Call for Papers

Session Chair: János Jernyei Kiss

As a result of the research program that began sixteen years ago and the ongoing publication work initiated six years ago, the fourth and final volume of the corpus of Baroque frescoes in Hungary will be published in the autumn of 2024, completing the project. This session will focus on new directions and branches that follow this fundamental research. The preparation of the corpus of Baroque frescoes in Hungary has provided valuable insights for the study of other artistic phenomena from the Baroque era. The methodology, based on documenting and analyzing the memories of various regions using a unified set of criteria, offers new approaches that could be applied to the research of architecture, painting, sculpture, and applied arts.

One of the emerging new topics could be a deeper examination of the social and economic contexts of Baroque artistic works, as well as the analysis of the relationships between the arts. Furthermore, the methodology provided by the corpus could serve as a model for the in-depth study of specific, well-defined groups of artifacts from other periods of Hungarian art history.

How can the results of this research be applied beyond the published volumes? What potential benefits can they bring to the fields of heritage preservation, the work of restorers, and interdisciplinary studies? How can the methodological lessons learned be extended to the study and historical processing of other areas and artifacts in art history? We invite proposals for presentations based on these ideas and questions.

Session Chair: András Zwickl

Since the 1990s, with the growth of contemporary art practices and the increasing importance of museum exhibitions, research focusing on exhibitions, their history, and theoretical implications has emerged within the field of art history. Exhibitions have been essential to the emergence and evolution of modern art from the very beginning, influencing the presentation and reception of individual works, the success and failure of artists, and the formation of various artist groups and movements, leading to their recognition. This has fundamentally shaped the artists' creative and career strategies.

From the early 20th century, a new type of professional emerged in the form of museum or independent curators who conceptualized and organized exhibitions, actively participating not only in the development of contemporary art but also in shaping the reception of older art. In this context, the work of professionals in independent exhibition spaces and commercial galleries, as well as the exhibition organizing activities of museum art historians, deserves particular attention. The exhibition as an institution itself is also worthy of research, especially regarding the evolution of operational rules, changes in display methods, the process of professionalization, and the role of exhibitions in the visual culture of modernity, as well as in the discourse of power and knowledge, making it an important research topic within art history.

This session invites presentations focused on the history and theoretical questions of exhibitions, the exhibition activities of artists and art groups, curators, and specific case studies, with special regard to Hungarian art.

Session Chair: Tamás Csáki

Architectural creation has always been a multi-actor process throughout history. The articulation of needs, the conceptualization of a structure to meet those needs, and its practical realization – with the exception of the oldest or simplest examples – have generally been distinct from each other. A building is often at once a reflection of the intentions of the client, the architectural program, the designer's efforts to shape these into a form, as well as the choices and opportunities of the collaborating artists and construction masters – and the clashes of these factors, the interactions and conflicts between the different actors.

In the past two centuries, the participants involved in the creation of buildings – whether as clients, designers, or builders – have frequently been institutions, companies, or organizations rather than individual people. The internal dynamics, decision-making processes, and working methods of these entities may also have influenced the design of a particular building. The design process itself has become extremely complex, involving a team of specialists with varying knowledge. Our understanding of most buildings considered as works of art is largely based not on direct experience, but rather on mediated perceptions. In this way, the individuals who shape the reception of a building – critics, photographers, historians – are also significant influencers, not of the architectural work itself, but certainly of the image we have of it.

In classical architectural history writing, the focus has primarily been on the activities and intentions of the client and the architect/designer. However, in recent times, other actors have increasingly come into the scope of research. Researchers are showing interest in the organizational aspects of architectural design in the 19th and 20th centuries (design firms, state-run design companies), the practitioners of the crafts and industries related to architecture, as well as the modes of transmitting architectural knowledge.

This session invites presentations that focus on the complex, multi-actor process of creating architectural works, examining the needs, intentions, constraints, and conflicts that produce a building or a group of architectural works. We also welcome presentations that place emphasis on the operating modes, goals, opportunities, and interrelationships of certain participants in this process, whether they are clients, designers (firms, companies), contractors, artisans, fellow artists, or those shaping architectural journalism and scholarly literature.

Session Chair: Pál Szeredi Merse

This session aims to reflect on the emerging new theoretical frameworks in international scholarship, focusing specifically on the opportunities and challenges of researching Hungarian avant-garde and modernist art between the two World Wars. As research on Hungarian avant-garde and modernism continues, it is increasingly important to test the applicability of new art history methodologies, which gained prominence in the 2010s, within the Hungarian discourse. The cultural history/microhistory research focus, the implementation of a (Central European) transnational perspective (Transnational history, histoire croisée – intertwined history), the center-periphery relationship, and the critical rethinking of art history's canonical hierarchies within Piotr Piotrowski's proposed horizontal art history framework are particularly useful in advancing the study of Hungarian avant-garde.

This session will provide an opportunity to reconsider the raised issues in light of ongoing research on Hungarian avant-garde and to initiate a critical dialogue on emerging theoretical trends in art history that are proving paradigmatic.

Session Chair: Katalin Aknai

In the 2021 Látkép program, several approaches were already presented (e.g., in the sections The Spirit of the Place, Global Theory – Local Practice, or Sensitizations), which foreshadowed the themes of this newly announced session. Over the past four years, the geopolitical, economic, and demographic situation of the world has undergone significant changes, affecting – among other things – the role, attention, and support given to the social and human sciences as well as to the fine arts. In this almost continuously shifting and increasingly leveling-down situation, we still observe artistic and art historical narratives with expectations and a compulsion for self-definition. In the past, discourse on art history education, teaching, and the scientific self-assertion of art in its disadvantaged dimensions perhaps received less focus – but today, we would no longer exclude it.

This session invites presentations that examine the local practices of various arenas, worlds, discourses, and marginalized positions – appearing both horizontally and vertically – and offer solutions that aim to support the survival prospects of the uncertain times ahead. Owing to the interdisciplinary nature of these approaches, the session broadly opens up the application of themes, methodologies, and contexts in the fields of fine arts, museology, and art history.

Session Chair: Anna Sidó

This experimental session is organized around a specific analytical approach: examining visual arts from an ecological and ecocritical perspective. Ecocriticism, initially emerging in the field of literary history and later in art history, is a theory that aims to uncover the relationship between creation, the creator, and nature, highlighting ecological connections during interpretation.

We invite presentations exploring topics that analyze the relationship between nature and visuality. These studies may cover individual oeuvres, various periods, and genres, uncovering the epistemological, philosophical, ideological, narrative, or microhistorical connections to nature. The analysis can extend to contemporary art, research-based artistic products, art-theoretical inquiries, or exhibition and curatorial projects closely related to the field.

The session promises an interdisciplinary approach and methodology, where both activist, participatory approaches and the exploration of theoretical frameworks fit in. One of the objectives of this session is to map how ecological viewpoints emerge within art history discourses. The ecological crisis and issues related to climate change are increasingly part of public discourse and various cultural fields, and undoubtedly, the environment-culture relationship and perspective will influence the field of art history as well.

Session Chair: Gábor Alföldy

Garden history is not only a young, emerging branch of art history but also an interdisciplinary field in its own right. Therefore, it is not surprising that representatives of various professions engage in this field, which holds vast horizons and still offers essential possibilities for discovery today: landscape architects, art historians, historians, ethnographers, literary scholars, architects, gardeners, biologists – to name just a few. The diversity of genres ranges from country house parks to urban public parks, institutional gardens, villa gardens, and embellished landscapes, while the time frame extends from the beginnings to the recent past. Research in this area spans from investigating the architectural, sculptural, and spatial elements of the Gesamtkunstwerk (total artwork), to studying the social, ecological, landscape, and urban structural impacts, as well as philosophical and sociological considerations. It also involves examining the patrons, designers, maintainers, and users of gardens, as well as analyzing visual and literary representations, uncovering international connections, precedents, trends, and personal memories. Overall, it can be said that the issue of preserved works, namely historical gardens, is also engaging more and more layers of society.

The scholarly approach to garden history in Hungary began nearly a century ago through the publications of Anna Zádor, and the Institute of Art History has been hosting multidisciplinary research on this topic for decades. This session explores the current challenges and tasks of garden history research and the preservation of historical gardens, considering the expanding circles of time frames, genres, and perspectives, the ever-increasing and increasingly accessible source materials, and the rapidly deteriorating original historic material.

Session Chair: Eszter Földi

The above thought was expressed by József Rippl-Rónai about Cézanne in his Memoirs, referring to the artistic practice that, from the 19th century onward, considered drawing an independent medium, not tied to other visual arts genres. Drawing, in its various forms (study sketches, preparatory drawings, experimental ideas in the process of artistic creation), as an outstanding art form, has not lost its earlier functions. Drawing can be seen as a cognitive tool that makes the invisible shapes of thought visible and perceptible, almost mapping out the process of artistic thinking.

On the other hand, considering the materiality, technical characteristics, and reproduction possibilities of drawing, it remains the most diverse and multifaceted genre in the visual arts. Drawing can create anything: a depiction of real or imagined scenes, as well as applied, decorative, or symbolic designs. Moreover, drawing facilitates transitions between the visual arts genres – painting, sculpture, architecture, industrial design.

Due to its many forms of presentation – magazine and book illustrations, posters, design graphics, typography – drawing reaches broad layers of society, transmitting ideas and exerting a significant influence on taste. Drawing is often examined separately from other visual art forms, yet, as mentioned above, it is intrinsically linked to larger artistic processes, frequently acting as their precursor.

This session welcomes topics that explore the lesser-known phenomena, areas, creators, and agents of Hungarian drawing and graphic art of the 19th and 20th centuries. In this context, we invite discussions on theoretical, medial, technical, and stylistic issues.

Session Chair: Ferenc Gosztonyi

The accelerated consumption of visual content in today's world influences our "professional" image interpretation habits and our perspective as art historians. Perhaps we do not even realize how much visual information we encounter daily, often in the blink of an eye, as images change in fractions of a second. We now look at and interpret images at a different pace than ever before. This applies not only to screens but also when visiting museums or viewing PowerPoint slides during university lectures. The classical methods of art interpretation in art history were fundamentally based on "slow," meaning-forming "looking."

The fundamental question of this session is: what can we, as art historians and interpreters, do with a work of art in 2025? Is it a challenge, and can we still "slow down" enough to engage in a deep, time- and energy-intensive dialogue with a selected work, transforming that conversation into an art analysis? In our radically transformed art world, are there still relevant questions with personal and/or communal stakes regarding works created fifty, a hundred, or even two hundred years ago? How can we analyze works of art effectively today?

This session invites speakers who are willing to undertake an analysis of a post-1800 artwork (i.e., a single piece) from a chosen perspective. We hope that the presentations will offer exciting, innovative ideas about individual works while also providing inspirational answers to the essential question many of us are grappling with: how can we revitalize, renew, and make the essence of our profession—the intense dialogue with individual works—more attractive, even to non-professional audiences?

Session Chair: Enikő Róka

This session addresses the artistic representation of the Hungarian landscape and its various interpretations from the 19th century to the present day. What motivated the widespread depiction of certain regions in the 19th century, and how did it relate to local traditions, national identity, its changes, and historical memory? What concepts did these works carry and perpetuate? How did the landscape painting motifs that emerged in the 19th century evolve, and what shifts in meaning did they undergo during the 20th century?

In the irredentist iconography after Trianon, the national landscape was accompanied by the map, symbolizing territorial identity and national integrity. How did the visual culture of the interwar period shape map and landscape motifs, and how were they revived after the regime change, with what popular graphic and contemporary artistic-critical interpretations? How did photography and digital media expand the boundaries of landscape representation in the 19th–21st centuries?

We invite presentations that reflect on the traditions, characteristics, and meanings of the genre through the analysis of specific works, artists, art groups, and artists' colonies, or that explore the phenomena and causes of continuity and change in a particular era or across historical periods.

Session Chair: Barnabás Zemlényi-Kovács

In the early 1990s, both philosophy and contemporary art "returned to the Real" (Hal Foster), emphasizing the significance, vitality, and agency of the material and bodily world as a correction to and critique of postmodern art and philosophy. This shift questioned the passive, lifeless view of the physical world, which had been mediated through social and discursive processes, representations, and narratives, placing the culturally constructed nature of reality at the center. The interaction between contemporary art and various new materialist philosophical movements has become particularly intense over the last fifteen years, linking with similar trends that have inspired artists, such as various eco-philosophical and posthumanist directions, object-oriented ontology, speculative realism, and material feminism. New materialism has become one of the popular theoretical frameworks of contemporary art in Hungary as well, associated with a variety of trends: for instance, practices related to the Anthropocene/Capitalocene discourse, which rethink the interrelations between nature and culture, human and nonhuman entities; "post-conceptual" and "neo-gothic" works that foreground primary experience, material qualities, and sensuality; and post-Internet art that explores the complex relationship between the immaterial and the material in the digital age. Furthermore, new materialism has shed a new light on certain practices and entire trends in 20th-century visual art, ranging from biomorphism to land art, process art, and abject art.

This session invites papers that explore the relationship between new materialist theories and 20th-century or contemporary art, focusing on the formal-material aspects, trends, events, exhibitions, or specific practices and artworks within both Hungarian and international art.

Session Chair: Bálint Ugry

We invite art historians to participate in this session who have not had the opportunity to encounter the objects of their research because these objects were lost, destroyed, stolen, or otherwise rendered inaccessible over time. Researchers who can only access the objects or groups of objects they wish to study through written sources, copies, or old reproductions and who aim to reconstruct these objects and create their own historical narratives based on the information available through such means. This form of historical reconstruction presents unique research challenges, as the absence of the object not only complicates the expansion of knowledge but also limits the broader historical context that the object’s creation and use could reveal. Yet, can this inquiry be reversed, and if so, under what principles? Where is the interpretative boundary of knowledge obtained through analogies in addressing such gaps?

We also welcome museum professionals who face similar challenges and have developed strategies to represent these absences in exhibition spaces. Exhibitions of this kind can be particularly intriguing as the missing objects not only offer insights into specific artistic movements and historical contexts but also seek new approaches to exhibition strategies employed in art history. The aim of this session is to explore these complex issues, presenting various principles, practices, methods, and techniques that may contribute to the creation of art historical objects and narratives in relation to missing works and documents.

Session Chair: Attila Horányi

What does it mean to think about the objects of applied arts and design from the perspective of their materiality? Materiality here refers first to the material itself, the techniques and technologies available for shaping it; secondly, to the ideas, desires, debates, and most importantly, decisions related to the usage and further functions (communicative, status-expressive, decorative, etc.) embodied in the object; thirdly, to the suitability of the object for the body or its lack thereof, yet always in relation to the work and the lived physical, social, and cultural experience within the body.

And what does it mean to extend all of this to the visual arts and the associated artworks? Is this extension, considering that until the early 19th century, before the emergence of the concept of the autonomy of fine arts, almost every work was based on ideas and commissioning intentions similar to today's (design) briefs? Is it an extension if autonomous works also possess a particular materiality (or, on the contrary, negate it, strongly denying it)? Is it an extension if visual arts works also, inevitably, exist and function in spaces—beyond the physical, in social, economic, cultural, and other spaces?

In his foundational essay on the discourse of design culture, Ben Highmore articulated it this way: "The conception of design as sensory worlds is, in my opinion, a crucial step in understanding the relations of design environments and the intertwining of bodies and objects. With this approach, we bring a macro-logical perspective into design; design is seen as a series of relays, and instead of 'the object,' the 'network of relations' between objects and subjects becomes the focus of study. But if modern sensory worlds turn design into a relay system between elements, there is also the possibility of a micro-logical approach, where the attention is directed to the stubborn object, its particularities, its materiality. This means that the object is not seen as a silent thing, nor as some other (desires, social aspirations, etc.) encoded form. The micro-logically perceived object is a thing oscillating between dreams and reality." (Comodista Manifesto)

We welcome case studies for this session that explore designed works/objects—along with images, spaces, and processes—within this complex network of relations.

Session Chair: Zsuzsanna Szegedy-Maszák

In analog photography, time is one of the fundamental components of the image, alongside light and chemicals. Due to the causal relationship between the photograph and the subject, we often think of a photograph as a snapshot of a specific moment tied to a particular time. As a result, we frequently assign precise dates to photographs. However, the relationship between time and photography is far more complex: time plays a role not only at the moment of exposure but also in the development of negatives and the creation of positive images. Since time is a crucial element in photography, the question arises: is the time aspect always central in every photograph?

This session will explore how time can manifest in a photograph—how photography can depict time. How can fictional time, passing time, timelessness, or permanence be expressed in a photograph? Experimental photography also sheds light on how time representation can be shaped and manipulated using photographic techniques. From a practical standpoint, it is worthwhile to examine which photographic processes have expanded the relationship between the medium and time. In particular, a relevant question today is how digital photography has altered the relationship between photographs and time.

Session Chair: Ádám Albert

Classical visual arts and representation techniques have been significantly transformed in the 21st century thanks to the integration of digital technology and artificial intelligence (AI). While analog, manual form-making remains influential, new digital methods, parametric and generative form-making have also become widespread and fundamentally reshaped the creative process. Current tools, along with the latest software associated with them, offer new possibilities for contemporary art, design, architecture, and industrial design, enabling creators to develop complex structures.

Computer-aided design and generation have become essential in material culture and are beginning to form a key part of art education. AI plays a significant role in visual creative processes as well. These innovations have brought numerous changes not only in static works but also in moving images. In the restoration of classical artworks and time-based works, digital technology and AI have made revolutionary advances. 3D scanning, printing, non-invasive procedures, spectral imaging, and digital reconstruction allow for the precise restoration of damaged parts of artworks and the uncovering of hidden layers. AI algorithms also assist in reconstructing original colors and textures. Thus, digital technology and AI offer significant potential not only for creative creation but also for heritage preservation.

Although technology has opened up many new dimensions, it also raises ethical questions, especially regarding the authenticity of creations. Therefore, it is essential to maintain a balanced use of both analog and digital approaches to preserve the harmony between human creativity and innovation. This session invites presentations that illuminate the above-mentioned issues and questions through specific examples or phenomena.

Session Chair: Béla Kelényi

In the 19th and 20th centuries, the difference between the West and the East, or rather between the West and the worlds geographically and culturally beyond it, seemed insurmountable. This fundamental conflict, between societies claiming to be modern reformers and those that are called, with various degrees of justification, traditional, rooted in political, economic, religious, and cultural oppositions, spanned centuries and was primarily about the conquest and domestication of the world outside the West by the West. However, by now the situation has changed significantly. Since the second half of the 20th century, following the postcolonial processes, the East, re- shaping its identity in line with the needs of the era, has emerged not only as an equal counterpart but also as a competitor to the West, which is gradually transforming its identity.

How does Western interpretation of Eastern art reflect this new context, and how does the Western world appear as reflected by Eastern art, which is increasingly demanding a larger space? Or perhaps this is no longer primarily a question of the West versus the East, nor of modernism versus tradition, but rather the issue of changes within both Western and Eastern societies, and the emergence of new ethnic and cultural islands within them?

We invite proposals for presentations that reflect on these questions or offer new perspectives based on them.

Session Chair: Krisztina Havasi

The Romanesque period is a defining style era in medieval Hungarian art, spanning the first two centuries of the Middle Ages, largely coinciding with the Árpád dynasty. The evaluation of its domestic beginnings is not unanimous: the 11th century is still considered the "pre-Romanesque" period; regarding the art of the St. Stephen's era or the period of the founding of the state, drawing comparisons with the art of the Ottonian period is historically relevant. Meanwhile, the "late Romanesque," from the early 1200s, carries features closely intertwined with (early) Gothic tendencies, similar to other Central European regions.

The Romanesque style as an artistic period received its last comprehensive and monumental overview nearly ninety years ago (Tibor Gerevich: Romanesque Monuments of Hungary, 1938). A more recent, thinner, yet complex book was published just over a decade ago, attempting new approaches (Ernő Marosi: Romanesque Art in Hungary, 2013). The intellectual heritage of the major generation of Hungarian medieval research from the 1960s and 1970s still holds significant influence today. However, in the last two decades, archaeological, heritage, museum, and archival research have revealed new "finds" that challenge and rewrite the broader picture. Even the well-known works require reinterpretation due to the expansion of the body of material and the rearrangement of universal Romanesque chronological and art historical questions. Furthermore, new methodological approaches are emerging.

The place, sources, and unique nuances of Hungary's Romanesque heritage can be understood within the broader European context, with the exploration of its network of relations being one of the most exciting and challenging tasks. However, the first steps toward this are only possible through the in-depth study and analysis of individual monuments and the uncovering of their internal connections. Therefore, in this session, we primarily expect analyses focused on a single Romanesque artwork, artifact, or related group of objects—introducing new perspectives and questions that challenge broader issues—from the "part" to the "whole." Presentations can come from any genre (architecture, sculpture, painting, minor arts) and focus on monuments created in Hungary or those discovered here.