From the Transcaucasian Periphery to the Georgian Socialist Soviet Republic: Medieval Art of Georgia Through the Pages of Russian Encyclopaedias (1893–1949)

FILIPOVÁ, Alžběta. From the Transcaucasian Periphery to the Georgian Socialist Soviet Republic: Medieval Art of Georgia Through the Pages of Russian Encyclopaedias (1893–1949). In Comparing Colonial Discourses: Africa and the Caucasus in Russian Thought. 2023.

Basic information

• Original name: From the Transcaucasian Periphery to the Georgian Socialist Soviet Republic: Medieval Art of Georgia Through the Pages of Russian Encyclopaedias (1893–1949)
• Authors: FILIPOVÁ, Alžběta.
• Edition: Comparing Colonial Discourses: Africa and the Caucasus in Russian Thought, 2023.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Presentations at conferences
• Field of Study: 60401 Arts, Art history
• Country of publisher: Italy
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• Organization unit: Faculty of Arts
• Keywords in English: Russian Colonialism; Great Soviet Encyclopaedia; Medieval Georgia; Historiography of Art History
• Tags: International impact

Abstract

The paper investigates the progressive establishment of the dominant Russian narrative that shaped the art of South Caucasus as the product of a geographically and culturally peripheral zone of assimilation and imitation of Byzantium. It focuses specifically on the entries on Georgian Art in the most large-scale distributed scientific channels providing the summary and the ratification of current knowledge, the Russian encyclopaedias. It analyses, contextualizes and compares the entries in two editions of the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary (from 1893 and 1913) and in two editions of the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia (from 1930 and 1949), in order to see the change of paradigm on Georgian medieval art, considered merely an unoriginal part of the whole Transcaucasia in the Imperial times, and gaining more “national” autonomy in the Soviet times, while still remaining under the incontrovertible Byzantine influence.

Links

• 101026166, interní kód MU: Name: Demarginalizing Medieval Georgia: History of Art History between Colonial Perspective and Nationalist Appropriation (1921–1991)

Investor: European Union, MSCA Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (Excellent Science)