Category: Research Projects

The Gothic Modern group admires the interior of Espoo Cathedral Photo: Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff

Out in the Field – a Gothic Modern Tour

Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff

The Gothic Modern research and exhibition project partners meeting in Finland, Thursday 11 November 2021

Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff, PhD, Chief Curator, Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum

—

The international research and exhibition project Gothic Modern started in 2018 and it will conclude with an exhibition in the Autumn of 2024. ‘Gothic Modern: from Northern Renaissance to Dark, Emotive, Uncanny Modern Art’ explores the pivotal importance of Gothic art for the artistic modernisms of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

This ambitious new approach to modern art focuses on the untold story of Nordic and Northern European medieval reinventions, from the 1890s to the fall of the Weimar Republic. The project aims to illuminate the Gothic as a core fascination for early 20th-century art, transcending nationalism, straddling war and its aftermath. It is also a compelling exploration of the Gothic for the 21st century, examining individual, gender and transnational community, entwined with the dark, the emotive and uncanny. The project partners are the Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki, the National Museum, Oslo and Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, with Professor Juliet Simpson as the guest curator.

The Ateneum Art Museum was delighted to host the first face-to-face partners workshop in Helsinki in November of last year, as the project team has been working remotely due to Covid-19 restrictions.

—

Featured image: The Gothic Modern group admires the interior of Espoo Cathedral
Photo: Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff

…

Read more — Download ‘Out in the Field – a Gothic Modern Tour’, by Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff, as a PDF

Download the article as a PDF >>

Isaak Rabinovich, The Martian City. Still from the silent film Aelita, 1924, directed by Yakov Protazanov. Courtesy of the BFI National Archive

Gothic Modern Sensibilities: Vaults of Matter and Spirit via a Russian Arch

Jeremy Howard

Dr Jeremy Howard, Deputy Head of School of Art History, University of St Andrews, Scotland

—

Strange as it may seem Gothic never died. Appropriately perhaps it has been living in an art-historical netherworld where the struggling forces of formal modernism and social realism seem to have reigned for nigh on a century. Yet the very struggle of these forces belies the place, and strength, of the Gothic: in their attempts to suppress it, the different parties acknowledged both its grip and its mystery. Let our conception of the Gothic Modern be one of vaults. For vaults, as we know, are underground chambers for the living, dead and treasured, as well as arched structures and the heavens. The pointed rib vault, from four-part to stellar and fan, represents the dynamic span of Gothic. Of course vault also means vigorous leap and, with that, transcendence. Here we focus on Gothic Modern’s Russian vaults.

We can conceive our vaults as vessels of matter and spirit. On the one hand they are grounded in craft and collectivity, this while simultaneously being celestially aspirant, a romantic questing for spiritual uplift. On the other, they are dark and decadent, an irrational foray into horror and descent. They can offer the sublime and the grotesque. Urged on by the writings of Wilhelm Worringer, Richard Sterba, Josef Strzygowski and Karl Scheffler, among many others, our vaults are identifiable in artworks from seemingly disparate movements and centres. So far from just spanning inflections of Expressionism and Surrealism, they cross Cubism, Constructivism and the International Style, while deriving much of their esprit from Symbolism and Art Nouveau. In the spirit of the Gothic Modern vault let us move backwards to move forwards, let us spring from a subversive alliance of bold post-revolutionary avant-garde architectonics to fin-de-siècle painterly anxieties and apparitions (and back).

—

Featured image: Isaak Rabinovich (1894-1961), The Martian City, still from the silent film Aelita, 1924, directed by Yakov Protazanov. Courtesy of the BFI National Archive

…

Read more — Download ‘Gothic Modern Sensibilities: Vaults of Matter and Spirit via a Russian Arch’, by Jeremy Howard, as a PDF

Download the article as a PDF >>

Featured image: Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Death and the Flower, woodcut, 9.5cm x 5.5cm Antell Collections, Finnish National Gallery / Sinebrychoff Art Museum Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Yehia Eweis

Gothic Modern

Juliet Simpson
Albrecht Dürer, St Sebastian Bound to the Tree, 1500–02, engraving, 11.5cm x 7.1cm Antell Collections, Finnish National Gallery / Sinebrychoff Art Museum Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Pakarinen
Albrecht Dürer, St Sebastian Bound to the Tree, 1500–02, engraving, 11.5cm x 7.1cm
Antell Collections, Finnish National Gallery / Sinebrychoff Art Museum
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Pakarinen Creative Commons – Copyright free

The international research and exhibition project Gothic Modern has been launched by the Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum. The project schedule spans 2018 to 2025. ‘Gothic Modern: from Medieval and Northern Renaissance to Dark, Emotive, Uncanny Modern Art’ explores the pivotal importance of Gothic art for the artistic modernisms of the late 19th and early 20th centuries

  • An ambitious new approach to modern art focusing on the untold story of Nordic and Northern European medieval reinventions from the 1890s to the fall of the Weimar Republic.
  • Illuminates the Gothic as a core fascination for late 19th and early 20th-century art, crossing cultural borders, transcending nationalism, straddling war and its aftermath.
  • Reveals a hidden aspect of the work of Edvard Munch and Käthe Kollwitz through their deep attraction to the art of the ‘Gothic’ past, as well as how this resonated for their contemporaries, such as Theodor Kittelsen, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Hugo Simberg and Helene Schjerfbeck.
  • Explores how these artists were inspired by medieval art through pilgrimages, eroticism and the ‘Dance of Death’ to create powerful new expressions of artistic and cultural identity: of sexuality and trauma; death and reconnection.
  • The focus is on major fin-de-siècle and early 20th-century Nordic, German and Russian artworks alongside rare medieval and Northern Renaissance objects
  • A compelling exploration of the Gothic for the 21st century, concerning the individual, gender, difference and transnational community, entwined with the dark, the emotive and uncanny, as well as connected cultures, places and new spaces of art.
    (Juliet Simpson, 2021)

Guest Curator
Professor Dr Juliet Simpson, Professor of Art History, and Chair of Visual Art and Cultural Memory, Coventry University, UK, juliet.simpson@coventry.ac.uk

Project Leader, Ateneum Art Museum – Finnish National Gallery
Dr Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff, Chief Curator of exhibitions and research, Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki, abonsdor@fng.fi

Partners
National Museum, Oslo and Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

Hugo Simberg, Boy from Säkkijärvi, 1897, oil on canvas, 31.3cm x 43.5cm Ester and Jalo Sihtola Fine Arts Foundation Donation, Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Janne Mäkinen
Hugo Simberg, Boy from Säkkijärvi, 1897, oil on canvas, 31.3cm x 43.5cm
Ester and Jalo Sihtola Fine Arts Foundation Donation, Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Janne Mäkinen
Creative Commons – Copyright free

Gothic Modern News and Upcoming Events

Forthcoming – Autumn 2021

  • ‘Gothic Connections and Connectors – Afterlives of Medieval Art in the Baltic and Nordic Countries: 1870s–1920s’, international research conference, organised by Prof. Juliet Simpson and Dr Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff, in the Ateneum Art Museum / Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki, Autumn 2021

Gothic Modern Publications – FNG Research New Online Series

—

Featured image: Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Death and the Flower, woodcut, 9.5cm x 5.5cm
Antell Collections, Finnish National Gallery / Sinebrychoff Art Museum
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Yehia Eweis
Public domain. This image of a work of art is released under a CC0 licence, and can be freely used because the copyright (70 full calendar years after the death of the artist) has expired.

…

Read more — Download ‘Gothic Modern’ as a PDF

Download the article as a PDF >>

Featured image: Bernt Notke, Dance of Death, end of the 15th century, oil on canvas, 160cm x 750cm, from St Nicolas’ Church, Tallinn, and now housed at the city’s Art Museum of Estonia Photo: Abrget47j / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

Writing the Gothic: Defining the Character of Medieval Heritage in Estonia from the late 19th Century to the 1930s

Krista Kodres

Dr Krista Kodres, Professor, Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn

This is a detailed abstract of the lecture given by Professor Kodres at the online Knowledge Sharing Workshop of the Gothic Modern Research Project, on 25 March 2021

—

How were different art-historiographical cultures involved in shaping the understanding of Gothic art and architecture in Estonia, a country that in the late 19th and early 20th century was part of tsarist Russia and which then, in 1918, became an independent republic? In my presentation, I also ask what kind of life-world the various art-historical interpretations created in the imagination: how did they define the spatial and temporal cultural belonging of different nationalities within Estonia.

The first art-historical surveys of Estonian local heritage were written by Baltic-German art historians. Artistic and architectural production was systematised and ordered into periods on the basis of formal stylistics. The Gothic style found its place from the start, and it also coincided with the beginning of Danish-German colonisation and the Christianisation of the Old Livonian territories in the 13th century, thus forming the foundation for all of the subsequent artistic development, i.e. Estonian art history. At the same time however, the Gothic in Estonia has been viewed as a belated and less artistic peripheral version of the German spirit. In order to overcome this unhappy conclusion, a special rhetoric was elaborated.

The first modern art historian who had to face these issues was Wilhelm Neumann (1849–1919), who was also active as an architect, and who in his later years was the Director of the Latvian Art Museum in Riga. In his book Grundriss einer Geschichte der bildenden Künste und des Kunstegewerbes in Liv-, Est- und Kurland (Reval 1887), Neumann wrote about the ‘slow becoming’ and ‘delayed arrival’ of the Gothic style because of the distance ‘from trend-setting centres and the conservative character of the inhabitants’. Therefore, he continued, ‘the forms never reached the clarity and richness of ideas and noble sublimity that is characteristic of the South [of Europe]’. In order to balance this aesthetic inequality, Neumann connected the development of Gothic forms to the use of local materials and thus made the architecture correspond to given special circumstances: ‘He (das Land) understood how to create new art forms that correspond to the nature of local materials…’ Hence, it is the Land and its people who give art-historical meaning to monuments. In the booklet he wrote for the local clergy, who were the keepers of medieval church buildings, Neumann crystallises this meaning: ‘Monuments of art and architecture are witnesses of the historical past of our homeland. The purpose of their maintenance is to preserve our consciousness of belonging to our cosy homeland, and to keep the memory of our ancestors alive’ (Merkbüchlein für Denkmalpflege auf dem Lande, Riga 1911). Accordingly, in Neumann’s view, all art-historical objects are important as material instruments of identity; they possess the ability to reflect history and affect feelings; they induce a sense of belonging. At the same time, the Gothic was determined to be the strongest signifier of ‘German power’ (Kraft) by the man who had greatly inspired Neumann, the German art historian Wilhelm Lübke.

—

Featured image: Bernt Notke, Dance of Death, late 15th century, oil on canvas, 160cm x 750cm, from St Nicolas’ Church, Tallinn, and now housed at the city’s Art Museum of Estonia
Photo: Abrget47j / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
…

Read more — Download ‘Writing the Gothic: Defining the Character of Medieval Heritage in Estonia from the late 19th Century to the 1930s’, by Krista Kodres, as a PDF

Download the article as a PDF >>

Ida Silfverberg, Self-Portrait, 1868, oil on canvas, 56.5cm x 46cm Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum Photo: Finnish National Gallery /Kari Soinio

A New Research Project: ‘Pioneering Women Artists in the 19th Century’

Anne-Maria Pennonen

Anne-Maria Pennonen, PhD, Curator, Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum

—

In Europe, the 19th century was a dynamic period that saw great economic, social, political and cultural changes that had an impact on women and their situation, including their education and their career choices. In the field of the arts, however, there still seems to be relatively little information concerning Nordic women artists at the beginning of the century, and yet we know that several men artists instructed women in their studios. During the first half of the century, painting and drawing were mostly regarded as merely suitable hobbies for women, and nothing more. Women could not attend art academies officially, and only a few worked as professional artists.

‘The Pioneering Women Artists’ research project was launched at the Ateneum Art Museum in September 2020, and now an international research group is to be assembled for the project. The aim is to stimulate research and debate, re-introduce forgotten or neglected women artists, and to present completely new names. The results of the project will be released in the form of a publication and an exhibition at the Ateneum Art Museum in Helsinki. The dates of the exhibition will be announced later.

The focus of this research project is on pioneering women artists who were active in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Baltic countries and Germany in the 19th century. There were big differences between the first and the second half of the century however, so a more precise time frame for the project will be defined later. The starting point of the project is to examine the opportunities for Nordic and Baltic women artists to study and work in their home countries and in Germany. The principal German cities in this respect are Düsseldorf, Dresden, Berlin, Munich, Karlsruhe and Weimar. At the same time, the project also aims to bring forward those women, for instance, from the US, Great Britain, France and Italy who had connections with Germany and possibly also with Nordic and Baltic women artists.

Besides gender, it is also essential to consider the aspect of centre and periphery in the field of arts, culture and science. In the 19th century, Germany constituted a centre in this respect, whereas the Nordic countries, especially Finland and Norway, were regarded as peripheral. Here the concept of periphery is understood as a geographical spatial element that is outside the centre. It is also worth noting that there were centres and peripheries within each Nordic country, and the juxtaposition also concerned their mutual relationships. Thus, Denmark and Sweden acted as centres, as they were politically independent kingdoms with long traditions of university education and their own art academies that had been established in the 18th century. In comparison, Finland and Norway were ruled by Russia and Sweden, and at the beginning of the century, they were only starting to organise their local artistic life and art education. To receive better training, one had to travel abroad.

The approach of this project is mainly art-historical but also cultural-historical, and the topic is examined from the perspectives of education, networks, travel, and movement. In most of these countries women were barred from gaining university degrees or attending art academies. Travelling as such constituted a challenge for them, as they could not travel by themselves as easily as men and they also needed an escort.

Finland as an example of women artists’ situation

In Finland, the situation changed in the mid-19th century when, following examples from Germany, the Finnish Art Society was founded in Helsinki in 1846 and the Society’s Drawing School two years later. Although a traditional drawing school had already been set up in Turku in 1830, it mostly served as an institute for pupils and apprentices for professional painters, and no women were admitted until 1852. The Drawing School of the Finnish Art Society was noteworthy in that it admitted women from the start. As its name suggests, the school mainly focused on drawing, and no nude models were used, which was probably the condition that enabled women to study there. If a student wanted to be instructed in oil painting, they would either have to enlist the services of an artist privately or travel abroad.

A great deal of art-historical writing on the 19th century has discussed the importance of Paris and France. This has also been the case in Finland where artists, including women, discovered Paris and France, especially in the 1880s. This period has been described as the heyday of Finnish women artists. At the same time, the career choices of women artists from earlier times has gained less attention, and the role of Düsseldorf and other German cities has largely been ignored or undervalued. As for Düsseldorf, a considerable amount of research into its Art Academy has been carried out in connection with different exhibitions, and yet women artists’ studies and networks in the city have largely escaped closer examination. However, the city played an important role in the art education of several Nordic women artists before Paris. The first women travelled from Norway and Sweden in the 1840s. They were followed by the Finns in the 1850s. To name a few, there was Amalia Lindegren (1814–91) from Sweden, Aasta Hansteen (1824–1908) from Norway, and Fanny Churberg (1845–92) and Victoria Åberg (1824–92) from Finland. Prior to this, for instance, Dresden had attracted women artists during the first decades of the century. We also know that there were several women studying art in Munich and in Karlsruhe.

Previous academic research and exhibitions on women artists

It was still the accepted truth in the 1940s in Finland that the status of women artists had been exceptionally good, although, as late as the early 1980s writers and exhibitors were interested only in the work of a few women artists. However, the situation started to change in the 1980s when a group of researchers studied women artists at the University of Helsinki. The research was funded by the Academy of Finland and the group was active in 1985–86. This work was followed by the Kristiina Institute, which was founded at the University of Helsinki in 1991 and focused on gender studies. In addition, several museums in Finland, including the Ateneum Art Museum, have organised a wide range of exhibitions on Finnish women artists. Consequently, a considerable amount of research has been carried out to bring more and more forgotten or neglected women artists into the limelight.

Internationally, the volume of research on women artists has increased considerably, since Linda Nochlin published her groundbreaking article in ArtNews ‘Why there have been no great women artists’, in 1971. It was followed by the exhibition ‘Women Artists 1550–1950’ at the Los Angeles County Museum in 1976, which inspired museums to search their collections for forgotten women artists and their works. Interestingly, a year before that, in 1975, however, the Nationalgalerie in East Berlin had organised an exhibition on German women artists under the title ‘Deutsche bildende Künstlerinnen von der Goethezeit bis zur Gegenwart’ (German Women Artists from the Age of Goethe to the Present), which remained unnoticed in the West due to the political situation at the time. Moreover, in 1982, Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock introduced a more radical approach in their groundbreaking book Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology. At the same time women’s studies in France focussed more closely on language and literature. Recently, the exhibition ‘Fighting for Visibility. Women Artists of the Nationalgalerie before 1919’, organised in Berlin in 2019, shed light on how women’s artworks made it into the museum’s collections. At the same time, the exhibition also celebrated the centenary of women’s right to start regular studies at the Berlin Art Academy and elsewhere in Germany.

How to participate

We now invite international scholars and museum professionals to participate in the research group. To begin with, the objective is to chart the artists of the period, their works and networks, and to present new, lesser-known artists and their works. Another aim is to compare the education and status of women artists in different countries in the period being studied. We are planning to hold the first international Knowledge Sharing Workshop in the autumn of 2021. The research project is led by Ateneum Art Museum Curator, Dr Anne-Maria Pennonen. For more information, please contact her, anne-maria.pennonen@ateneum.fi.

—

Featured image: Ida Silfverberg, Self-Portrait, 1868, oil on canvas, 56.5cm x 46cm
Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum
Photo: Finnish National Gallery /Kari Soinio

…

Read more — Download ‘A New Research Project: ‘Pioneering Women Artists in the 19th century’, by Anne-Maria Pennonen, as a PDF

Download the article as a PDF >>

Featured image: Sigrid af Forselles, Youth, 1880–89, bronze, 43cm x 41.5cm x 26cm, Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Pakarinen

Strong, Self-Sufficient and Sharp – Nordic Women Sculptors 1870–1940

Anu Utriainen

Anu Utriainen, MA, Senior Researcher, Ateneum Art Museum / Finnish National Gallery

 A research and exhibition project co-ordinated by the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, and the Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki.

—

This research project aims to chart and compare the women sculptors in the Nordic countries who were active at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. The criterion for the selection is that the women were professionals, meaning that they had been trained as sculptors, exhibited sculpture at public exhibitions or that their work had been acquired by museums.

The project is led by Curator of Sculpture, Linda Hinners PhD of the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. Members of the editorial board are Curator Vibeke Waallann Hansen of the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo and Senior Researcher Anu Utriainen of the Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki. The research group consists of scholars and researchers in the Nordic countries, Belgium and France. The results of the research project will be released in the form of a publication and an exhibition at the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm in 2022.

The increased presence of women in artistic life at the end of the 19th century marks an important shift and reflects the discussions about gender in this period. This was a pioneering time for women’s rights and particularly for gaining the opportunity to enter professional careers and paid employment. Art was an attractive choice for the daughters of the middle classes. In 1848, Finland became one of the first countries in Europe to give open access to basic art studies for women and men alike at the Drawing School of the Finnish Art Society. In Sweden, the Fine Arts Academy offered art studies for women from 1864 onwards. At the same time, there were still limits placed on women having careers as independent artists, and conventional opinions had a powerful influence on what were deemed to be suitable activities and occupations for women.

—

Featured image: Sigrid af Forselles, Youth, 1880–89, bronze, 43cm x 41.5cm x 26cm, Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Pakarinen
Public domain. This image of a work of art is released under a CC0 licence, and can be freely used because the copyright (70 full calendar years after the death of the artist) has expired.

…

Read more — Download ‘Strong, Self-Sufficient and Sharp – Nordic Women Sculptors 1870–1940’, by Anu Utriainen, as a PDF

Download the article as a PDF >>

Joseph Alanen, Lemminkäinen and the Cowherd, 1919–20, tempera on canvas, 50cm x 64cm. Collection Maine Wartiovaara née Alanen, Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Jenni Nurminen

Editorial: European Revivals Ten Years On

Riitta Ojanperä

Riitta Ojanperä, PhD, Director of Collections Management, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

 

20 January 2020

 

Dear Readers,

As we enter a new decade, the FNG Research magazine is proud to launch a special collection of art-historical articles under the title European Revivals. From Dreams of a Nation to Places of Transnational Exchange. Released to coincide with an international conference this month, this publication marks the culmination of the ‘European Revivals’ research project and its accompanying series of six international conferences inaugurated in Helsinki in 2009 with subsequent conferences held also in Oslo, Krakow and Edinburgh.

On this occasion the Finnish National Gallery extends its warmest thanks to all those individuals and organisations who have taken part in and committed to realising the vision for the ‘European Revivals’ project and its research publication. Working together with our colleagues and international collaborators on both an intellectual and a practical level has been most interesting and inspiring.

The reason behind the project was to stimulate debate and reflect upon the phenomena surrounding European national revivals by bringing together and analysing the multifarious connections and correspondences that have helped to shape the identities of modern European nations. In 2009, the question of national revivalist discourses in art and art-historical research was a topical subject at the Finnish National Gallery, which had just opened a comprehensive exhibition of Finnish art based on motifs from The Kalevala past and present.

Towards the end of the 19th century, European artists began to express a new and profound interest in their unique local pasts and cultural inheritances. This growing sense of national identity prompted a major flowering of debate concerning the rapidly disappearing regional cultures throughout Europe. This was a debate that was largely shaped by the desire within several countries for cultural and artistic, and ultimately social and economic, independence. It resulted in creating new art that sought modern interpretations and links with local roots. It also resulted in art-historical and cultural historical narratives in which the uniqueness of the narratives of national or local histories were emphasised.

It was clear that art-historical scholarship on the subject had been broadly established, but the ‘European Revivals’ project aimed to examine parallel phenomena from a more wide-scale international perspective. Our key interest was to look at the similarities of these narratives, rather than their differences. In the course of the project, this approach turned out to raise lively interest among art historians in both museums and across academia.

From the outset, the project aimed to work towards producing a scientific publication which would cover the most interesting topics to have emerged over the ten years of its activities. We therefore invited several scholars who had participated in European Revivals conferences to submit articles for this publication. These peer-reviewed articles have been developed from the original papers given between 2009 and 2017.

As well as publishing research articles and other information concerning the Finnish National Gallery’s research activities, we are continuing to develop our research intern programme. Each year, we recruit for a period of three months up to three, master’s-level art history students to study a chosen topic arising from material in our research archives. The aim is to publish an article based on their research process, supported and tutored by our in-house professionals.

From the applications received last year, two research interns for 2020 have been selected. Karita Kivikoski, from the University of Helsinki, is studying the artist Leena Luostarinen and her artistic output during the 1980s–90s from the point of view of the reception of her works and discourse analysis. She will be researching press clippings, interviews and exhibition catalogues related to Luostarinen and her art works in the collection of the Finnish National Gallery. Olga Korka, from the Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg, is studying Ilya Repin’s years in Finland and the Finnish-Russian cultural relations based on Repin-related archival material and Repin’s art works in the collections of the Finnish National Gallery.

The call for research interns for 2021 will be launched in autumn 2020. During this year, the FNG Research magazine will be published every second month, continuing its in-depth exploration of the research interests behind the Finnish National Gallery’s three museums’ exhibition programmes. We also invite scholars to submit articles that are linked with or relevant to our extensive collections.

Wishing you all a most inspiring new decade,

Dr Riitta Ojanperä

—

Featured image: Joseph Alanen, Lemminkäinen and the Cowherd, 1919–20, tempera on canvas, 50cm x 64cm. Collection Maine Wartiovaara née Alanen, Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Jenni Nurminen

Cover of the print version of European Revivals - From Dreams of a Nation to Places of Transnational Exchange, depicting the illustration by Akseli Gallen-Kallela for the novel, Seven Brothers, by Aleksis Kivi, 1907, watercolour and pencil, 23.5cm x 31.5cm. Ahlström Collection, Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Aaltonen

European Revivals – From Dreams of a Nation to Places of Transnational Exchange

Admin

Table of Contents

Foreword

Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff and Riitta Ojanperä
Download >>

Visions of Identity, Dreams of a Nation

  • Ossian, Kalevala and Visual Art: a Scottish Perspective
    Murdo Macdonald
    Download >>
  • Nationality and ­Community in ­Norwegian Art Criticism around 1900
    Tore Kirkholt
    Download >>
  • Celticism, ­Internationalism and Scottish Identity: Three Key Images in Focus
    Frances Fowle
    Download >>
  • Listening to the Voices: Joan of Arc as a ­Spirit-Medium in the Celtic Revival
    Michelle Foot
    Download >>

Artists’ Places, Location and Meaning

  • Inventing Folk Art: ­Artists’ Colonies in ­Eastern ­Europe and their Legacy
    Marina Dmitrieva
    Download >>
  • The Vernacular Revival in the Polish Tatras c. 1900: Arts, Patronage, ­Collecting and  Documentation
    Edyta Barucka
    Download >>
  • Önningeby and Skagen: ­Investigating Two Artists’ ­Colonies with Social Network Analysis
    Anna-Maria Wiljanen
    Download >>
  • Constructing ­Mythologies of the Germanen in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-­century Germany
    Iain Boyd Whyte
    Download >>

Concepts for Revival Movement

  • From Nostalgia to Where…? National Romanticism, Esotericism, and the ‘Golden Age of Finnish Art’
    Marja Lahelma
    Download >>
  • The Artist’s House: ­Symbolism and Utopia
    Laura Gutman
    Download >>
  • Visions of History: ­Gerhard Munthe’s Rhythm and Revival in fin-de-siècle Norway
    Tonje H. Sørensen
    Download >>
  • Craft, Ornament and its Meaning in Finnish ­Architecture around 1900
    Charlotte Ashby
    Download >>
  • Encounters between Art and Folk Art around 1900 in Norway: Gerhard Munthe, Theodor ­Kittelsen and ­Frida Hansen
    Vibeke Waallann Hansen
    Download >>

—

Featured image: Cover of the print version of European Revivals – From Dreams of a Nation to Places of Transnational Exchange. On the cover: Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Illustration for the novel, Seven Brothers, by Aleksis Kivi, 1907, watercolour and pencil, 23.5cm x 31.5cm. Ahlström Collection, Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Aaltonen

…

Read more — Download ‘European Revivals – From Dreams of a Nation to Places of Transnational Exchange’ (ISBN 978-952-7371-09-1) as a PDF

Download the complete book as a PDF (screen version) >>
(best for narrow, e.g. mobile displays, or for continuous flow reading within a browser)

Download the complete book as a PDF (print version) >>
(best for viewing on displays large enough and supporting viewing the document by spreads, or for creating double-sided printouts)

Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Lemminkäinen's Mother, 1897. Ateneum Art Museum. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Jouko Könönen, Pirje Mykkänen.

Research Projects: European Revivals

Admin

A Finnish National Gallery Research Project

—

The Finnish National Gallery established a research project titled ‘European Revivals’ in 2009. The reason behind the project is to stimulate debate and reflect upon the phenomena surrounding European national revivals by bringing together and analysing the multifarious connections and correspondences that have helped to shape the identities of modern European nations.

This ongoing project’s aims are fostered by encouraging scholarly networking between academia and museum professionals through organising or supporting affiliated seminars and conferences, all of which explore different aspects of these phenomena. Other initiatives that will take place under the auspices of the ‘European Revivals’ project include publications and international exhibitions culminating in 2018 in a scientific publication.

Towards the end of the 19th century, European artists began to express a new and profound interest in their unique local pasts and cultural inheritances. This was a discourse that was largely shaped by the desire within several countries for cultural and artistic, and ultimately social and economic, independence. Art-historical scholarship on the subject has been broadly established, but the ‘European Revivals’ project also strives to examine parallel phenomena from a wider-scale, international perspective.

As part of the project, a series of international conferences has already been organised, with the first taking place in 2009 in Helsinki. Each ‘European Revivals’ conference has its specific theme, title and organising team.

Here we give information on future conferences with links to the conference web sites. We also list here the previous conferences with their programmes.

—

Featured image: Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Lemminkäinen’s Mother, 1897. Ateneum Art Museum. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Jouko Könönen, Pirje Mykkänen

—

‘European Revivals’ Conferences

Read More >>

—