Project information
Slavophile Art. The Reception of Medieval Art in Monuments for a New Slavic Identity (SlavArt)

The project deals with the identity-making processes built on the medieval past and the use of an imagined Slavic medieval “Golden Age” as a tool for constructing modern historical and political narratives in Eastern and Central Europe, namely in Czechoslovakia (ČSR) and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (KSCS). Its aim is to analyze the monuments by Ivan Meštrović (KSCS), Alfons Mucha (ČSR), and other contemporary works of art in relation to the two saints, Cyril and Methodius, as the representatives of Slavic culturalization. Meštrović’s relief in the Račić family mausoleum in Dubrovnik as well as Mucha’s stained-glass windows in the St. Vitus' Cathedral in Prague deploy media that have traditionally been associ-ated with medieval art and are thus embedded in a historicist architectural context. The theme of the two “Apostles of the Slavs” is in clear rupture especially with the Austro-Hungarian past in ČSR and in some regions of the KSCS. Visual art is thus becoming a tool to promote the transformation of transnational empires into alleged nation-states.