On Paper. Print and Iconicity in the Balkans and Beyond
Printed media have been described as antagonistic to the art of icon painting and the act of venerating holy images. This paper challenges that view by sketching a broader picture of how printers in the Balkans and adjacent areas interacted with woodblock prints, engravings, and icon tracings. Given the vital role that icons played in Orthodox culture, one can ask whether print in the Balkans and elsewhere requires a distinct theoretical framework from models proposed for Western Europe. What cultural weight did the printed image bear, and how did the signifying mark on paper differ in the eyes of audiences given the unique history of these places? With such a versatile, fluid, and diffuse art form as print, to what extent can one speak about regional features defining a corpus and a set of local craft practices?
Justin Willson is Curator at the Icon Museum & Study Center in Clinton, Massachusetts. His research focuses on concepts of the work of art in later Byzantium and the early modern Slavic world. Willson received his PhD in Art & Archaeology at Princeton University in 2021 and was the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Art History Leadership at the Cleveland Museum of Art / Case Western Reserve University for 2022–24. Willson is editing volume 4 of the series “Sources in Byzantine Art History,” entitled The Visual Culture of Late Byzantium and the Early Modern Orthodox World (c.1350-c.1569) (Cambridge University Press, Forthcoming). His essays have appeared in such venues as Speculum, Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik, Byzantinoslavica and Dumbarton Oaks Papers.
An event in the context of the ORTHPOL project funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Grant Agreement 950287.