Artistic Alliances and Revolutionary Rivalries in the Baltic Art World, 1890–1914
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR HISTORY, CULTURE AND MODERNITY www.history-culture-modernity.org Published by: Uopen Journals Copyright: © The Author(s). Content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence eISSN: 2213-0624 Artistic Alliances and Revolutionary Rivalries in the Baltic Art World, 1890–1914 Bart Pushaw HCM 4 (1): 42–72 DOI: 10.18352/hcm.503 Abstract In the areas now known as Estonia and Latvia, art remained a field for the Baltic German minority throughout the nineteenth century. When ethnic Estonian and Latvian artists gained prominence in the late 1890s, their presence threatened Baltic German hegemony over the region’s culture. In 1905, revolution in the Russian Empire spilled over into the Baltic Provinces, sparking widespread anti-German violence. The revolution also galvanized Latvian and Estonian artists towards greater cultural autonomy and independence from Baltic German artistic insti- tutions. This article argues that the situation for artists before and after the 1905 revolution was not simply divisive along ethnic lines, as some nationalist historians have suggested. Instead, this paper examines how Baltic German, Estonian and Latvian artists oscillated between com- mon interests, inspiring rivalries, and politicized conflicts, question- ing the legitimacy of art as a universalizing language in multicultural societies. Keywords: Baltic art, Estonia, Latvia, multiculturalism, nationalism Introduction In the 1860s a visitor of the port towns of Riga or Tallinn would have surmised that these cities were primarily German-speaking areas of Imperial Russia. By 1900, however, one could hear not only German, but Latvian, Estonian, Russian, as well as Yiddish on the streets of Riga 42 HCM 2016, VOL.
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