Tomul 3 (47), 2013
HORIA VLADIMIR ȘERBĂNESCU
Caricatura militară în presa umoristică românească, de la Unire până la Războiul cel Mare (1859-1916)
Abstract
The article analyses for the first time the evolution of cartoons within the evolution of Romanian humorous press from the middle of 19th century till the beginning of the first World War.
The first cartoons were published in 1859, after the Union of the Romanian Principalities, when the freedom of press was established and the first humoristic journals were released. These cartoons were produced by amateur artists and simply illustrated the comic of some political jokes or anecdotes with no concern for the quality of the artwork. The printing conditions were also very poor and lithography was often preferred to the better quality engraving methods.
Military subjects mainly consist in critics of the political involvement of some high ranking officers or the army was considered as a repressive force. During the Independence War of 1877-78, the cartoons with military subject adopted a patriotic accent and the image of the Dorobantz (the territorial infantryman) became the traditional icon of the Romanian soldier.
During the first decades, the greatest part of the cartoons were made by unknown amateur graphic designers, but sometimes foreign talented artists, some of them of Polish origin, such as Alexander Kaczanowski, Hipolit Dembitzki, Wincenz Faleski, produced good quality cartoons.
From mid 1890s a new pleiad of young talented Romanian artists tackle with the humoristic artwork. Some important comic journals such as Moftul Român (“The Romanian Trifle”), Moş Teacă (“Father Scabbard”), Zeflemeaua (“The Tount”), Ţivil-Cazon (“Civil-Military”) and especially Furnica (“The Ant”) published many good quality cartoons and anecdotes, some of them with military themes. This time the humor evolved to a wider approach in which the relationship between the officers and men, the military life or the contacts with the civilian world overhauled the political or international matters. The most important cartoonists of that period were: Constantin Jiquidi, Nicolae Mantu, Nicolae Petrescu-Găină, Ary Murnu, Iosif Iser, Francisc Şirato, Camil Ressu.
Keywords: cartoon, humoristic press, military, lithography, Romanian artists
MARK BRYANT
Graphic Warriors. International War Cartoonists, 1792–1945
Abstract
Over the past three centuries satirical artists have often been overlooked in the histories of international conflicts. At best their images have been used to decorate the pages of scholarly treatises but even then their names have frequently been omitted and very little information has been given about their lives. This brief survey highlights some of the greatest international cartoonists and caricaturists working from the time of the Napoleonic Wars until the end of the Second World War. More than 70 artists are mentioned from 15 countries, including Australia, France, the Czech Republic, Germany, Holland, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, Russia, the UK and the USA.
Keywords: war, cartoon, caricature, international, satire
GHEORGHE VIDA
Figura lui Vlad Țepeş în opera lui Theodor Aman
Résumé
L’étude se propose d’analyser la peinture d’histoire de Théodore Aman (1831-1891) du point de vue de la stylistique de l’historisme, comme courant artistique issu vers le milieu du XIXe siècle. La recherche se focalise sur les travaux d’Aman concernant la figure emblématique du prince Vlad l’Empaleur, personnage clef de l’histoire médiévale roumaine. Le peintre suit de près l’évolution de l’historisme européen, allant de l’improvisation fantaisiste du style troubadour jusqu'à la démarche de type archéologique de Thomas Couture dans Les Romans de la Décadence. Chez l’artiste roumain cette archéologie devint l’occasion d’une analyse picturale de source réaliste.
Keywords: history painting, historicism, “style troubadour”, Vlad the Empaler, realism
ADRIAN-SILVAN IONESCU
Art or Moral Boosting Propaganda? Photography from the Romanian Battlefield during the Great War
Abstract
During World War I in 1916 Romania sided with the Allies and the General Army Staff included professional photographers in a newly established department providing official and propaganda images. That was known as Serviciul Fotografic al Armatei (The Army's Photographic Department). Head of this department was appointed Lieutenant Ion Oliva, a reservist who, in his civil capacity worked as an architect. Oliva carefully chose experienced photographers to include in his team. A wide range of subjects starting with portraits of Royalty were used extensively throughout the war for propaganda purposes. Many images captured King Ferdinand reviewing the troops or decorating the braves or Queen Marie caring for the wounded soldiers in a Red Cross apron.
Other topics were offered by the front line: the crude images from the trenches, cannons and machine-guns in action, soldiers cleaning and greasing their weapons, troopers washing and sewing their rugged uniforms or eating their soup hidden on the bottom of the trench, young officers relaxing and reading or playing the violin. There were also the snapshots of German prisoners and heaps of German captured helmets and other trophies such as heavy guns and ammunition, destroyed railway stations, bombed towns or villages burnt to ashes. The suffering of the enemy, became in the logic of political warfare, equal uplifting as the heroic poses of our troops in action and key to moral boosting. It was a team effort and it is difficult to state who did what, who was the specific author of any given picture. Some of the images made their way into published magazines and into illustrated newspapers due to their art potential. But many prints were sent out to various units to the frontline to raise the troops' moral as propaganda material, when propaganda was not yet a dirty word. Going through the archive today it is not so easy to dismiss as propaganda some of these prints. Acting as a buffer between the horrors of reality and the soldier's perception of the world, many of these images are more art than mere propaganda and would be difficult for any curator to draw a clear line.
Keywords: war photography, propaganda, art photography, The Great War, Ion Oliva
MANUELA CERNAT
Jean Negulesco, un pictor ignorat în România de ieri şi de astăzi
Abstract
Rated among the Top Ten directors in the Hollywood golden decades 1940-1950, American filmmaker of Romanian origin Jean Negulesco was also a gifted painter. Yet, this chapter of his creative activity is little known in Romania and abroad even though his works are exhibited in some major European and American Museums. Entering the Bucharest Painting Academy in 1919, he soon left for Paris where he attended both the Académie Julian and La Grande Chaumière classes. In December 1923 he opened his first personal exhibition in Bucharest, followed by a Paris one in 1926, warmly received by the critics. Moving to the United States, he got the generous support of Duncan Phillips and soon opened a painting school which proved very successful. Despite the economic crisis, his first exhibitions in Washington, Seattle and on the West Coast were successful both from an artistic and financial point of view. They paved his way to Hollywood where his renown of portraitist inspired Greta Garbo to open for him the gates of the Los Angeles Gotha. But it is the French art historian Elie Faure who pushed the young painter to enter the film industry. In the early forties, fully exploiting the cultural richness accumulated in Bucharest and Paris during his painting studies, Jean Negulesco became one of the “most European” American filmmakers, celebrated for the sophisticated visual style of his movies.
Keywords: Jean Negulesco, famous Hollywood filmmaker, painter, rediscover, reevaluation, Romanian origin, early painting career, personal painting exhibitions, Bucharest, Paris, Washington, art collections, art museums, memories, correspondence.
NOTE
TUDOR STĂVILĂ
Școala de Belle Arte din Chișinău. Fondatori și susținători
Abstract
Alexandru Plămădeală (October, 9, 1888, Buiucani district, Chişinău – April, 15, 1940, Chişinău) is considered the most important Bessarabian sculptor of the first half of the XXth century and founder of Art school in Kishinev. He graduated from the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Moscow, in the workshop of Russian sculptor Volnuhin. After 1918 he returned to Chisinau where he was appointed as director of the School of Drawing in 1919, later transformed in School of Fine Arts. He worked there for 21 years. The Fine Arts Museum was founded in 1939 by the city favourite sculptor Alexandru Plămădeală and French painter Auguste Baillayre, who later became the first director of the Museum. It was known that Alexandru Plămădeală personally selected 160 works of Bessarabian and Romanian artists to set up the first gallery of the Fine Arts Museum. Plămădeală's masterpiece is the Monument of Stephen the Great in the Public Garden in Chişinau (1927). Among other works, Plamadeala made a series of portraits of Romanian and Bessarabian creative people and intellectuals as the singer Lidia Lipcovschi, the bust of Alexandru Donici, the portrait of Bogdan Petriceicu Haşdeu, the portrait of Valentina Tufescu, the portrait of his wife Olga Plămădeală, the portrait of painter Sion I. Teodorescu, and the portrait of the poet Ion Minulescu.
Keywords: art history, founders, School of Fine Arts, Fine Arts Museum, sculptural portrait
CRISTIAN VASILE
Proiecte de reorganizare a Direcției Monumentelor Istorice în anii 1960
Abstract
In 1948 a venerable cultural institution such as the National Commission on the Historical Monuments ended its existence due to communist authorities’ decision. After three years the government set up a scientific commission under the aegis of the Romanian Academy, but its functions were limited. No sooner than the year 1959 the old commission reappeared as the Department on the Historical Monuments being part of the State Committee for Constructions, Architecture, and Systematization. Due to its activities endangered churches and other historical monuments were restored. However, in 1965 – after Nicolae Ceauşescu took over the leadership of the Romanian Communist Party – the ideological sections of the RCP’s Central Committee gathered archaeologists, architects, art historians, and other experts in order to seek a better functioning for the Department on the Historical Monuments. In the end Ceauşescu’s plans for territorial systematization brought the annihilation of the Department in1977.
Keywords: historical monuments; cultural heritage; Communist cultural policies; art restoration; art history.
MIHAI SORIN RĂDULESCU
Despre genealogia Anei Aman
Résumé
L’article reconstitue les liens de parenté et les propriétés d’Ana Aman née Politimos, qui, avant d’être mariée au peintre Theodor Aman, avait épousé Iorgu Niculescu-Dorobanţu. La famille Niculescu-Dorobanţu est liée à deux églises peintes par Nicolae Grigorescu, toutes les deux dans le district de Prahova: à Puchenii Mari et à Mărginenii de Jos. Ana Politimos a eu de son premier mariage, un fils et une fille Zoe qui est devenue cantatrice d’opéra en Occident sous le nom de Zina de Nory. Le nom de la famille Politimos vient d’un mot néogrec qui signifie «précieux». Les propriétés de cette famille riche s’étendaient dans toute la Valachie, depuis le district de Gorj jusqu’à celui de Buzău. Du côté maternel, Ana Aman descendait d’une famille de boyards du district de Teleorman, les Butculescu, dont la filiation remonte au XVIIe siècle.
Keywords: Aman, Niculescu-Dorobanţu, Butculescu, genealogy, family, painter.
ARHIVA
ECATERINA CINCHEZA-BUCULEI
Pictura pronaosului bisericii mănăstirii Sucevița
IOANA IANCOVESCU
Picturile din bolniţa Bistriţei
CRONICA
MARINA SABADOS
Expoziţia Mărturii. Frescele Mănăstirii Argeşului, Muzeul Naţional de Artă al României, Bucureşti, 6 decembrie 2012 – 25 august 2013
RECENZII
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PAUL REZEANU, Brâncuși. Tatăl nostru, Autograf MJM, Craiova, 2012, 706 p. Recenzie de Virginia Barbu, p. 258.
GREG DICKINSON, CAROLE BLAIR, BRIAN L. OTT (ed.), Places of Public Memory. The Rhetoric of Museums and Memorials, The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, 2010, 282 p. cu il. Recenzie de Corina Teacă, p. 259.
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REVISTA REVISTELOR
Ars Transilvaniae XXI, 2011 (autor: Ioana Iancovescu), p. 267
De libris. Buletin bibliografic 2008-2013 (autori: A.S. Ionescu şi Virginia Barbu), p. 268
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