We cordially invite you to the lecture from the cycle Collegium historiae artium, which will be given by Jasna Gajler (University of Zagreb) on the topic of Crossing Borders: Transnational Exchange as a Site of Women Interaction in Modern Design. The case Antoinette Krasnik (1874-1956).
The lecture will take place on Wednesday, October 11, 2023 at 4.30 pm in the Institute of Art History CAS, room 117, Husova 4, Prague 1.
Taking the transnational exchanges in Central European context at the turn of the century as a starting point, the presentation explores its formative, multilayered and controversial relations through the career of Antoinette Krasnik (1874–1956). Applying cross-disciplinary methods of design history, art history, cultural history and curatorial studies, it analyzes her transnational career as a case study of women interaction in the field of design. In only a few years, from 1898 to 1907, she traversed the path from an anonymous student of Koloman Moser at the Kunstgwerbeschule in Vienna to an internationally accomplished designer. Her oeuvre is characterised by highly individualised, specific visual language that achieved a synthesis of symbolic and functional codes of design which subverted the gender roles of a woman-artist, professional designer and the stereotypes of the “female” aesthetics. Yet, like all to many women artists and designers of her generation, she remained marginalised in the framework of patriarchy. Besides the gender, the aspect of centre and periphery in different fields of art and culture production is also essential here. Based on extensive research of archival sources, museum and private collections, the presentation aims to examine the reception of her interaction in the field of modern design, including its medialization and musealization. By tracing the methods used by design historians and curatoral studies to record and construct the narratives of that interaction, the aim is to contribute to critical rethinking the structural role of women in networking modern design discourse.