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The enormous popularity of decorated industrial wall and floor tiles in Europe in the years 1840–1940 is strongly linked to the standardization, technical quality, and aesthetic variety of the products that were well marketed through often lavishly colored trade catalogues. More than the study of existing tile schemes in interiors, a systematic study of these trade catalogues leads to a better understanding of the general use of tile in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century interior. They inform us about factories and offer invaluable information on the technical and aesthetic evolution of tiles. They help us to date the designs and acquire a better knowledge of changes in taste in applying them. They are also a valuable source for documenting differences and similarities between factories and countries in matters of tile design and reveal opportunities to better understand the global export success or stylistic influence of many European factories in other countries on the continent as well as overseas. In this paper a general and theoretical approach is elucidated by referring to concrete cases based on a research collection of more than 600 tile catalogues from all over the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article has been prepared on the basis of my paper for the conference Arts in the State - The State in Arts and does not aim to present the full picture, which cannot be comprehensive anyway. It is based on the approach that a text is a photograph of language, and thus an entire collection of words can be composed according to the principle of photo collage, as words create meanings that everyone understands differently. Taking into account the fact that in the above-mentioned conference the unique conception of the Cemetery for Artworks was presented publicly for the first time, this text, for scholarly purposes, was written as a case study. Depending on the raised problems, a case study allows choosing the forms of writing that are most suitable for a concrete solution and most precisely define the starting point of its "challenge" or problem. Separate parts of the article written in an improvised legalese become experimental extensions of the artistic/research field in different linguistic registers. Using the narrative approach, the author polemicizes not only with the popular role of a speaking/writing artist, but also with the rhetoric of the regulations supporting or commissioning creative work. Legal linguistics with its inner logic and power strategy used as a means to speak about a certain creative tendency proceeds from the main problematics of the article. It should be noted that from the classical viewpoint of art, rules are made so that they could be remade. Since it is the first larger official text about the Cemetery of Artworks that has actually been in operation for three years already, information of rather descriptive than explanatory or assessing nature is basically given here. As can be judged from the consistency of the presented information, its content is rather artistic, but in the paradigm of artistic research it can be read both as a practice and theory, which in its present shape does not represent either of them. Basically it is a study for art, about art, through art and together with art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper overviews the development of the notion of trans-disciplinarity in Lithuania and its neighbouring contexts, and makes an attempt to identify its current relation to science and art. The paper analyses the ways in which artistic research, without being a discipline in its own right, can nonetheless both provide a basis for the doctoral studies in arts, and liberate it from the traditions and disciplines of the humanities and other sciences. Furthermore, the paper argues that doctoral studies in arts are inherently trans-disciplinary and thus able to accommodate the traditional traits of the doctorate studies in the areas as different as humanities, social sciences, and even natural sciences. Lastly, the paper builds the case for artistic research as both the basis for the doctoral studies in arts and a unique research paradigm, itself able to produce new research traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is concerned with the process of developing the concept for the conservation, restoration, and reconstruction of the missing parts of the seventeenth-century candleholders from the Church of St. George the Martyr in Kaunas. The paper will review the issues encountered in the effort to find and select materials for the conservation and restoration of stone fragments. It will also describe the tests carried out during the process and highlight the role of chemical and non-interventional analysis as an auxiliary tool in the process of conservation and restoration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on alternative options regarding the often highly time-consuming treatments to overpaint removal from wooden polychrome objects used in Lithuanian conservation practice. It aims to highlight the variety of approaches used throughout the European region. Based on the case study analysis, the four types of approaches that have been identified throughout the European region are mechanical, solvent, biological, and physical. The four methods found in Lithuanian conservation practice are mechanical ablation with a scalpel, organic solvent-soaked compress action followed by scalpel ablation, organic solvent-soaked swab action, and application of commercial paint strippers (commercial organogels). Five more methods that are used abroad employ self-modelled organogels, hydrogels, enzymes, heat, and laser radiation. The further analysis helped determine twelve removal systems based on the methods mentioned above. These are illustrated in the flowchart, providing information on each process step by step, which can serve as an aid when designing a case-specific approach. Subsequently, the author of this paper presents an application of a diversified removal system regarding multiple campaigns of overpainting on a wooden polychrome reliquary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hopes to restore the independent state remained very much present throughout the whole 19th century and motivated the ideas of the civil resistance in both Poland and Lithuania. The struggles for independence erupted through the uprisings of 1794, 1830-31, and 1863. While these attempts at armed resistance did not lead to the liberation of neither Lithuania nor Poland, they demonstrated the undying willingness to regain freedom. With the increasing repressive crackdown by the tzarist government, the role of artists only grew. Paintings and poems became weapons in the fight against the tzarist policy of Russification. The paper focuses on the works that the painter Vincentas Smakauskas (1797-1876) created after the suppressed uprising of 1831. The paper proposes a hypothesis that the paintings created during this dramatic period of Lithuanian history encoded secret symbolical meanings that represented the ideas of civil resistance. The research was inspired by the repeating scenes of grief and was carried out as an analysis of the traumatic experiences in society after the suppression of the uprising of 1831, when the tzarist government started repressing cultural and religious life. The methodological combination of iconological research and psychoanalysis resulted in the premise about the compensatory functions of creativity for both artists and their social environment. While searching for the reasons of similarity between the two paintings by Smakauskas--"Steponas Batoras Establishes the Vilnius Academy" and "A Group of People Surrounding a Woman in Her Death Bed"--the research poses a question: what is the real object of loss? The paper proposes a hypothesis that the object of loss can be deduced from the interrelation between these two paintings. While the former depicts the act of establishment of Vilnius University, which is a socially uplifting event, the latter shows the loss of this symbol. It is likely that, due to the complicated political situation and censorship, Smakauskas was forced to hide this idea by depicting the anonymous woman in her death bead. Perhaps, his contemporaries, who still recalled his first painting proudly displayed in the hall of Vilnius University, were expected to recognise the anonymous dying woman as an allegory for the closed Vilnius University, which was also known as Alma Mater Vilnensis. This hypothesis still lacks in sufficient proof, yet we expect to find it during the further research. While researching Smakauskas' work, the paper has discovered the exceptional role the artists played in the social life of the 19th century Lithuania. Being the citizens without a state, they acted as public intellectuals and politicians of resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The paper analyses the role of the Lithuanian diaspora and its artists in the art field of Argentina in the 30's and 40's, and overviews their input into the development of the nativist discourse. The paper employs social art history to show the impact the transatlantic migration had on the social mobility of migrant artists and their careers in South America and Lithuania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artistic research has helped verify how primary a role creative processes play in not only constructing knowledge but also questioning knowledge elitism. The particular power-knowledge problematics for artistic research - addressed in both academic and artistic ways in this paper - is academic quotation. I first trace critical qualitative inquiry into citation back to feminist ethnography's so-called citational politics. Then, by methodologizing my own artistic research into the non-distinction between reading and citing academic language, I make it possible for citationality to be holistically understood as interplay between: citation's technical role in academic writing; its quantitative role in academic capitalism; and its political role in academic positionality. The well-trodden citational genealogies called out by Sara Ahmed are replaced by citational pathways connecting the authoring academic to voices entirely outside the discourse community that is academia in, for example, the arts-based educational research of Camea Davis. In the final analysis, such artistic understandings of citationality - citations that transform what we mean by citation - have the power to redeploy citations as channels of communication for social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper was written to help address the tenuous status of research-creation at the University of Toronto, where I am a Doctor of Musical Arts candidate. There, I devised a "feedback saxophone" system in which I combine the tenor saxophone with various microphones and speakers to encourage and control acoustic feedback. The DMA program at U of T is classified as professional, so the premise of centering my thesis around my feedback saxophone practice was met with some healthy skepticism. This was not because it was viewed as uninteresting, but because creative practice is not typically considered a justifiable form of research in thesis writing. To therefore bolster research-creation as a legitimate form of scholarly inquiry and to build a model for my own research in music, I aim to answer two questions, insofar as they pertain to my research-creation project: (1) "How is creative practice research?" and (2) "What methods are appropriate for carrying out my creative practice as research?" In answering the first, I draw from the literature to demonstrate how research-creation is a form of knowledge generation that complements conventional modes of investigation. Following this, I examine different categories of research-creation and illustrate them on a music research "compass" to facilitate comparison and understanding. To answer the second question, I discuss two relevant research-creation methodologies and combine them to construct my own "problem-practice-exegesis" approach. I conclude by detailing how I carry out my research using this methodology. Through this work, I endeavor to provide a practical model for graduate artist-researchers who are interested in integrating their creative practices with thesis writing and to contribute to the validation of research-creation within Canadian graduate music programs and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doctoral programs in the fine arts, instead of coming up with their own ways of doing things, tend to adopt standards from the humanities, which themselves tend to adopt standards from science. Because of being preoccupied with trying to look like other disciplines, artistic thinking within artistic doctorates gets suppressed. But if we look into science directly and not through this second-hand approach, we can find aspects of scientific thinking that are closer to art than to the humanities. In this paper, I give examples of artistic thinking in the work of various scientists and mathematicians: a non-fiction book that uses fiction (Douglas Hofstadter's book Gödel, Escher, Bach), a linguistic analysis that concludes with a story (Livia Polanyi's book Telling the American Story), scientific lectures with unusual formal aspects (Roger Penrose's "VJing" of multiple layers of foils through an overhead projector, David Deutsch's Lectures on Quantum Computation), and a collective hiding behind a fictional mathematician (Nicolas Bourbaki). I also briefly introduce the problem of verbal overshadowing and the effects it may have on the creative process in art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fictocritical writing has been defined as an interdisciplinary practice that seeks to "blur the boundaries between the fictional, the factual and the theoretical." As a mode of experimental writing, it holds a great potential to reinvigorate the current state of critical art writing - specifically, artistic research. The present paper sets out to investigate the usefulness of venturing beyond the constative function of the text and discusses the performative nature of writing employed at the service of artistic enquiry. To that end, I examine three key case studies that shed light on the intricacies of fictocritical writing: Bert Danckaert's The Extras, Barbara Browning's The Gift, and Katrina Palmer's The Dark Object. They all constitute artistic research projects written as novels (two of them are also PhD theses) that, at the same time, are inscribed in an art project. Furthermore, I offer a practice-based example, an excerpt from my novel The Fantasy of the Novel (also part of my PhD thesis), with the hope that the reader will be able to apprehend the effects of fictocritical writing directly, rather than just their description. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents historical data about tile manufacturers in the northern part of East Prussia, collected from address books from the nineteenth- to the mid-twentieth-century from Königsberg, Tilsit, Insterburg, Gumbinnen, and the surrounding areas, mid-twentieth-century ceramics industry directories, and advertisements in German periodicals. The paper gives an account of activity periods of tile factories and workshops, their manufacturing sites, and the names of the owners. The data is expected to facilitate identification of tile products and their back-marking in future research efforts. [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]

In Lithuania, the era of a contemporary artist's book began with the restoration of Independence. The year 1993 saw the opening of "The Book", the first international show of artist's books (Vilnius Contemporary Art Centre; cur. Kęstutis Vasiliūnas) which was followed by various presentations of book art in many other international art fairs abroad. Since 1997 Vasiliūnas has been curating the triennials dedicated to artist's book (including "Diary: Eight Days", "Love", "The Rabbit and the House" and "23 Sins"). The 8th triennial "Memento Mori" (2018) took place in Vilnius Martynas Mažvydas Public Library, later the exposition was brought to the USA, Italy and Germany. The triennials dedicated to the artist's book have been organised across the entire world. Since 1993, over 40 international shows and symposiums were held in Lithuania, Germany, USA, Austria, France, South Corea and elsewhere. Vasiliūnas has managed to assemble a growing international community dedicated to the genre of artist's book. The extensive international interest in the Lithuanian artist's book trienials testifies to the lasting importance of Vasiliūnas' curatorial work. R. Vaigeltaitė-V. became part of the contemporary artist's book movement back in the early 1990s. During the next 30 years she has created over 60 artist's books, all unique in terms of their form and structure. Most of her books have a traditional format of a leafed codex, but she also made leporello concertinas and book-objects. The books were made of various types of paper, including hand-made paper, as well as plastic, linen fabric, natural materials and found objects. The artist's books often involve mixed media such as linocut, wood block, colography, collage, stiching, ink jet print. The subjects of these diary-like records of everyday and travel experiences include mythology and religion. In terms of printing technique, Vaigeltaitė-V's book art is related to graphic printing: the ideas she comes up with during the making of the artist's book are then explored in graphic prints, and vice versa. The artistic scope of Prof. Kęstutis Vasiliūnas (Graphic Art Department, Vilnius Academy of Arts) is truly universal -- he is a graphic artist, artist's book designer, installation artist and curator. Vasiliūnas got interested in the artist's book in the early 1990s. His first work -- The Book of Creation -- was exhibited at "The Book" (1993), a show dedicated to the genre of artist's book. Vasiliūnas usually makes singular books and small print runs. Among the techniques he uses are coloured wood block print, longhand writing, drawing, ink jet print and movable type print. Vasiliūnas' books retain their visual link with the traditional block-shaped book. Despite of what they are made of -- be it wooden panels, paper, tea bags -- they all have landscape or square-shaped rectangluar pages and they all feature lapels. The series of of tea bag book-objects was launched in the naugthties. Vasiliūnas also works as a graphic designer. His work is defined by an interplay between these two disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the cloth-bound and decorated books stored in the Rare Books Department of the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, and expands on the use of textile depending on the content of the book and its purpose. The number of cloth-covered books is rather small. One of the reasons for this is that from the 16th century onward, with the advent of stronger gold-plated leather bindings, textile bindings experienced a decline in popularity; their use got restricted mainly to the special books and with additional decorations. Furthermore, clothbound books fray faster unless their corners have extra protection. It cannot be ruled out that some of such old bindings may have perished during various disasters while what reached us was re-bound books or books that had lost their bindings. The 19th century Catholic Church stand out as notable examples. A relatively large number of them survived to this day, particularly those dedicated to the Samogitian diocese. This can be explained by the fact that the calendars were only used for one year; therefore, simple fabric bindings were sufficient. The recurrent cloths used for the covers of rubricellae support the assumption that at least some of the calendars were sold for binding. Of the ornate books of secular content, the 1737 Horace's works printed in London are worthy to be distinguished, with their inner covers covered with silk moiré. The exquisitely ornate Catholic missals and Orthodox Gospel books are covered with additionally decorated velvet: the corners are adorned with square or rounded details, with a biblical scene or an image of a saint featured at the centre. Such books usually have a metal clasp. Although no metal components of the Orthodox Gospel books stored in the funds of the Rare Books Department have survived, the possible scenes depicted in them can be deduced from other respective Gospel books -- they would probably contain images of evangelists in the corners and the crucifixion at the centre. Catholic liturgical books are decorated with multiple-strand bookmarkers with ornate anchors covering their connecting knot. As the pages of the book had to be turned during the liturgy of the Mass, and the prayers were meant to be read from different places of the book, several bookmarkers marking the different places were required. For the sake of convenience, they were connected at the top. It is not possible to determine exactly where the tradition of decorating the connection point of the bookmarkers came from as such details of various shapes are known in both Catholic and Orthodox books; therefore, such method could have either come along with the missals or it could have been borrowed from the Orthodoxes living nearby. Two shapes of the bookmark anchors used in both missals and the Gradual have been discovered -- flat rectangular ones, decorated with lace, embroidered or simply sewn from ornate fabric, as the ones shaped like an elongated tube, made from decorative twine, with a piece of firmly rolled-up thick paper placed at the centre. Missals have bookmarks unique exclusively to them -- they are, glued to the side, made from various ribbons, usually silk, marking each page of the Eucharistic prayer. They were meant to help turn the pages easily, making sure that the priest saying the prayer is not distracted. Although not abundant, the collection of books with textile bindings stored in the Rare Books Department of the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences is very diverse. The examples discussed in the paper reveal the different options of using this material: luxury cloths are used for exclusive books with functional significance, simpler ones -- for short-lived, practical publications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2018, the Uruguayan-Slovene artist Francisco Tomsich launched the artistic research project Give my regards to those you connect, an exploration on connections and dialogues between artists from the former Yugoslavia and the River Plate region corresponding through the Mail Art network from the late 1960s onward. The research's point of departure was a list of postal addresses from artists in Serbia prepared prior to the dissolution of Yugoslavia by the Uruguayan artist Clemente Padín and expanded in 2019 by Tomsich through the study of the "Yugoeslavia" folder at the General Archive of the University of the Republic of Uruguay. This paper traces the project's development in Uruguay and Serbia in 2019 and summarises some of its achievements while describing the author's approach to artistic research and the key issues of method, archive, comparative art histories, institutional context and failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Isabel Flores de Oliva (1586-1617), generally known as Saint Rose of Mary or Saint Rose of Lima, became the first and, until today, the most venerated Catholic saint of Latin America. Almost immediately after her death, this Dominican of the Third Order, who died young and won fame for her highly ascetic life, various virtues and immovable faith, developed a cult following in Peru. Soon enough the cult had spread across South America and Europe. The topic of Saint Rose of Lima has been addressed in a great many publications that appeared in various (primarily Spanish-speaking) countries, but in Lithuania, the devotion to and images of this saint have not received specific research attention. By referring to the published sources and manuscripts, as well as the surviving ecclesiastical artworks, the author of this paper aims to discuss in more detail how information about the life and personality of Saint Rose of Lima was disseminated in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, what information about Latin America, its culture and people was conveyed in these sources, whether it was reflected in the iconography of the saint, and if so, how. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I utilise Edward Said's framework of Orientalism in order to investigate how the regions that the European explorers have mistakenly or negligently identified in their imaginaries as "the East" are brought into the colonial order through an a priori assumption of their inferiority to the West. I turn to South America and Eastern Europe as the two frontiers which make these operations visible. Through the analysis of primary sources such as travel journals and letters from Spanish explorers and conquistadors during the age of encounters, as well as the writings the English and French travellers made during their visits to Eastern Europe during the Enlightenment, I demonstrate how the Western European Orientalist imaginaries remain persistent through the ages despite the geographical explorations and geopolitical changes, and instead of disappearing, migrate to create the new orients as the realms of European otherness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to discuss and reconstruct in general features the reality of the Vilnius artistic community from late autumn 1939 to June 1941. This period of less than two years significantly changed the configuration of the artistic community of the city, the system of institutions shaping the art scene as well as the artistic goals. It also brought forth new names and inspired new images. These changes were above all determined by political circumstances: the war that broke out in Poland on 1 September 1939; the ceding of Vilnius and the Vilnius region to Lithuania; two Soviet occupations: in the autumn of 1939 and June 1940, and the subsequent Nazi occupation a year later. The influence of politics on the art scene and the life of artists has been explored in institutional and other aspects by both Lithuanian and Polish art historians, but the big picture is not yet complete, and the general narrative is still under construction. A further aim of this paper is to highlight some elements that have not received sufficient attention in historiography and that are necessary for the reconstruction of the whole. Some facts of cooperation or its absence among artists of various ethnicities are presented, and the question is raised on the extent to which these different groups were affected by Sovietisation, and what impact this fragmentation had on the city's art scene. The timeline of the activity of the higher art school and the Art Museum has been detailed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the phenomenon entitled as "(non)recording medium", the phenomenological experience of which and the subjective relation with the mirror image of the Self are reflected on from the perspectives of psychoanalysis, phenomenology, philosophy, and media theory. By interpreting the works of visual art that use reflexive surfaces, the paper analyses the representational-mimetic function of reflection in the contemporary culture of visual over-abundance. By using the notions of 'the Real' and 'illusion' as the key parameters, the paper analyses the introspective state that emerges in front of the non-recording surface, the viewer as the Other self and their experience of the Real. Here psychoanalysis acts through the Other self the image of which is reflected on the surface, phenomenology-- through the sensual and temporal experience of the subjective reality, while the image itself is but a mimetic copy of the experienced object inscribed in the consciousness of the viewer. The paper introduces the definition of the ephemeral, transformed and ever-changing act of mimesis where the spontaneous--and volatile--nature of an image unfolds. By questioning the similarity and representation, the paper rethinks the shift of mimesis from the classical understanding of the imitation of reality to the modern understanding of the Real as volatile and temporal. Here the mimetic experience manifests through the combination of impermanence and temporality in art which, through the interaction between the subject's consciousness, memory and imagination, turns imago into a non-recordable mask of the subject. The ephemerality of the image implies the essential experience of the present where the Real is reduced to an appearance, while a constantly self-positing consciousness shapes the individual experience and thus affects the visuality itself. Therefore a visual reflection should be regarded as one of the categories of contemporaneity which functions as a radical form of reductive mimesis which exists beyond the limits of representative acts--it condenses the perceived Real and is strengthened through temporal dimension and the over-abundance of the images of fleeting presence. The paper aims to specify the notion of mimesis which, while still imprisoned in antiquity, is now often replaced with other terms, and is largely ignored by the art theoretical discourse. The paper discusses the examples where it unfolds via different artistic means: Asukas (2018) by Beatričė Mockevičiūtė, Pre-consciousness (2017) by Paulius Rainys, and The Continuity of Presence in the Past (1974) by Dan Graham. By temporarily capturing the parameters of the ever-changing Real, these experiential installations are positioned as visual screens that transmit the fleeting present. The paper actualises the question of (un)reality of an image--just like an artwork, a mirror posits a false--fictional--replica of the subjective Real: in other words, it is an imitation, or mimetic reality. The paper concludes that we are both what we see and how we are seen by others: we no longer reflect on the images, but rather are images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper was inspired by the need to acknowledge and identify the signs of war in the Lithuanian art of the 1930s. In order to keep the specificity of art historical research in view, the research is narrowed down to the visual artefacts of various kinds and purposes--from paintings (Justinas Vienožinskis) and graphic prints (Mečislovas Bulaka, Jonas Kuzminskis, and Žibuntas Mikšys) to the mass-produced press illustrations, posters, adverts, and decorations. The paper analyses historiographically lesser known artworks, including the posters by Vytautas Jurkūnas, Boleslovas Motuza and Liudas Vilimas, and the examples of imported art (lithographs by Louis Lozowick as well as foreign photography). The research material leads to the conclusion that Lithuania was preparing for a modern warfare which, similarly to the situation in the neighbouring countries, was widely associated with new types of weapons; tanks, planes, bombs and gas masks were regarded as symbols of the upcoming war. The image of modern warfare was reflected and disseminated not only via political texts of both local and foreign authors, reports from war zones, civil defense instructions, but also by images, primarily mass-printed press illustrations, public posters, event decorations, and advertisements. From a product of mass visual consumption, the motif of a gas mask got transposed onto paintings and graphic art where it acquired the status of the sign of modern warfare and acted as a premonition for the war that was about to engulf Lithuania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper offers an enquiry into masquerades as a social phenomenon. The peculiarity of masquerades--public events that emerged and were popularised in the 18th century--is that they provided different social classes with a unique opportunity to have fun together. The paper aims to research the structure of the 18th century society and identify the social changes that fuelled the demand to transcend the limits between social classes through this particular form of entertainment. By drawing on memoirs, fiction, and press reports, the paper analyses the function and social reception of masquerades. Even though the popularity of masquerades could be regarded as a sign of democratisation and diminishing of class barriers in society, these barriers remained very much present and obvious to everybody. Because the identities of people behind masks were unknown and participants were not permitted to bring any status-related attributes (such as weapons or servants), masquerades were creating an illusion of social equality. Yet this equality was rather ephemeral--the person's status was still often recognisable nonetheless and the aristocracy was not even attempting to hide it. The masquerade security forces were allowed to use their judgment and punish the wrongdoers according to their class. It is worth noting that, as masquerades were gradually gaining popularity, they were also subjected to "stratification": they adapted to the financial situations and demands of various social groups and, while becoming accessible to the poor, masquerades also introduced even greater social divisions. Masquerades were attractive primarily due to the unrestricted exploration of the possibilities of anonymity. They were based on the natural tendency to create illusions and tricks, which some saw as part of a controlled social game, while others saw them as a chance to hide their social status. The paper also concludes that, due to the mass character and the capacity to draw crowds from all social strata, masquerades were also used as tools of soft power: for example, in Vilnius, masquerades used to be organised by the officers of the Russian army deployed in the city at that time. This also served as a reason for debates about patriotism and treason. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has not been much academic research into how the artefacts of orientalist art ended up in Lithuanian museums, libraries and private collections, and how they are represented. This paper raises the question of the Far Eastern art heritage in Lithuania, and addresses the problems of artistic attribution. The paper analyses the case of the Chinese woodblock prints--nianhua (年画), or the so-called "New Year images"--stored in the orientalist art collections of the Lithuanian Art Museum (LAM) and Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis National Museum of Art (MKČNMA). The collections contain seven nianhua prints of this particular format and style. The research has successfully decoded the Chinese inscriptions; specified and determined the titles of the prints; attributed the prints to specific printmaking schools and workshops; identified the theatrical motifs with their corresponding literary sources and Peking opera productions; elaborated on the characters and their various properties; specified the meanings of the allegories, emblems, scenographic makeup, and costumes; and defined the particularities of artistic expression. The paper combined iconographic, historical and comparative methodologies, and carried out a partial research on the artistic style. Compared to the Chinese graphic art collections in the museums abroad, the works stored in LAM and MKČMA are not as numerous, yet they are arguably just as rare and valuable. The prints are unique in their form, aesthetic value, and artistic technique. All prints are attributed to the famous Yangliuqing school and dated to the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. They are all in good condition, and some of them are professionally restored. This first attempt to identify and introduce the Chinese woodblock prints from the orientalist art collections of Lithuanian museums is intended to inspire further research, promote the museum collections, and give an impetus to expand them. The research aims to bring a wider knowledge about the theatre-themed prints that reflect the whole complex of Chinese spiritual culture to the contemporary audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By drawing on the principles of the 17th century portraiture, the paper discusses the functioning and meaning of the anthropomorphic imagery embedded withing the system of the architectonically structured decorum. The paper is based around the following question: is it feasible to identify the 'average' facial types as they are used in various pictorial systems with portraits of specific people? The research reconstructs the practices--prevailing in the discourses of the Lithuanian art history--of identifying specific individuals in the hermas on the doors of the Kretinga Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary; it also brings out the iconographic analogies in some of the wood carving motifs and offers their possible sources. The research has shown that, during first decades of the 17th century, the roles of visual and verbal representations of a person were taken up by various hybrid structures. For instance, a personal coat of arms with the depiction of a particular individual, itself being a hybrid structure, makes a yet another hybrid formation primarily with another media of representation-- that of a portrait. The same goes for the values and their representations professed, advocated, defended, or created by this particular individual, namely: churches, books, tombs, sarcophagi... The analysis of written sources revealed the inherent connection between the literary portrait of an individual and the dedicated heraldic figures. Jonas Chodkevičius' heraldic griffon blends in rather organically with the narrativised descriptions of the commander's appearance, including the traits of physiognomy depicted in the spirit of Aristotelian tradition - for example, Chodkevičius' noble and predatory "eagle's nose". Differently from literature and the odd illustrations from Giambattista Della Porta's treatise on physiognomics, no such hybridity is found in representational art of the 17th century: a person is represented mimetically in a portrait and symbolically (in this case, via zoomorphic motifs) in the coat of arms. These different media can be unified within a single architectural space (e.g., a church) and a single architectonic system (tombstone, gateway, furniture, etc.). The question remains whether a specific person can be represented in a hybrid structure such as herma, term, Caryatid, or Atlas. While deconstructing the art theorist Marija Matuškaitė's idea about the identification of people--the approach that prevails in Lithuanian art historical discourse--in relation to the Kretinga Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, the research concludes that the principle of similarity and the links with biographical facts are not enough to interpret the hermas as depictions of specific people. The research confirms and contextualises the depictions of the church founders Jonas Karolis Chodkevičius and Sofija Chodkevičienė in the upper segments of the coats of arms that decorate the doors; the research also proposes a hypothesis that the three hermas at the lower part of the doors represent three parts of the Rosary Prayer, yet they can also represent the community of worshippers, a common prayer (Mt 18, 20) and the Church itself. Iconographically, the anthropomorphic images found in the Kretinga Church decorum can be divided into two groups: the familiar portraits of saints (Jesus, Mary, and the Cherubs) and the hybrid figures of anthropomorphised columns (Atlas and Caryatid as the figures of man and woman that support the doors as well as the trypych of hermas in the decorative system of the main entrance of the church). Their function is not merely decorative and they clearly encode a message that is either dedicational or didactic. The research was unable to determine the iconographic sources and specific meanings of Atlas and Cryatid depicted on the sacristy doors as figures cinctured with rosary and morphed into volutes and mannerist "cufflinks". It is obvious that this decorative composition, the upper part of which is decorated with the monogram of Jesus and the heads of Cherubs, and the sides of which are supported with two columns-figures that terminate at the pedestals ornamented with flower buds and lion heads (symbols of death/eternity), articulates the concept of faith and prayer. The same is also evident in the wood carvings and the iconographic programme of the church's main entrance. The research concludes that some of the motifs of the wood carvings of Kretinga church doors--burning lion heads and tasseled strings of rosary--are similar to the copper etchings in Joannis David's book Veredicum Christianum (1606) illustrated by Theoodor Galle, Joan Galle and Johan Wierix. This allows us to assume that further research on the decorative motifs can be useful for the attempts to reconstruct the iconographic programme of these unique wood carvings, find out their origins, and clarify the circumstances of their creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the portraits of Maria Lupu (c. 1625-1660), daughter of the ruler of Moldova Duchy and the second wife of Janušas Radvila (1612-1655), made specifically during the period between mid 17th century and mid 19th century. The paper takes into account only the portraits and their later copies depicting Lupu in her mature age, and is dedicated to the question of false attribution. The research attempts to clarify their dating and the conditions of their creation. Only a few portraits that were made during her lifetime survived to this day: the National Museum of the Republic of Belarus has a painting by Johan Schretter that depicts both wives of Radvila--Lupu and Kotryna Potockytė; the portrait of a lady which was recently identified as Lupu, stored in Rosenborg Castle in Copenhagen, Denmark; and a possible copy of the latter portrait reproduced in the publication Theatrum Europaeum (1652). Warsaw National Museum also has a portrait from the series of "Laureal Leaves" which is possibly modelled after the painting held in Rosenberg Castle. The only references to the vanished group portrait of Radvila with his two wives are the drawing by Ferdinandas Friderikas Vilhelmas Radvila (1834-1926) and the watercolours created by Karolis Račinskis (1799-1860) in the first half of the 18th century (the latter depict the figures separately). As many as three portraits of Lupu were misidentified and turned into symbolic masks for other people. First, it is the Rosenborg Castle portrait which was once thought to depict M. Stricka. The second one is a portrait held in a private collection--painted on a wooden plinth, it dates back to the 18th century and is once thought to depict Barbora Radvilaitė. This portrait is likely to be created as a copy of the reproduction printed in Theatrum Europaeum. The third case belongs to one of the two portraits that depicts the duchess in the Radvila family album Familiae Ducalis Radivillianae--it has a signature that falsely identifies it with Kotryna Tomicka. The image has been created according to the portrait painted by Johan Schretter who portrayed Lupu alongside Radvila's first wife Kotryna Potockytė. The analysis showed that the false attribution of these portraits could have occurred due to the misinterpretation of the attributes of status and lineage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the 17th century canvas "St. Ann the Third" that once belonged to the Nesvyžius Benedictines and is now held in a private collection. The research has concluded that Hieronymus Wierix's (1553-1619) engraving "Earthly and Heavenly Trinity" served as a template for the said canvas, where the figure of St. Joseph was substituted with that of St. Ann's. The analysis focuses on the specific traits of St. Ann's face and hypothesises that the portrait of the saint bears similarities with Krystyna Eufemia Radziwiłłówna (1598-1657) who was a Benedictine nun and, since 1631, the abbess of the Nesvyžius Monastery. As a comparison, the research also draws on other artworks that the scholarship associates with this historical person: the sculpture of St Scholastica, once part of the altar in the Nesvyžius Church of Benedictines (currently in the Church of Novaya Mysh), and the canvas "Lamentation of Christ" in Kaunas Church of St. Michael (Radziwiłłówna is identified with the image of St. Mary Magdalene). It is likely that the sculpture of St. Scholastica was created in the likeness of Radziwiłłówna who was the then abbess of the monastery. This is confirmed by the abbess' robe which, while unusual for the traditional portraits of St. Scholastica, is identical to those popular in the congregation of Culm Benedictines of the 17th century. The same line of argumentation allows us to assume that "St. Scholastica", the painting by an unknown painter dated to the 17th century and displayed in Kaunas Church of St. Michael, is likely to have been created in the likeness of one of the abesses of the monastery. Meanwhile the paper rejects the identity between Radziwiłłówna and the figure of St. Mary Magdalene in the painting "Lamentation of Christ". The research determined that this painting was created much later and replicates a 1635 composition from the Church of Santa Maria in Aquiro, Rome, attributed to the Italian painter J. Massa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the context of the two editions (1967 and 1982 respectively) of Drafting Modernism [ Modernizmo metmenys], a monograph by Lionginas Šepetys. It is argued that the five reviews of the 1967 edition and the two reviews of the 1982 edition that appeared in news media and cultural press of the time, are partially indicative of the levels of knowledge on modernist art the readers of the book had during the different times. An overview of the publications on modernist art gives an impression that, in order to justify a comprehensive presentation of the theoretical and methodological approaches in modern art, publishers and news media had to find ideological pretexts and make it look like they were following the guidelines of the soviet cultural policy. Hence, instead of being the actual means of implementing the ideological cultural policy, these cases were rather a result of the specific circumstances and the particular relations between people and nations. At that time, Drafting Modernism was the single most prominent Lithuanian publication dedicated to modern art, and the totality of its critical reviews forms a picture of the informational field of the time, allowing us to see what information was available to the expert reviewers that used to be commissioned by the cultural press. In order to recognise the significance of the publication within the information field of the time, the paper analyses the texts via the methods of knowledge sociology and critical discourse analysis. Only a small part of the soviet art theorists had access to the specialised information—these were usually the researchers and acknowledged dissertation authors trusted by the regime who were permitted access to the Western libraries or at least the special collections in the Moscow libraries. Lionginas Šepetys was one of those few researchers. It would be more accurate to say that many of those who, in the conditions of freely available information, might have been called experts, or whom soviet publishers and media regarded as experts, were what the knowledge sociologist Alfred Schütz called ‘well-informed citizens’. They had access to the special collections in the libraries of Moscow and Vilnius, and were able to summarise the opinions of both local and foreign experts. Meanwhile the authors who favoured the soviet regime used to create socialist narratives about the well-analysed artworks. Thus a large number of those wanting to become well informed citizens had to rely on the popular soviet literature which was too sparse for the readers to engage in an informed polemic that involved different points of view. In addition to that, an author did not have to be an expert—in principle, a work on popular science could have been published by a well-informed citizen who was capable of interpreting the research of experts, and yet the publications often did not list their information sources. This gives an impression that, from the standpoint of the publishers, this kind of literature was aimed not at a citizen who wants to be well-informed, but rather at the ‘man on the street’ who had no interest in the cultural principles and processes. In 1967, there were no experts capable of debating Šepetys as equals. Lacking in specialised knowledge and unable to rise to the level of experts, the local well-informed citizens were reviewing the monograph within the bounds of their limited knowledge based on the soviet art history and their enquiries into the notion of modernity according to the Lithuanian art theory. Meanwhile, the 1982 edition no longer holds its status as an indisputable source of expert information—with the advent of the alternative expert narratives, the new edition now featured source references, which was a telling sign of the shifting relations between the actors in the information field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the roles of women in the 20th century Lithuanian literature and culture. The paper focuses primarily on the lives and works of the poets Janina Degutytė and Judita Vaičiūnaitė, and the art critic Aušra Sluckaitė. The argument is built around the two premises: first, the atmosphere of the post-Stalinist ‘thaw’ of the 1960s manifested through the liberalisation of society and modernist experimentation in arts. Second, the post-Stalinist reprieve also saw the return to the ideology of the traditionally patriarchal gender roles. The paper looks through a series of cases and analyses the ways in which women were active in literature by noting how the notions of femininity manifested in their work, and how their ways of working in the field of literature actually impeded their capacities to make their contributions evident. Drawing on the memoirs, letters, and other documents, the paper discusses women’s representations of both their selves and their youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the idea of ‘cultural resistance’ or ‘quiet modernism’ by analysing the records (in the form of interviews, papers and books) of the first generation of the post-WWII Lithuanian modernist architects (Vytautas Edmundas Čekanauskas, Vytautas Brėdikis, Algimantas and Vytautas Nasvytis, Algimantas Mačiulis, and Justinas Šeibokas), also known as the founders of the ‘Lithuanian school of modernism’. This generation of architects emerged in the late 1950s, when it started criticising the Stalinist architecture, realising important public objects in city centres, and occupying increasingly prominent positions in academia and the world of architecture, which eventually led to the formation of a particular cultural elite. This story of success might seem unrelated to the notion of ‘cultural resistance’ (or ‘quiet modernism’) often mentioned by the architects themselves. The paper concludes with the analysis of the evolution of and the ‘grand narrative’ behind this architect group that shared the same values and employed certain ‘quiet motifs’. The research also focuses on analysing how this myth has been reconstructed after the 1990. In conclusion, the paper argues that the notions of compromise, adaptation, and subversive opportunism—rather than ‘cultural resistance’—are more appropriate to describe the architectural and urban practices of the aforementioned generation of architects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social and cultural changes that transformed the Western world so rapidly and radically in the 1960s and 70s were known as ‘sexual revolution’ primarily because they led to an overall sexualisation of popular culture. The paper analyses the forms of the sexualisation of public culture in Soviet Lithuania and offers an interpretation of its overall meaning. Rather than regarding it through a quantitative analysis of the sexualised images that appeared in public, the paper will consider the phenomenon of sexualisation through the accounts of the ‘interpretative community’—i.e., the target audience that was meant to receive and perceive the content. Two magazines (Švyturys and Nemunas) serve as the main objects of analysis. The paper examines the readers’ letters, questionnaire forms, and protocols with reader requests. The analysis identifies the main topics that were driving the reader responses and the ensuing debates on the sexualised images in the 60s (emancipation of women, difference between art and pornography, education of the youth), and identifies several forms of relating to the sexualised images (questions of feminist emancipation, elimination of eroticism, profanation of sexuality). The paper concludes with the thesis that the ‘interpretative community’ of magazine readers grasped the meaning of cultural sexualisation by encountering the sexualised images in public and identifying itself as a part of that culture. Due to the conservative ideological control, the public sexualisation was relatively moderate and restrained, while the reader reactions and debates were rather intense and pressing, which is why the paper proposes to name this phenomenon as ‘quiet sexualisation of culture’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper was inspired by Elona Lubytė’s seminar that she held in the National Art Gallery on December 1, 2018. The seminar focused on the question of whether it was reasonable to use the term ‘quiet modernism’, and whether this phenomenon actually took place in the soviet Lithuanian art. During the early ears of independence, the idea of ‘quiet modernism’ seemed attractive and convincing as it gave the artists the sense of selfworth. However it might as well have been a myth created by the artists themselves. The paper traces the clearly evident influence of cubism and, particularly, Pablo Picasso, by discussing the strategies of modernisation and the way they were applied by the Lithuanian artists from the late 1950s until the early 70s. The paper argues that this idiom was operative in art that was both officially censored and officially acknowledged, thus bringing the otherwise incompatible and semantically opposite artworks into a stylistic proximity. By using a few most prominent cases, the paper demonstrates that the two ideologically opposite fields of art actually used the same artistic forms. The paper goes on to discuss and analyse the hybridity of the post-cubist idiom that thrived during the periods of Khrushchev’s liberalisation and the early years of Brezhnev’s stagnation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to clarify the specificity of the art field in the Soviet Lithuania, and argues that the latter cannot be exhausted by the dichotomous approach based on a clear-cut separation between the official (non-modernist) art and the ‘quiet’ (invisible) modernism. The paper focuses on the art phenomena that, until now, have been referred to via a rather lofty umbrella term ‘quiet modernism’, and breaks them down into three segments: ’quiet’ systemic art, ‘shadowy’ non-systemic art, and anti-systemic art. Compared to the ideological control of other arts, fine art censorship in Soviet Lithuania was relatively weak, with only the mass-oriented genres having been subjected to closer scrutiny. The control of easel painting was delegated to the art professionals themselves, while the experts and audiences were fully trusted in setting the boundaries of artistic expression. Meanwhile, during the late period, the Soviet regime itself became much more tolerant of the possibilities of artistic expression. Here we can highlight several factors that contributed to the fact that, having been a less visible and yet fully established within the bounds of the official, the quiet systemic art in Soviet Lithuania not only completely ‘overshadowed’ the non-systemic art, but also left no place for the anti-systemic art production. First, with regards to the problematic territory where public dissent was still rife and unchecked, Soviet government felt it important to divert the potential opposition through relatively harmless channels such as the spaces of limited visibility, decorative applied art, and art export. Second, during the late soviet era, the soviet republics of the Baltic region were looking for the ways to reach out for the lost world of Western art by strengthening their cultural ties with exiles and neighbouring countries west of the Iron Curtain, which was another important factor that modified the rules of the game. Third, local party elite quickly realised that they could strengthen their administrative powers by exploiting the work of Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian artists who, particularly in the sphere of applied arts, were largely inspired by West and therefore freer in expression—party leaders were using this kind of art as a regional business card both inside the soviet empire, and abroad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper expands on the art historical context of Elona Lubytė’s project Quiet Modernism (1997)—which is now widely acknowledged as a certain point of reference in soviet art studies and art distribution—with the aim to introduce other concepts relevant to Lithuanian art history. Here the modernisation of art that began during the decade of the Khrushchev Thaw is discursively separated from other modernisms or, rather, (post)modernisms that are currently being invented as a result of using the (Jacques Ranciére’s) aesthetic regime to interpret the late soviet art. When researching the art of the past, particularly that of the periods of political oppression, it is crucial to distinguish between the productive and reproductive approaches, as well as to differentiate between the perspectives of creator and perceiver. Art production and historical distribution are deeply rooted in the milieus of each period, therefore we should also consider not only the art shows in remote areas and other nuances of ‘quiet modernism’, but also the clamorous modernisation of the official art. In other words, it is not only about the resistance against the sovietisation of art, but also about the very project of sovietisation as such. Viewed from our current perspective and linked with the discursive contexts that are relevant to the interpreters themselves, the soviet artworks become freed from the historical clutches of a particular epoch and enter a more universal discourse. The year 1997 was a particularly favourable time to invent some of those possible ‘local’ modernisms. The end of the 20th century saw a renewal of the debates on the heritage of the Western modern art. This project is still pertinent in the context of the multiple, extended, repeating, and recurring global modernities. The fact that, in the field of Lithuanian art, artists are showing their interest in modernist heritage, proves that the currently ongoing process of ‘reloading’ the modernism is very much alive. The paper also gives an overview of this new stage of modernist development in Lithuania. Some of the works by middle-aged artists are just as attributable to the new modernism as those by the young generation. With their serene and constructive attitudes, the former are displaying purity of forms (but not that of media) that they clarify, reactivate, reference, and reflect on. The paper concludes with the question: why the 20th century Lithuanian modernism is still excluded from the global history of the ‘reloaded’ modernism, and why is it not featured at the representative art ‘centres’? This might be due to the fact that Lithuania still lacks a clearly articulated visual narrative of its own modernism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual art in Vilnius of 1919-1939, as a whole, has not been studied until now. To a lesser extent, its level of study was determined by the difficult geopolitical situation in Vilnius. In the interwar years, Vilnius and its region were annexed by Poland. Subsequently, the peculiar artistic life of the city during this period and its results for a long time have been of little interest to Lithuanian researchers. This has led to a fragmented perception of Lithuania's art history, in which the interwar artistic life of Vilnius has still been marginalized. The aim of the article is to analyze the art formation processes of the interwar Vilnius, highlighting the direction and nature of the activities of its most important institutions (Faculty of Arts at Stephen Báthory University, Vilnius School of Crafts, Vilnius Association of Plastic Artists), and to discuss and evaluate their significance in the process of modernizing the city's culture. The paper raises a question of Poland's cultural policy in the interwar period: in which ways and by which means did it work in the field of art in Vilnius? It highlights that the art of the interwar period in Vilnius was dominated by the portrayal of historical architecture, while other spaces and themes were hardly touched - for example, there is a lack of images of suburban and modern lifestyle and daily life. The paper makes an assumption that it was the political and cultural situation in Vilnius that influenced the establishment of such a retrospective view. Only in the 1930s, with the transformation of Vilnius into a modern city of the Second Rzeczpospolita, its modern visual culture began to manifest itself more actively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eugenijus Karpavičius (1953-2010) one of the most prominent Lithuanian book designers of the turn of the 20th century. He designed over 300 books from all over spectrum of genres: art and photography albums, catalogues, as well as books of poetry, essays, academic papers and textbooks. His books have won many awards in both Lithuanian and international book art competitions such as the Best Book Design from All Over the World, and were widely exhibited innternationally in book fairs and pavillions of the Lithuanian Publishers Association and the individual publishers. Throughout his 30 years of practice, Karpavičius remained faithful to the creative principle 'less is more'. In a way, this principle reflects the very essence of a book -- the oldest means of communication, a cultural object and a avaluable commodity. A book is about information and its transmission, therefore its main functions: informational, educational and aesthetic. Karpavičius understood those functions perfectly well and his works stand out as their masterful embodiments -- they all feature a distinct architectonic, structural logic, compositional clarity, harmony of text and image, and highly literate application of printing techniques. Karpavičius approach was minimalist, and he consciously avoided any unnecesary decorum. His artistic style is based around the 20th century's 'classical' principles of book design: clarity of both structure and overall composition, harmonious and logical layout of text and images, and expertise in printing technologies. However, his books are not devoid of spirituality -- the meticulousness of his designs gives away an overly emotional relation towards both text and image. Today laconic and functional design -- an alternative to the 'novelty' or even kitsch -- is undeservedly underrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the work of Kaunas bookbinding studios during the Interwar period. The research resulted in a large amount of archival data on the identities of the bookbinders from that time, as well as their professional qualifications, capacities, work management, level of mechanization, services on offer, materials used, product prices and requests from clients. The research aimed to reveal the differences between the industrial, custom high-street and custom artisan bookbinding. However it turned out that they were all closely intertwined. The analysis of the documented bookbinding equipment in various workshops has shown that the process of mechanization was rather slow, and that even the mass production was dominated by manual work. Back then, many books would leave the printing presses soft covered, and authors themselves often had to personally seek out the bookbinders for more durable book covers. Back then Kaunas had several types of bookbinding studios: industrial printing house bookbinders, private bookbinding businesses, and individual artisans. However all these types of workshops were able to provide the same range of services -- from mass productions to one-off books, both normal and artist editions. For instance, printing house bookbinders would not only take care of the mass production but also accept individual orders, even for one-off prints. Furthermore, all bookbinding studios were not only binding books (and documents) but also producing folders, photo albums and greeting cards, as well as padding the maps and charts with fabric and offering book 'restoration' services. Although Kaunas had no bookbinding school, many artistic bookbinding experts knowledgeable of the many intricacies of the craft. The craft of bookbinding often intertwined with leather decoration business -- the latter also used the same materials and offered products such as photo albums and notebooks. The Interwar leather processing and bookbinding industries were highly influenced by "Šatrija", a bookbinding company which had the Estonian expert Aksel Karing workin under their employ. He introduced some artistic and technical innovations of leather processing, thus significantly popularising this trade. The research concludes that the Lithuanian artistic bookbinding has been influenced by the Estonian school much earlier than it was thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the second half of the 18th century, Vilnius had four institutional printing houses: one was the Academia's press enterprise, and the other three belonged to the Piarist, Basilian and Franciscan congregations. Inspired by the ideas of Enlightenment, Vilnius institutional printing houses began to seek out new types of book design. The paper takes a close look at the illustrations of secular books printed in Vilnius during the second half of the 18th century. Secular illustrations of this period is still a largely under-researched area. Such research is key in revealing the interactions between the traditionally religious and the newly enlightened worldviews that circulated aroud the book culture of the Great Duchy of Lithuania at that time. The research focuses on the six illustrations from different secular books. Three illustrations come from the Piarist printing house: "The Allegory of Diplomacy" (engraved by Johanna Dorothea Philipp-Sysang) from the book published in 1758; "The Allegory of the Piarist School of Piety" (by the artist F. Moser), book published in 1774; and "The Allegory of Electricity" (engraver unknown) in the publication from 1786. Two illustrations appear in the books printed in 1781 by an academic printing house: "The Portrait of Lucius Anneus Seneca" (engraver unknown) and "The Exterior View of Vilnius University" (engraver unknown). One unauthored illustration-vignette in the book printed in 1791 by the Basilian printing house depicts a labouring child. The research sought to identify the symbols, subjects and iconographical origins of these illustrations. It turned out that two of the illustrations ("The Allegory of Electricity" and the view with Vilnius University) were original works made by the local artists. Meanwhile Seneca's portrait gives away the local author's personal preferce, as the type of the iconographical portrait he chose to imitate originates in the humanist reception of the stoicist philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the first decades of its existence, the printed book slowly developed its own shape and gradually became more distinct from manuscripts. Title page was a particularly important moment in this process. This completely new element came in various forms and featured various content. In addition to the title, author's name and publishing address, it often contained various poems, contained in the form of epigram. They acted mostly as an advertisement for the publication itself. Sometimes they also contained a praise for the book's author. It would also be common for these short verses to be enriched with various graphic elements; it is worth noting that this took place even before the publishing of Emblematum liber by Andrea Alciato. This paper focuses specifically on the poems found on the oldest title-pages of Cracovian prints and discusses the context in which they appear as well as the functions they perform. A particular interest is put on the prints published by Florian Ungler, but the works of other printers such as Kasper Hochfeder and Jan Haller are also mentioned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nuclear events have inscribed the 20th century into a new chemical temporality, that generally escapes our scrutiny due to radioactivity's invisibility. Radioactive particles keep falling back to earth since nuclear tests peaked during the Cold War, they form an iterative invisible presence that is coated in political invisibility. Through films and fictions, the paper traces haunted images that keep coming back. Two distinct geographies are weaved together, that of West Coast American deserts, where numerous tests were conducted, and that of the nuclear peninsula of La Hague, in France. The recurring metaphors of dust and mist, not only characterise the two landscapes, but illustrate how radioactive particles literally journey and affect natural environments and activate the trope of contamination. Viral Fictions address the issue of creating a nuclear marker for La Hague's burial site. Underlying the fragility of material cultures and the aporia of projecting knowledge through deep time, the article creates a possible immaterial fictional nuclear marker for La Hague. Merging a set of references from local folk oral legends with the ability of fiction to transmit forms of knowledge and imaginary archetypes, Viral Fictions uses AI algorithmic software to generate speculative forms of fictions and visuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The object of this paper is medieval jewellery from the Trakai parish church, which still remains the least studied in the scholarly field. By analysing the material aspect and the cultural context of the object, the paper tries to examine its historical value for the studies of the crafts and customary culture of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania during the Late Medieval Period. First of all, rings are analysed, concentrating on their form, production technique and, especially, function. It is worth mentioning a ring with a crystal eye, whose size and construction, as well as its rich decoration and luxurious materials enable us to hypothesize about its function as a ring-reliquary. The flat decorated surface of another ring would supposedly point to its usage as a signet ring. The group of earrings is interesting by their luxurious materials, high craftsmanship and forms reminiscent of the Balkan traditions of the craft. Meanwhile, the analysis of the cultural context of the jewellery reveals its "multicultural" aspect, when the traditions of the craft from different cultures forgather. Moreover, a cross, found in the presbytery of the church with Victorious Cross iconography and Catholic and Orthodox symbols enables us to think about a complex bi-confessional reality and manifestation of the Church Union politics in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania during the Middle Ages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review of publications and exhibitions is devoted to the artistic community of Interwar Vilnius and the Faculty of Fine Arts at Stephen Báthory University. It includes a look at how the National Museum in Warsaw has operated since the 1960s (under the direction of Prof. Stanisław Lorentz), as well as the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, the Nicolaus Copernicus University and the District Museum in Toruń. The subject of discussion is monographic exhibitions of artists (including Ferdynand Ruszczyc, Ludomir Sleńdziński, Henryk Kuna, Tymon Niesiołowski), problematic exhibitions such as "The Vilnius Artistic Community 1919-1945" (BWA Olsztyn 1989), "Fine Arts Education in Vilnius and its Traditions" (Toruń 1996), publications by, inter alia, Prof. Józef Poklewski, Dr. Irena Jakimowicz, Jan Kotłowski and the author of the present paper. Attention is also directed toward the Jewish artistic community - in particular, the "Yung Wilne" group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]