MAIPR
EUROPEAN CULTURE – PAST PRESENT FUTURE
READING LIST:
The past is a foreign country – Understanding the past and history in
European culture
As lucidly noted by David Lowenthal in this work The Past is a Foreign Country, the concept of the past
is both less and more than history. But what is the past? And how does it differ from history? What is
memory in relation to the past? Even today this presents a highly contested field among historians and
historiographers. It could be said, that awareness of the past is common to all individuals, and that it
shares both the mechanisms and its subject matter with the concepts of history and memory.
Assigned reading:
John Tosh, The Pursuit of History, London 2006,21-50
If you do not like the past – change it! The manipulation of time in European
culture
History, by its very nature and due to the fact that it is always created from one viewpoint, can only treat
one section and never the entire past. Also, it can never recover the past since the past has been, it has
passed and cannot be retrieved. For that very reason we can never know the real outlines of a historical
truth, which means that truth can always be altered, history rewritten and time shifted.
Assigned reading:
David Lowenthal The Past is a Foreign Country, CUP 2005, 185-237
Further reading for topics 1&2:
Marc Ferro, The Use and Abuse of History, Rautlege and Kegan Paul, 1984
David Lowenthal The Past is a Foreign Country, CUP 2005
J.H. Plumb, The Death of the Past, Mackmillan, 1969.
Theories of Memory: A Reader, ed. Michael Rossington, Edinburgh Uni. Press, 2007
John Tosh, The Pursuit of History, London 2006.
The world of fragile harmony - the longing for the erasure of time and utopia
in European culture
From the earliest Sumerian epics (Dilmun) utopia was an ideal land, rich, fecund, florid and fertile, the
place without illness, wars or imperfections of any sort. T Aristotle’s definition of utopia comprised its
temporal quality – outopia means the land which is not, the land that exists outside the realms of time.
Every utopia has to be both geographically and temporally as far removed from our own existence as
possible. It has to be out of grasp, dislocated in order to be desired forever. Such an absolute ideal could
not, and must not, be reached. For that very reason the location of a utopia, both in space and time, cannot
be fully explained and its map cannot be drawn.
Assigned reading:
Lyman Tower Sargent, Utopianism a very short introduction, CUP, 2010.10-50.
Mnemosyne and peculiar case of Aby Warburg
Focus on Aby Warburg (1866-1929), one of the legendary figures of twentieth century cultural history
reveals a hidden depth beyond capacites of european humanistic tradition. Presentation holds a glimse
into unknown territories of experience between documentary data from the past and mythological fiction
as well as Warburg's own age of modernist mechanical progress beyond potency of pictorial iconography
within European Renaissance Art.
Further reading:
Philippe-Alain Michaud, Aby Warburg and the Image in Motion, MIT Press, Cambridge MA 2004.
Art within public spectacles – closing of 19th century
Public spectacle runs from about 1880 to 1905, exploring the second half of the nineteenth century in
which a new way of seeing was introduced, but also refereeing to previous times. The shift from an
emergence of subjective vision by gathering the inventions and creations in the past of public attention,
even in smaller scales as intimate sensations of personal performance and tricks. By emulating of objects,
shadows and optical illusions, the artistic hint came into public consciousness . This was helped by
invention of moving images, as well as the pervading presence of photography in western societies and
Europe in all of it's differences in front of diverse audience.
Further reading:
Crary, Jonathan. Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle and Modern Culture. Cambridge
(Mass.): MIT Press, 2000.
Eyes, Lies and Illusions, Hayward gallery, London 2004.
The End of Time – Apocalyptic Depictions and Infernal Characters
Origin of doomesday, monstrosity and scopes of revelation is a pervading phenomena and a continuing
cultural, artistic nad media attention, while rising debates in ethics, politics and public belief of european
public.Apocalyspe is mediated also as a consumerist issue and most recent depictions rely on it's
popularity and multitude of variations in all fileds of imaginary outcomes.
Further reading:
Cohn, Norman, The Pursuit of Millenium, Oxford University Press; Oxford 1970.
Van Alphen, Ernst, Caught by history : Holocaust effects in contemporary art, literature, and theory,
Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 1997.
Baltrusaitis, Jurgis, Le Moyen-Âge fantastique. Antiquités et exotismes dans l'art gothique, Paris 1955
(prevod: Fantasticni srednji vijek, Svjetlost, Sarajevo 1991.)
La Capra, Dominick. Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
2001.
'Jake and Dinos Chapman' Tate Britain, London 2007.Archer Michael, Apocalypse: Beauty and Horror
in Contemporary Art Royal Academy Of Arts, London 2000.
Konrad Lorentz, Die Acht Todsuenden der zivilisierten Menschkeit, Piper Verkag, Muenchen 1974.
Classification of the space – Belgrade Artist Leonid Šejka
Question of formation of late modernist artistic space atrributed to a regional tiny revolution of Belgrade
artist Leonid Sejka (1932-1970). He adressed european humanistic tradition and pictorial illusionism as
escapism in the midst of social changes and turmoil of establishing a core of consumer postmodern
societies even under changes in communist states in years after a 'cold war'period in global politics.
Included after a presentation of Slate Sejka's composites of arts and theoretical phantasm, a documentary
film on the artist.
Further reading:
Marcuse - Critical Theory and the Promise of Utopia By Robert Pippin, Andrew Feenberg, and Charles
P. Webel, Bergin & Garvey Paperback. South Hadley, Mass. 1988.
Ješa Denegri, Pedesete; Šezedeste: teme srpske umetnosti Svetovi NS,1993;
1995.
Bora Ćosić, Bekstvo Šejkino na zapad,u: Sodoma i Gomora, Nolit. Bg 1984
Kristine Stilles, Material Culture and Everyday Life, u: Theories and Documents of XX century
Art, UCLA, Berkeley, Los Angeles 1996.
Elizabeth Wilson, The Death of Bohemia, u: Ambient Fears, Rivers Oram Pres, London 1996.
6. Entoni Gidens, Modernost ili postmodernost?, u: Posledice modernosti, Filip Visnjic, 1998.
Elegies of immigration and exile – from writings to visual culture
States of emergence in diverse aftermaths of modernism inside 20th century reveal an ongoing social,
historical, but moreover personal exeriences of exile, forced immigration within violent outcomes. This
vast topic is seen inside contemporary arts visual practise mainly based on literature and writings
througout 20th century as well as further back into european past.
Further reading:
Searching for Sebald Photography After W. G. Sebald
(essays and artworks), Institute of Cultural Inquiry, Los Angeles, 2007.
W.G. Sebald: Austerlic, Paideia, Beograd 2009.
Jean-Christophe Royoux , Marina Warner et al., Tacita Dean (Contemporary Artists (Phaidon,
London 2006.