Dr. Stavros Alifragis is an architectural engineer with undergraduate studies at the Department of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (1996-2002). He has attended two postgraduate programmes, at the Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge, on architecture and the moving image (2002-2003), and at the School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens (2003-2004), on issues of architectural history, theory and research methodology. He completed his PhD thesis at the University of Cambridge (2004-2009), on the representation of the ideal socialist city in the cinema of Dziga Vertov, and his post-doctoral research at the Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly, on the creation of moving image and sound databases for the city. Since 2010, he maintains a rich research, writing and teaching activity. [sa346@otenet.gr]
Exhibitions that wrote their version of (art) history. Politics of memory and art historical narratives at the first documenta
Eugenia Alexaki
The historiography of documenta’s first editions had, until very recently, focused on the role of the world-famous art show in the consolidation of the newly established Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) in the “Western Bloc”, as well as on how documenta has served as a preeminent instrument of the US Cold War cultural policy. Although the first documenta (1955) had promoted itself as the ‘“Stunde Null” exhibition’, as the event meant to restore the status of the arts that has been destroyed by the National Socialist regime (1933-1945), the West German myth of the “Stunde Null” had not been challenged as regards specifically to documenta, and the biographies of some of its founding fathers have remained largely underresearched and unconnected to the role they may have played in shaping and establishing one of the most influential international exhibitionsof contemporary art. On the backdrop of the ongoing research regarding the Nazi past of some of the protagonists of the first documenta events, a research that was dominant in the recent exhibition of the German Historical Museum documenta. Politics and Art (Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin, 18 June 2021 – 9 January 2022), the paper examines what kind of art history was presented in 1955, ten years after the end of the WWII in Kassel, West Germany. Whose artists, and not only artists, the history was made? Whose history was forgotten? Which are the “documents” and which are the myths behind the artworks presented in this historical exhibition? And which political/ideological, artistic, institutional, or even personal parameters defined the art historical narratives of the first documenta editions and how have these in turn influenced the master versions of the history of the 20th century German art and European modernism?
Eugenia Alexaki holds a PhD in art history from the Freie Universität Berlin. As a Fulbright scholar, she has conducted research on critical visual literacy at Columbia University in New York. She works as a lecturer at the University of West Attica and the University of Western Macedonia (Greece). Her current research focuses on the role of art in dealing with the traumatic past as well as on contemporary art about the Holocaust and the Nazi crimes. Since 2020 she has been curating Artemis Alcalay’s visual research project “Greek Jews Holocaust Survivors”. [eugeniaalexaki@yahoo.gr].
“Ut pictura poesis”: word and image in 18th century French art theory
Anna Adraskela
The opening phrase of Horace’s Ars Poetica, “Ut pictura poesis”, has been the subject of different interpretations and for centuries has been the basis of a conflict between speech and image that has had significant consequences for art history and theory. This paper will examine some aspects of this controversy, focusing on the art debate in France in the 18th century and pointing out the historical limit of this debate in the same period.
Anna Adraskela is a PhD candidate in Art History at the Athens School of Fine Arts. Her research interests focus on the history and historiography of art. [anadraskela@yahoo.gr]
ΙΣΤΟΡΙΑ ΤΗΣ ΤΕΧΝΗΣ 