'I don't know how (…) a Helena Johnová figurine would hold up in today's crazy world,' complained Jiří Hořava, a ceramic collector, in his monumental book about the artist Helena Johnová, in connection with her statuette Mouřenínek. '(…) calling someone black already smacks of a lawsuit for racism today; ostentatious depictions of black people in the roles of servants and other menial professions lead to judgments justified by claims about "negative stereotyping of black people",' continued Hořava. (1)
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Tuesday, the 10th of January 2023, saw the passing of the German scholar Hans Belting (1935–2023), one of his generation's most important art historians. This had a particular significance in Brno, since the Department of Art History was one of three institutions to benefit from donating his personal library (the other two were the Freie Universität in Berlin and the Danube University in Krems).
The autumn's 2022 first SMArt Talks hosted two art historians who are currently working on the theme of the visual strategies of the Central European nations when presenting themselves abroad and at World’s fairs during the late 19th and the first half of the 20th century.
