Justin Willson’s Lecture On Paper: Print and Iconicity in the Balkans and Beyond (“Balkan Research at the ÖAW” Lecture Series)

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?