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Visual Culture Exchange Across the Baltic Sea Region during the...
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Visual Culture Exchange Across the Baltic Sea Region during the Long 19th Century

A special issue of Arts (ISSN 2076-0752).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2023) | Viewed by 12941

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Thor J. Mednick

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Art, University of Toledo, Toledo, OH 43620, USA
Interests: 19th-century European painting, particularly Scandinavian; Symbolism; Realism; nationalism and art; artists’ colonies; landscape painting and science & technology; graphic design; public art
Dr. Bart Curtis Pushaw

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen, Nørregade 10, 1165 København, Denmark
Interests: nineteenth-century art

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The long nineteenth century occupies a precarious place in the history of the visual and material culture of the Baltic Sea region, at once containing the most popular and obscured areas of historical and artistic investigation. Since the 1990s, the concept of a Baltic Sea region encompassing the sea and its surrounding land has fostered transnational thinking about the region, transcending Cold War binaries of ‘East’ and ‘West’ in an effort to view the area more holistically. Yet, national funding schemes in these countries—Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Sweden, and Russia—continue to encourage a historiographical imbalance that downplays the significance of the Baltic Sea as a cultural crossroads. Our publication foregrounds artistic exchanges and the ideological or pragmatic factors that motivate them in order to create a common ground for viewing the Baltic Sea as a nexus of cultural entanglements across the long nineteenth century (ca. 1750-1920).

This Special Issue concerns an artistic exchange across the Baltic Sea region 1750-1920: a neglected yet important topic. Its main objective is to demonstrate the degree to which this region witnessed a dynamic cultural exchange in the modern period, and was not as many envision and scholarly trends have reified, a set of isolated cultures defined largely by linguistic differences. Its central theme is an exchange—the ways ideas, individuals, technologies, and values migrate from one geographical location to another.

Dr. Thor J. Mednick
Dr. Bart Curtis Pushaw
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Baltic
  • 19th century
  • exchange
  • Sweden
  • landscape

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Published Papers (6 papers)

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Editorial

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3 pages, 150 KiB  
Editorial
Introduction for Special Issue “Visual Culture Exchange across the Baltic Sea Region during the Long 19th Century)”
by Michelle Facos, Bart Pushaw and Thor J. Mednick
Arts 2023, 12(4), 138; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12040138 - 4 Jul 2023
Viewed by 1189
Abstract
The goal of this Special Issue is to promote a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the Baltic Sea Region as a nexus of artistic exchange during the long nineteenth century, and to inspire further research on this understudied and ideologically isolated subject [...] [...] Read more.
The goal of this Special Issue is to promote a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the Baltic Sea Region as a nexus of artistic exchange during the long nineteenth century, and to inspire further research on this understudied and ideologically isolated subject [...] Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Visual Culture Exchange Across the Baltic Sea Region during the Long 19th Century)

Research

Jump to: Editorial

13 pages, 8077 KiB  
Article
Ferdynand Ruszczyc: A Polish Painter at the Crossroads of Cultures
by Agnieszka Rosales Rodríguez
Arts 2023, 12(6), 232; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12060232 - 2 Nov 2023
Viewed by 2042
Abstract
The oeuvre of beloved Polish painter Ferdynand Ruszczyc (1870–1936) reflected the patriotic Neo-Romantic landscape trend of the fin-de-siècle prevalent in Germany and the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden). It should be considered in the context of Nordic visual culture for two reasons: [...] Read more.
The oeuvre of beloved Polish painter Ferdynand Ruszczyc (1870–1936) reflected the patriotic Neo-Romantic landscape trend of the fin-de-siècle prevalent in Germany and the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden). It should be considered in the context of Nordic visual culture for two reasons: (1) until the affiliation of Central and Eastern European nations with the Soviet Union in the wake of World War Two, nations bordering the Baltic formed a single, fluid territory of cultural exchange, and (2) Ruszczyc’s oeuvre displays significant commonalities with dominant patriotic and Neo-Romantic trends of progressive artists around the Baltic Sea, where landscape became a vehicle for expressing dreams and emotions, as well as love of homeland. This article situates Ruszczyc’s national and artistic identity at the crossroads of cultures and artistic impulses, regional as well as international. Ruszczyc was born in Bohdanów near Vilnius (now Belarus) to a Polish father and a Danish mother. Like many Polish artists from the Russian partition, he was educated at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, where he studied with Ivan Shishkin (1832–1898) and Arkhip Kuindzhi (1878–1910). He also travelled to Sweden. Ruszczyc was influenced by the Russian art circle Mir Iskusstva (World of Art, est. 1898) and is often compared with Nordic (e.g., Akseli Gallen-Kallela; Finnish, 1865–1931) and German (e.g., Otto Modersohn; 1865–1943) artists. His visions of nature are sometimes raw monumental images of the northern landscape or fairy-tale fantasies containing symbolic allusiveness and a mythical, poetic element that evoke intimate memories of the land of his childhood. In his paintings, Ruszczyc presented the changeability of seasons, orchards, soil and streams, clouds formations, and tree trunks with palpable emotion. By exposing the material substance of nature, his paintings also reveal its mystical aspect, its ability to transform in accordance with the cyclical, cosmic rhythm of growth, maturation, death, and rebirth. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Visual Culture Exchange Across the Baltic Sea Region during the Long 19th Century)
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14 pages, 2177 KiB  
Article
Cloudscapes over the Baltic Sea–Cloud Motifs in Finnish, Swedish, German, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, and Latvian Symbolic Landscape Painting around 1900
by Emiliana Konopka
Arts 2023, 12(5), 193; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12050193 - 7 Sep 2023
Viewed by 2289
Abstract
The cloud motif, a significant one in the landscape painting of the 1890s and early 1900s, has been usually marginalized by scholars despite the fact that during this (Symbolist) period clouds became independent subjects of landscape painting in many European countries, especially in [...] Read more.
The cloud motif, a significant one in the landscape painting of the 1890s and early 1900s, has been usually marginalized by scholars despite the fact that during this (Symbolist) period clouds became independent subjects of landscape painting in many European countries, especially in the Baltic Sea Region. Cloud imagery makes a robust appearance in Scandinavian, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, and Latvian art during the decades around 1900. The variety of symbolic meanings and possible interpretations of cloudscapes was impacted by cultural and literary associations that emerged with European Symbolism. There is a surprising resemblance of cloudscapes executed within the Baltic Sea Region, an examination of which reveals the complexity of artistic influence and the presence and wandering of motifs among artists. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Visual Culture Exchange Across the Baltic Sea Region during the Long 19th Century)
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13 pages, 8901 KiB  
Article
“Pro-Raphaelites”: The Classical Ideal in Religious Art and the Agency of Artworks in Estonia from 1810 to 1840
by Liisa-Helena Lumberg-Paramonova
Arts 2023, 12(5), 190; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12050190 - 6 Sep 2023
Viewed by 1967
Abstract
This article analyzes Baltic German religious art based on examples from Estonia in the first half of the nineteenth century, focusing on artistic networks and the reclamation of a Renaissance classical ideal. Baltic German artists such as Friedrich Ludwig von Maydell, Gustav Adolf [...] Read more.
This article analyzes Baltic German religious art based on examples from Estonia in the first half of the nineteenth century, focusing on artistic networks and the reclamation of a Renaissance classical ideal. Baltic German artists such as Friedrich Ludwig von Maydell, Gustav Adolf Hippius, and Otto Friedrich Ignatius were in contact with the Nazarenes, whose ideals were inspired by Raphael’s attempt to merge art and religion. The Nazarenes influence can be seen in Baltic German religious art, which favored idealized forms and followed on from the works of the Renaissance masters. In addition to presenting religious scenes, in the Baltic context, these artworks acted as mediators of European artistic heritage. The classical ideal was thus perpetuated by a tightly connected network in which Baltic German artists joined others in re-establishing the power of the European canon of art history. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Visual Culture Exchange Across the Baltic Sea Region during the Long 19th Century)
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20 pages, 18992 KiB  
Article
A Foreign Artist and a Russian War: Peter von Hess, a Case Study in Imperial Patronage and National Identity
by Andrew M. Nedd
Arts 2023, 12(4), 171; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12040171 - 8 Aug 2023
Viewed by 2930
Abstract
A number of foreign artists received the earliest commissions to represent Napoleon’s Russian Campaign of 1812 for Russian emperors. My paper is a case study of a German artist who served the Russian Imperial court. Peter von Hess trained at the Academy in [...] Read more.
A number of foreign artists received the earliest commissions to represent Napoleon’s Russian Campaign of 1812 for Russian emperors. My paper is a case study of a German artist who served the Russian Imperial court. Peter von Hess trained at the Academy in Munich and served both King Ludwig I of Bavaria and Otto I of Greece. In 1839, Emperor Nicholas I commissioned the artist to complete 12 monumental canvases for the Winter Palace representing key battles that followed Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812. While earlier battle paintings and portraits commissioned by Alexander I dealt only with elite officers and the emperor, Hess’s paintings elevated the common Russian as the bearers of a great sacrifice and as the true defenders of Russia. This representational shift is the product of changing ideas concerning Russia’s involvement in several alliances from 1803 to 1815 that included Austria, England, Sweden, and Prussia. In addition, over the course of Nicholas I’s reign, the concepts of “autocracy, orthodoxy, nationality” crept into representations of the Russian experience of the Napoleonic wars. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Visual Culture Exchange Across the Baltic Sea Region during the Long 19th Century)
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12 pages, 268 KiB  
Article
‘Rooted in the Native Soil’—Cultural Amnesia and the Myth of the ‘Golden Age’ in Finnish Art History
by Marja Lahelma
Arts 2023, 12(4), 129; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12040129 - 26 Jun 2023
Viewed by 1692
Abstract
In Finnish art history, the period around the turn of the 20th century has been considered to be particularly significant for the formation of a national identity, and it has therefore come to be known as the ‘Golden Age’ of Finnish art. According [...] Read more.
In Finnish art history, the period around the turn of the 20th century has been considered to be particularly significant for the formation of a national identity, and it has therefore come to be known as the ‘Golden Age’ of Finnish art. According to the commonly held historical narrative, artists in late nineteenth-century Finland, which at the time was an autonomous Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire, shared a patriotic mission that led to a blossoming of the arts. This narrative construction has become so well-established that its origins in the cultural debates of newly independent Finland in the 1920s and 1930s have faded out of sight. This article identifies some of the mechanisms of active and passive remembering and forgetting that have generated the myth of the ‘Golden Age’. The analysis is guided by perspectives created in the field of cultural memory studies that emphasize the role of remembering and forgetting in the construction of historical narratives. A brief overview of the vibrant cultural exchange between Finnish and Russian artists of the period is given in order to exemplify the richness of historical phenomena that has largely remained under the shadow of the powerful myth of the ‘Golden Age’. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Visual Culture Exchange Across the Baltic Sea Region during the Long 19th Century)
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