation States or empires within continents played an
important political, économie and cultural role.
The spatial and the chronological dimensions of
the Atlas when compared with the World Wide Web
look of course old fashioned. Electronic library gives
endless links and cross-referencing while traditional
maps are limited and highly sélective. Cartography
and mapmaking must be able to communicate by
using more or less pre-given systém of signs. The Atlas
of World Art as a kind of topographie art historical
survey puts together very disparate information be-
cause the traditional cartographie symbolic systém/
agenda of graphie codes does not differentiate between
invasion, expansion, traveling, import, export or trans-
fer of artistic styles and movements (everything is
marked by an arrow). The resulting compromises do
not satisfy: maps seem to be reductive and leveling
out such different discourses as the slave trade and
the art trade. So, even if we appreciate depiction of
circumstances, social, political and économie context
in the map of arts, a sort of misunderstanding keeps
going on in a sense of strategie essentialism. Never-
theless by doser reading the maps disclose how “in-
tercultural dialogue” has been made through com-
modity flow. For example the map of Netherlands
ca. 1750 depicts the export of goods — tapestries,
paintings, prints, books, altars, sculptures and cabi-
nets of curiosities objects meanwhile the import com-
prises goods like ebony, ivory, gold, silver, diamonds,
tortoiseshell and marble. The map of Africa from the
same period (1500 - 1800) reads the export of slaves,
gold, ebony, ivory, fur, spices, oil and the import of
textiles, clothing, horses, wine, glassware, ironware/
products, sculptures of saints and crucifixes.
Talking about Crossing borders by trade routes,
export, import of Commodities also implies so-called
transfers — as a kind of very neutral term. Within the
Atlas we can find, for example transfer of American
native people’s objects (kachina dolls, masks, quilts,
beadworks, baskets and totems) from the US West
coast and Southwest coast to International World
Expositions (Pan American Exposition, 1901) and to
natural history muséums on the East coast (Smithso-
15 See ERRINGTON, S.: The Death of Authentic Primitive Art
and Other Tales of Progress. Los Angeles — London 1998.
nian Institutions, 1858). At the same place — in the
wealthiest part of the world, the US East coast — Eu-
ropean art, purchased from France, Netherlands,
Germany and Italy (Vermeer, Botticelli, Tizian, Raf-
fael, Barbizon school or European avant-garde), has
been accumulated or “transferred” because of Invest-
ment of money into art and foundation of private
collections, muséums and galleries. Here — in the Atlas
of World Art — art flow means money flow.
The Atlas of World Art
and Central Europe
Writing the global story of art in terms of space
and time (or geohistory on the map) is not an easy
task. In the Atlas, Central or Eastern Europe is on
the map, too. There is the map of Eastern Europe
and Southeast Asia from 600 to 1500, Europe from
1500 to 1800, Southeast Europe and separately Po-
land and Lithuania from 1500 to 1800, Austria-Hun-
gary and Southeast Europe from 1800 to 1900 and
Eastern Europe from 1900 to 2000.
When we focus only on Central Europe in the last
two centuries the maps seem to be interesting read-
ing. The artistic map of Austria-Hungary and South-
east Europe from 1800 to 1900 is based on the idea
of the European metropolis. This is a precondition of
modern civil society, culture, cultural contacts, ur-
ban infrastructure and the lifestyle of the West. With-
in the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy there are five
metropolises: Vienna, Budapest, Prague, Krakow and
Lvov. The map also depicts several provincial towns
which hâve an opera house, theatre or a museum.
Within this multi-ethnic state we can read ethnie lan-
guages, different religions and folk art (Volksfors-
chung). There is almost no “high art” just ethnicity
and smaller régions. As Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann
has noted in his book, especially in the chapter “Ar-
tistic régions and the problém of artistic metropolis-
es: questions of (East) Central Europe”: “There Prague
or Budapest might readily corne to mind. But it is difficult
to find any such metropolises much before the First World
War. It is even more difficult to discover, especially in east-
ern Central Europe, any artistic metropolises, as they hâve
been defined, before the nineteenth Century.”16 In this sense
16 DACOSTA KAUFMANN 2004 (see in note 6), p. 158.
283