Reforms, revivals and returns revisited
Reforms, revivals and returns in the visual arts have taken many avenues and have had many departure and end points. By seeking an alternative path, they often promised a distinctive departure from the powers of capitalism. For instance, calls for reforms of housing led over the last century to attempts of creating new, self-reliant communities that live in so-called garden cities according to Ebenezer Howard, or in King Charles’s new urban developments of Poundbury and similar projects. Likewise, revivals of crafts once related to pre-industrial self-sufficiency aim at recovering skills that rely on local materials, knowledge and community. Initiatives promoting homemade clothes, needlework or upcycling have been linked to a wide spectrum of political actors from sustainable craftivists to tradwives.
Common to these revivals are concepts like tradition, community, and authenticity. Yet do they run the danger of becoming conservative, normative and exclusive whether in terms of gender, race or class? This panel seeks papers that critically examine ideas of authentic, socially-engaged architecture, craft and design, exploring their political scale and social impact.
Focusing on the period since 1900, we ask the following questions:
- Can the reform movements from the past provoke a genuine reform in the future?
- What values can be promoted through reforms, revivals and returns of traditions, however invented?
- How were the “Western” reform movements transferred, translated and adopted in different global geographies?
- What are the political motivations and intentions of such activities?
- Whose traditions, values and authenticity are revived and constructed?
Submit your Paper via this form. Please download, complete and send it directly to the Session Convenor(s) below by Sunday 2 November 2025:
Dr Marta Filipová, Masaryk University Brno, Czech Republic, m.filipova@phil.muni.cz
Dr Vendula Hnídková, Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences, hnidkova@udu.cas.cz