Suchergebnisse

Δεν παρατίθεται περίληψη στα ελληνικά. ; Alexandros N. Teneketzis, Art and Politics in Cold War. The International Sculpture Competition for the Monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner The gradual transfer of the metropolis of the western art world from Paris to New York and specifically in circles around the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) under the leadership of Alfred H. Barr Jr. and with the theoretical foundation by Clement Greenberg, but practically under the guidance and financing from the CIA, was also visible in the case of public memory and art about the Second World War. The international institution that was the cause for the widespread diffusion of the artistic standards grown in USA was the "International Sculpture Competition for the Monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner", which was organized under the auspices of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London and the Tate Gallery, but actually with the encouragement, blessings and supervision of the CIA. The competition was from the beginning a large turnout and the proposals submitted until January 1953 surpassed 3.500 –mainly abstract or semi­abstract stylistic suggestions. The biggest names at the time in the international arena of sculpture in West took part, while artists from the Eastern Bloc boycotted the process. Therefore were precluded any realistic academic representative works and of course any relationship with socialist realism, giving thus the tone for both the style, and for all other future monuments in the western world. Eventually, the first prize of 2.500 pounds awarded to the British sculptor Reg Butler, unknown to the general public until that time but with a decisive commitment to abstraction. However, the work of Butler was never completed, principally because of the changing international circumstances and relationships after the death of Stalin in '53 and Khrushchev's secret speech in '56. The new "Thaw" era in East­West relations imposed the final rejection in 1960. A public monument like that of Butler's, which would refer to the previous tense situation, was no more possible. Nevertheless, the dual objective of recognition and legitimization of abstract art in the western world and at the same time of the weakening of socialist realism and therefore of communism was promoted and achieved up to a certain degree.

Δεν παρατίθεται περίληψη στα ελληνικά. ; Kostas Raptis, Merchants in Imperial Austria during the 'Long' Nine­teenth Century This article, which draws mainly on the Archives of the Austrian Ministry of Commerce, as well as on contemporary works and modern li­ terature, focuses on the examination of the historical course of merchants (above all the whole sale traders and the well suited shopkeepers and retail merchants) in Old Austria as a distinctive group within the Central European bourgeoisie. The contribution of the merchant­magnates (Großhändler) to the industrialization of the Austrian Half of the Habsburg Empire and the formation of a powerful business class, the importance of the involvement of businessmen from abroad in Austrian wholesale and foreign trade, the grip of the state and imperial allegiance in the commercial sector, the social position and the political activity of merchants– primarily at local and regional levels –as well as the attitudes of the multi­ethnic merchant class towards all kinds of nationalist movements in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, are the central issues of this essay. Merchant­magnates, among whom many of foreign provenance or/ and not of Catholic faith (Protestants, Jews and Greek­orthodox) established themselves as the most active entrepreneurial group within the Austrian bourgeoisie during most of the nineteenth century (at least until the 1870s), since they exploited promptly every new opportunity to accumulate and augment their capital and income: in industry, banking, insurance and other share­holding companies, transport, shipping and real estate. The bourgeois status of the Austrian merchants is confirmed for the same period by their participation in all sorts of (bourgeois) associations, their subscription to public benefit causes, their charitable and philanthropic activities. The imperial state's favorable disposition towards entrepreneurs in general and merchants in particular, its recognition and reward of their contribution to the Austrian economy and export trade, of their mercantile knowledge and professional experience, as well as of their charity and philanthropic work, are documented in the appointment of honorary consuls of Austria abroad or of consuls of foreign states in the capital and cities of the Monarchy, the conferring of the highest social distinctions on merchants by Emperor Franz Joseph through award of medals, honorary titles and titles of nobility or the merchants' collaboration with the Ministry of Commerce as elected members and officials of chambers of commerce, as experts, special advisers and commission agents. In addition to the merchants' indirect relations with politics there were direct ones too, in other words their active participation as elected representatives, primarily to municipal councils and secondarily to the local and imperial parliaments of Austria after the constitutional reforms of 1860­1861. During the so­called era of liberalism, from the 1860s up to the mid­1880's, it was mainly german­speaking merchants, who, together with industrialists and other middle class groups, dominated in most towns, whereas in the three decades which preceded the First World War –an era of increasing anti­semitism and nationalism– they had to share power with new emerging petit­bourgeois strata (among them many shopkeepers). The article concludes with a remark on the upheavals caused to the merchant world by the two World Wars and national­socialism, which destroyed the unified economic space of Austria­Hungary, nationalized its cosmopolitan bourgeoisie and finally led to the expulsion, material depravation or/and extermination of such a dynamic and prominent group, like the Jewish merchants and entrepreneurs, followed by the abolition of the capitalist economy by the new socialist regimes in Central and East­Central Europe after 1945.