Art
Studying art involves a variety of disciplines – from philosophical aesthetics, to the history of art, or even visual studies. Historical narratives connected to objects of art reflect the diversity of human experience and help us understand cultures, ideas, and traditions that are different from our own. Art history allows scholars to understand artworks as meaningful products of specific time periods and places, to realize how different our lived experience is from that of our predecessors, and yet, how little has changed with regards to our aspirations and values. This theme on our Educational Platform deals with phenomena of urban art and creative spaces (like workshops or galleries) – this includes spaces involved with fine art, other imagery, cinema, documentary or fictional narratives, and theater. Understanding our history through art helps us to make sense of the past and, by analyzing what is represented in the art itself, we can understand what was considered important and valuable. Stories about the lives of artists, their practices, artworks, how they interacted with their cities, and their navigation of society can inform our thinking about history and aesthetic comprehension. It can also help us to understand how our own lives fit into the human experience.
Filter by periods:
Primary Sources
Testimonies of Ihor Kostetskyi’s Fate under Nazi Rule
Ihor Kostetskyi was just one example of several hundred thousand individuals who were taken by the Nazi Army from occupied eastern European territories and had to work as “Ostarbeiter” in the German war industry. Before the war, Kostetskyi was an intellectual who – though born in Kyiv, Ukraine – had little consciousness of his “Ukrainiennes” before the fall of Carpatho-Ukraine in 1938 and was involved in several cultural, artistic, and creative projects and initiatives. When he was mobilized to the Soviet Red Army at the start of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Kostetskyi was already in the process of changing his Russian-sounding name “Ivan Merzljakov” to his, since then...
Testimonies on the Material Situation of the Culturally Active Ukrainian Diaspora in Germany, 1946-1951
The Ukrainian DP journal KHORS was initially planned to be quarterly. However, the first KHORS edition in 1946 was also the last. These documents provide an insight into the reasons for the non-publishing of further editions and deliver indicators for the material situation of the Ukrainian diaspora in the American occupation zone of Germany in general. A second and third editions of KHORS were seemingly planned shortly after publishing the first edition. The indicator for this thesis is the handwritten list of planned content for these two editions. On the back of this document, it is visible that it was initially an old document of the German Air Force from World War Two....
Principles and Future Aims of the DP Journal KHORS, 1946-1951
The Ukrainian DP journal KHORS was, first and foremost, not a political publication. Published by a small team around the dissident Ihor Kostetskyi, its focus was on arts, culture, and film. In its own statutes, KHORS was not only displayed as a journal. Instead, it should be somewhat of a worldwide movement, that people could join or leave if they wish in the future. The overriding principle is to accept the “primacy of the artistic form,” that art should be created to be art and not for economic, political, or popular reasons. If one does accept this very principle, this core principle, “every artist is allowed to belong to [KHORS] - regardless of...
Reviews of Film Art as an Instrument of Independence by the Ukrainian DP Journal KHORS, 1946-1951
The Ukrainian DP journal "KHORS" was planned as a quarterly on arts and culture, written by a group of editors around Ihor Kostetskyi. Even though a second edition was never published, the editor's notes and pre-written articles, ready to be published in a long-planned second edition, tell a lot about the potential of the project. In the statutes of KHORS, the journal, as well as the attaching, desired worldwide idea, distanced itself heavily from Communism and the Soviet Union. The reason that was provided for this positioning was the Soviet understanding of art and the fact that art had to serve a purpose under Soviet Realism. Such distancing from Soviet influence in world...
“A Collective of Individuals.” Booklet of the Volyn Amateur Film Studio, 1987
The source provided below is a promotional booklet from the Soviet amateur film studio “Volyn,” located in Lutsk. Unlike studios that were under the authority of and funded by trade union organizations, this studio was affiliated with the oblast department of culture. The booklet highlights the achievements and activities of the studio. This type of publication was widely circulated and exchanged at competitions and festivals of various levels. The presence of such printed materials could further indicate the level of financial support for the studio.
Program of the amateur film competition “For You, Motherland, Our Hard Work,” Kharkiv, 1974
This program is part of the multi-stage film selection for the Soviet-wide competition “For You, Motherland, Our Hard Work.” It features a compilation of works from the most active studios in the Ukrainian SSR at the time, including film titles and authors’ names. It provides information on the gender and social distribution within the amateur filmmaking movement, as well as its geographic spread. It is striking to note that most listed authors are men. Characteristically, each name is accompanied by a profession, though not always accurate, highlighting the diversity of individuals involved in amateurism. Attention can also be drawn to the film titles and their formats. Many amateurs utilized the professional 35mm format,...
Show more
Collapse all
View on the Monument to the Soviet Constitution, Lviv 1940
The monument to the Soviet constitution, or the Stalin Constitution, was built in Lviv in October 1939. The authors were the sculptor Serhyi Lytvynenko and Kyiv artist Mykhailo Dmytrenko, it’s possible that, the artists adapted the project, originally conceived in Moscow, to the new city conditions. The sculptors Yevhen Dzyndra and Andryi Koverko carried out the project, but the participation of Lytvynenko’s student the young sculptor Yakiv Chaika is also a possibility. The monument was made in the ceramic-sculpture factory, which opened on Muchna St. in 1939. The location for the monument was chosen in the city centre, the “island” on the boundary mark of the Hetman embankments, between Yahellon’ska st. and Holy...
Members of the cinema club in the village of Novooleksandrivka, Ukrainian SSR, during a film shoot, May 1981
In addition to film studios, which predominantly comprised adults, the network of amateur filmmaking also encompassed groups tailored for children and teenagers, typically organized within houses of culture or schools. Oversight of these groups was typically carried out by representatives from People’s Studios and local film clubs. The archival caption of this photograph reads as follows: “Members of the cinema club at the House of Culture in the village of Novoaleksandrovka, Belovodsk district, Voroshilovgrad oblast, during a film shoot. From left to right: students Naydysh A, Petrov P, the club’s leader Kolesnik V. I., student Burian V. — village Novoaleksandrovka, 15 May 1981, by Y. Khromushyn (outdoors against the backdrop of a river).”
Bilka, film,12 minutes
A film by amateur filmmaker Roman Buchko, co-directed with Volodymyr Bordiuk and Roman Chyzhyk. The film is named after the Bilka River in Lviv Oblast, a right tributary of the Poltva (Vistula River basin). It was created at the Murator People’s Film Studio of the Lviv House of Culture of Builders. The triple authorship reflects the specifics of amateur filmmaking in the USSR, where any amateur activity had to be collective. The chosen topic and content of the work were characteristic of Roman Buchko, who systematically worked with this theme. Buchko hailed from the area depicted in the film, the village of Hai, near Zvenyhorod. Noteworthy is that Volodymyr Bordiuk, head...
Roman Buchko on Soviet Film Amateurs: Excerpt from an Interview on November 1, 2012
Comment will follow...
“Oh, in the meadow blooms the red viburnum,” a Ukrainian resistance song
This source is an audio recording of the folk version of the one of the most popular Ukrainian resistance songs. It is known by various titles: “The rifleman’s Anthem,” [Cтрілецький гімн] “The song of the viburnum,” [Пісня про калину] or “Oh, in the meadow blooms the red viburnum” [Ой у лузі червона калина]. The song’s worldwide spread was facilitated by the performance of Andriy Khlyvnyuk, the lead singer of the Boombox band, who on February 28, 2022, the fourth day of Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine, sang only the first stanza of the song. His performance on St. Sophia Square in Kyiv led to the emergence of remixes. Among the many performers are...
The early vision of amateur filmmaking in the Soviet Union was characterized by the pragmatic idea of using the new media not only for entertainment but also to involve a wide range of citizens in the production of newsreels and to create a network of correspondents across the country to cover the construction of socialism. However, despite sporadic attempts, this idea was not immediately implemented on a large scale. The lack of technology and sufficient equipment, and later the political climate of the 1930s, hindered this. It was only after liberalization and Khrushchev's reforms that the idea reappeared on the agenda.
This course, created by Prof. Sonya Bilocerkowycz, will examine how Ukrainian writers, filmmakers, and artists depict experiences of war, displacement, ecocide, colonial resistance, and other urgent concerns. Not only that, but we’ll consider how thinking alongside the work of Ukrainian creators can help us strategize ways to address global challenges as well as issues in our local communities. In signing up for this course, students agree to read and write frequently, to share their thoughtful impressions with others, and to help foster an environment of respectful dialogue and collective curiosity.
Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has prompted many to reconsider Ukraine’s relationship to the question of what it means to “decolonize.” This present-day revaluation of Ukraine’s complex imperial inheritances has centered primarily on Ukraine’s historical relationship to the Russian Empire (and the Russocentric Soviet Union), often to the exclusion of Ukraine’s Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and other imperial inheritances. This tragic moment of reflection raises a number of bedeviling questions. How do we narrate a decolonial history of Ukraine? Is it possible, or desirable, to disentangle Ukrainian culture from empires of the past and present? Can we imagine a future political and economic order for Ukraine that is not wholly dependent upon more powerful...
This lecture course comparatively and transnationally investigates twentieth-century communism as a modern civilization with a global outreach. It looks at the global spread of communism as an ideology, an everyday experience, and a form of statehood in the Soviet Union, Europe, Asia (i.e.Mao’s China), and post-colonial Africa. With the exception of North America and Australia, communist regimes were established on all continents of the world. The course will examine this historical process from the October Revolution (1917) to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster (1986), which marked the demise of the communist state. The emphasis is not just on state-building processes or Cold War politics but primarily on the social, gender, cultural and economic policies that...
The aim of the course is to get to know how to analyze examples of visual culture, including: fiction films and documentaries, video, photography. Both contemporary and historical materials will be studied, together with theoretical texts and publications (from the area of film and media studies, anthropology, cultural studies and history. Although images are mostly seen, if you want to really know them and understand them really well, you must not only "see" them but also "read" them, that means to analyze them as a complex message/ text. That is why at our course we will firstly discuss some terms and categories, that would help us to read images such as: composition, convention,...
In our mini-course we will explore cultural interaction between Jews and non-Jews (Ukrainians, Poles, Russians) in the borderlands of the Habsburg and Romanov empires. This is interaction that may have been conscious or unconscious, and may have involved encounter, appropriation, negotiation, exchange and destruction.
The course consisting of five lectures focuses around interaction of text and image in modernist culture in CCE with a focus on Poland and its multicultural milieu. Two lectures break away from this framework, providing on the one hand a historical, longer perspective – and on the other locate the formal achievements of the avant-garde in today’s sociopolitical context.
Historians constitute a rather conservative breed, and of course some historians are more conservative than others. The comfort zone of a conservative historian is a document, that is a preserved text, especially one that has some kind of official provenance. Memoirs, testimonies, oral history — the conservative historian considers them at best to be second-rank sources, too subjective and uncertain. This kind of historian does not even recognize visual materials as sources and makes no use of them. But this is unfortunate, because we live at a time in which all sorts of information is presented ever more frequently by visual means. Our students have become accustomed to acquire information in a form...