Suchergebnisse

This article discusses the case of Ion Grigorescu, and of his ambiguous relationship with the communist regime, which he registered through a form of "documentary realism". Through his "realgrams" Grigorescu documented real life experiences in an innovatory approach to the majority of Romanian artists of the time using photographs of his everyday environment, and being inspired by his social and political context. Grigorescu is thus an artist committed to the public space and assuming a critical stance without it being discursive, pedant or moralizing. The approach of this study is descriptive, based on the artists' artworks and self-descriptions, and seeking to situate Grigorescu's approach in the context of the communist regime and its transformation after 1990 into a democratic regime. The conclusions show that Grigorescu's artworks are anti-system, criticizing any establishment, no matter in which regime he finds himself. His contestation is specific to a committed artist that chooses to express his freedom of expression beyond his own studio.

During the communist regime, photography was a popular activity due to the existence of the Association of Photographic Artists. Its members weren't professional artists, but mostly people with technical backgrounds, and who transformed their hobby into a job. The lack of interest of Romanian artists in photography (except for a few particular cases such as Ion Grigorescu or Ștefan Bertalan) can be explained by the fact that there were no photo-video departments within the art universities and the Romanian Artists' Union (UAP), the only form of institutional organization of the Romanian artists, had no special photography department. Therefore, the photographic practice in communist Romania was linked to the Association of Photographic Artists and not to the Romanian Artists' Union. The evolution of its activity in the period between 1968 and 1978, and the impact that politics had on it transpire very well from the evolution of the Fotografia magazine, the only photo periodical of that era. This article shows that even in a creative field, which was overlooked by the Communist Party, the echoes of the official political discourse were felt, mainly after 1975. We have outlined two aesthetic trends in the mid-1970s. One was the photograph obtained by laboratory procedures, supported by a depoliticized discourse and the second was a pseudo reportage photography, namely the communist propaganda photography.

This article compares the ideas of two political thinkers representative for their time and region - Kautilya (of ancient India) and Machiavelli (of modern Europe). The analysis reveals important similarities and differences, and offers potential explanations for the findings. Most significantly, the similarities between Kautyla's Arthasastra and Machiavelli's Prince are visible particularly when it comes to their treatment of war, 'state' administration, diplomacy, monarchy and the features of a good leader. Such similarities suggest that the development of modern European philosophy has been influenced by other cultural spaces, including Ancient India.

The paper analyzes the institutional transformation of cultural policies in postcommunist Romania and the correspondent emergence of an art market in Romania. The case studies considered show that both artists and policy makers adapted to extraneous expectations and patterns rather than promoting new visions and models. The "triangle metaphor" forged by Magda Cârneci, representing the relationship between artists, the state and the Union of Visual Artists (UAP), offers the basis for analysing the game of continuity and change after the fall of Romanian communism.

The article presents the judgment delivered by the European Court of Human Rights of 5 March 2020 in GROBELNY v. Poland, by which the Court found that Article 1 of the First Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights had been infringed following the rejection by national courts of the applicant's claim for compensation equal to the invalidity pension which he was unlawfully deprived of by applying the res judicata principle, despite the existence of relevant and sufficient grounds for departing from that principle, namely the fact that the applicant's deprivation of pension rights was the consequence of a manifest error attributable to the public authority, found as such by the court in the second dispute. The Court held that, in this way, the national authorities had failed to ensure compliance with the principles of social justice and fairness or good governance and that the burden to which the applicant was subject was disproportionate, since he was required to bear the consequences of the errors attributable to the public authorities on his own, even though he did not have any other legal means to compensate for the damage. The article also contains an analysis by the author of the ECtHR ruling.

Although many institutions were involved in the cultural diplomacy of the Romanian communist regime, a very consistent part of the artistic exchanges with the East and the West were mediated by the Union of Artists. This paper would like to highlight the important role the Union played in framing the artistic exchanges with several "capitalist countries" and "popular democracies", by looking at several agreements of collaboration between Unions or similar institutions. More precisely, we will look at the variations regarding the form and the quantity of exchanges that were established through such official documents and which referred mainly to exchanges of persons, informations or exhibitions. We will also look at the way these were organized in practice: the study of the travel reports, informative notes or daily programs that were produced on such occasions shows that these exchanges were systematically surveilled and politically motivated. A preliminary analysis of these allows us to observe the Union's interests regarding the East and the West and suggests that the Romanian Union of Artists contributed to the expansion, the regulation and at the same time the control of the cultural contacts with foreign countries.

Starting from the case of Ion Irimescu, this article discusses the issue of continuity among Romanian visual artists before and after 1944. In this study, I argue that it was essential for the visual artists' survival and establishment as artists during the communist regime to enter into a clientpatron relationship. The existence of this relationship meant access for the artists to financial funds, promotion within the UAP, and protection from the measures, which the Securitate could have taken against them. This article is divided into four sections. Every section examines an episode from the life of Ion Irimescu. His interwar biography is presented in the first section, and his adaptation to the communist regime is the subject of the second part of this study. The last two parts analyse the factors which facilitated his confirmation and promotion as a state artist after 1944 and the relation of the artist with the Securitate.

This article explores a number of the themes that late researcher and professor Alexandru Duţu treated in his the articles, book reviews and interviews published in the Romanian cultural and opinion press between 1990 and 1998 (Arc. Litere. Arte & Meşteşuguri, Cotidianul. Litere Arte. Idei, Dilema, Secolul XX, Transilvania, Viaţa Românească etc.). As some of these themes are covered also in his scientific works, the study contributes thus to an inventory of the historical premises for Duţu's ideas on the formal and contradictory duality of the modern world, including the duality of "organic" and "organized solidarities", as well as the Janus-like nature of liberty or of liberties. Furthermore, it investigates his view on the reconstitution within the orthodox space of the Romanian cultural and political tradition, "ravaged" by the rationalism of the 19th century modernization efforts. This "aggression" led to the emergence of a new image of tradition, in folkloric tones, that has stubbornly endured also throughout the protochronism preached by the communist regime. Finally, the article approaches the sensitive theme of human condition during communism and the Duţu's self- professed "inner exile", as well as on his reactions as a citizen of the polis. All these stem from this long scholarly history of dual worlds, particularly the condition of the individual for more than three centuries: that of a relentless search for the lost harmony between the "world within" and the "world outside"), as well as from the internalization of his personal development.

The paper explores the merits of Protagoras' view of politics as a possible intellectual source of the post-communist theory of democracy. Unbeknownst to themselves, Romanian politicians and political scientist tend to understand the function of politics in the footsteps of Plato and Lenin, as an art, or science of leadership. Interested mainly in the effectiveness of government, they give no significant heed to the issue of rights and liberties. The great discourse of Protagoras of Abdera could supply, in a normative way, the conceptual tools for a different approach to politics, as a pedagogical rhetoric of legal and political equality.

The study catches a glimpse of the different faces of "communist death", imagined as "assumed death", "egalitarian death", or exemplary (i.e., heroic) death. In fact, this was really the death of individuality. The goal of this study was achieved through transdisciplinary methodologies, which involve the specific tools of social investigation, interconnected disciplines (see political history, political, cultural and funerary anthropology, social psychology, art and architecture history), through convergent usage of historical sources specific to recent history (official documents, newspapers of the Stalinist period, memory literature, ethnographic sources, funerary inscriptions, interviews). The aim is to present the operations involved in the ideologization of death, a process demanded by "the hunger for legitimacy" of the communist system.

Cinematography was deliberately organized, financed and oriented towards the purposes of the system and consequently became the most effective element of political and cultural pedagogy. The synchronic correlation between word and image, the power of visual suggestibility, empathy as an emotional response to the actors' performance - all these had immediate effects on the collective imaginary, on the perception of reality as a social and identity-forging project determined by the emergence of the ideological discourse. The Romanian socialist cinematography from the time of Ceauşescu synthesized and systemized a coherent and explicit system of values wherein it integrated the message of literary and other artistic works, of variegated forms of cultural expression, so that Romanian cultural axiology could find new possibilities to stand out in strict dependence to the institutional and optional structures of mass culture. The cinema per se thus became a sort of pedagogy for universal use, rendering the past heroic, as it exacerbated the national ego via the instruments of entertainment. Highly permeated ideologically and quasi entirely subordinated to the Communist cultural policies, the cinema production, carried out because of the appeal to emotions and collective memory, thus became part of the official discourse and orientated its issues, especially after the 11th Congress of RCP, according with the political and ideological interests of the national Communist project. The analysis focuses on the Romanian historical films with subjects and episodes relevant for the ancient and mediaeval history, in relation with the efforts of identity reconstruction, coordinated during the Communist regime in relationship with the project of the socialist nation's building and, after 1989, in relationship with the attempt of reconsolidating, sometimes from a radical perspective, the nationalist mythologies. Socialist patriotism thus incorporated many stereotypes drawn out from the ante-bellum, as well as from the inter-bellum Romanian spirit: the lyric of self-identification expressed by the film soundtrack and by the majestic character of the heroic gestures, the heroic epic obvious in the popular ballad pattern of pre-modern nature, the activist pedagogy specific to all forms of identitarianism. Despite all this ideological infusion, the mythology of Romanian historical films during the Communist nationalist times remains one of a sadistic-masochistic nature, cultivating the fear towards the Other, fatalism, expectation and obedience, all chronic and historicized.

In the context of internationalisation the national issues regarding the restitution of nationalised immovable goods in different stages of history, the subject at hand, represents a pioneering analysis of a complex national reality. Recent practice of Romanian courts has revealed a delicate problem that is apparently the object of debate and resolve of the national and international academic environment. Through the analysis the author tackles the problem of discrimination that is committed by the national law that regulates the matter of restitution of goods that were abusively taken over by the state, from the point of view of the theoretician, as well as the practitioner, pointing out the necessity of direct cooperation with the European courts. The negative discrimination, resulting from the art. 36 of 18/1991 law, can be analysed as an objective and rational justification that would allow the direct practice of the European convention of human rights concerning the litigations about "Land Act" (Law no. 18/1991)

This article is a case study of the Romanian Artists' Union during the Thaw as an institution potentially capable of renewal by creatively applying the rules imposed in the totalitarian communist State. The methodology used is that of archival research through the use of the concepts of Repressive State Apparatus, Ideological State Apparatus (Althusser), dispositif (Foucault), and habitus (Bourdieu). The text shows that from 1953 until 1957, in the context of similar changes in the Soviet Union, the Union of Romanian Fine Artists underwent a gradual transformation, which culminated with the change of the Management Board and a professionalization on specific criteria of the structure. The characteristics of the modern foucauldian dispositif, that the Union acquired in the period of the Thaw, remained valid in the next period, of reideologisation (1958-1963). The conclusions are that even in conditions of totalitarianism, subjects and structures can introduce creative elements into the process of reproduction of a given order, by modifying this order.