History of Czech-Slovak Art of the 20th Century and the Use of the Alternative Concept of Oral History in Its Research and in the Educational Process
Abstract
Using the long-term project entitled Grey Gold. Czech and Slovak Women Artists 65 as an example, we reflect on the potential for teaching 20th-century art history, primarily by collecting information through biographical interviews with living women artists.
Narrated histories can present important aspects of the post-war Czechoslovak artistic operation to students in a more attractive way, while also presenting a more plastic picture of it. By confronting existing historiographical sources and lived personal experience, an atmosphere often occurs in the classroom that fosters the communicative, cognitive, and critical aspects of thinking.
At the same time, the paper focuses on recent artistic and theoretical projects operating with the collection and transcription of oral history, which have mostly taken place under the institutional auspices of Czech art colleges and departments of art theory and history.