Our Own Estonian Art History: Changing Geographies of Art-Historical Narrative
Our Own Estonian Art History: Changing Geographies of Art-Historical Narrative

Summary/Abstract: The geography of art serves as the basis for delineating art-historical material and for constructing the narrative accordingly. This article poses a question about the content and character of 'the geographies of Estonian art history' – i.e. the geographical image in art-historical discourse and the so-called truth-value, or its correspondence to visual material, on which such argument rests. In what follows, the Baltic German, the Baltic-Nordic, the Estonian and the Soviet versions of art-geographical comparative method are under examination. All these models of art-historical inquiry were defined by their emphasis on aesthetic judgement, which, as closer inspection reveals, was overshadowed by the ideological agenda of a particular period. Thus, the past narratives of Estonian history of art should be subjected to critical reinterpretation. Given the new approaches to art historiography that are being practised today, whereby issues of art's aesthetic value are historicised and the focus is on the investigation of the historically specific mechanisms and processes that generate meaning in art and culture, it no longer seems adequate to rely on art-geographical method alone.

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