Nenad Makuljevic

The monuments of Christian art in the region of Vidin are understudied. Мost of the extant churches in that region have been built in the nineteenth century. In the second half of the eighteenth century, high-class icons by anonymous Athonite icon-painters appeared. Other
icons from Jerusalem-based workshops were donated by worshipers.
Late Russian icons pique researchers’ interest with some replicas of venerated wonderworking icons of the most Holy mother of God kept at churches and museum collections. A great deal of the icons and
part of church murals in the region of Vidin have been painted by masters of the Art School of Triavna.The Wallachians living in
the local villages used to commission painters from Craiova to decorate their churches. Painters of the Art School of Samokov would work in
the region of Vidin rather episodically.А famous icon-painter Dimter Hristov made an iconostasis for the Metropolitan Church of St Demetrios in the 1850s. It was painters of the Art School of Debar that have more often than not worked in the area since the 1860s: Dičo Krstev from Tresonče, later his son Avram and grandson Krsta; Petre Debranec from the same village; Evgenij Pop Kuzmanov from Galičnik, Danail Nestorov from the same village among others. Master builders
from the region of Debar were commissioned for the construction of some of the churches. As the region of Vidin failed to form a local school of painting in its own right, it became a venue for painters
from across the Balkans.

VISUAL CULTURE OF THE BALKANS: STATE OF RESEARCH
AND FURTHER DIRECTIONS
In recent decades there has been a significant change in
observing art and culture of the Balkans. One of the current issues is
the study of visual culture of the Balkans. While in the Balkan
countries the national historiographies still dominate, it is becoming
quite obvious that the common social, political, artistic and cultural
frameworks influence the creation of all forms of cultural life in
entire Balkans. The Ottoman Empire, in which had lived majority of
Balkan nations; formation of a Yugoslav state, as well as the similarity
of political systems in Southeastern Europe all together have resulted
in establishing a common Balkan culture. In these processes, visual
culture has had a prominent place because it contributed to the
creation of private and collective identity, and represents one of the
most powerful communication tools between different ethnic,
religious and social communities.
Nenad Makuljević
Department of Art History
Faculty of Philosophy
Belgrade University

The Institute of Art Studies, BAS holds its Art Readings colloquia on a yearly basis. Since 2015, the conference has been divided into two modules: Old Art & New Art. This year’s Old Art module titled Heroes/Cults/Saints was occasioned by the 500th anniversary since the dormition of St George the New Martyr of Sofia. It was attended by renowned researchers from Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Albania and the Republic of Macedonia. The organisers strive to offer a developing annual platform for art historians, archaeologists, musicologists, literary historians and architects from the Balkans, who are exploring arts from Antiquity to the end-nineteenth century.
The next conference, slated to be held in early April 2016, is themed Texts/Inscriptions/Images. Generally, this wording evinces the idea of examining the role of word in arts as well as presenting art itself as a language and correspondingly, as communication.
The expectations of the organisers are to encourage presentation of papers that would come up with texts significant to the development of arts, setting sustainable trends in shaping the tastes both of the artists themselves and the recipients of arts. These could be ancient treatises on painting, architecture, music or manuals containing lessons or notes by particular masters on their creative practices. Recent observations about representations of visual arts of the type of Byzantine ekphraseis are also eligible. In this regard, literary historians, architects, art historians, musicologists and art restorers are expected to present their ideas of the so-called intertextuality, for instance, in their scientific reports.
The papers may trace the relationships between texts and representations, between canon and creative interpretations, accentuating the path of a passage from a manuscript or a book to the painted area or to re-contextualising it in vision. This segment allows epigraphers for presenting the sources of, say, biblical or hymnographic quotes and highlighting the function of the latter in the decoration of churches, commenting on the impact of apocryphal works, bringing to light palaeographic, dialectical specifics of inscriptions on icons, murals, sacred vessels, proposing instruments for epigraphic dating. The presented inscriptions may be in Cyrillic, Greek or Latin letters.
Traditionally, the focus of the papers will be on the Balkans’ historical conditions, but we also encourage studies relating geographically to wider regions. Generalising observations about the existing until the end-nineteenth century relationship between word and work in fine arts, architecture, music; their interaction with other types of languages, including questioning the already established scientific stereotypes as viewed by contemporary intervisuality are also welcomed. And last but not least, recent theoretical observations are expected about the presence of word in visual arts and about the principles of building musical-verbal images.