Art History [Istoria tis Technis] journal
corpus
Modern Architecture as a Social Practice – CIAM 1-4
Sokratis Georgiadis
The aim of the first four congresses (1928-1933) of the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) was to establish the principles of a functionalist architectural and urban design. The ‘decisive suspension of the aesthetic element’ and the alignment of architecture with the demands of the masses for space eventually led to architecture breaking away from the fine arts and repositioning itself within sociology. The dilemma between technocratic-reformist strategies, on the one hand, and a systemic critique (at a socio-politically highly charged time) of the modes of production of the built environment on the other, formed the nucleus of the debates, conflicts, programs, and declarations of the congresses.
Sokratis Georgiadis is a Professor of History of Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture of the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Stuttgart. His research interests focus on the history and theory of architecture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as on the history of Greek architecture in the archaic period. He has published monographs on the work of the Swiss art historian Sigfried Giedion and the theoretical work of the German architect Gottfried Semper. He is currently working on an edition of an unfinished work by Sigfried Giedion on the history of culture in the nineteenth century, housed in the archives of the Institut für Geschichte und Theorie der Architektur/Eidgenössische Technnische Hochschule Zürich [sokratis.georgiadis@abk.stuttgart.de].
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Archaeology and Art History in 19th-century Greece: The Teaching of Grigorios Papadopoulos and Stylianos Konstantinidis at the Athens School of Arts (Part II)
Eleonora Vratskidou
This two-fold study explores the institutional origins of art history in 19th-century Greece, focusing on the courses taught at the Athens School of Arts. The second part of the study (For the first part of Eleonora Vratskidou’s paper, titled “Archaeology and Art History in 19th-century Greece: The teaching of Grigorios Papadopoulos and Stylianos Konstantinidis at the Athens School of Arts (Part I)”, see Istoria tis Technis [Art History], 1, Winter 2013, pp. 10-45) examines the case of the philologist Stylianos Konstantindis (1838-1899), Professor of Art History and Aesthetics between 1879 and 1896. Konstantinidis’s teaching breaks with the archeology-oriented approach established by Papadopoulos and introduces, on the one hand, a formalist art history of universal scope and, on the other, a ‘scientific’ aesthetics that draws on physiology and experimental psychology. His pedagogical writings borrow mainly from the work of contemporary French theorists Charles Blanc (1813-1882) and Eugène Véron (1825-1889) and promote ideas and values, artistic originality included, that severely undermine the normativity of ancient art, upon which academic authority had rested until then.
Eleonora Vratskidou holds a PhD from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (E.H.E.S.S.), Paris. As a research fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2014-2016), she is currently working on a postdoctoral research project at the Τechnische Universität Berlin, focusing on the teaching of art history in academies of fine art during the nineteenth century [evratskidou@gmail.com].
Collectors and Modern Greek Art in the First Half of the Twentieth Century: Collectors’ Profiles, Attitudes and the Frame of Reception
Afroditi Kouria
Historical, socio-economic and cultural conditions in Greece did not favor the emergence of high-profile collectors with a powerful presence in the artistic life. In the first half of the twentieth century, however, collectors supported Modern Greek art and artists, and collecting in some cases transcended the private space and was bound up with the public sphere and cultural institutions. The multilayered treatment of this scarcely researched topic, and the consideration of collectors and collections in various contexts aims to highlight the many facets of this topic and the challenges they offer to historians of Modern Greek art as regards documentation, the role of art critics, and the reception of artists, works and particular subject-matter, in a decisive period for the shaping of early Greek modernism.
Afroditi Kouria holds a PhD in Art History from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her current research interests focus on collectors and collections of Modern Greek art as well as on the iconography of the urban landscape in Modern Greek painting of the first half of the twentieth century [akouria@otenet.gr].
ΙΣΤΟΡΙΑ ΤΗΣ ΤΕΧΝΗΣ 