“The themes drawn from the key ideas supporting the European Revivals project are still powerfully resonant in the early 21st century. People’s lifestyles, indigenous material culture, national myths, forming personal or collective identities and the meaning of native landscape or nature in general still have an enduring significance today.”
– Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff and Riitta Ojanperä in the foreword to European Revivals: From Dreams of a Nation to Places of Transnational Exchange.

This multifaceted and rich publication contains thirteen articles exploring the connections and correspondences that have helped to shape the identities of modern European nations. It marks the culmination of the ‘European Revivals’ research project and its accompanying series of six international conferences inaugurated in Helsinki in 2009 with subsequent conferences held also in Oslo, Krakow and Edinburgh.

The complete book can be downloaded as a Pdf on the Finnish National Gallery’s website at research.fng.fi.

‘European Revivals – From Dreams of a Nation to Places of Transnational Exchange’ (ISBN 978-952-7371-09-1)

The book is written by art historian Marja Lahelma, PhD. The richly illustrated book places Gallen-Kallela’s art in the European context and presents the artist’s fascinating life. The book is available in Finnish, Swedish and English. Available online at www.museoshop.fi.

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This is a call for abstracts for an online-publication on ‘Northernness’ in visual culture edited by Frances Fowle and Marja Lahelma, to be published by The Birch and the Star as part of the series ‘Studies in the Long Nineteenth-Century’. The publication will coincide with the 100^th anniversary of Finnish independence in 2017.

Mythical notions of the north have existed in European culture since antiquity, fuelled at various times by archaeological discoveries and cultural revivals. Romanticism brought on a veritable ‘cult of the north’, which gained in strength throughout the nineteenth century, riding on the back of the nationalist wave that swept across Europe at the fin-de-siècle. Northernness is not a simple concept; while the Nordic people were associated with purity, originality and subjectivity, the Celts were regarded as creative and noble, yet feckless and irrational. Nevertheless, partly through the impact of Wagner’s operas and Macpherson’s Ossian, by the end of the nineteenth century, northern artists were elevated to a prominent position on the international stage. This notion was supported by the theosophical formulation that it was time for the ‘northern race’ to take over.

This publication will examine the mythical associations and cultural appropriation of ‘north’ and ‘northernness’ in European and North American visual culture in the long nineteenth century. We invite abstracts that examine the revival and assimilation of the north and northernness, taking into consideration, for example, mythical origins, spiritual and theosophical agendas, or notions of race and/or national identities. Topics might relate to individual artists and artworks, particular geographical regions or specific artistic and cultural phenomena, as well as to broader ideas associated with northernness.

Please send a 500-word abstract to Marja Lahelma (marja.lahelma(@)helsinki.fi) and Frances Fowle (frances.fowle(@)ed.ac.uk) by 31 January 2017.

Between Light and Darkness: New Perspectives in Symbolism Research is the first issue in the series Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century published by the Birch and the Star. This publication builds on the 2010 Symposium Between Light and Darkness which was held at the Ateneum Art Museum in Helsinki. It explores issues related to religion, mysticism, and subjectivity in Symbolist art and theory, the fin-de-siècle relationship between art and science, and the continuation of the Symbolist influence after the fin-de-siècle period.

Click here to view the publication