“Ikonotheka” 33 (2024) – Introduction
We are beginning to present texts published in FEMINIST ART HISTORIOGRAPHIES IN EASTERN EUROPE AND LATIN AMERICA issue of “Ikonotheka” 33 (2024). You can access all the issue here
Authors: Agata Jakubowska, Andrea Giunta
From the Introduction:
Previous years saw an increased number of projects that offered a comparison of art created in Eastern Europe and Latin America, such as Subversive Practices: Art under Conditions of Political Repression: 60s–80s / South America / Europe (Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, Ostfildern 2010), Artists’ Networks in Eastern Europe and Latin America (ARTMargins, 2012, 1, nos 2–3, 2012, eds. Klara Kemp–Welch, Cristina Freire), Transmissions: Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America, 1960–1980 (The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2016), or The Other Trans-Atlantic. Kinetic and Op Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America 1950s – 1970s (Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2017), to name just a few. Many of them deal with art that reacted to dictatorships/totalitarianism and their diverse forms of action in society, such as censorship, violence, and rights restrictions. They concentrate on avant-garde art from the second half of the 20th century and analyse networks built by artists from both regions around joint ideas, be they artistic or political. Our seminar contributed by discussing feminist art that, so far, has almost been ignored. But it also proposed a different perspective – instead of analysing transfers of artists and ideas, we focused on a comparative analysis of the development of feminist practice in art and art history. We wanted to contribute to a better understanding of feminist art created in Eastern Europe and Latin America, but also of how feminist art is written about in our regions, and it is the latter that is presented in this volume.
As correctly stated Antje Kempe, Beáta Hock, Marina Dmitrieva – the editors of the newly published volume Universal – International – Global. Art Historiographies of Socialist Eastern Europe – “While we can note a comprehensive discussion about the artistic production of Socialist Europe and its framing in narratives, art historiography was until recently only partly visible in this discourse”. Both in Eastern Europe and Latin America, we can observe the development of the history of art history in the recent decade. Our volume can be perceived as a further contribution to our regional historiographies of art history that adds an analysis of the feminist perspective in art historical writing. In both regions, some effort has already been made to historicise the relationship between art and feminism, usually in each country separately, without focusing on the specific concepts that would help differentiate the historiography of the regions. Radical Women. Latin American Art, 1960–1985 was the first historical overview of the development in fifteen countries of Latin America, providing materials for a comparative study on how artistic and historiographic production occurred in each of these countries. In Eastern Europe, such a comparative project on feminist art historiography has yet to be initiated. Our volume, which seeks to develop inter-regional discussions, is simultaneously a contribution to the global historiography of feminist art history that – as it seems – is yet to be written.
