Non-European and
ropean "Others" in
entral European
modernis
Kovacs, Eva. (2021). Black Bodies, White Bodies - 'Gypsy' Images in Central Europe at the Turn of the Twentieth Centun
(1880-1920). Critical Romani Studies, 3(2), 72-93. https://doi.org/10.29098/crs.v3i2.75
"We are used to thinking of gaze and image as separate,
and therefore we speak of looking at an image. (...)
however, images form in adapting the gaze. The
complicity between body and gaze leads to the image"Jonathan Crary
Techniques
of the Observer
ON VISION AND MODERNITY
IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Hans Belting, 'Body and Image'. In Iconic Power. Cultural Sociology, 2012,
187.
"...the history of vision is not merely the history of
representations; it also encompasses the history of the
status of the observer at the intersection of relations
between the body and forms of institutionalised discursive
power."
the panoptic regime of Modernity (Michel Foucault):
ernalised, visible yet unverifiable power
e Panopticon of Central European Modern
'Gypsies' become pendants of tne African
Asian 'primitives' of Western Europe.
Kovacs, p.76,
the optical unconscious (Walter Benjamin): aspects
reality that register in our senses but are never qu
processed consciously
What happens if we combine images comparisons in new ways? The "hysterical" female body
r
• 1
1/ t | t t i j u * i * « - i £ '
Albert Londe, Mile Banares (hysterie); Tympanite,
c. 1883, collection Texbraun
André Kertész, Untitled, Abony, 1921
Ministére de la Culture (AFDPP),
France.
André Kertész (1894-1985)
Horizontal Art History?
Piotr Piotrowski (1952-2015)
"The non-European 'Other' is a real 'Other', while the
Central or Eastern European Other is a 'not-quite-Other' or
a 'close Other'."
Piotr Piotrowski (2009), "Toward a Horizontal History of the European AvantGarde",
52.
"While it seems obvious that the modern art of the margins
developed under the influence of the West, it appears much
less obvious to ask how the developments in non-Western
art affected the history of Western art or, more precisely, the
perception of Western art.
Here, then, a question arises: how does marginal art
change the perception of the art of the center? How is the
center perceived, not from the center itself - the place
usually occupied by the historian of modern art - but from a
marginal position?"
Piotr Piotrowski (2009), "Toward a Horizontal History of the European AvantGarde",
54.
Horizontal Art History
and Beyond
Revising Peripheral Critical Practices
EDITED BY AGATA J A K U B O W S K A
A N D M A G D A L E N A RA.DOMSKA
I
Horizontal Art History and Beyond Revising
Peripheral Critical Practices. Edited ByAgata
Jakubowska, Magdalena Radomska, Routledge
2022
August von Pettenkofen (1822-1889) & the Szolnok artist colony
Genre painting in the Biedermeier era: idyllic scenes of "ordinary life"
August von Pettenkofen, Gypsy Family, 1868,
Slovak National Gallery
August von Pettenkofen, Robbers in a
Cornfield 1852, The Wallace Collection
August von Pettenkofen, Market in Szolnok,
ca. 1870- 1880.
Vienna .? wm.
August von Pettenkofen, Portrait of a Gypsy,
c.1860, Belvedere, Vienna.
"When Albert Besnard returned to
France from his voyage in India and I
saw his work, I told him there was no
need to travel great distances as you
can paint figures like that in Hungary,
too. (...) Most of my Gypsy paintings
have been sold since; I hardly have
any left in my ownership. In a collective
exhibition in Paris in 1913, where I still
had many works with Gypsy themes
on show, the daily Paris-Midi that
reproduced some of these paintings
called me 7e peintre des zigán'. But
what had befallen these Gypsies?
They were no longer wearing long hair.
As a matter of fact, those drafted into
the army in 1914 had their hair cut
short..."
Kunffy, Visszaemlékezéseim [My memoirs], edited by
Jánoš Horváth, 2006, 108-109 - translated by Róza Vajda
UN MAITRE HONGROIS
1
*-—-—
Lajos de Km|ííy, peiijlre de$ fzigaijes
--..
Lc noiiilrc Uui.^roin Lajos de Kunffy est sioo daujourd'hul. Cent, & coup sur, une
ni. i.„!..:,.o •!•• [in Salons. Cliaque année, U remarquablu mumicelution d'uri.
la Soclétó nutionujy dos Dtuux-Arts, il cx> " L'obscrvation tie la vie tilgun* a touJoorg
pose ciuelque gruvc paysui;c, quelque tyi*a I "přívalu, en M. Lajos Uu Kunfly, e\ 1 on nt
saisissaut dc soit puyst, Cost un probo e\ I sauralt trop r« n4íUcllcr. Que da pelntres
Lajos Kunffy (1869-1962)
Somogytúr artist "colony": Béla Iványi Grunwald, Lajos Szilányi, Aladár Edvi-lllés, and József Rippl-Rónai
Gypsy Women On The Bridge (on The Way Home), 1911, location
unknown.
Harvesters having lunch, 1921, Hungarian National Gallery
Béla Iványi-Grúnwald (1867 -1940)
Nagybánya artists' colony and Kecskemet artists' colony
Gypsy Girls by the Banks of the Lápos, 1909
Kecskeméti park, n.d.
B l a c k " bodies, "white" b o d i e s ?
"The eyes of the
adolescent girl reflect the
dominant - so to speak,
paedophile - male gaze:
instead of eroticism, they
suggest embarrassment,
fear, and sexual
vulnerability. Such an
explicit infringement of
social norms was possible
only when oppressed
ethnic or social groups
were concerned - hard as
I tried, I have not found a
single similar composition
by any contemporary
Hungarian artist of a
'white' adolescent girl."
Egon Schiele, Three Girls, 1911, private collectio
Kovács, 86.
the panoptic regime of Modernity(Michel Foucault)
internalised, visible yet unverifiable power
the optical unconscious (Walter Benjamin):
aspects of reality that register in our senses but are
never quite processed consciously
anos Goroncser Gundel, Gypsy Girl and Nude Model, c. 1907, Hungarian National
Gallery, Budapest.