Storms and Networks Symposium at the Belvedere

Pivotal impulses for the development of art in the 20^th century sprang from peripheral art centres. The exhibition In the Eye of the Storm, currently on view at the Lower Belvedere through 2 June, calls attention to this often overlooked fact by exploring the modernist movement in Ukraine as well as the foundations of the Ukrainian avant-garde.

In conjunction with the ongoing exhibition, the scholarly symposium Storms and Networks brings together scholars and experts to initiate a debate about the significance of the periphery, including other Central, South, and Eastern European art centres in the discussion. By illuminating cities such as Kharkiv, Lviv, Odesa, Košice, Kraków, Brno, and Miskolc as well as other smaller regions, the symposium challenges the geopolitical demarcations of “modernity” while contributing to a more diversified understanding of this notion as a densely interconnected network.

Adding new perspectives to European art history, the participants of the symposium will address topics as diverse as modernity in Brno, Ukrainian embroidery as a vehicle for modernist experiments, or the early stages of modernist and avant-garde experiments in the Austrian-Hungarian city of Lviv across three panels: Preconditions / Situation / Continuity / Discontinuity, The fetishism of folk art and the crime of ornament, and Peripheral centres. The concluding keynote lecture will focus on Ukraine’s artistic heritage as well as the eclectic character of its art production in the early 20^th century.

The symposium will be preceded by a tour of In the Eye of the Storm, led by the curatorial team.

Further information on the symposium can be found on the IWM's website, and free tickets are available here.

A collaboration between the IWM, the Belvedere, the Embassy of Ukraine in Vienna, and the Czech Centre Vienna