Art Histories Supplement 2.0, January 2016
Editor: Clemena Antonova

This issue of the Art Histories Supplement 2.0 will look at art criticism in Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, etc.) and Russia from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present. Our motivation is to familiarize Western readers with a number of rich traditions of art historical writing, which for various reasons, including language, are little known to scholars in the West.

While art criticism in the region has been strongly influenced by Western art history and aesthetics, it has also reflected local artistic, historical, intellectual developments, which are specific to the national cultures. At times, the end result has been narratives of art that have offered alternative models of art history to the one established by the Western canon. At present, when scholars are becoming increasingly interested in issues of multiculturalism, including in the sphere of art criticism, the present volume represents a step away from the meta-narrative of the Western “story of art” towards the possibility of multiple “stories of art” (see James Elkins’s Stories of Art, (Routledge: New York and London, 2002).

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
– Art history and cultural identity in Eastern Europe and Russia
– Art history and national myth-making (with a possible focus on the reception of a landmark monument)
– Art history between tradition and modernism
– Responses to Western formalism
– Art history in the age of revolution
– Art history in the Communist period (issues of art and religion, propaganda, cultural policy on art, etc.)

Please, submit an abstract of up to 500 words to the following e-mail address: clemenaa@yahoo.com

Deadline for the submission of abstracts: 15 June 2015
Deadline for the submission of the papers: 30 September 2015
Publication date: January 2016