DOI Artikel:
Milena Bartlová: Cultivating its Own Roots: Czech Art History in the 1980s in Search of its Own Beginnings
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.73804#0096
95
SUMMARY
Milena Bartlova
CULTIVATING ITS OWN ROOTS:
CZECH ART HISTORY IN THE 1980S
IN SEARCH OF ITS OWN BEGINNINGS
The contribution examines the significance of the two-
volume publication Chapters from the History of Czech
Art History (1986-1987). It was published by the Institute
of Theory and History of Art of the Czechoslovak Acad-
emy of Sciences as its official task, but also to support the
existence of the field of art history, which was threatened
in the 1970s and 1980s for ideological reasons in what was
then the Czech Socialist Republic. Although the book
identifies Max Dvorak as the founder of Czech art history
and defines its mode normatively as a history of historical
development, the first volume, subtitled Predecessors and
Founders, describes the history of the field from the 15th to
the end of the 19th c. The main characteristics of the pub-
lication can be summarized as a description of the con-
stitutive features of Czech art history, with which it is still
identified in its mainstream: Czech art history is made up
of the ideas of great males who were born in Bohemia and
Moravia and overwhelmingly wrote in Czech; the norm
is the developmental model and the unquestioned patri-
arch is Max Dvorak; the descriptive mode of art histor-
ical work is legitimate and proper because it shapes the
national history of art; plurality involves inconsistency of
ideas and art history can well do without paying attention
to its own philosophical foundations.
SUMMARY
Milena Bartlova
CULTIVATING ITS OWN ROOTS:
CZECH ART HISTORY IN THE 1980S
IN SEARCH OF ITS OWN BEGINNINGS
The contribution examines the significance of the two-
volume publication Chapters from the History of Czech
Art History (1986-1987). It was published by the Institute
of Theory and History of Art of the Czechoslovak Acad-
emy of Sciences as its official task, but also to support the
existence of the field of art history, which was threatened
in the 1970s and 1980s for ideological reasons in what was
then the Czech Socialist Republic. Although the book
identifies Max Dvorak as the founder of Czech art history
and defines its mode normatively as a history of historical
development, the first volume, subtitled Predecessors and
Founders, describes the history of the field from the 15th to
the end of the 19th c. The main characteristics of the pub-
lication can be summarized as a description of the con-
stitutive features of Czech art history, with which it is still
identified in its mainstream: Czech art history is made up
of the ideas of great males who were born in Bohemia and
Moravia and overwhelmingly wrote in Czech; the norm
is the developmental model and the unquestioned patri-
arch is Max Dvorak; the descriptive mode of art histor-
ical work is legitimate and proper because it shapes the
national history of art; plurality involves inconsistency of
ideas and art history can well do without paying attention
to its own philosophical foundations.