The Visual Culture of Festivals in Germany, Scandinavia, and Central Europe

Mikhail Bakhtin’s foundational work on carnival has inspired countless studies on festivals around the world, and the idea of the world turned upside down. Though Bakhtin’s focus was on literature, much subsequent work on festivals has been produced by anthropologists, social historians, and theater historians, for whom the inversion of carnival provides a useful framework to consider myriad themes (social hierarchy, humor, reform, etc.).

But what makes a festival a festival? What is often most striking is their rich visual culture. In this panel we are interested in the idea of the festival broadly defined: gatherings religious or secular, parades, protests, organized events and spontaneous celebrations or revolts. From the elaborate ephemeral architecture of early modern royal entries, to Midsummer celebrations involving maypoles and bonfires, and the Krampusnacht parades of Austria and Central Europe, these festivals make full use of the visual impact of masks, puppets, floats, costumes, automata, and the manipulation of architectural and/or natural spaces. Ephemeral live events, records of festivals also often survive only in visual form, whether in photography, painting, engraving, or other forms of visual record-keeping. This panel seeks papers that consider the highly visual and spatial aspects of the festival in Germany, Scandinavia, and Central Europe through an art historical lens.

We welcome submissions that blend art historical and other theoretical approaches in order to explore what the tools of art history can bring to the study of the festivals from this region, from antiquity to the present.