MICROSTORY OF ART

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM

LEMMATA

Lemmata: Microhistory – Microstory – Microstory of Art

(Picture: library.hrmtc.com)

Microhistory:

A trend in historiographical research and writing that was especially popular during the 1980s and 1990s. Instigated by individuals with a flair for literary techniques of writing (and for literary strategies found in textual source material), microstoria aimed to reconstruct the worlds of individuals and social groups, basing these reconstructions on detailed explorations into vast amounts of textual materials and close readings of this materials. Since court cases tend to produce this welcome wealth of documents, Microhistorians tended also to develop a predilection towards the records of inquisitorial court proceedings. Due to detailed explorations actual windows into passed lives of individuals did open (the victims of history came to speak here, because they were interviewed by inquisitorial judges); and the nature of the source material required detective-like strategies and attentiveness for minor detail (to hear what the victims had actually to say). Thus a style of historical writing did develop during these years that seemed to take its inspiration not least from the very detective novel. Although Microhistory focussed on the detail and although Microhistorians, as it were, used the microscope to learn as much as possible about individual situations and individual people, one couldn’t say that Microhistory was less concerned than Social History with social theory, social structers and questions of power in the end. On the contrary – because Microhistory tended also to develop a deep sympathy for subversive elements of culture, for people that did not belong to the ruling classes, in sum: for the real people. And while Microhistory, in style and method, did challenge the historiographical master thinkers with their sociological master theories, it was certainly a trend that was no less political than Social History. Yet in its deep interest for people, for situations, for practices (and for literary writing), Microhistorians felt that Social History tended to loose touch with the actual social realities of people – the Microcosmos of human life and human history.

Microstory:

(Picture: DS; picture below: DS)

›Story‹, as opposed to ›history‹ does refer here to the actual telling of things passed, as opposed to the things passed as such. As a ›Microstory‹ we understand here, and this is the one axis of our Microstory of Art Online Journal, the literary presentation of the results of just one more expanded inquiery into cultural worlds of the past or the presence. We call this singular contribution an ›Edition‹, and every Edition is dedicated to one person or a theme (but usually it does also combine various directions of inquiery). We proceed with three Microstories per season, but combine this format with other formats like the Feature, the Special Edition, the Document and the Extra. Pieces of these kinds are not contributed in a regular rhythm, but add from time to time to the regular series of Microstories.

Microstory of Art:

Online Journal that was founded in the summer of 2014 by Dietrich Seybold, to the aim of presenting the results of explorations into passed and present worlds of art and culture (especially also literary culture). Inspired by the tradition of Microhistory, inspired also by the title Story of Art, that Ernst Gombrich did choose for his classic account of art history, inspired further by working on various art historians and connoisseurs that can be seen as embodiments of attentiveness for detail, we wish to create a platform here for a style of essayistic writing that, in its flair for following a merely subjective interest, in its flair for digressions, and in its disinterest of following just routinely the course of things, no longer finds its place in printed journals, but rather on the World Wide Web.
What we have running here on this website is, as we also have pointed out this in our Editorial (http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/MicrostoryOfArtEDITORIAL), a demo version of an Online Journal that is meant to become more and more professional and that possibly is also going to migrate onto an actual Microstory of Art website. Also we wish to further expand the basic principle of a regularly contributing on arts and culture – in form of Microstories – towards an embedding of a more specialized section on the History and Theory of Art Authentication into our journal. Thus we would like to combine essayistic writing on the one hand that also sets a frame for, on the other hand, a dealing with more specific problems of connoisseurship (understood now only as the attributing of works of art). In that we try to combine an interest in these specialized problems with a general curiosity for cultural worlds and things, and especially for ways of seeing these things, we would like to unfold here as much as possible what connoisseurship, in our view and in its best moments, can be: a passionate living with artistic and cultural things that does not find its end in mere attributing of these things, but in a lively relation between individuals and an individual works of art, a relation that stimulates, on its part and again a basic interest for methods and strategies of attribution.

INDEX | PINBOARD | MICROSTORIES | FEATURES | SPECIAL EDITIONS | HISTORY AND THEORY OF ATTRIBUTION | ETHNOGRAPHY OF CONNOISSEURSHIP

INDEX | PINBOARD | MICROSTORIES | FEATURES | SPECIAL EDITIONS | HISTORY AND THEORY OF ATTRIBUTION | ETHNOGRAPHY OF CONNOISSEURSHIP

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM
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