Kunt Ernő szerk.: Kép-hagyomány – Nép-hagyomány (Miskolc, 1990)

III. RÉSZ: A KONFERENCIA SAJTÓVISSZHANGJA

Visual Aitthroivlogu, Vol. 2, pp. 93—

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1989 Harwood Academic Publishers GmbH Printed in the United States of America REVIEWS International Symposium "Visual Traditions

—Folk Traditions" From 5 through 10 April 1988, the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF) played host in Miskolc, Hungary, to the Third International Symposium for Ethnological Study of Pictures.

1 The meeting was held in cooperation with the Department of Visual Culture Research of the Museum Board of the Borshod Region and the Otto Herman Museum. Recent years have witnessed a sharp rise in interest in relatively new types of ethnographic sources, in particular, iconographie ones. As a rule, visual material was most often used illustratively and considered as a folk creation subject. As a result, research touched upon limited categories of fine arts and a narrow sphere of problems. An utterly new approach to the problem of iconographie material research was demonstrated at the First International Symposium held in Lund, Sweden, in 1984. Arranged by N.-A. Bringeus in his capacity as president of SIEF until 1987, its results were recently published in the collected works, Man and Picture.

2 The symposium raised the problem of communicative research of visual material: this approach highlights the degree of the effect of pictures on human consciousness and their role in the life of society, rather than the analysis of their external merits. The Second International Symposium, held in Göttingen, FRG, in 1986, concentrated on the history, dissemination, functions, and value of technical means for the production of European folk pictures. An ethnographic approach to visual material research is explained by the fact that though traditions and everyday life make up the core of ethnography's object sphere, its cognitive tasks require research into all spheres of a nation's life which display ethnic specificity. A new approach to visual material research presupposes an attempt of contextual analysis of its nature in a social aspect, rather than a merely formal approach from the cognitive point of view. Therefore, ethnographers' works display a new theoretic orientation towards visual material research as specific material depicting the everyday life and spiritual culture of various classes and social groups. The main topic of the Third International Symposium was "Visual Traditions

— Folk Traditions." Its aim consisted of the acquaintance with visual culture of a large characteristic population group, namely peasants. Particular attention was paid to traditional knowledge with respect to the image and its utilization, therefore, the