Research on national art and global movements
Ewa Machotka receives funding from the Swedish Research Council for the research project “Can Art be National? Japonisme and Transculturation in Turn of the Century Sweden and Poland”
Ewa Machotka, the project leader, is a professor of Japanese language and culture at the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. Katarina Wadstein MacLeod, the project participant and a professor of History of Art at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics, will also contribute to the project. The Swedish Research Council has granted SEK 4,868,000 for this project.
Project description
Motivated by a revival of discourses on national canons of art across Europe, the aim of this project in Art History is to advance a critical understanding of the role of transculturation in the construction of national art in the 19th c. In focus are the parallel cultural contexts in Sweden and Poland, both renegotiating their national identity, and the role of Japonisme in shaping these national imaginations.
The paradox is that while modern art in Sweden and Poland pursued divergent narratives of national culture, it shared engagements with Japonisme. Art that emerged in this transculturation became a part of the national canon. This prompts the question what acts of cultural appropriation play a role in the emergence of national art in European nations? The project will conduct comparative studies of Thielska Gallery Collection, Stockholm and Feliks Jasieński Collection, Kraków. Viewed as articulations of discourse on national art and Japonisme they will be studied via formalist and materialist methodologies, and theories of transculturation, hybridization and cultural nationalism.
To understand what national art and cultural canon means in today’s globalized world we need to interrogate the overlaps of cultures constructing the premise for this art. The significance of this project is its potential to demonstrate political agency of art, and expose the ideological fallacy of current discourses on national cannons of art afflicting democracies across Europe.
About Ewa Machotka
Ewa Machotka is a professor of Japanese language and culture. She is an art historian specializing in intercultural and interdisciplinary study of Japanese visual arts. Among others, she has explored the role of art in the formation of national identity in Japan, and the interplay between Orientalism, nationalism and globalization in Polish and Japanese art. She has also worked as a museum curator, and researched exhibition strategies and collection histories.
More about Ewa Machotkas research
About Katarina Wadstein MacLeod
Katarina Wadstein MacLeod is professor of Art Studies at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics. Her research is in modern and contemporary art. Among other things, she has worked on questions about the representation of the home, depictions of nature and center and periphery, as well as exhibition history at Swedish museums and art galleries.
More about Katarina Wadstein MacLeod's research
Last updated: November 21, 2023
Source: Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies