Conference Program

The subject of the lecture is a collection of 220 watercolours by Thomas Ender (1793-1875), which is kept in the Archives of the Library and Information Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and was a gift of János Waldstein (1809-1876) to the institution in 1868. The watercolour series depicts the landscapes of Upper Hungary, including castles (castle ruins), manor houses and natural sculptures. The pictorial documentation of individual landscape units has many antecedents for art historical research. Throughout the 19th century, the artistic recording of landscapes was (and still is) widely used as an 'auxiliary material' by various disciplines (natural, social and historical).  In addition to the visual support of the sciences, the various political and/or ideological motivations behind the commission and the identity of the artist cannot be ignored, especially in the case of high-profile clients. In presenting the series of watercolours in the academical collection, I will focus on the idea behind the selection of the landscapes depicted by the artist, and how the collection itself and the donor's gesture can be integrated into the history of national discourse.

The historical landscape was an emblematic genre in nineteenth-century Hungarian art. Depicting the human-made remains of the distant past among the ever-renewing elements of nature, these pictures simultaneously evoked the ancient glory of the nation, ideas of transience, the popular ghost stories of the time, and the invincible power of nature. In merging time and space into one image, these pictures helped define the past of the nation and its territory as interrelated; hence, after the First World War and the country's territorial loss the genre came to be suffused with new meanings. However, beside national(ist) messages, historical landscapes spoke of the relationship between civilization and nature in a broader sense; about the ways in which humanity shaped the landscape, perhaps irrevocably. In the age of industrialisation and modernisation this issue became increasingly relevant and added further motifs and meanings to the imagery of historical landscapes. This paper will explore how political, industrial, economical and artistic modernity shaped the conventions and characteristic motifs of the historical landscape and the media in which it appeared in the early twentieth century. In addition to examining Hungarian examples, it also looks at the transformations of the nineteenth-century tradition of the genre in other successor states of the Habsburg Empire, asking how these variations reflected diverging interpretations of the shared historical past.

My lecture will address the question of how the nineteenth-century historical landscape painting was used by the Hungarian propaganda for territorial defence and then revisionism, transforming its original political meanings. From the beginning of the 19th century, landscape paintings depicting the historical sites of the homeland sought to strengthen the sense of a common, nation-state identity in the multi-ethnic Habsburg Empire. The depictions of ruins and castles emphasised the common historical narrative.Territorial defence propaganda after 1918 and later the irredentist visual communication emphasized the historical significance of these sites, however not anymore as an expression of a common identity of nationalities, but suggesting an ethnically based concept of nationhood and Hungarian superiority. These sites were now presented specifically as monuments of Hungarian history, such as the battles fought solely by Hungarians to defend the West from barbarism. At the same time, in the visual representations of neighbouring countries that had (re)gained their independence after the First World War, the same sites were given other meanings. Thus, for example, fortresses are the sites of heroic battles of the Slavs, and the Carpathian Mountains represent the homeland for every nation.In my lecture I will attempt to confront the implicit political messages associated with these landscapes by using examples from a wide variety of popular and applied art fields.

How have photography and digital media pushed the boundaries of landscape representation in the 21st century? How can digital tools and artificial intelligence change the way we create images? How do established viewer habits blend together? How are traditional image interpretation strategies softening? What kind of cityscapes are synthesized on the basis of established patterns? What do the new possibilities of digital imaging and the virtualisation of natural images tell us about the "reduction of our environment into a natural representation"? In what ways does the visuality of landscape images found on the internet change when crossed with images taken in camera-less processes? Can landscape images be syntheses of different natural elements or visual schemata? In my paper, I will try to answer these questions - among others - based on the work of Sári Zagyvai.

This paper explores illustrated narratives concerning tribal societies that appeared in almanacs and inexpensive pamphlets (popular prints) from the second half of the 19th century. Particular attention is paid to depictions of peoples such as Native Americans, the Tungusic peoples of Siberia, and Indigenous communities in Oceania, focusing on how their perceived wildness, freedom, and—as contemporary vocabulary would have it—savagery were represented.The presentation investigates how long-standing literary and artistic topoi and stereotypes—crystallized in earlier centuries—shaped the pens and pencils of authors and illustrators who created reading material popular among the lower middle class, peasantry, and urban working classes. The central question is how such narrative stereotypes were transformed into images in specific cases and, conversely, how widely circulated engravings—reproduced in the international press and mass visual culture—may have influenced contemporary narratives about tribal cultures.The paper also examines the extent to which the narrative and visual representations found in popular literature, almanacs, and popular prints can be considered "modern" when compared to portrayals in other social subsystems, such as elite literature or academic ethnography. By the last decades of the 19th century, a distinct interpretive framework characteristic of popular or mass culture appears to have consolidated—rooted in earlier traditions but forming a coherent system that continued to shape the attitudes and mentalities of widely distributed printed materials into the 20th century.

This presentation focuses on a medium that has so far received only limited scholarly attention: the diafilm–a series of still images projected onto a screen– and, in particular, its most familiar form in East-Central Europe, the so-called tale diafilm [’mesediafilm’ in Hungarian]. While visual storytelling through projected images has a long tradition in Europe (e.g., via the laterna magica and glass slides), the Hungarian diafilm adaptations of folk tales and fictional tales (that can be classified as classical children's literature) are documented only from the 1950s onward, following the launch of large-scale, state-controlled slide film production. With the introduction of flame-resistant, safe film material, tale diafilms quickly gained immense popularity.In the decades preceding the spread of color television, slide film projection offered a unique home cinema experience throughout the Eastern Bloc. In Hungary, these tale diafilms were not only widely used in family settings but also played an important role in institutional education. As a modern visual aid of the Kádár era, they helped to support and reinforce the comprehension of school reading materials.The golden age of diafilms in the region occurred in the last third of the 20th century; their functions have since been taken over by newer audiovisual media. However, the fairy tale filmstrip –as a unique form of visual narrative– and the cultural practice of slide projection have not disappeared entirely. Forgotten diafilms continue to resurface from attics and basements, and today, nearly 300 titles (some newly produced) are still distributed by the legal successor of the former Hungarian Diafilm Company.Moreover, the “Hungarian tradition of diafilm storytelling and projection” has recently become part of official heritage recognition: in 2022, it was included in the cultural values registry of the Ministry of Culture. This presentation summarizes the results of a research project that approaches Hungarian fairy tale diafilms from a folkloristic perspective. Its primary aim is to identify the sources and influences that shaped the visual and textual worlds of these films, which significantly influenced how generations came to know fairy tales.

The history and techniques of carpet weaving represent an exciting intersection of craft, folk tradition, and design. From the early 20th century, applied arts in Hungary began to integrate diverse weaving techniques and ornamental traditions into a new aesthetic harmony, initially under the influence of Art Nouveau. Beginning in the 1920s, national economic policy—shaped by identity politics—encouraged designers to create new types of utilitarian objects using motifs drawn from folk ornamentation.Applied artists and the designers they trained developed patterns for weaving workshops and taught courses for women—often from rural or lower-middle-class backgrounds—seeking a livelihood through artisanal work. These workshops largely disappeared during World War II. In the 1950s, new cultural and economic frameworks emerged, redefining both folk art and applied arts. The transmission and "updating" of folk material culture—adapted to contemporary tastes and marketability—was governed by a stylistic and aesthetic system identified as applied folk art. This hybrid model aimed to balance the authenticity of traditional folk art with the innovation of modern applied design.From the 1960s onward, notable figures emerged in Hungarian carpet design who helped develop a new aesthetic vocabulary aligned, at least in part, with contemporary cultural policy—and they were also granted space within the framework of applied folk art. These creators operated on the boundaries between fine art and the applied arts.This presentation explores the influence of economic and cultural policy from the 1950s onward on the development of carpet weaving within applied folk art. It examines the strategies employed by craft cooperatives when deciding whether to collaborate with professional designers, and the ways in which aesthetic, commercial, and traditional criteria intersected—sometimes harmoniously, sometimes in tension—within the creation of hybrid artifacts. Furthermore, it considers the memories of weavers who once collaborated with designers, and asks: what became of the patterns? How have they been preserved, adapted, or passed on by cooperative members into the present?

Social activism and political movements frequently draw on the symbolic language of folklore. As a result, folkloric motifs often emerge as central emblems in processes of cultural revitalization. A particularly illustrative case is that of the Sámi people, an Indigenous minority in Europe, whose recent history—from the 1960s to the present—has seen the growing use of folkloric elements to assert cultural identity.In the early stages of this movement, the reappropriation of traditional culture served both internal empowerment and external communication. Sámi intellectuals placed formerly stigmatized cultural elements—such as the traditional dress (gákti)—at the center of revitalization efforts. As a result of these initiatives, Sámi attire and design quickly spread beyond the Indigenous sphere, becoming objects of interest in tourism, commerce, and public representation. This widespread appropriation provoked protests and legal actions within the Sámi community, aimed at restricting the unauthorized use of their cultural (and specifically folkloric) assets by outsiders.By the turn of the millennium, the dominant response was a strategy of cultural closure, centered on asserting Indigenous ownership over folklore and related symbolic expressions. However, since the early 2020s, a shift toward more openness and engagement with global trends can be observed. One example of this is the loosening of traditional color use regulations in Sámi dress. Yet Sámi clothing remains a complex and emotionally charged cultural discourse, governed by both community norms and symbolic meanings.As such, traditional dress—and its transformation—serves as a highly expressive medium through which broader societal and political dynamics can be understood. Sámi postcolonial responses highlight the challenges inherent in both cultural homogenization and separation, and dress is one of the clearest indicators of these tensions.At the same time, international legal frameworks and official definitions of (folk) art and professional artistic practice bring into focus deep ontological differences between local and global cultural interpretations. These tensions become even more pronounced in the context of Indigenous or stateless minority communities, whose cultural assets raise fundamental questions about ownership, authenticity, and authority in a transnational world.

In May 1914, the worldwide event called Bugra opened in Leipzig. The commemorative event planned for the 150th birthday of the Deutscher Buchgewerbeverein began to be organized in 1912, and it soon became clear that an event larger than world exhibitions was being prepared. "...a truly historic exhibition that will have an unforeseeable impact on the industry and the graphic arts as well," predicted Imre Kner in his on-site report on the exhibition. The historical section of the exhibition traced the development of paper, image, writing and printing products from ancient times to the most modern inventions.
The exhibition of artistic graphics was a sort of accompanying event to the expo: more than 4,000 "original etchings, woodcuts, lithographs, drawings" were on display in 40 rooms. In the Hungarian section, 82 sheets of the best-known representatives of Hungarian contemporary reproduction graphics and drawing art were on display. The exhibition was put together by Simon Meller, and based on the roughly known list of exhibitors, it seems as if he tried to organize a graphic version of the painting exhibition of 1910. In the preceding decade and a half, art graphics had already become a field of progressive endeavors, and no one knew better than Meller the extent to which paper-based genres carried the changes that later unfolded in painting tendencies. The performance tries to reconstruct Simon Meller's exhibition concept.

The Gresham Circle remained informal throughout its history. However, by the end of the 1930s, with the cooperation of critics, art historians and organisers, its 'operation' and the joint appearance of artists has become more visible and coordinated. One of the most important and apparent means of this process was the exhibition publicity, which, in parallel with their gradually strengthening role in public art life, was partly consciously used by the Circle members to communicate – almost 'programmatically' – their own artistic principles. The most important texts written about their exhibitions, that in most cases went beyond the analysis of the current exhibition, were written by those authors, who gathered around the artists' table at the café, and occasionally by the artists themselves. In this way, the Circle quickly appropriated the way of describing its own activities, defining key concepts that became an increasingly integral part of the contemporary reception of its exhibitions as well. By highlighting some of their most significant shows of the 1930s, I will explore the contradictory process of how – through exhibitions and criticism – the Gresham Circle's 'self-image' became increasingly defined, in which fora, along which concepts, and in which terms they marked out their own positions and gradually became publicly identifiable as a group.

Aliz Torday, as an art writer, expanded her activities in the final decades of her life to include organizing exhibitions. As the head of the Szombathely Textile Collection and later as a staff member at the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest, she had the opportunity to curate exhibitions. As a member of the European Textile Network (ETN), she was also able to organize conferences and international appearances for textile artists. In my presentation, I would like to analyze Torday's curatorial perspectives, examining the subjective possibilities and extent of her selections. A few exhibitions curated by Aliz Torday include the International Miniature Textile Biennale at the Szombathely Gallery and the Small Package exhibition at the Museum of Applied Arts, which provided her with opportunities to further explore and represent the genre of miniature textiles. These exhibitions allowed her to break free from the conventional object aesthetics traditionally shown in art history, and through her role as curator, to develop and expand her curatorial identity. I am looking for moments that make the curator’s creative role identifiable and unique. Questions that occupy my mind include: Can a significant difference be seen between exhibitions in a series if the curator is different? How do Torday’s editorial experiences manifest in the concept and realization of her exhibitions? Aliz Torday did not study art history in an academic framework. Did she feel any form of rejection?

In 1992, János Frank compiled his essays, previously published primarily in the columns of Élet és Irodalom, summarizing the practical and theoretical experiences of his forty-year career as an exhibition organizer, into a collection titled Exhibitions – Ceremonies. Frank’s exciting career in itself – which was already summarized by Sándor Hornyik in the 6th issue of Enigma’s Frakkok series – was closely intertwined with the history of Műcsarnok (Hall of Arts) as a national exhibition center after World War II. Drawing partly on János Frank’s writings and recollections, and partly on other contemporary criticisms, the presentation attempts to map the operation of centralized exhibition organizing institutions and to explore the concepts of exhibitions of the era. Although the focus of the research is on exhibitions from the socialist period in Hungary – but not only those presenting Hungarian art – in order to better understand the context and working mechanism, the presentation will also present similar exhibition organizing institutions in the region (e.g. the Zachęta – Central Bureau of Artistic Exhibitions in Warsaw) as well as research projects that critically examine the exhibition histories of socialist countries.

In 1869, István Kápolnai Pauer, a military officer and military historian, who also studied the Battle of Mohács, described in the scholarly journal titled Századok a painting of Louis II, at the time kept in a private collection in the Italian city Rotonda. In his description of the painting, the author also discusses the contradictory historical sources about the appearance of Louis II. He believes that the trope of the young king’s underdeveloped, stunted stature and ill health is contradicted not only by Pál Jászay’s work, published in the middle of the 19th century based on historical sources, but also by the painting he saw, which depicts a healthy, masculine face with regular features. I haven’t been able to find the painting in Italian collections yet. I have also searched unsuccessfully for the ‘small album’ in which the author, who didn’t have a photographer with him, drew the painting, which he intended to show to the committee of the Hungarian Historical Society to present the painting to them. The painting was also mentioned by Florio Banfi, also known as Flóris László Holik (Barabás), in his work about Hungarian artworks in Italy, published in Rome in 1941, but it seems that he did not see it with his own eyes, but used only Kápolnai’s description. In this presentation, I will try to define, based on surviving portraits of Louis II, to which iconographic type the painting seen and drawn by István Kápolnai Pauer could belong or could have belonged.

Hungarian art historical research first turned to women artists in the 1930s, trying to discover their works from the 19th century. Although the researchers were still guided by the social and professional prejudices of their time, it was clear that in many cases only a small number of works by a single artist were available. Nevertheless, it was not until the last third of the 19th century that women were able to enter higher education and become professional artists, or at least teachers.
The lack of signatures and public collections, private ownership and the difficulty of identifying works of art make them difficult to identify. While in many cases there is some information on the name of a woman artist: contemporary exhibitions, knowledge of her participation in teaching, the absence of works known at most by title is palpable.
While the boundaries between professionalism and amateurism are difficult to define for women artists of the period, the question is whether it is possible, or even necessary, to speak of a life's work. For example, Giovanna Bianchi (1808-1866), the wife of Giacomo Marastoni (1804-1860), is known to have taught female students at the First Academy of Painting in Pest, while sometimes acting as a model for her husband. However, none of her works are currently known. Is it possible to speak about her in art history research?

The collection of Jewish ceremonial objects is a relatively new phenomenon: it was only at the end of the 19th century that such collections of artifacts were established, mainly in Western Europe. In Hungary, the collection of Ignác Friedmann, the Chief Councillor to the Government, was one of the most important in the world before the Second World War; it was more extensive than the Rothschild collection of Judaica in the Cluny Museum in Paris.
According to contemporary descriptions, the collection contained over a thousand valuable ceremonial objects. It was confiscated after the German occupation of Hungary; its fate and whereabouts are still unknown. In 1958, the descendants filed a claim for restitution under the Bundesrückerstattung Gesetz (BRüG). The proceedings were unsuccessfully closed in 1972.
Several items from the collection have appeared in contemporary publications (mainly as illustrations), and a partial virtual reconstruction is possible based on these. My presentation deals with the collector and his collection.

The presentation is about the wall paintings of Budapest's first and most elegant marriage hall. In 1953, the First Central Marriage Hall in Budapest was established in the former Batthyány Palace (today's MTA office building). The representative room was decorated with four panels depicting the beauty of the marriage bond. The paintings on the long walls of the room, by József Breznay, depicted the stages of marriage from youth to old age, while a large painting by Géza Fónyi on the far wall of the room showed the ideal (socialist) family as an example to those getting married. The pictures were removed from the room in 1984, when the marriage room was renovated, and their fate has not been known since.
In this lecture, I will present the circumstances of the creation of the Marriage Hall and the making of the pannos, based on archival sources, contemporary writings, art historical evaluations and interviews, placing them in the context of the artists' oeuvre and the typical public building decorations of the period.

The presentation of the four latent murals can, I believe, enrich the picture of socialist realist painting in the 1950s, an era whose historical and artistic perception has changed significantly in recent decades.

The Hungarian Romanesque art, whose period roughly coincided with the centuries known in the historiography as the Árpád period, became the focus of intense interest from the 1960s onwards. In the course of a generation, researchers in the fields of architectural history (Melinda Tóth, Ernő Marosi, Sándor Tóth, Vera Molnár), the history of painting (Melinda Tóth, Tünde Wehli), the history of treasure art and artifacts (Éva Kovács) have introduced a complex methodology of modern scholarship in this field and produced outstanding results that are still valid today. The question that the lecture will address is what the active participants in the generation change that took place around the turn of the millennium are doing with this coherent heritage. In what directions are they taking the research of one of the most (if not the most) significant stylistic periods in the international arena? Do they have the capacity for creative renewal and can they lead the way for the younger generation of researchers who will also soon inevitably succeed them? Are there signs of young researchers coming forward?

There are two double cross-shaped reliquaries, both connecting to the Hungarian kingdom of the Árpád dynasty: one has been taken to Salzburg from Esztergom, the other is now kept in the Cistercian monastery of Víssy Brod. Both crosses are richly covered in filigree decoration, albeit very different in size, style and quality. What connects them is the Hungarian origin – notably, the double cross appears in the Hungarian coat of arms from the beginning of the 13th century, unparalelled in the development of state symbolism in Europe.

The recent autopsy of the two crosses had a technical focus, yet their results warrant revisiting the results and the questions stated by the existing research. The cross from Salzburg has been associated with the Hungarian royal sceptre, and has been regarded as a former part of the royal insigniae, although the dating of the cross (late 11th or early 12th century) is way earlier than the first traces of the double cross in royal representation, which does not occur before the reign of Béla III. The connection between the Závís cross and the royal court has not yet been unquestionably cleared either – historical evidence suggests a way, in which it could go from the royal treasury to the possession of Závís von Falkenstein, but a further analysis of the different styles of its two sides and the unique features of its filigree technique can add further considerations to this question.

The enamel plaques of Pétermonostora and the other artefacts that appear to have belonged to the same ensemble have been analysed through various art historical, archaeological, and historical perspectives. Recent research suggests that the plaques were made in the Meuse Valley.
It has now become clear that many of the difficulties in interpreting these artefacts stem from their exceptional nature; their closest parallels can be found among the finest imperial and French royal commissions. However, the reliquary does not fit into the established (modern) categories of “French” or “German” art but instead belongs to Lotharingian art. The use of this artwork and its Lotharingian interpretation hold particular methodological and art historical significance for the study of Romanesque art in the Kingdom of Hungary.
The discovery of the reliquary in a middle-sized private monastery was unexpected, but the more we learn about its unique qualities, the more extraordinary the artwork appears. The plaques, which are the second-largest extant northern enamels in the world, are deeply rooted in Mosan/Lotharingian theology and present highly complex narratives. The interpretation of this work carries a rich cultural significance, making it not only unique within Hungarian art but also within the broader context of Mosan art.

Although the founding of the Hungarian Kingdom and the Christianization of the country by St Stephen went hand in hand with the spread of literacy, the import of books (i.e. codices) and the appearance of local scriptoria, most of the books produced and/or used in Hungary in the age of the Arpad dynasty were destroyed. The image we can form of the book culture of the period is very fragmentary. We know only a few pieces, whose embellishment goes beyond the ornamental decoration of – sometimes very high quality and stylistically informative – initials. Besides the richly illuminated Admont Bible of Salzburg origin, which was kept until 1263 in the Benedictine monastery at Csatár, only the zoo-anthropomorphic portraits of the Evangelist in a Gospel-book, the Canon-page of the Missal of Németújvár (Güssing), the Passion of Christ image-cycle in the Pray-codex and the figural initials of the so-called Psalter of St Margaret help us reconstruct characteristics and practices of book painting. Since in this resource-poor environment any new information is of great importance, the presentation will focus on a hitherto overlooked group of images, sketches on the margins, and it will argue that valid and new conclusions can be drawn from them regarding the process of image-making, and the visual culture surrounding book creators and users of the age.

Károly Lotz (1833-1904) continued the Renaissance process of mural painting. He progressed from detailed studies and compositional sketches to finished designs presented for approval and to full-scale cartoons. Two hundred of his scketches in the collection of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts demonstrate clearly that the pencil was his favourite tool. Thinking on paper, he developed an unique collection of motifs from nudes placed in varied situations. His ideas about the relationship between drawing and color were certainly influenced by the views of his master, Carl Rahl. Although Rahl started his compositions from colour sketches, he demanded the clarity of drawing from his students. At the same time, he was also open to the possibilities offered by the new medium: photography. Like him, Lotz also incorporated photographs into his creative practice. The photos preserved in the university archives document that he sometimes painted on photos taken of his compositional sketches. Other times he photographed (or had photographed) his large preparatory drawings in order to present his ideas to the client. Apart from that, he also had photos taken of his finished works purely for the purpose of reproduction. During the presentation, I would like to show how Lotz renewed the working method inherited from the Renaissance, relying on the – hitherto mostly unpublished – artefacts preserved in the Art Collection of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts.

Despite the fact that Pál Deim graduated from the University of Fine Arts in graphic design, and drawing played a decisive role in his work, this part of his oeuvre has received little attention so far. The current research reveals the connections between his works in different media and his drawings. In addition to the fact that the effects of the methodology applied by Dezső Korniss and Lajos Vajda of the “Szentendre program” are clearly visible in the sketches of motif collection preserved in the artist’s legacy, the latest research results on this subject (Andrási 2022, Deim 2022) are also enriched by the connection between his early drawings and paintings. Examining these may also shed light on Jenő Barcsay’s role as an anatomical drawing teacher in the development of Pál Deim’s emblematic, idol-like figure. Furthermore, drawing played a key role in Pál Deim’s three-dimensional work, as well as in his real and fictional memorial designs in the 1970s-1980s, thanks to which the genre boundaries between drawing, painting and sculpture, as well as between real design and artistic imagination blurred, and these processes occasionally contributed to the concept of the realized works. This research is the first step towards the realization of a publication that examines Pál Deim’s little-known drawings, etchings, screen prints, unique graphics and their broader connections in the context of his oeuvre and art history, using a medium-specific approach.

Anna Mark (1928), living in Paris, is best known for her abstract reliefs and gouache paintings. However, there is a figurative drawing collection of around 100-120 sheets, created between 1957 and 1959, which, apart from offering the joy of discovery, deserves attention as a special landmark of Hungarian surrealism in the 1950s.
Born into a bourgeois, intellectual family, Anna had detested the Hungarian art scene of the 1950s and wanted to become a painter in Paris. With her husband, Gábor Czitrom, they fled across the border in December 1956. Their original destination was Paris, but an old acquaintance offered her husband a job in Saarbrücken, Germany. What began as a temporary detour of a few months lasted almost three years.
She had no job and spent her days in a rented flat. She had already left Hungary, leaving her family and friends behind, but she had not yet arrived where she longed to be. She found herself in an empty space, which she considered temporary. She spent her time drawing, and the fruits of the bitter three years were exquisitely delicate and virtuoso ink drawings. They express the pain of separation, the desire for freedom, anxiety and loneliness. Their composition, full of silences, is balladic in its condensations, repetitions and omissions. Each is valid on its own, but they can also be interpreted as a group of drawings.
She stored them when she arrived in Paris, and they were first shown to the public in February 2025 at the Kisterem Gallery.

The foundation of Anikó Loránt’s (1977-2020) oeuvre is the thousands of drawings and watercolors preserved in over forty sketchbooks and notebooks of varying sizes. These include closely interconnected, rich elaborations of themes and symbols, diary-like entries, short texts, and various growing series of drawings and sketches for community collaborations and collaborative installations. Anikó Loránt’s subtle works, often made in a domestic environment, take as their main themes the transformations between different life worlds and ways of life and between organic and crystalline structures. Copying and the revision and mutation of prior works were her essential method and practice. Interlinked within a rich web of connections, her drawings typically mix media and sometimes include haiku-like poems, intertwine narrative threads, stories, references to her readings, everyday observations and discoveries, and the experience of an unbreakable bond between the human and non-human realms. She has expanded her program of non-growth, also adopted at the individual level, to develop a possible small community toolkit for ecological crisis and existence outside post-industrial society. The presentation examines the fundamental framework and key questions of her creative work and, in relation to this, the role of drawing as a medium.

Ecocriticism, a critical theory which has existed since the late 1970s and which analyses the representation of nature in literary works from an ecological perspective, has emerged as a necessary method of analysis as the human ecological crisis has currently escalated. Ecocriticism provides an opportunity to analyse works of art not from an aesthetic, historical, genre or stylistic point of view, but to re-read the material culture they represent, the relationship between man and nature, man and his environment, from an ecological perspective. In the last 20 years, the ecological perspective has also appeared in art historical research, not only in relation to contemporary art projects reflecting on the ecological crisis, but also in relation to historical periods. In my paper, I want to explore the potential of the ecocritical method in art historical research, while attempting to interpret naturalism, the widespread artistic movement of the 1880s and 1890s, from an ecological perspective.

Apart from Renaissance and Baroque garden art, no artistic period or movement may more clearly express the early modern Western belief that perfecting nature is necessary and desirable. The view that nature requires assistance to become perfect and to reach the highest level of the 'third nature' was deeply rooted in the Scientific Revolution's mathematical-mechanical worldview, which also influenced garden design. In the 17th and 18th centuries, ornamental gardens represented rule over nature and, along with it, political power.
Within what cultural-historical and philosophical framework can this now outdated perspective be interpreted? What were its antecedents in Western thought, what criticisms did it face at the end of the period in question, and how can we engage with its legacy amid the ecological crisis of the 21st century? Renaissance and Baroque gardens represent a rich cultural heritage, but will they remain sustainable and be passed on to future generations in the face of climate change?

According to Bruno Latour, the challenge of the Anthropocene lies in humanity’s recognition that it does not shape its fate alone but rather in mutual dependence on many other agents. Adaptation requires a new worldview, which also entails a re-evaluation of our established concept of culture. In this context, ruins can play a crucial role: as liminal phenomena, they render perceptible the entanglement of cultural and natural creation while deconstructing the conventional active-passive dichotomy. Like the Anthropocene, ruins disrupt linear conceptions of time and human teleology. It is no coincidence that ruins appear in multiple ways within the discourse on the Anthropocene: from the highly aestheticized, fictional architectural remnants of post-apocalyptic popular culture to the ruins left behind by climate-related disasters, whether natural or built. In my presentation, I explore various aspects of the relationship between the Anthropocene and ruins, with a particular focus on ancient and medieval ruins. Rather than viewing them as static mementos, I interpret them as evolving ecosystems that make tangible the collaborative work of human and non-human agents, thereby offering a unique experience of the Anthropocene.

Margit Kováts Sz. was born in Mindszent in 1930 and graduated from the Szeged Pedagogical College as a student of László Winkler, where she later worked as an assistant teacher and teacher at a training school. In her work, she created colourful ink paintings on wet paper and oil paintings in the spirit of bioromanticism, evoking natural and plant forms. Her reception did not go beyond regional recognition: she exhibited in Szeged, Szentes and Kishunhalas, as well as in exhibitions of educational artists and summer art workshops for teachers of drawing, and after his death in 1997 she was forgotten. As an art historian living in Szeged, I consider it important to focus on the forgotten artists due to their regional situation and their female identity, and therefore in my lecture I would like to present the oeuvre of Margit Sz. Kováts Sz., made in the sixties and seventies, which is "lost" in the storage rooms of public collections in the countryside and in the hands of family members, with special attention to the abstract oil paintings and prints made in the sixties and seventies. These works, which evoke deconstructed, eroded, natural elements and refer to them in their titles (Bushfire, Blast furnace slag, Space Decay), represent an incomparably exciting segment of the period of socialism, which, from today's perspective, can be interpreted primarily from the theoretical apparatus of ecofeminism. 

In connection with the renovation of the Sacred Heart parish church in Kőszeg, designed by Ludwig Schöne, we collaborated with Márton Sarkadi to create an exhibition on the building's history. The exhibition shed new light on Schöne's work and the building practice of the late 19th century. Schöne developed a Gothic Revival church type with an octagonal central tower, a patterned slate roof and glazed pots, which he decorated with mass-produced elements, mainly following his Hanoverian master C. W. Hase. Looking at his various buildings, it is visible that in each case the same Viennese factories appear in the supply invoices. Moreover, Schöne himself recommended these contractors to his clients.The supporting pillars, arches of the churches were chosen from the products of Pittel & Brausewetter. The facades were usually decorated with Oherr & Stepnitz mass-produced reliefs. He ordered the decorative tin elements, even the crossing towers, from Heinrich Lefnär's tinsmiths factory. The architect probably had a financial interest in the companies, as he had personal contacts with their managers, and Schöne also designed the buildings of these factories. In my presentation, I would like to illustrate, through Schöne's example, the new construction approach that changed the role of the designer. The architect evolved into a entrepreneur who coordinated work processes, creating his designs based on standard plans and using pre-manufactured products from various factories.

György Bernády's mayoralty (1902–1912) marked a period of spectacular transformation in the builders’ society in Târgu Mureș. As early as the 1890s, the local architecture began showing numerous signs of change. A vocational school and a construction industry training course were established, from which many students continued their studies in Budapest, and some returned from European study trips. Just a few years later, these individuals whose thinking was shaped by modern vocational education set the pace in the local building industry. They would become the main beneficiaries of the impending Bernády-era economic boom and the renovators of the city's image. The mayor had a keen understanding of the importance of these educated young master builders, had personal relationships with many of them, and had influence in their rise. These skilled master builders were capable of handling large-scale projects and flawlessly executed modern designs by eminent Hungarian architects like Marcell Komor, Dezső Jakab, Ede Toroczkai Wigand and Károly Kós. They were also the constructors of numerous residential buildings, often taking on design responsibilities, making them the main actors driving the city toward the Secessionist style. Our presentation will explore the careers of the most important master builders of the period, their relationships with each other and with the influential mayor.

The early 1940s marked the beginning of the period that laid the foundations for the careers of most of the Hungarian architects born in the 1920s. It was also the time when the decreasing scale of private architectural projects was coupled with a drastic increase in the scale of the state’s military and industrial developments. It is understandable why these young architects tried to exploit the opportunities provided by the wartime economy as best as they could and turned their careers towards industrial architecture. Especially appealing for them was the architecture office of Gyula Gottwald (Mátrai from 1945), which won large-scale industrial commissions at the time. These young architects, however, were not simply drawn to Gottwald’s office because of the promise of individual success but also because of their passionate interest in special building structures and new construction technologies. Indeed, in a few years, the office had developed into an important workshop of engineering innovation and as such functioned as a coordinator mediating between the stakeholders of the development projects: developers, technological designers, contractors and civil engineers. Despite its heavily damaged state, the Gottwald legacy sheds light on what it meant to run an architectural office dealing with industrial commissions during the war years and undertaking projects commissioned by ethically questionable clients, while consistently representing the values of modern architecture.

The lecture examines what factors shaped the architectural design process during the socialist era through the operations of the South Transdanubian Architectural Planning Company. The broadest framework was dictated by the political regime: during the period of centrally planned economy, the state not only determined the volume of planning tasks but, as the primary client, also specified the types of projects to be undertaken. The corporate structure had several advantages: within the studio-based system, the collaboration of architects, structural engineers, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, and interior designers fostered professional communication. Nevertheless, errors in planning made by draftsmen, editors, and auxiliary workers trained in crash courses could be classified as acts of sabotage against the national economic plan, even resulting in imprisonment. The centralization of regional architectural design tasks in Pécs required significant additional time and effort (travel, communication with institutional leaders) while disregarding local knowledge (urban development patterns, architectural heritage). The architect’s possibilities were fundamentally influenced by contemporary technology, including steel structures, panel construction, and the IMS system, while standardized designs called into question the artistic dimension of architectural planning.

Exhibitions were frequent and influential events in the city during the interwar period, addressing contemporary issues and engaging a broad audience. The term “art of exhibitions”, used by the Hungarian architect Bierbauer (Borbíró) Virgil in 1935, can best be understood today as exhibition design. In this context, art does not appear as an exhibited object. Instead, it emerges as an ephemeral artistic creation, a form of construction and a display mode within exhibition spaces. By the 1930s, the notion that exhibitions required complex artistic design work had gained widespread acceptance. Avant-garde art circles experimented with innovative display techniques, which soon appeared at fairs and propaganda exhibitions of dictatorial regimes. While the history of exhibitions and the “art of exhibitions” have received considerable attention in international scholarship, they remain a relatively underexplored topic in the Hungarian context. My research focuses on tracing the development of this genre in interwar Hungary, with particular emphasis on its international connections and the role exhibitions played in Hungarian state propaganda. In my presentation, I will explore the professionalisation of exhibition design, the avant-garde roots of these practices, and their eventual mainstream adoption. I will also discuss the methodological approaches to studying this genre, addressing the available sources and the challenges posed by their absence.

The term ’École de Paris’ was coined in interwar France not as an aesthetic but as a political-sociological descriptive category it denoted the non-French, the ’foreigners’ who created in Paris. Both the slurs used to describe this demographic group and the art critical texts that sought to capture its national and 'racial' character through style criticism show that the presence of 'foreigners' was perceived as hostile by the French art institutions. The stakes of the discourse on the 'Ecole de Paris' were thus primarily political, and concerned the ’assimilability’ of non-French artists into the French artistic canon and society. Drawing on examples of artists and critics of Hungarian origin, active in Hungary and Paris, the paper examines (1) the extent to which xenophobic and anti-Semitic semantic layers of the debate were perceptible then and now, and (2) whether local Hungarian layers of meaning associated with the ’École de Paris’ were created along interwar domestic political lines. It also discusses (3) whether collective, national and racial character traits live on as individual artistic traits captured by style criticism in art historical discourse. Ultimately, the paper argues that the problems raised are integral to the production of knowledge in art history, but can only be addressed through historical and social scientific methods and perspectives (cultural transfer, transnational perspective). 

Lajos Vajda arrived in Paris, the centre of Western art in 1930. In this multicultural environment, he was interested in approaches that saw the picture as a medium of presentation, in contrast to the classical Western tradition of depiction, which considered the picture as a medium of representation. He was fascinated by the art of non-Western cultures, photography, film and collage-montage techniques. The time spent in Paris initiated the train of thoughts that form the backbone of his oeuvre, with the key concepts of transparency, positive-negative form, seriality and facture. Later in Szentendre he rediscovered traditions (the Orthodox icon) he had known from his childhood, which, together with the influence of the avant-garde (e.g. Serbian) Orthodox movements, combined a specific Central and Eastern European pictorial concept in his works. My presentation shows how the aforementioned multicultural influences are combined in the constructive surrealist thematic and how they relate to the MS 1936/60. Some of these influences have already been the subject of academic research, but in my lecture I analyse specific analogies which must have been his sources, based on my new research of Vajda's legacy. Reconstructing Vajda's train of thoughts confirms that a close connection can be found between works of his that had not been linked previously. I will also attempt to provide a new interpretation of the MS 1936/60 that also makes use of the perspective of horizontal art history

Tér és Forma (Space and Form, 1928–1948) was the leading architectural journal in interwar Hungary, which was edited by the architect Virgil Bierbauer between 1928 and 1942. The journal was the most important mediator of modern architecture in Hungary and at the same time successfully integrated into the international network of architectural journals, where it became a major reference point for information on Hungarian architecture. Tér és Forma continuously reported on the latest developments of architecture in Hungary and abroad, paying special attention to housing and urban planning, and reviewed current exhibitions, professional events and publications. Bierbauer edited the journal together with János Komor until the end of 1931, and then by himself. As editor and writer, Bierbauer became the defining voice of the journal, so his professional network and the connections he made through it were greatly influential on the magazine’s content. The structure and the dynamics of his network were decisive in terms of press appearances. This is supported by the microhistorical analyses conducted on the content of Tér és Forma and the network visualizations I created. In my presentation, I examine the validity of the horizontal art historical approach and the transnational framework in relation to the magazine and the modern architectural transfers that took place with the involvement of Hungary.

The genealogical works of Maximilian I not only had artistic models in the 14th and 15th centuries, but also a rich impact in the 16th century. These include family trees and portrait series of Emperor Ferdinand I, the diverse activities of Archduke Ferdinand II in Ambras, but also the sculptures and paintings of Queen Dowager Mary of Hungary and King Philip II, which are now in Spain. They were obviously created not only in knowledge of the production for Maximilian I, but also through mutual stimulation or influence.

Father Pierre Le Moyne (1602–1671) of the Company of Jesus published his book La Galerie des Femmes Fortes in Paris in 1647. With the book he intervened in the “Querelle des Femmes” of his time. Dedicated to the then regent Anna of Austria, the book discussed twenty virtuous women exemplifying female power and weakness as well as the limits of female actions. Le Moyne’s book was illustrated with a frontispiece depicting Anna of Austria as statue on a pedestal surrounded by allegoric figures and with twenty copper engravings with etching, depicting the heroines. The copper engravings with etching were executed by Abraham Bosse and Gilles Rousselet after the work of Claude Vignon. Each heroine is shown standing in a solemn pose in the foreground; in much smaller scale in the backgrounds are the scenes of their principal heroic acts. Each print has a subtitle on the lower edge with a short description of the woman’s virtuousness. The prints were used by the artists as a source of inspirations for paintings and applied arts. An overview of all the known and preserved artworks inspired by this print series leads us to the conclusion that the series was not known and appreciated only in France but also in Central Europe. Two painted series are preserved in the castles Český Krumlov in the Czech Republic and Vurberk in present day Slovenia. The Krumlov series is composed of eleven paintings, from the Vurberk series only two paintings are preserved.

Portraiture is an important means of dynastic and personal representation. While in the Middle Ages it remained in the Czech lands mainly reserved only for the presentation of the royal dynasty, in the 16th century it was increasingly used also by the nobility, especially in the decoration of family residences, in order to highlight the glorious and ancient history of the family and its important place within the aristocratic society and in relation to the monarch. Aristocrats took inspiration from the royal and imperial court, and not infrequently sought to engage artists who had succeeded in the most prestigious court commissions. This inspirational relationship is not entirely straightforward, however, and reflects the complex situation in the Czech lands, where most of the Habsburg monarchs ruled but did not reside.    

The holdings of the former imperial arsenal at Renngasse, Vienna, represent one of the key components of the Imperial Armoury’s modern-day collection. This presentation aims to provide a survey of the arsenal’s history from its foundation in the late sixteenth century to its abandonment in the 1850s, with a special focus on its transformation in the eighteenth century. In 1759-1771, the building and the display of its contents were subject to a major reconfiguration, and the arsenal emerged as an imposing showcase of the Habsburg dynasty and its military successes. More broadly, this makeover, which has been described as “Empress Maria Theresia’s museum foundation par excellence“ (Bruno Thomas), illustrates the crucial importance of early modern armouries as spaces of princely and civic self-fashioning. My attempt to reconstruct and contextualize the arsenal’s history will closely follow the scarce textual and visual evidence (the latter has not yet been published in full), supplemented with new archival findings.

The Württemberg-born stonemason and later architect Friedrich von Schmidt (1825–1891) became a central figure of Neo-Gothic architecture in Central Europe through his profound technical and historical knowledge of Gothic architecture, his restorations and partial completions of unfinished medieval structures (such as St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna), his own designs, and his long-standing teaching activity at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts (1865–1891).The planned contribution to the symposium focuses on Schmidt’s architectural oeuvre in Vienna, his theoretical writings, and their controversial reception. Initially, the question will be explored: how "medieval" were the typology, style, and construction techniques of his Viennese works (City Hall, Academic Gymnasium, several churches, competition designs for the Parliament and the Votive Church)?Research has already convincingly refuted the assumption that Schmidt’s buildings were genuinely "medieval," referring to him as a "Gothic Rationalist" (Haiko, 1994). The focus will now shift to examining the "ideology" behind Schmidt’s concept of Neo-Gothic and its ideological (including political) positioning.What agenda lies hidden behind his deliberate modesty as a "simple stonemason" (as indicated on his tombstone), despite the fact that he substantially shaped the built environment of his time? Which elements of his planning and theoretical approach were later adopted by modern architecture? And which aspects remain relevant today?

This presentation focuses on the group excursions, organized for a larger number of the most gifted students and introduced by Friedrich Schmidt (1825–1891) in 1861 as a significant part of his innovative teaching concept at the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts. Based on archival reports, together with memoirs of F. A. Lehner and his contemporaries, the course of the study trips has been precisely reconstructed. Utilising the amount of pencil field sketches, archived in the Graphic Collection of the Academy, the presentation details Schmidt´s selections of objects for the excursions. In addition to highlighting Schmidt´s emphasis on direct study of buildings from autopsy and their detailed measuring, revealed also is his interest in historical data, declared in his correspondence with I. Henszlmann, as well as in historical plans, illustrated in his identification of the gothic parchment plan with the Donnersmark chapel. The presentation in its second part accentuates the importance of these exact sketches as an exceptional documentary source for the understanding of the unpreserved form of medieval architectural components. This thesis is significantly supported by the cases of Mocker´s sketches, depicting unpreserved gothic gargoyles of the Poor Clares and the Franciscan churches in Bratislava and also those of A. Nedelkovits from Zlatá Koruna. This approach not only provides a deeper understanding of Schmidt´s methodological concept in a broader historiographical complexity, but also underscores the importance of study trips for the founding of the historical architectural research methods, since used till now.

Like other European countries in the 19th century, Croatia was also affected by a wave of restoration of medieval buildings.

Throughout the first half of the century, interest in medieval buildings grew. They were gradually transformed into historical and national monuments, stimulating the first Neo-Gothic restoration projects. The restoration works on churches at that time were still on a smaller scale. As the example of the Zagreb Cathedral shows, the most common approach was to remove Baroque furnishings and purchase new Neo-Gothic ones. Larger restoration projects were mainly related to fortresses and castles. The most important projects were carried out by Laval Nugent, a prominent Habsburg military leader, who transformed the Trsat, Bosiljevo and Dubovac fortresses. From the mid-19th century, the restoration of Trakošćan, Maruševec and other castles followed. Since the 1870s, thanks primarily to the Đakovo Bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer, who employed architect Friedrich von Schmidt on a series of projects, what was then considered a “scientific” approach to the restoration of medieval monuments was introduced to Croatia. According to Schmidt's designs, first the Zagreb parish church of St. Mark was restored. It stimulated the restoration of the Zagreb cathedral which was ultimately finished by Schmidt's student Herman Bollé. Bollé in the last decades of the 19th and in early 20th century restored several other Gothic churches (such as the Greek Catholic cathedral in Križevci, the Franciscan churches in Zagreb and Ilok). Along with him, a number of other Schmidt’s students (Josip Vancaš, Vincenz Rauscher), would play an important role in the history of Neo-Gothic restorations. These interventions were interpreted as the return of buildings to their original medieval state, which usually meant radical rebuilding that aimed for unity and purity of style.

In the second half of the 19th century, many monumental buildings - both sacred and secular - were built in the Gothic style. According to my thesis, this stylistic decision was not only based on a question of aesthetic taste and the widespread interpretation of Gothic as the highest spiritual and Christian building form. Rather, the choice of (neo)Gothic was often an ambitious social reform project. Neo-Gothic can also be read as an attempt at moral mobilisation and social education in the spirit of conservative Catholicism. Through style, iconographic programme and the communication of values, which followed an idealised retrospection of the Middle Ages, monumental neo-Gothic representative buildings became focal points of a broad popular education campaign for Christian values and community.

The paper will provide an overview of the current state of Latvian art history, focusing in particular on the architecture and art at the turn of the 20^th century, which is the main field of research of the author of this paper.How do we write the history of Latvian art? Since the 19^th century, there have been several uncoordinated attempts to do this, but it is only in the last decade that this project has become the focus of the collaborative effort of a number of Latvian art historians, who have been working on a 7-volume edition of The Art History of Latvia since 2012. Each of the volumes is dedicated to a particular historical period and published simultaneously in both Latvian and English. Currently, the project is gradually approaching its conclusion as the last three volumes of The History are at the final stage of preparation. This monumental project is the brainchild of the Art Academy Professor Eduards Kļaviņš. Each of the 7 volumes consists of the contributions made by the foremost experts in the respective periods.The author of this paper has participated in the preparation of the parts for the 3^rd  and 4^th volumes of The Art History of Latvia, which are dedicated to the applied arts and design in the second half of the 19^th century as well as the architecture and applied arts of the early 20^th century, which is the author’s area of expertise. The paper will mention the problems and challenges encountered while working on the history of the given period and some of the future tasks.

As recalled by Irēna Bākule and Arnis Siksna in Riga beyond the walls (2009), the city is one of the few European metropolises whose extension beyond the medieval city core was conducted through a rigorous succession of urban plans that clearly determined its physical form and, last but not least, its green appearance and harmonious character. Like Turin and Berlin, although in different historical and political contexts, planning dictates the development of the city, but – differently from these examples – not by expanding through additions and parts but by governing the process intimately linked to the fortifications and their overcoming, in an increasingly global perspective. Riga today presents a powerful urban fabric of value, between Historicism and Art Nouveau, nestled in a radial structure and large semi-circular arteries, the Elizabeth Avenue and the two internal boulevards, which are the result of the plans of 1857-72. In Riga, planning followed the progressive Swedish and Russian military needs, governing fortifications and suburbs on several occasions, in 1652, in 1771, and then again in 1813 and 1815. A city founded in 1201, a member of the Hanseatic League and which, despite various foreign dominations, saw the uninterrupted domination of the German component on the City Council and the Western openness towards the engineers and architects active in the plans, of Dutch, German and Swiss origin or ancestry.

The presentation provides a brief overview of the most important areas of art history research conducted in Lithuania over the past decade. A summary of the state of art history research in Lithuania at the start of the 21st century was published in English by my colleague Giedrė Mickūnaitė about ten years ago. Her essay appeared as part of the chapter on the Baltic States in the book Art History and Visual Studies in Europe. Transnational Discourses and National Frameworks, edited by Matthew Rampley and others (Brill, 2012).This presentation outlines key research developments since then contribute to global art history, such as the four-volume Dictionary of Lithuanian Artists (2005–2017), the monography by Margarita Matulytė and Agnė Narušytė Camera Obscura: the History of Lithuanian Photography, 1839–1945 (2016), and syntheses of 20th-century architectural history. These include surveys of modernist architecture in English, intended for non-Lithuanian-speaking audiences.The genral interest in image theory and visual culture has had significant impact on the study of Lithuanian artistic heritage—encompassing both classical art and modernism—as well as contemporary art research. Some of these works (by Erika Grigoravičienė, Laima Laučkaitė, Giedrė Mickūnaitė, Jolita Mulevičiūtė, and others) are of considerable regional importance, even when published in Lithuanian.The colonial approach has provided a new perspective for research on the 19th century, the Soviet period, and the Nazi occupation, focusing on previously understudied topics such as the impact of tsarist and Soviet censorship on culture, the activities of pro-Communist artists during the interwar period, the discourse surrounding the Great Patriotic War versus the Second World War, the art of war refugees, strategies and practices of cultural Sovietisation, and similar themes. The most common way of publicising the results of these studies is through curatorial exhibitions accompanied by comprehensive catalogs (such as those by Giedrė Jankevičiūtė, Gabrielė Radzevičiūtė, Indrė Urbelytė, etc.), as the research primarily centers on artifacts that were previously unseen by the public and even unknown to professionals.A separate area of research focuses on women’s art and photography, which has been heavily influenced by the social theory of art (as seen in the works of Algė Andriulytė, Laima Kreivytė, Agnė Narušytė, Rasa Žukienė). The application of this methodological approach, i.e. social art theory, has led to a shift in art history towards the history of society, fostering collaborations between art historians and social historians. This is particularly evident in research on the history of everyday life, Holocaust art, and art under Soviet and Nazi occupational regimes.

Exhibition histories and provenance studies are growing fields of interest in art historical scholarship, also in the Baltic region. What do these approaches have to offer to art history? In the conference of Baltic art historians in Vilnius in fall 2024, nearly half the papers were dealing with exhibition histories from one perspective or another. Why has the history of exhibitions grown to be so prominent in Baltic scholarship today? Most of these scholars are dealing with Soviet- or post-Soviet-era art, design or architecture exhibitions, but I will argue that this perspective also has a lot to offer to early-20th-century history of art, allowing to look not only at the relationship between different ethnic communities participating in an exhibition, but also the popular and political dimensions of art. Reconstructing a historical exhibition can mean an intellectual exercise in the form of a scholarly article, but it can also mean a physical reconstruction, a critical remake. My paper seeks to address the main challenges in the latter case.

Piotrowski's concept of horizontal art history, which sought to abolish the vertical model of the hierarchical canon of Western modernism, still resonates strongly in Central Europe. Piotrowski proposed to abandon the universalist concept of the modernist centre, to emphasise its own positionality and to examine its artistic production in balance with the art of previously marginalised places. However, his theory could be expanded by the notion of ‘inter-imperiality’ of longue-durée politics in global context, suggested by the literary historian Laura Doyle., The concept aptly captures the positioning of the buffer zones of the minor states between the vying empires. It engenders the possibility of revaluing the contribution to world art and culture of artists who were previously marginalised and lived in the shadow of political and cultural empires, while subversively using their rivalries to promote their own culture. The present paper will attempt to extend Piotrowski's approach, drawing in particular on the suggestions of theory of ‘inter-imperiality’, and simultaneously will also attempt to adapt Doyle's concept to the specific situation of Central Europe. It will propose to modify the notion of ‘inter-imperiality’ and to think of the cultural space of marginalised countries in Central Europe as ‘liminal spaces’ that have shaped their modern art also in their own right, not merely in response to the inputs of competing imperial agents. Admitting the autonomous activity of minority players from ‘liminal spaces’ also absolves them of innocence in relation to their participation in global imperialism. Thus, the paper will suggest that artists and actors from marginalized Central European countries may have operated towards other ‘liminal spaces’ from a position of imperial power - either for their own benefit or for the benefit of the empire to which they were at the time aligned.

Recently we all have realized that the region which we call the Central Europe is much more dynamic than we could ever had imaginated. In terms of understanding common aspects of its History of Art we are walking on the path defined by Piotr Piotrowski (1952-2015) as Horizontal Art History. It has been followed, interpreted and polemized by many art historians not only from our region.For almost ten years I was trying to work on the theoretical concept called Homonymic Curtain. Although it has few interesting outcomes, it still resists to be broadly applicable. As a part of an attempt at self-reflection I have realized, that Piotrowski’s ambition to make Horizontal Art History global through “Periferies of the World Unite” criteria, might be sui generis trap. I am afraid more peripheral examples we add, more we isolate the art we talk about.In my paper I will promote two possible ways of thinking about this common problem. First is socio-historical, puting Polish, Czech, Slovak and Hungarian angles of view onto Central European Art History to certain kind of opposition (Rashomon Effect). To overcross this segregation - in the second part - I am thinking about the same region in common. I compare it to the movement of pendulum, which always can appear only on one side of the space, to put the emphasis right there and leting free space behind, immediately to make a back move to make the other constellation possible.

The paper will focus on the critical reception of Piotr Piotrowski's concept of horizontal art history through the lens of Marxist philosophy and ecological Marxism. It will focus on demonstrating the lack of class-based elements in horizontal art history, without which, as I will argue, it is not horizontal enough. In addition, I will look at the underlying concept of geography and ask whether horizontal art history is a form of geography. Finally, I will question the usefulness of the concept in the context of post-anthropocentrism. I will reconcile horizontality with the species hierarchy that lies behind it and point out the analogies of the species hierarchy to class structure and the related relations of production. Horizontal art history will be juxtaposed with the current of ecological Marxism, the theories of Malm and Morton. 

Since Piotr Piotrowski published his article on horizontal art history, the academic landscape has changed considerably. Inequalities persist, and central and eastern Europe continue to be ‘minor’ subjects in the curricula of European and North American universities, and of relatively marginal interest to art historians and critics in New York, Paris, London and Rome, for example. However, many scholars from the region have now found a more prominent international voice, publishing with global publishing houses. It would be too soon, however, to conclude that Piotrowski’s arguments are no longer of relevance. Universities from central and eastern Europe arguably still underperform in international league tables, and countries from the region have had limited success with bodies such as the European Research Council. National governments have recently begun adopting policies intended to rectify this situation, yet with mixed results.This paper is less concerned with the specifics of art history than with the larger context of university and institutional culture in central and eastern Europe in which the problems identified by Piotrowski played out. Without wishing to dismiss or underplay the significant logistical and other obstacles that still face academic researchers in central and eastern Europe, it argues that many of the problems he described are home-grown, products of a culture that has ended up being counter-productive. In addition, it argues, the steps taken by education ministries threaten to create new problems rather than necessarily solve old ones. The paper takes, as a case study, the Czech Republic, with which the author is most familiar, but this is based on the view that many of the systemic issues it identifies have their parallels elsewhere in the region, including in Hungary.

According to Francois Soluage, the essential characteristic of photography is what the photographer does against time. Let us turn this assumption around and see what the photographer can do for time. In my lecture, I will attempt to outline the typology of the time aspect of photography through examples. I consider it important to supplement all this with the technical characteristics of the photographic process. I will particularly discuss the example of photo series. Starting from the issue of time that never existed (constructed time), through dream time, in addition to the questions of memory politics of “disappeared time”, I will also criticize the concept of highlighted time (in the sense of Lessing’s “productive moment”) in my examination. In addition to the “internal time” appearing within the composition, within the problem area arising in the space-time relationship, “differance”, movement, process, and narrative elements come into focus. In my analysis, in addition to examples of time representing duration (stroboscopic or chronophotographic representation) or compressed time, I would also like to address the issue of the time gap, which is formed by the possible gap, “independent time”, between the foreground/background. The latter also characterizes the functioning of photomontages. I would like to present all of these with foreign and hungarian examples.

In 20th-century family photo albums, as the decades progressed,we find more and more pictures taken by people who did not practice photography as a profession. Photographing the family was a leisure activity, its products were not intended to be seen by the public, and if the person taking the photos was a family member, the pictures could record intimate moments and feelings. When organised into an album, the photos gained the dimension of temporality: the conscious choices of the album’s producer turned them into the parts of a story that they wanted to tell and remember. The paper analyses Piroska Purgát’s mid-20^th-century family albums, highlighting the characteristics of the making and the structure of such photographic objects, and identifying the tools of visualising the temporal aspect of the recorded moments. What makes these albums special is the fact that among the family members taking the photos there were three professionals. They are Piroska Purgát (1926–2011), also the producer of the albums, and her two uncles, Károly Kukorelli and Jenő Kukorelli. Although the professional gaze and the photography skills of these three people do not change the personal nature of the material, the paper points out, mainly with respect to the visualization of time, that their awareness as creators and their considerations about composition played a major role in taking the photos and in using the paper prints.

One of the basic assumptions about photographs could be that the passage of time no longer affects the represented subject, so that only the printed matter decays or decomposes in time. One could think of photographs as solid fragments of history, time capsules in which a moment has been caught in a trap set by technical mediation. But the relationship between photography and its subject is far from simple. In the metaphysical space of the photographic print, objects continue to have qualities that unfold in time. Neither the photographic space nor the time contained within the photograph ends up structuring the visible. The space and time of the image are real, but not identical to the external space and time. The systems and qualities of endophotographic objects cannot be described by the same kinematic parameters as the world outside the image. I intend to discuss the photographs of Francesca Woodman and Helena Almeida that were produced in the 1970s. My study will attempt to answer the question of what qualities of reality are revealed by the internal space and time of the photograph. What visual, compositional choices determine the space-time system of the image in which the objects unfold their qualities? At the same time, I seek to answer the question: is it possible to conduct a political analysis of the space-time systems of Almeida's and Woodman's photographic work?

How can photography capture the world of theatre? How can photography make the present of theatre part of the past and cultural memory? How can media differences be resolved? Is the photographed moment, taken from the dramatic action, a record of the past or a message for the future? The aims and methods of theatre photography have undergone a significant transformation in recent decades. In the past, photographs of stage scenes were primarily documented and used as illustrations for the printed press, but today the visual world of a theatre performance is available to the audience on digital platforms before the premiere.
As Marvin Carlson pointed out in the context of theatre posters, programmes and reviews, these tools are not only sources of information, but also the first strategies for the audience to interpret the theatre performance. Theatrical photography is now also able to affect and stimulate the audience's expectations and influence the viewer's current interpretation. In my research, I examine the related questions, based mainly on the photographs from the archive of the Csiky Gergely Theatre in Kaposvár.

In the second decade of the twenty-first century, a new materialist philosophy with an ecological horizon has infused anti-capitalist critical art with new energy. The writings of Donna Haraway, Jane Bennett, Karen Barad, Timothy Morton and Graham Harman have inspired a number of art exhibitions of global significance. The inspiration is moreover mutual and symbiotic. Philosophers and aesthetes are often inspired by artistic visions and theories ranging from new wave science fiction to surrealism and dark romanticism, as exemplified by the cover of Bennett's Vibrant Matter, with an installation by Cornelia Parker that evokes the traditions of vitalism, panpsychism and animism. In my presentation, I would like to analyse the exhibition First Songs of Sympoiesis by a Hungarian art project, Alagya (Szilvia Bolla and Áron Lődi), in this philosophical and aesthetic context. The term sympoiesis is linked to the work of Haraway, who revisits the theory of autopoiesis (Maturana-Varela), while the mood of the exhibition also evokes the visual culture of new weird literature, with a special focus on the work of China Miéville (Bas-Lag trilogy). Miéville, in turn, is linked in many ways to the art of surrealism (especially Max Ernst) and to the Bretonian aesthetics of merveilleux (marvellous), which in turn integrates the European and non-European traditions of animism and analogism that are recurring in contemporary critical art.

As an ecological artist, I draw on new materialist theories to trace the fractured cycle of phosphorus—a fundamental nutrient for all life on Earth. Following its flows across time and place, I reframe phosphorus not as an inert resource but as an active, agentic substance entangled in social, ecological, and metabolic relations. Circulating through geological, biological, and agricultural systems, phosphorus has been ruptured by industrial exploitation; its cycle transformed into a site of crisis. Large-scale phosphate rock mining fuels an extractive agricultural model that prioritises short-term productivity over ecological renewal, severing the reciprocal flows of matter. Meanwhile, phosphorus-rich organic waste is systematically excluded from natural cycles, reinforcing a linear metabolism that depletes soils and pollutes waters. This paradox reflects a deeper material dissonance within anthropogenic landscapes, where matter is reclassified, diverted, and controlled rather than allowed to move within its own temporalities. Through site-specific installations, participatory rituals, and speculative narratives, I explore how artistic practice can intervene in these ruptures—revealing phosphorus as more than an industrial commodity and re-situating human agency within regenerative cycles. Composting, in this context, emerges as a counter-practice that resists the abstraction of phosphorus, restoring its presence as an elemental force in soil, food, and time.

Visionary art, inspired by the shift in perspective towards a (hyper)spatial horizon, markedly diverges from the postmodern ethos. These images, often inspired by psychedelic experiences, are not merely rearrangements of existing symbols and codes, but potential windows to alternative realities. My research focuses on recognizing the agency of non-human entities and dimensions within these works, by developing a novel analytical methodology. This methodology, based on compositional interpretation, uncovers the spatial dynamics and networks inherent in visionary images. I examine how the constellation of agency between human and non-human entities changes the interpretative framework of these images. My conclusion is that these images present completely novel spaces, in fact which are glimpses of one hyperspace. The presentation extends the discourse towards artificial intelligence and non-human intelligences, emphasizing the need for developing new methodologies that align with contemporary epistemology.

When reading the name of Béla Kondor, who lived in the middle of the 20th century, few people would think of new materialism as a theoretical approach. In the 1960s, in the midst of the space race, the emphasis was not on the machines, but on the astronauts who controlled them and the engineers who created them, the human heroes of the era. In the Cold War context, the fight to conquer the Moon was not about the Moon, but about putting a man on it. Those familiar with Kondor's work and the discourse on his art also interpret him in terms of universalism and humanist anthropocentrism, describing his apocalyptic visions as a warning prophecy against techno-optimism. Is it really only anti-humanism that destroys man that can be interpreted from his works? Do we find ideas that are compatible with our contemporary fears about the rise of technology replacing man, or our optimism about cyborg existence? Focusing on the large-scale painting Astronauts by Kondor, presented in 1970, I will take a deep dive into the techno-optimistic imagination of the 1960s and, through the artist's hybrid machine-man construct, into his apocalyptic predictions, which have a certain kind of posthuman flavour.

The terms horticulturist and horticulture appear with increasing frequency in the press, in economic records, in directories of addresses, goods, and commodities, and other sources from the 1830s onwards. In the mid-1800s, the term horticulturist referred to gardeners who were professionally engaged in the cultivation and trade of ornamental plants, who sometimes also worked in urban panning, landscaping, garden design and maintenance, did plant breeding, and provided expert advice, thus serving the growing floral and ornamental needs of urbanites in addition to the owners of the rural estates that employed them. For a long time, the affix -culture also referred to an artistic, innovative activity which, in addition to the activities of cultivation and plant breeding, placed equal emphasis on creativity, innovation, and design, thus elevating the profession of ornamental horticulture to the ranks of the arts and its representatives to the ranks of artists.The ornamental gardens created by horticulturists (castle parks, public parks, bathing gardens, etc.) became a relaxing and useful community space for the contemporary citizenry's leisure time in the modern sense. It is no coincidence that the administrators of manor estates, as well as developing Hungarian towns, in an attempt to catch up with Western models, first tried to attract and employ "foreign," i.e., "alien," more prominent professionals. In the Hungarian vernacular of the time, "abroad" usually referred to the world outside the borders of the Monarchy and the Austrian parts of the Monarchy, and "foreigner/alien" to all those from there: French, Germans, Czech-Moravians, Croatian-Slavonians, Austrians.The wide-ranging expertise of the horticulturists labeled "foreign" / "alien" working in turn-of-the-century Hungary quickly earned them a high level of esteem and respect among the locals, and their ideas and creative work not only fascinated and impressed their fellow Hungarians, but also got them thinking, enriching them with new knowledge.The planned presentation can only provide a broad overview of the members of this narrow but all the more colorful social stratum and their place in society, but it aims to illustrate through a few specific examples why the written and pictorial sources (such as ego-documents still in the private possession of descendants), which can be explored using the criteria, research questions, and classical collection methods of ethnography, have so far escaped the attention of historians and art historians, and how ethnographers can contribute to the results of historical research and garden, urban, and architectural history in these disciplines by collecting, interpreting, and processing them.

The Historical Photo Department of the Hungarian National Museum is the first and largest collection of historical photographs in Hungary. The word “historical” is significant. The collection mainly holds images related to the history of Hungary and its people. Among the photographs, we can find ones made by both famous and unknown photographers, as well as images in perfect condition and worn, deteriorated ones. A photograph is a keeper and mirror of whole reality. Museologists working with the history of photography should know about all that, and the history of gardens as well – an obviously impossible task! A historical photograph is a source both on its own and as a complement to written pieces. Since the history of gardens is an interdisciplinary study, photographs are the same in most cases as well. The online database of the mnm.hu contains more than 30,000 images from the collection of the Historical Photo Department. Searching for the word “garden” yields 857 results, “park” 316, and “castle” 598. But we can also search for the names of famous gardeners or individuals fond of gardens. Of course, not all keywords yield real results, and overlapping might also occur. This means that that 2-3% of the database could be connected to ancient gardens in some way. There are lovely images of castle parks, but also of gardens in POW camps, details of public parks, gardens of private houses. Even a portrait taken outside can contain important details of a park or garden. We can inspect the outside furniture or plants and learn something about the usage of the garden itself too. We keep essential sources for the research of gardens. I would like to present the complexity and diversity of our collection from the perspective of research on the history of gardens, as well as describeone of our new acquisitions, and highlight how the online database grows every day, allowing easily accessible use of resources.

In 1806, Ferenc Kazinczy published a series of garden art articles (including a brief summary of garden theory) in the Hungarian newspaper Hazai Tudósítás, entitled Hotkócz - Ánglus-kertek (Hotkócz - Ánglus Gardens), which is considered by Hungarian art historians as one of the first theoretical works on garden art. Before writing this article, Kazinczy had visited seven early English landscape gardens in Hungary. He visited these sites on his way to captivity (1795) and after his release from captivity in 1803-1806. As a result, some gardens have been preserved for posterity which are not only practically extinct today, but are not even mentioned in the literature on garden history.
In the case of two gardens in particular, such as Ludányhalászi (Ráday manor and garden) in Nógrád county and Ács (Esterházy and later Zichy manor and garden) in Komárom county, Kazinczy is an irreplaceable source: in both cases the former manor house has been so ruined that it is no longer protected. The park in Acs has been destroyed, the one in Ludány is in a poor, neglected state. These places are only remembered through Kazinczy's memory. In their case, archival research proved indispensable, which contribute ignificantly to the knowledge of their former composition and details. The excavated documents relating to the gardens make it possible to authenticate Kazinczy's descriptions and to reconstruct their state in his time.

A basic prerequisite for the research of historic gardens using the archaeological method is the garden history based on visual and written sources, especially the interpretation of representations. It is on the basis of the instrumental measurements and this source material that the archaeological research of the garden in question can be initiated. Based on the experience of these field investigations, this knowledge can greatly help the excavation work, while certainly many objects are also found that were not known from the source material. The lecture will use concrete examples to illustrate the use of historical sources - and the lessons learned from them - in relation to a particular garden. Thus, the so-called northern garden of the Batthyány castle in Körmend and the garden buildings there (especially the orangery), the garden of the Esterházy castle in Fertőd (especially the Lés forest) will be presented. The paper will also discuss the excavation in the surroundings of the castle of Nagycenk, which also revealed a large garden object, the base of a fountain, unknown before. We would also like to give an overview of the investigation of the park of the Szabadkígyós castle.

“If anywhere, then in particular the buildings that serve the needs of children require sunlight, cleanliness, air, and brightness.” (On the Paths to the Future, 1930/4.)
Interwar periods circle of modern architects, the Hungarian CIAM (International Congresses of Modern Architecture) group emphasized adapting the built environment to the society transformed after the First World War. The change in the view of children also fits perfectly into their idea. The group was connected to progressive educational movements in several ways, and the healthy built environment of the child was a cornerstone of their exhibitions. Through the story of Rózsadomb playschool (Zoltán Révész, 1932-1933.), the presentation outlines the network of clients and designers, in which the dominant figures of movement art and progressive educational movements of the era are also present.  The playschool is the only kindergarten building consistently designed along modern architectural and progressive educational principles, as the first of its kind in Hungary. Due to Révész's missing bequest and the lack of biographical information, the method of researching the building differs from the traditional one: in the absence of primary sources, the researcher is forced to examine the persons and factors surrounding the architect and to map the network around him. The people and events that made the house what it is.

Dénes Györgyi returned home from the 1937 Paris World Exhibition with two grand prix. He was also awarded for designing the pavilion and compiling the artworks. However, surviving correspondence and plans reveal that he did not carry out the complex work alone. From the requirement of the call for the tender we can feel that the work was to involve many specialists, in order to 'bring out the full force of the Hungarian artistic spirit'. An art committee was appointed to collect the artworks for the exhibition consisting of Tibor Gerevich, who supported the politically important artists, and Dénes Csánky, the director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest. Dénes Györgyi had to consider the ideas of other architects in many work phases and then had to cooperate with the applied artists who furnished the interior spaces. For example, Gyula Kaesz, the permanent designer of the period's exhibitions of applied arts at home and abroad, was given most of the work in the Paris pavilion. The story is further complicated because the building served to represent the Hungarian state, several political figures with different points of view constantly supervised the works. Among them, the Hungarian government commissioner for the exhibition, Géza Tormay, and his Parisian colleague, Count Andor Teleki, were actively involved at many stages of the process.In my presentation, I show the rich picture that has been assembled so far based on the latest results of my doctoral research.

While in Hungarian architectural history writing, the knowledge of the "great architectural debate" of 1951 has become almost trivial, and slowly the so-called tulip debate, which is considered to be another great debate in historiography, is also becoming trivial, much less is said about the series of debates started by Rezső Szíj, a Reformed pastor, historian of culture and literature in 1967 in the journal Kortárs. Szíj's inaugural article was entitled "Architectural Problems - Fragmentary Notes on Dunaújváros", published two years after the death of the city's chief architect, Tibor Weiner, and calling him to account for all the mistakes that had been made in urban architecture between 1950 and 1965 - in the language of the time, "our socialist urban planning". I believe that Szíj's and the later contributors' critiques are worth examining in more depth, to see what urban planning in Hungary really meant after 1950, and what role Weiner played in it as a planner and then as deputy chairman of the council. I think that the criticisms of Szíj and later contributors are worth looking at in more depth to see what urban planning in Hungary really meant after 1950 and what role Weiner played in it as a planner and then as deputy chairman of the council. We will see that the debate under discussion was about issues that affected our society and an open critique of the system.  Szíj's view, summed up in a single sentence, is that Dunaújváros is not a city. Is that really true?

Ferenc Bán is an outstanding personality of modern Hungarian architecture. In the 1980s he was commissioned to design several churches of different denominations in Szabolcs-Szatmár County. His Roman Catholic church in Nyíregyháza-Borbánya brought the master great professional recognition. Few people know that at the beginning of the decade he also designed two Greek Catholic churches: one in Ófehértó in 1981, the other in Csenger in 1982. Both of them were built, but the one in Ófehértó is not at all mentioned in the literature on the architect's work.  The church in Csenger is referred to several times, but only the plans are reproduced, not the finished building itself. Moreover, in 1998, the latter was sold, given a different function and replaced by another church in the centre of the town, designed by Imre Makovecz, in a completely different style. In my lecture I will explore the historical, artistic, social, aesthetic and economic circumstances that led to the marginalisation of these two churches within the professional oeuvre of Ferenc Bán, to the extent that the church in Ófehértó was completely forgotten.

Among the written sources related to works of art works of art, lists, inventories and catalogues have been the research material for art historians since the birth of the discipline in the mid-19th century. These documents continue to expand and reveal new insights. Their use has long been indispensable, especially for the provenance of works of art and the reconstruction of the history of collections, of groups of works of art that have been destroyed or broken up. However, it is also worth examining the lists as texts and objects with material properties: to explore the motives for their creation,  their content and terminological characteristics. They reveal data and contexts for which we have very few other sources. For example, they shed light on relationship to the objects, the question of possession or collection, the existence of general and/or specialized knowledge about the artworks. In my lecture, I would like to focus on the sources themselves, tracing their evolution from medieval treasury registers to early modern collection catalogues in a contemporary sense. As a museum person, I aim to demonstrate how the surviving corpus of monuments and these sources complement each other, filling in gaps and together creating a broader, more expansive narrative.

According to the written sources of Tamás Nádasdy’s (1498–1562) and Orsolya Kanizsay’s (1520–1571) wedding of 1535 among the Hungarian aristocrats’ precious nuptial gifts a rare piece, a silver ostrich egg cup could be found. My paper deals with this special object.

In addition to traditional art historical methods, research on collection and treasury reconstruction based on archival sources offers many possibilities. The wills of archbishops, lists compiled during inheritance processes, and inventories of chapter treasuries provide insight into the material culture, patronage, collecting, and treasuring activities of the Catholic ecclesiastical elite in the early modern period.
This lecture examines the collecting activities of György Lippay (1642–1666), György Szelepcsényi (1666–1685), and György Széchényi (1685–1695) based on their wills, inheritance documents, inventories and the materials of the Archdiocesan Treasury of Esztergom. By identifying objects of particular significance or popular types, we can better understand 17th-century conceptions of value. The sources also provide insight into the everyday life of the most significant ecclesiastical collection in the early modern Kingdom of Hungary. An analysis of archival sources and collections – featuring exceptional Baroque goldsmithing and liturgical vestments – offers a deeper understanding of the material culture of the archbishops of Esztergom between 1642 and 1695.

In the first half of the 18th century began the cultural rebirth after the Turkish wars and the Rákóczi revolution in Vác as well. During the period of the recovery were Michael Friedrich Althann and his nephew, Michael Karl Althann the leaders of the diocese of Vác. The prelates, who were also well-connected in the imperial court of Vienna, owned secular and ecclesiastical titles, which influenced their art-patronage. (Michael Friedrich Althann, among others, was cardinal and Neapolitan viceroy, Michael Karl Althann was the archbishop of Bari.) Most of the art-pieces, reliques, books and music instruments, which got to Vác thanks to the Althann bishops, got lost during the time, but we have written sources about them, such as the reports of canonical visitations, inventories or testaments. Researches were made about the art pieces and reliques, which still exist today in Vác. These objects make the researchers to examine the objects, which are known only from the written sources. During Michael Friedrich Althann and his nephew, appeared Italian cultural impacts for a short time in Vác, which were thanked to the short period, when the Neapolitan Kingdom was the part of the Habsburg Monarchy. How strong and in which from appeared the Italian cultural impacts in Vác? What kind of information can we get even from the written sources, if they do not contain precise object descriptions? I am looking for the answers for these questions through the example from Vác.  

The presentation focuses on anonymous design, as an area invisible to our aesthetic experience routine, and within it the collector work of Franco Clivio, Swiss designer and teacher. According to Clivio's confession, by collecting ordinary, everyday objects, he acquires intelligent chains of ideas. He bases his practice on the inspiration gained from anonymous design, excludes stylistic pressure from the design process, starts instead from archetypes, and brings banal solutions to life. Clivio's work and teaching method encourage us to question the validity of the social construction that objects of aesthetic contemplation are found in places designated by experts - mostly in museums. The same qualities can be examined in objects related to anonymous design as in the case of design icons. Interpreting and contemplating everyday objects as works of art can lead to the development of an attitude that can pay attention to details, which no longer limits the recipient's ability to seek aesthetic experiences to qualified occasions. In this way, we could see the perception and reception of aesthetics not as an isolated occasion, but as a process or as a routine.

The genre of the poster has always been characterised by a specific dichotomy, forming a border between autonomous fine arts and applied arts. Like fashion and design, it is an integral part of our visual culture; due to its specificity and nature, it has been attributed from very early on a significant power to shape taste and environment.In the socialist period (1957-1979) I have been studying, the process of poster creation and the complex apparatus of multiple bodies behind the mechanism of advertising often did not support the highest quality works. The propagandists favoured artworks that were clichéd and mediocre but which served the socialist ideology of the state.
Between 1948 and 1975, several poster exhibitions were held, where graphic designers presented not only posters but also poster designs. In this way, the exhibition material reinforced the difference in quality between the artists' own ideas and the advertisements promoted by the propaganda machine, which was also detected by the press at the time.Within this rather complex institutional framework I examine the socialist poster - and the materialisation of artistic inspiration - by means of party documents, exhibition catalogues and other printed sources. The Hungarian National Gallery's poster collection serves as the corpus of the research, and the way it was collected also sheds light on the duality of the poster as an art object and as a period document.

Design is deeply intertwined with human existence, carrying forward the social ambitions and artistic commitment of the Bauhaus into contemporary contexts. My research explores how objects related to female sexuality and pleasure have evolved at the intersection of social acceptance and design development. Using vibrators as a case study, I examine the aesthetic, social, and political dimensions of these objects.
Pleasure objects are shaped not only by technological and aesthetic aspects, but also by cultural and political meanings. Their design reflects decisions about who they are made for, what experiences they offer, and who is excluded from the design process. As John Heskett states, objects are “a crucial expression of ideas of how we could or should live, put into tangible form”.
This study applies methodologies from design culture and art history to analyze the formal, material, and functional aspects of these objects, alongside their broader social significance. In recent decades, shifting perspectives on sexuality and wellness have led to greater mainstream acceptance of these products, transforming them from taboo items into design-driven pleasure objects available not only in sex shops but also in mainstream retail. By examining this evolution, my research aims to foster a more open discourse on the female body and pleasure while offering new perspectives on the political and ontological dimensions of design.

My paper’s point of departure is the exhibiton Reversed Object that I curated at Ludwig Museum last autumn. The paper discusses the following three topics. 1/ Practical questions: For technical and financial reasons, some works of art that had served as my starting points and inspiration in formulating the concept of the exhibition had to be omitted. By using some of these as examples (Jeremy Deller, Robert Gabris, Rajkamal Kahlon, Malgorzata Mirga-Tas, Danh Vo), I plan to show the key notions of the curatorial concept. 2/ Theoretical questions: I intend to compare my curatorial concept with the theoretical frameworks of some recent international exhibitions with similar focus to my exhibition (Documenta 15, the 2024 edition of the Venice Biennale), and analyse their local relevance from a decolonial perspective. 3/ Finally, I aim at finding alternative theoretical frameworks to the ethnographic one, that appeared as the main source of reference in the exhibition Reversed Objects. A framework that paradoxically may be closer to an art historical perspective than imagined.

A so far unexamined but clearly delineated part of Zichy's oeuvre consists of the drawings and watercolors he made of Renaissance artists (Michelangelo, Raphael, Correggio, Palissy). These works fit well into the 19th-century trend that defined the role of the artist in relation to the great predecessors. What the Renaissance masters represented – an autonomous artistic status and the success associated with it – stood in stark contrast to the image embodied by the jester-like figure with a cap, Zichy's ironic artistic counterpart. A more nuanced picture of his artistic self-reflection can be obtained if we look at the 19th-century reception history of the artists he depicted and confront this with Zichy's own unique interpretation. Several questions might arise. What patterns of identification can we expect? Who and in what role did he depict? How did Zichy relate to artistic success through placing Correggio at the center of attention? Or – through Michelangelo – to the figure of the autonomous, socially isolated artistic genius. At this point, the presentation also adopts the theoretical perspective emphasized in the call. How can Zichy, the "drawing prince," be interpreted in his particularly close identification with Michelangelo? Can this be seen as a stance in the color-drawing debate of the time, in favor of "neutral ink"? After all, as a contemporary critic claims, "he drew as magnificently as Michelangelo, and his nature could not reconcile with oil painting."

The title was used by Ottó Herman in his 1888 essay Nature - Art to refer to the examples of naturalists who illustrated their own works on zoology or botany. He explained that for a long time it had been thought that there could be no organic link between art and science, and that the artists who produced the illustrations accompanying scientific works were not considered to be true artists. Is there such a boundary between artist and creator? How should we view (sketch) drawings on scientific subjects that were made to better understand and explain their subject? Among other things, these are the questions I will explore in relation with Géza Entz Jr.’s (1875-1943) heritage, part of which is preserved in the Art Collection of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, alongside the Natural History Museum. It consists of autograph notes, both scientific and private; drawings; photographs and various prints. Some of the drawings are related to Entz's biological research, while the rest were made for art’s sake. The lecture will also seek answers to the question of how Entz's work, career and drawing practice fit into the scientist-artist correlation.

In the context of printmaking, technical questions are rarely addressed within art historical discourse, even though, from the artist's perspective, the process of execution is a fundamental component of the work. In Hungarian graphic art of the Kádár era, a distinct group of works can be identified that place the technical instruments of engraving and printing at the center, thereby embodying an artistic attitude that defines the creator as a craftsman. In contrast to the avant-garde's traditional prophet-martyr artist role, this approach is situated in the enclosed environment of the workshop or studio, with a protagonist who is a craftsman-artist engaged in manual labor in monastic solitude. The presentation explores the theoretical writings and artworks related to this emerging artist role that took shape from the late 1960s, through the work of artists such as Rafael Ábrahám, István Engel Tevan, János Józsa, Béla Kondor, Tamás Kovács, Csaba Rékassy, and Dóra Maurer.

The last great period of Gábor Karátson's (1935-2015) painting is the Bible series: he made more than 230 sheets for the six books of the Bible. Most of the watercolors were published "illustrating" five biblical books. The watercolors made for the first book of the Old Testament were only shown in a few exhibitions. The artist has stated on several occasions that painting was the key to understanding for him: "For me, the biblical watercolours are a meditation on the Bible, an exploration of its meanings, a prayer, shall we say, a resumption of an enterprise that painting of earlier ages has always practised and never abandoned." "Imitation" as "the relationship between the object outside the picture and the image on the picture surface" is the subject of investigation: whether the works are illustrations, how far the world of the biblical watercolours can be considered an autonomous, "archetypal" pictorial language, how far it can be independent of the centuries-old iconographic tradition, how far it can be considered a sovereign commentary, and how the Karátson trinity is asserted in these series.

What do we see? A shield made of embossed and chased metal, with biblical scenes on it. What does the analytical research tell us? It is an ornament made for the 1867 Paris World's Fair, where it was awarded a gold medal; the prototype was made by Léonard Morel-Ladeuil for reproduction by electrotyping, the work was executed by Elkington & Co, the patentee of electrotyping, and the illustrations are based on John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost, to commemorate the bicentenary of its composition. The copy was purchased by the Budapest Museum of Decorative Arts at the 1873 World Exhibition in Vienna, so the French artist's work, executed in Britain, came to Budapest via Vienna. Why a shield? Why galvanoplasty? Why wasn't it reproduced by casting or pressing? What kind of interior was it intended for? Does this artwork have an afterlife? What are the terms used for it in the world's major art databases? Can it be compared with other adaptations of Paradise Lost by other forms of art?

Death row or the last day of a condamned man?Munkácsy's painting Death row is undoubtedly one of the iconic pieces of Hungarian art, and this is true even if the term has now become  eroded.  Completed in 1870, the unexpectedly successful work has been treated of both literature and popular writings like a genre painting.
This painting has radically changed Munkácsy's life and painting, and not only in a positive  sense. Whereas the previous eight years had been characterised by a bold, innovative, and decidedly open-minded creative attitude, in the years after the success of the picture, partly because of the high expectations and partly because he was able to move to Paris, he found it difficult to find a way to continue. The present lecture, however, is concerned not with the consequences, but with the antecedents, with Munkácsy's „Hungarian” period, and proposes a broader interpretation, namely that Munkácsy's painting in the 1860s is closely linked to the ideals of the civil revolution and struggle for freedom of 1848-1849, and can only be interpreted in the light of this. This is supported both by the thematically related works of this years and by Munkácsy's autobiographical and other letters.
The narrow conception of the Deas row  as a genre painting  may have been based on the work's French title (La dernier jour d'un condamné), which differs greatly from the much more general „Death row”, as the painter referred from the very first moment to the composition 

If the rapid consumption of images endangers the traditionally slow ‘close reading’ method of art history, we can look at a picture of a building until doomsday, without getting the point. The series of photos or the film already provide more help, but even in the case of a smaller residential building, we cannot avoid studying the floor plans and sections in order to see the internal space system and organism of the house. The analysis of buildings, depending on the construction technique, may require more technical knowledge, while it cannot do without knowing the theories of form and style. However, nothing can replace visiting the building and experiencing it on site.
For analysis, I choose a (non-modern) building from my topography Buda's architecture between the two world wars (1995), which appears in several popular local history blogs. I examine why these posts are liked, but in my own analysis I focus on some important issues, such as the dimension of time and place. The building exists in time, it is transformed, extended, and sometimes demolished. What does the original state mean, how does the description handle the changes? Can a house be interpreted out of its urban-landscape environment? How to deal with such "intangible" concepts as coziness, spatial experience or atmosphere? Can we help in this if we apply the lessons of phenomenology, hermeneutics or Somaesthetics in the art historical discourse?

At first glance, the work is a Renaissance-style portrait of the former iconographer of the Museum of Fine Arts, Edit Lajta – from István Mácsai's series of stylistic quotations from the early 1960s. In addition, behind the portrait of a medievalist with an enigmatic smile, wearing a black overcoat, a hat and a white neck scarf decorated with a drawing of the Duomo in Florence, one can perceive references to a Winnie the Pooh role-play, intellectual gatherings on Fridays, then persecution and a strange journey. Imprisoned and tortured on trumped-up charges in early 1956, Edit Lajta was released in the days of the revolution and, for many years, was denied travel abroad.
In 1965, a journalist linked to the secret service offered her and her husband a passport on the condition that they – the prosecutor and the ex-convict, the professional denouncer and the intellectual – would travel to Italy together.
The portrait, painted after the four of them returned home, was shown in 1965 at Mácsai's first solo exhibition, where the now faded, sarcastic overtones of the picture expressed by the silk scarf, painted with unparalleled care and the smile and straight gaze, unique in the series of his melancholic female models resonated among those informed about the bizarre Grand Tour.
Apparently, the era’s readings of the escapist artistic styles of the time – Historicism, pastiche, paraphrase, and allusion – were conscious of the hidden cultural resistances here and there. 

My talk focuses on a single object, a glazed porcelain sphere, which ceramic artist Júlia Néma first presented in Veszprém in 2023 as part of her Liquid Earth series. The work is titled Icycle.
It is guided by a dual goal: on the one hand, I would like to address what exactly it means to understand such an object. What prejudices need to be set aside — for example: a studio ceramic work is a decorative ornament, and thus has no meaning; or: since this work was made barely two years ago, it does not have the historical perspective that the discipline of art history requires, so it can only be art criticism; and: as art criticism it is certainly subjective — and what knowledge and skills need to be mobilized: first and foremost, the tool of art description, of reflected vision and viewing; the historical and technological knowledge of understanding the objectivity and physical nature of works; the knowledge of the applied arts, design and modern art frameworks in the tension of which the work was created; and finally, the exploration of the social and economic situation in which this work can exist at all, together with other objects with similar artistic and utilitarian functions.
My second goal, of course, is to understand this seemingly simple object beyond the exploration of methodological expectations, by applying them. I believe that the methodological results of such research can be extended to historical objects as well.

The Hungarian and German-language fashion magazines of the 1840s placed great emphasis on the image, driven by the development of printing technology and the public's growing demand for images. The plates were linked to the content of the magazines. Previously, these illustrations had been studied by scholars more from the point of view of the national movement and national topos, while they also contributed to iconographies linked to other cultural and social themes.
The articles, embroidery patterns, music sheets and fashion engravings aimed at women in fashion magazines tended to reflect the ideals of the wife, mother, housewife and national duty. At the same time, in the 1840s, their columns talked a lot about women's emancipation, education, artistic and intellectual achievement, and participation in political affairs. This discourse was shaped by both texts and images in the press. Alongside supportive voices, the discussion of gender equality was accompanied by negative opinions and fears. For example, the reversal of gender roles, even at the level of dress, was a popular theme in the print media of the Reform Era. In my paper, I will examine the plates of fashion magazines to see how and in what contexts the phenomenon of cross-dressing and the figure and dress of the emancipated woman were depicted.

The third wave feminism (starting in the 1990s) saw the emergence of grassroot female organizations and local community-building (growing into national or regional movements). In many cases, these networks have been formed around collective textile-making projects, transforming individual struggles into shared experiences, intimate sisterhoods into visibility in the broader political and social fabric.
This paper argues that craftivism—a fusion of craft and activism—nevertheless is not a contemporary, but a historical phenomenon. Participatory needleworks have historically functioned as vehicles for networking, activism, and solidarity among women in (Austro-)Hungary in the long 19th century. Rediscovering these artefacts and these female communities offers an alternative mode for narrating women’s history in Hungary, one that challenges dominant historiographical approaches and provides a comparative, international framework for understanding women organizing. It brings a revival for needleworks, as well, previously dismissed academic discourses as amateur domestic practices, relegated to the status of mere artifacts rather than performative cultural productions or creative forms of political resistance. Unlike the normative and hegemonic art history, feminist histories of participatory needleworks are part of identity-forming activism and empowerment, connecting past and present.

Art history writing has always favoured thinking in terms of periods, whether we differentiate between creative periods in an artist’s career or successive style movements in European art. However, it has always focused more attention on the early years of artists, on their earliest influences and the factors that shaped their artistic identity. Until recently, how an artist’s career came to a close was rarely examined. For a long time, the art produced in old age was considered taboo and either interpreted as a decline following a mature period, or not presented because it did not fit neatly into the story of an artist’s career.
Among the first and most memorable uses of the term “late style” can be found in Theodor W. Adorno’s 1937 essay “Spätstil Beethoven”. This is the origin of the view that late works form a distinct group that should be examined within their own context, as they possess unique references that may differ from earlier periods.
The complexity of this phenomenon is illustrated by recent works by Géza Perneczky (1936, Keszthely, Hungary) artist and thinker who has opened a new chapter with his expressive and figurative drawings and paintings of the last few years. Alongside his late works, in the lecture will be shown “late works” from different modern and contemporary artists such as Georg Baselitz, Judit Reigl, Gerhard Richter, etc. Their works provide examples of a wide range of end-of-career strategies.

The amusement grounds of Budapest’s City Park served as a popular entertainment option for the lower classes from the end of the 19th century, with various performers and attractions awaiting the urban working class, who were looking for a thrill and some leisure at the weekends. The Lilliput Theatre (1925-1950) was one of these attractions, of which the older generations might still have first-hand memories. The troupe was called to life by Ferenc Gerencsér at Mutatványos square 17., where he operated the institution for a quarter of the 20th century. The theatre’s troupe changed over the years, but as the outdated and derogatory term “Lilliputian” suggets, the actors were little people exclusively. In the summer seasons the Lilliput Theatre put on ten to twelve musical cabaret numbers a day, while in the winter they toured the metropolises of Europe. They were not shy to represent their own minority group and speak up about the struggles related to their height to the press of the times. Their everydays were intertwined with love, fame and artistc self-awareness, but also with exploitation, dissapointment and exclusion. My research deals with the forgotten history and possible interpretations of the Lilliput Theatre, with a particular focus on the social and political zeitgeist of that era, the exhibition practices at the turn of the century (fairs, dime museums, mass entertainment) and the early eugenic discourse in Hungary. During this historical analysis I rely upon the fields theatre history, circus arts and cultural heritage, while I also strive to position the phenomenon of the Lilliput Theatre in the field of international disability studies and freak studies.

The Romanesque church of Nyitrakoros (today Krušovce in Slovakia) represent a rare building type in Hungary which can be characterized with a pair of towers at the western facade combined with single-nave arrangement. The closest analogy can be found at Nyitradivék (Diviaky nad Nitricou, Slovakia), moreover, new archaeological research identified a similar structure in the neighbourhood. This paper will analyse and contextualize this architectural group. During the last years, archaeological research has been conducted in and around the church, including the research of its walls. Studying the facades the building history is better clarified by now. During the investigations, medieval wall paintings have been discovered in the church and the attics, dated to different periods. The restoration of the external facades has been completed by now. It is significant because of its special effects applied taking into consideration the different viewpoints. The interior is still under restoration, provoking debates on the preservation or elimination of medieval details. The present paper intends to reflect all these problems.

In her 1974 volume on wall paintings from the Arpadian period, Melinda Tóth aptly points out the limitations of acquiring an overall picture stemming from the fragmentary nature of the surviving material, extreme even for this notably fragile artistic genre. In the half-century that has passed since then, the range of monuments dating to the Arpadian era has been enriched by several discoveries of wall painting ensembles; their examination may help to refine our picture especially of the last decades of the period.
The extensive painted surface revealed in Cisnădie between 2019 and 2023 is one of the significant discoveries, even if only the preparatory drawings and the impression of colours are fragmentarily preserved in most of the wall paintings. The surviving details provide a unique opportunity to partially reconstruct the decoration program of a Romanesque basilica covering the entire chancel, triumphal arch, as well as the clerestory walls and piers of the nave.
As part of a comprehensive monographic study, this paper aims to identify some compositions and motifs whose iconography has not been clarified so far. It also explores how the fragmentary decoration program fits into tendencies widespread in the region and a larger European context and how it nuances our view of painted programs from the late Arpadian period. At the same time, it puts forward preliminary considerations for refining the thirteenth-century dating proposed so far.

At the center of my presentation is a mysterious embrace. The motif is not unique either in the Bible or in the medieval tradition, as there are many versions of men and women embracing. Because of its secondary placement and unknown original context, one of the reliefs in St Michael's Cathedral in Gyulafehervár is named "The Embracers" after its most tangible element, the intertwining of two figures.
Throughout the history of research, some scholars have identified it as a meeting of Mary and Elizabeth, others have seen it as a love allegory from the Song of Songs, and have seen it as a scene of Sponsus and Sponsa, and also as a scene of temptation, which placed the composition in a narrative of the fall into sin or human weakness. In my presentation, I will offer interpretative perspectives on possible iconographic interpretations of the embossed figure of the Embracer. I will present in detail the role and meaning of the embrace motif in the biblical tradition and in Romanesque art. I will also propose an attempt to determine the original location of the relief in the architectural and sculptural context of the cathedral.

According to a royal charter of 1332 – known from a transcript of 1383 –"authentic in form, false in content”, the Benedictine Abbey of Ják was founded by the Hungarian holy kings. This was what Benedikt Vinković,canon and then bishop of Zagreb and at the same time abbot of Ják, must have had in mind whenhe saw the work of this holy kings in the church of Ják(that is to the 11th century – cf. the dating of the art history to the 1220s–1230s), and in its Western porch with a spectacular figural sculptural ensemble from this periode such as the cathedral of his own diocese dedicated to St. Stephen and founded (indeed) by St. Ladislaus did not have.In 1640, therefore, he commissioned a new porch for the main façade of Zagreb Cathedral, to be made 'on the model' of the Western portal of Ják, from the stone carver Kozma Miller of Gurkfeld (Krško, Slovenia), but it was not completed until after his death in 1643. (This porch was demolished during the restoration of the cathedral, which began after the 1880 earthquake in Zagreb, and its sculptures and some pieces are now preserved in the city museum - Muzej grada Zagreba.)

In my lecture I analyse Dóra Maurer's body of work entitled Space Painting, Buchberg (1982-1983). As part of this, Maurer painted a medieval tower room; made a film about the process; and wrote about her experiences in her text Structural filmmaking, generally and closely.Maurer soon found the medium of photography inadequate for capturing the total experience of space and color. Originally, she planned to film only the finished space. However, while painting in the tower room, she was confronted with the resistance of time, matter and space, and instead of making the process more efficient, she submitted to the „gravitational” force of this particular temporality. At the same time, she felt that this could only be endured by "expressing-interpreting" it, of which film became the means.While filming, Maurer also recorded still images, mostly with the camera itself. The temporality of the photographic still image and of the medium of film are both central to Maurer's oeuvre, but in the case of the film Space Painting she uses the two photographic media in dialogue with each other. In the case of a work whose fundamental motivation is the expression and analysis of the specific temporal experience of making art, I find it particularly productive to examine the role of still and moving images in the film.In my analysis, I examine how Maurer's film attempts to "open up the temporal materiality” of her work, and how she documents „enduring time" (Lisa Baraitser).

In my lecture I will analyse the temporal nexus of the sequence, a photographic image type that (also) appeared in Hungary in the 1970s and was popular/dominant until the mid-1980s. I will focus primarily on the work of some of the artists of the Studio of Young Photographers, such as Bálint Flesch and Antal Jokesz. In the course of my analysis, I will, among other things, discuss the inspirational power of the artistic tendency which used this image type that critiques the phototheory concept which states that the photograph is transparent.  The influence of the artists of the attitude defined by A.D. Coleman in the USA as the Directorial mode in the columns of Artforum, especially Duane Michals and Leslie Krims, has hardly been explored in Hungary, although through their images and their anti-modernist practice the subversive role of the sequence image type in Hungarian photography might be better understood. Although the form of the sequence is heterogeneous, its technique of using a multiplicity of images in a single frame neutralises the fixed present, the magic of the image. In this way, the photographic image is freed from the tyrannical dominance of the lens and the shutter speed, it becomes legible and a different sense of time or timelessness is created.

Since the invention of photography, it has still had a powerful impact on us, although ubiquitous it is still fascinating. Looking at a photograph, a system recording „physicometric data” and a „distinctive biometric system”, our human perception embedded in culture, confront each other, and the power of photography lies in this confrontation we can say with Michel Frizot. According to the French scholar  associating photography with reality at all is a huge fallacy. Photography has access to only one register of reality, and that is light, which can be described by physical laws. However, inspired by the much-referenced ideas of Roland Barthes and Walter Benjamin, photography seems to enter other registers of reality. The photograph can be seen as a metric of memory, a measure of lived experince (duration), if we look at it from the perspective of psychoanalysis; if we read the relevant passages of the renowned book, Barthes’s Camera Lucida in relation to a less referenced, but corresponding passage from Benjamin’s Berlin Chronik. In my presentation I will present this reading.  

In photography, iconic works are often mentioned as collective symbols of modern rituals. Still, little is said about photography as an icon, though, even if it does not have a religious function as a “fact pointing to the reality of God” (Florensky 1972/1988), but as a secular icon (Maynard 1983), photography can open a window between the artist, and the subject appearing in the image, even link the viewer into this communication, either they possess the capacity to contemplate the vision of the icon “with pure reason and consciousness,” or by “moving the faculty of perception of the spirit, dormant deep in the unconscious,” precisely through the act of reception. (Florensky 1972/1988) Photography, to divert Marion’s definition of painting as a paradox, “often points to a miracle – it makes visible that which one should not be able to see and which one is not able to see without astonishment. (Marion 2007/2013) Part of the curiosity and the main source of the aesthetic value of photography “is precisely the transformation that time brings about and how the photograph evades the intentions of its maker.” (Sontag 1973/1981) Photography can become timeless in terms of measurable time as an element of the qualitative concept of time in kairos. In my talk, I wish to explore this issue primarily through the works of contemporary Hungarian photographers, including Zoltán Keresztes and Éva Boglárka Zellei, as well as international references.

The Russian avant-garde of the early nineteen twenties was divided by various concepts and artistic practices that sharply differed from one-another. This new art raised extraordinary interest in Germany, France, and the Netherlands. The new art of a country of a new social order generated hopes for young progressive artists in the West for a new art they might also share and adapt. The names of Vladimir Tatlin, Kazimir Malevich, Alexander Rodchenko, and the terms constructivism and suprematism had become legends in the West before the works themselves became known. When this new art was presented in Western Europe, first in the 1922 Berlin show titled The First Russian Exhibition, organized by great efforts, and then by El Lissitzky's short-lived three-language journal titled Veshsh, Objet, Gegenstand,  disappointment and misunderstanding were voiced in the contemporary press. My lecture would discuss the conceptual, personal, and political reasons and the details of this misunderstanding.

In the 19th century, the opening of the West to the exotic East contained several motivations in the architecture as well. Partly, they wanted to bring the space closer by the ornaments, forming a bridge between the Holy Land and the West in the synagogues built at that time. The reverse was also true, as the missionary activities of Western denominations also took shape in Asia. The stories and atmosphere of the mystical East seemed appropriate scenery, thus many buildings and districts with mosques, Turkish wells and other visual elements were realized in Hungary as well. Later, as part of modern intellectual endeavours, the renewal was seen in the logical structure and use of colors of oriental ornaments, therefore orientalizing decorative elements appeared. This aspiration was strengthened by the experiences of world-traveling scientists and artists, who drew attention to the influence of the forms associated with motives from the Asian life in architecture and related arts. Meanwhile, the constantly developing West became an example of modern art philosophy, which also gained ground in Asian cities. This lecture represents examples of mutual influence of Western and Eastern architevture based on specific aspects, describing the works of Hungarian architects who had the opportunity to design an evangelical church or museum in India, a school in Cambodia regarding the local climatic conditions, or the first bakeries and luxury clinics in modern Japan.

At the first Látkép conference in 2021, I discussed how the Oriental art collection of the Zsolnay factory in Pécs influenced Japonisme in the factory in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The findings were presented in the exhibition Lustrous Butterflies and High-gloss Herons – The Japanese Collection of the Zsolnay Museum and Zsolnay Japonisme (2022). This project also highlighted that numerous japonising Zsolnay creations were not inspired by Japanese (or Chinese) ceramics, but rather by the products of the Herend Porcelain Manufactory.
Herend is one of the earliest representatives of Hungarian Japonisme and an important, internationally recognised player in the 19th-century European porcelain industry. My 2024–2025 research project aims to map Herend’s repertoire of Eastern-inspired patterns, investigate their sources, and explore the manufactory’s network of connections. The key questions of the research are: Since when, and from what sources, has the concept of the "East" been present in Herend’s porcelain art? Which types of Asian ceramics served as models, and how were the borrowed (or appropriated?) motifs transformed? Beyond motifs, did Herend draw on other aspects of Eastern ceramic culture?
The aim of this inquiry is to determine whether, and how, Herend’s range of orientalist products fits within the art-historical framework of Japonisme, and what significance this holds within the historical narrative of the soon 200-year-old manufactory (2026).

The Western-rooted, analytical approach of art history has long marginalized non-Western art. This perspective has had a global impact, shaping the structure of art education in the East as well. A case study of South Korean high school art textbooks reflects the evolving relationship between East and West in academic discourse and education.
In this presentation, I examine the narratives of South Korean upper secondary school art textbooks from the 1950s to the present, exploring how the central role of Western art has shifted, how Korean and Eastern artistic traditions have been integrated, and what political and ideological factors have shaped this process. In the 1950s, Western art was still regarded as a universal norm, but over time, Korean art gained prominence. From the 2010s onward, the influence of global visual culture and applied arts also became apparent.
Through discourse analysis and visual representation studies, I map the changing portrayal of Western and Eastern art, the role of Korean artistic traditions, and the evolution of interpretative frameworks. The findings extend beyond the Korean context: the dominance of Western art history is gradually diminishing, giving way to a pluralistic, global art historical narrative in which the opposition between East and West is increasingly transformed into the dynamic coexistence of cultural identities.

"Neither the WEST nor the EAST, but an interstellar invasion. Back and forth!" – declares the relevant passage of the Hungarofuturist Manifesto (2018), which also outlines the geocultural orientations of the planned lecture. The lecture aims to critically explore various alternative East-futurisms within the speculative world-building strategies of contemporary visual art discourses. 
During the presentation, we will examine contemporary artistic practices that "inhabit" Eurasian landscapes stretching from the eastern side of the former Berlin Wall to the western edge of the Great Wall of China—practices that navigate the boundary between fiction and reality. These include the projects of the Slavs and Tatars collective; the work of Henrike Naumann, originating from the former East German region, and the issues of Ostalgie/Ossiefuturismus; the installations of Monira Al-Qadiri and the GCC collective, as well as the broader phenomenon of Gulf Futurism, which focuses on the Arab Gulf region; and Lawrence Lek’s Sinofuturist imaginative exercises, offering dystopian realist interpretations of contemporary Chinese techno-cultural transformations. 
Through an exploration of these contemporary artistic positions, the lecture ultimately seeks to answer whether—and if so, how—it is possible to transcend the dominant geocultural logic rooted in Cold War paradigms and the future narratives derived from it, which to this day continue to be built upon the dichotomies of East and West?

Geometric construction in Gothic architecture has been a popular research topic for centuries. The extent to which and the method of how quadrature and triangulation were used has long been a subject of debate, as few surviving drawings from the period are available and those that are do not show the design process. Contemporary survey methods, however, allow us to understand the exact geometry of the studied buildings, including their inaccuracies.In my research I have used 3D scanning to make surveys of the buildings I analysed. I converted the resulting data into point clouds from which slices cut in any plane can be easily extracted, making it easy to create floor plans and sections, and these clouds are adequate to take accurate measurements from as well. The precision provided by this method has allowed the reconstruction of probable geometric construction methods in the study of several cases. In this presentation, I will demonstrate the potential of the field scanner survey method using the examples of the Franciscan Church of Szeged-Alsóváros, the Evangelical Church of Nagysink, the Franciscan Church of Gyöngyös-Alsóváros, the Evangelical Church of Medgyes and the Reformed Church of Nyírbátor.

The emergence of artificial intelligence presents many new challenges to both legislators and law enforcers in the system of copyright terms, rights and obligations of the autors and the users too.
In my presentation, I would go over the essential questions of copyright issues that arise in the case of artworks created by generative artificial intelligence (primarily works of art, photos, paintings).
How and what legislation regulates works created by artificial intelligence under current foreign, UE and Hungarian law.
I would also comment on what answers copyright law can currently provide to the difficulties of authorship and originality. What guarantees and legal solutions are suitable for protecting the personal and property rights of authors, if artificial intelligence has used a work protected by copyright? Are there already law cases that can serve as a lesson, and what can be the answer of legal regulation to the challenges of technology?

Digitisation and high-resolution scanning of animated films on celluloid tape, for master copies in good condition, is not a major challenge for film restoration professionals, due to the nature of the medium. However, restoration (or in common jargon remastering) of the animated films produced in the early stages of the transition to digital workflows is far from easy: the low resolution predetermined during production is a major limiting factor. Although there are artificial intelligence-based resolution enhancement tools or upscaling algorithms, these alone are not sufficient for restoration. They have difficulty in recreating the unique, abstract visual worlds of animated films, and in the process important characteristics may be transformed or lost altogether.
The issue of generative AI is of course a matter of great professional debate in the animation community, but it is possible to use these tools in an ethical framework for film restoration The aim of this talk is to present a technical pipeline combining generative AI-based tools and traditional technical solutions for the restoration of low-resolution animated films in a practical and understandable way.

The aim of art historical documentation in practical heritage preservation is to repurpose information for scientific research, relying on interdisciplinary methods. One such method is the visual recording of data, which is based on architectural surveys, point cloud models, and the views generated from them for on-site research and the documentation of the masonry. However, these approaches are often insufficient or may not align with the objectives of architectural historical research. Depending on site conditions, it is necessary to apply available methods, such as photographic recording, manual surveys, and textual descriptions. Additionally, scanning and 3D modelling are increasingly regarded as fundamental tools, contributing to a more advanced level of data processing. These methods are successfully applicable not only to buildings but also to artefact documentation, such as stone carvings.
In recent years, widely accessible software and digital tools have expanded the practice of wall research and architectural surveys. The purpose of the paper is to present two digitisation methods used in art historical research through examples from Transylvanian medieval buildings, with a special focus on the lapidarium collection of St Michael’s Church in Cluj-Napoca: LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) laser scanning and photogrammetry as spatial modelling technologies.