RUSINKO, Marcela. Art collections - seeking middle class identities? Constructing social status as a collector in interwar Czechoslovakia. In In the Shadow of the Habsburg Empire? Art and Culture in Interwar Central Europe, International Conference, Brno, Moravian Gallery, 12–14 September, 2019. 2019.
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Basic information
Original name Art collections - seeking middle class identities? Constructing social status as a collector in interwar Czechoslovakia
Authors RUSINKO, Marcela.
Edition In the Shadow of the Habsburg Empire? Art and Culture in Interwar Central Europe, International Conference, Brno, Moravian Gallery, 12–14 September, 2019, 2019.
Other information
Original language English
Type of outcome Requested lectures
Field of Study 60401 Arts, Art history
Country of publisher Czech Republic
Confidentiality degree is not subject to a state or trade secret
WWW URL
Organization unit Faculty of Arts
Keywords in English art collections; interwar Central Europe; art market; Czechoslovakia; middle class; social identity; social status
Changed by Changed by: doc. Mgr. Pavel Suchánek, Ph.D., učo 19371. Changed: 12/3/2020 08:35.
Abstract
The art collecting phenomenon needs to be understood as one of the most significant and complex attribute of the social elites’ lifestyle. At least from the dawn of Early modern era, the dynamically developing network of the noble residences with their specific material, symbolical and spiritual cultures formed the constituent parts of the political and social system. Thus, the fall of the Habsburg Monarchy in Central Europe was strongly accompanied with the changing social elites. Not by the coincidence, one of the first laws adopted by the newly established Czechoslovak Republic was that on the abolition of the noble titles. The economic powers and social positions of “old regime” representatives were deeply hurt also by the discriminatory land reforms that followed. From this point of view, we can look at the 1920s and 1930s as the decades of the dynamic social restructuring processes and strong flows of the artistic assets, all these accompanied by the intense searching for the new modern social and individual identity. The paper will take a look at the specific phenomenon of dozens of art collections of businessmen, bankers, lawyers, attorneys, doctors – representatives of the quickly developing (upper) middle class – that have been founded or built during this period as the notable integral parts of the social identity prospective constructs and private (or also professional) lives lived by their owners. What was the structure and referring points of these collections? Did they mostly refer to their noble predecessors (concerning the main aspects) or rather to the national altruistic motives and modernist ambitions of their owners? The paper is intended to be the report on the current state of the research on interwar period Czechoslovakia art collecting, opening the new interdisciplinary interpretational points of view as well as the field for contextual comparisons and connections that could help us search and share common aspects of bordering countries and regions (Prague, Brno, Vienna, Budapest, Kosice).
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