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The paper offers a general overview of the Lithuanian art historical research published during the three decades of Independence (1990-2020). The paper discusses the changes in institutional and academic life, the spectrum of methodological approaches, as well as the key art theoretical publications and their authors. The overview aims to assess the current situation in the art historical discipline and fascilitate the debates around the question whether Lithuania has managed to develop its own school of art theory. The analysis of the publications (mostly monographs) by the Lithuanian art theorists has conclusively shown that such school does already exist. In terms of its organisation, Lithuanian art theoretical school matches all the academic criteria: education is provided at all levels, and the dissemination and continuity of research, both empirical and theoretical, are ensured. The school has already gone through two or even three phases of development. The first stage, spanning between 1990 and 1998/99, was rich with significant achievements in the sector of education: it saw the launch of the first art theory doctorate programme in Lithuania, as well as the establishment of the Institute of Art Research, and the Vilnius Academy of Arts Publishing House. During the period, Kaunas Vytautas Magnus University launched their art theory programme, while the Culture and Art Institute in Vilnius had acquired two art theory departments. The second stage (2000-2010/12) saw a rapid growth of the number of publications, widening of the art theoretical specialisation, and further development of research methodologies. Along with the formal analysis and methodologies of iconography and iconology, came the outlines of social art history. All the spheres of art history became equipped with various methods of source research and interpretation. Among the main fields of research were the history of ecclesiastic and devotional art (patronage and heritage of mansions and urbanite art). One of the leading research problems of the time - the relation of text and image. The third stage covers the period of 2010-2020, and instead of the focus on the oldest examples of art historical heritage to the art of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. In Lithuania, the methodological innovations started gradually taking root only after the year 2000, therefore there are still many possibile routes to explore. Most texts emoploy a combination of different methodologies, varying between iconology, phenomenology, and semiotics. This helps the research to better grasp the multiplicitous nature of the analysed phenomena, although this sometimes comes at the expense of the narrational coherence and constructiveness of conclusions. The Lithuanian school is predominantly national-based. This has many advantages, although sometimes this makes it difficult to distribute the research internationally. Despite all the developments within the Lithuanian art history as a discipline, international collaboration via conferences, projects, publishing, and media still leaves much to be desired. Due to the reliability of documented information, Lithuanian art historians are able to produce a particularly high level of in their work with sources. Rather than emerging as a circle of followers around a particular prominent individual, the Lithuanian art theoretical school is a result of a number of colleagues - art historians and critics - practicing mutual support and exchange of ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The text analyses the specific forms and channels of artwork development, namely, it looks into the storytelling potential of the physical space (the closedness of interiors and openness of exteriors), the digital space, and the space of paper publication. While respecing the artistic freedom, the paper stresses the importance of the permanently changing context, although even the most recognised art professionals can forget that, which often produces a comical effect. The research involves some seemingly unrelated topics and a few concrete objects: 1. artwork distribution, 2. the entrenchment of architects in the fabric of exhibition, 3. unseen contexts, and 4. the analysis/slam of exhibition titles from a particular historical period. The paper uses the comparative method that is rich both with references and personal remarks, and its style is close to that of a writer-artist rather than an academic. It aims to show the artworld as being slightly rough-around-the-edges, governed by distinct sources of power, and rich with absurdity. The research also uses dedicated illustrations to comment on the topical issues and various tragicomical situations related to them. Along with its visual component, irony temporarily relieves us of tensions and enriches the text companion. The research method is based on the practice of observation of the art field, and the analysis of its exhibition spaces along with individual artists, publishing platforms, and their intersections in the art critical publications, conferences and the internet. The paper tries to study the role of the new participants, specifically exhibition architects, in the exhibition context, while subjectively highlighting both successful and unsuccessful examples. The third part presents the analysis as a clash between randomly picked material (e.g., exhibition titles) on the one hand, and the material of a distinctly different genre (e.g., slam comments) on the other, thus deliberately rejecting the entire sociology of art. Because, when preparing to their exhibitions, artists fall prey to various word games when coming up with their project titles, and end up being torn between family, friends, art theorists and art centre directors on the one hand, and their intimate desire to express themselves on the other. This is also why the third part comes without any conclusions. The author is happy to live in such a structurally obscure environment (what's the difference whether you're self-taught or you've got a degree in art management; after all, life is but collection of exceptions), as long as one has the power of an individual voice. The author is but a text, while the polyphony of other people, historical events and texts is but a context, and the latter is always bigger than the former. The voice, in which we tell our stories of art, will be most successful not only when it is unique, but also when it comes out as a scream. One is thus bound to scream loudly and end one's life with a book. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the interactions within an exhibition between its architecture and its curatorial program. Instead of being regarded as a dual system with a single goal, the interactions are seen as two separate systems that do not always ensure a coherent articulation of the content in the exhibition. An architectural program implies an existing exhibition space with new design solutions for a specific exhibition. An architectural program is an existing exhibition space with new design solutions for a specific exhibition. The curatorial program is called the logic of the arrangement of works - the principle according to which art objects are combined into a conceptual, visual or thematic picture. The study highlights that each of these programs has three types of expression that make up nine possible interactions between the exhibition architecture and its content. Of these, three interactions mark situations where the spatial layout and its content correspond to each other. However, the study focuses on the cases with particular discrepancies, as the practice shows that such exhibitions are most prevalent. This is thought to be due to the fact that the architectural structure of the exhibition halls is often unfriendly towards certain curatorial scenarios. Instead of regarding this as a problem, the paper considers this as an opportunity for the cases of conscious and productive solutions. The paper investigates one specific case: "Head With Many Thoughts", an exhibition at CAC. The exhibition is analysed both theoretically and practically with the help of the Space Syntax method, analytically assessing the behavioral patterns predicted in the exhibition, as well as practically checking how the audience groups respond to the exhibition. Rather than using a mere theoretical analysis, the paper proposes to consider the potential of these methods for further development and practical adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the aspects of anationhood in art theory and culture have already been thoroughly investigated, the relatively young discipline of cinema theory is only beginning to grapple with the notion of nationality in cinema. The earliest attempts to define 'national cinema' go back as far as the soviet and the early Independence periods, as seen in the works of Marijona Malcienė, Laimonas Tapinas, and Živilė Pipinytė. The paper aims to build on these early debates and develop a new interpretation of the notion of national cinema, offer its contemporary historiography with the pluralist understanding of the notion, and therefore ask the following series of questions: is it only the cultural texts about the host country that can be considered 'national'? does 'nationality' depend on the nationality of the artist? what criteria determine the value and significance of cinema? is it just the films with high artistic quality that are worthy of our attention? how about other factors that determine the culture of cinema (audience, distribution, screening)? how does the integration of these factors change our understanding of 'national cinema'? The paper addresses these questions in three parts. In the first one, I use key authors (Andrew Higson, John Hill, and Stephen Croft) to discuss the development of the notion of 'national cinema' while paying more attention to its modern interpretation due to its relevance to the contemporary cinema theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper overviews the history of the privately owned Kaunas Women's Arts and Crafts School (1927-1940), established by the craftswoman Stasė Gudonytė-Biziokienė (1896-1943). Her work is analysed in the context of the interwar arts and crafts education. The school was continuing the tradition of women's crafts education that formed in the 2nd half of the 19th century. Being part of the interwar elite, Gudonytė-Bizokienė, was considered one of the founders of Lithuanian high fashion. During the period of 1935-1936, the school introduced three additional courses: hat making, women's fashion, and children's clothing design and tailoring. The paper uses archival material and memories of family members to present the biography of Gudonytė-Bizokienė. The paper also describes the school with its educational aims, structure, institutional reforms of 1935, and its curriculum. The paper overviews the remaining samples of the students' work that reflect the interwar ideals of a cosy home space, and feature a mix of art deco and modernised folk style. The significance of the school is demonstrated by tracing the careers of its graduates in the general context of arts and crafts education of the time. Apart from Kaunas Art School and Dotnuva Academy of Agriculture (1924-1945), Kaunas Women's Arts and Crafts School was the only higher education establishment with speciality in arts. The school's aims matched the Lithuanian demands. Gudonytė-Bizokienė's tailoring courses were on par with the educational programs of the notable tailors of the interwar Kaunas. The paper concludes that it was the artistic crafts that Gudonytė-Bizokienė saw as her main goal, while the fashion salons were only an appendage to her educational work. Crafts education was credited with a higher status in the Lithuanian schools of vocational education. However small, the group of the school's graduates that the research was able to identify demonstrates excellent professional skills and readiness to work in the sphere of crafts education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is dedicated to the theoretical approaches and methodologies of artwork interpretation. By drawing from the contemporary materialist philosophy, primarily the theories of Bruno Latour and Donna J. Haraway, the paper aims to develop a version of contextual interpretation that is both terrestrial and spectulative. The paper discusses the conditions of discoursive emancipation, networked inclusivity and agency of artworks, namely: author's death, the importance of cognition, and Rancière's notion of aesthetic regime. Rancière talks about the emancipation of viewer as a result of the unpredictability of sensory cognition and the incongruity of the rules of poetics and aesthetics, which implies the activisation of artworks (images, texts, etc.). The paper argues that artworks (mediated images) have more agency than texts, which is confirmed by visual phenomenology, psychoanalysis of the gaze, the paradigm of effigies, etc. The artworks are thus the active and not-quite-dead participants of social interrelations because they keep generating unforeseen performative consequences and random meanings, as well as shaping the behaviour of the audiences that perceive them. Meanwhile authors and interpreters are not subjects but 'mere' actants - they are not-quite-alive as they rely on mediatised repositories of knowledge and forms. In terms of Latour's Actor-Network Theory (ANT), the perceiving audience (including art theorists themselves) are networked actants, and their interrelations involve many other actants, including originary imagery, (meta)stories, ideas, artists, thinkers, atmospheric phenomena, animals, and artefacts. Within Haraway's paradigm of situated knowledge, an artwork would be a sympoietic companion that joins us in thinking, makes us worry, assemble into the networks of partial, embodied, and site-specific knowledge, as well as mourn and facilitate our response-ability. If we are able to think together with various human and non-human entities, both alive and dead, this surely extends to artworks too. Haraway calls the paradigm of cohabitation of species and entities Chthulucene, and sometimes it is possible to apply it to the artworks that are not necessarily new. In the second part, I ignore the distinction between the art theoretical text and meta-text, and take up the case of Antanas Gudaitis (1904-1989). A master figure of Lithuanian modernism, Gudaitis studied in Paris (1929-1931), and his later period is marked by the plentitude of references to inter-species cohabitation. In his drawings from the 1970s, we see birds sitting at the table together with people, and his later work features 'double-portraits' that combined the heads of humans and various animals. Depicted in the distinctly expressionist style, objects and animate creatures are turned into equal actants. Gudaitis stresses the optical similarities between humans and non-humans, which gives his work the quality of the Freudian uncanny. In the conditions of an almost total cultural isolation during the soviet era, the art of Gudaitis, as well as that of the CoBrA collective, with their vision of an empathetic and slightly uncanny inter-species cohabitation (which today we would call post-anthropocentric), could have only emerged in the artistic soil already prepared by surrealism. The research of creative contexts, cultural environment and imagery is common in art history, and it is also one of the traits of the situative - terrestrial - interpretation, although the reformation of the art theoretical language through a meaningful developing of the speculative dimension is certainly not an easy task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the history of the Dailė Cooperative, the need and circumstances of its founding, its structure and activities. The cooperative operated (1941–45) during a highly turbulent period in Lithuania, when one occupational regime followed another, and World War II took place. The activity of this cooperative was important in that it built a concentrated production base (workshops with equipment, materials, etc.), handled orders, and coordinated the purchase and sale of works of professional and folk art. The Dailė Cooperative was modelled after the Soviet Art Fund, which, by means of centralizing material support (materials, tools, distribution of orders, and remuneration for work) provided to artists, controlled the creation of artworks. It should be noted that the founding and activities of the Dailė Cooperative were closely related to the Marginiai company, which was established in the interwar period to support folk art and home industry. The Dailė Cooperative took over its infrastructure as regimes changed; the company’s facilities were used, and nationalised workshops were merged into it. The cooperative brought together artists and folk artists, handled the sales of their works, held workshops, provided financial support, and contributed to the organisation of exhibitions. The activities of the Dailė Cooperative partly reflect the structure of the art scene in the period of occupation, the mechanism of its functioning, and the nature of the need for art and its consumption. The Dailė Cooperative was established during the first Soviet occupation, and its activities were not suspended, restricted, or terminated during the Nazi occupation. This shows that the institution of this type and the principle of its operation (centralised management) were acceptable to both regimes. After the war, the Dailė Cooperative became the basis for the Dailė manufactories, which were founded in 1945 and operated throughout the period of the second Soviet occupation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article was prepared for the conference „How to Tell About Art? Art History, Criticism, Texts and Narratives in Lithuania" which was organized by the Institute of Art Research. The conference description stated: "The aim of art history and criticism is to open the work of art to the imagination of the perceiver." What texts on art best reveal their artistic dimensions? All texts leave traces and affects perception, depending on the influence and symbolic value of the interpreter and the emancipation of the viewer or perceiver. How many and which perceptual references, what plug-ins/crutches does the viewer really need from an art critic? For Jacques Rancière, the emancipation of the viewer begins with the principle of equality. However, the art institution often insists on the 'correct' way to view the work, as well as what to buy, collect and watch, thus enforcing a linear understanding of cultural development. American antropologist Clifford Geertz argues that culture cannot be described by imposing ideas and advocates for the percetion-based, rather than evaluation-based understanding of culture.31 According to the modern paradigm of cultural relativism, it is important to learn the language of those we research, so that we could look over their shoulder, without succumbing to the Darwinian scientific racism. The latter violates the artist's autonomous representation of free thought, as well as the viewer's freedom to choose and interpret works of art according to their own experience. The artist's own 'study' of the authentic origins of an artwork can be considered as a unveiling of the unexposed part of the artwork in textual form. Artists own narrative frees them from the necessity to evaluate and provides material for studies of the peculiar systems of artistic thinking and creative genesis. Speaking about - or rather, with - art and artistic approach presuppose a respectful relationship with the art viewer and perceiver: instead of explaining what the particular experience should/could feel like, it provides more material for perception and further artistic interpretation. Could this help us "open the work of art to the imagination of the perceiver"? It is possible that, when written by a non-canonical artist, such a text with its ambiguous ties to the artwork would not only hamper the viewer's imagination, but also deconstruct any pre-existing fragmentary perception. The art history inventory finds complicated systems inconvenient. Therefore, by asking "Who Wants to Know where Artists live?", I not only emphasise the Who, which refers to the interested party, but also ask weather (who needs it) or why it could be interesting to know all that, and what to do with it. The article presents excerpts from a piece of author's artistic writing which was read as a conference paper. The reader is therefore invited to sample the experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the first Lithuanian art historical publication by proffessor and art historian Joseph Saunders, who read it in Vilnius University in November 1815. The article titled "Knowledge about Szymon Czechovicz's Life and Creations" is considered to be the beginning of historiographical research in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Similarly to the first art historian Giorgio Vasari and his "Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects" (published in 1550), Saunders reminds his readers of a forgotten painter (who made multiple portraits and religious scenes), and underlines his accomplishments and talent. Following the Vasarian tradition, Saunders brings attention to Czechovicz's life, his character, and his approach to art. Much like Vasari, Saunders is interested in the artist's soul, virtues and morale, and is emphasizing their importance in his philosophic reflections about art and artists. By comparing Saunders' article with the scheme of the "Lives" by Vasari, the paper suggests that Vasari could have been a model art historian, and argues that his methods of analysis were applied by Saunders in the 19th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is based on a paper presented at the conference "How to Tell About Art?" (Vilnius Academy of Arts, 7-8 May 2021; curated by Lina Michelkevičė, Laura Petrauskaitė, and Aušra Trakšelytė). The topic of the presentation was suggested by the growing interest among the Lithuanian public in historical art exhibitions. Both the conference report and the article are based on the assumption that the increasing visibility of the historical art exhibitions in the Lithuanian cultural field and their growing popularity might have an impact that goes beyond the art historical reflections. Such exhibitions not only develop the audience's sensitivity to artefacts, but also stimulate and partially satisfy the desire to learn about the history of culture, society and politics. The immanent characteristic of art - the perpetual movement of a visual artwork from (total) invisibility to (partial) visibility - implies the significance of an art exhibition and its capacity to communicate the 'inconvenient', and therefore silenced and distorted, memory. A fragment of the past will remain irrelevant for as long as it is unrecognised. By bringing the viewer face to face with the artefacts of a forgotten reality, the exhibition brings the latter closer, sharpens its colours, and makes it vivid. By taking the series of exhibitions dedicated to Lithuanian art and artistic life during WWII as its case study, the article aims to at least partially answer the question: how relevant, influential, and meaningful is the communication of 'inconvenient' and therefore silenced historical topics, particularly in an art exhibition that uses catalogue as its integral part? The article explains the motives for organising these exhibitions, analyses their brief descriptions along with their narrative structure, and overviews the forms and methods of dissemination. In order to provide a broader context for the issues at stake, a juxtaposition is made with similarly themed exhibitions recently held in Germany and Italy. They became renowned for their local and international focus on art produced under the Fascist and National Socialist regimes, as well as under the conditions of WWII. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]