ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I propose a look at Piotr Piotrowski’s horizontal art history from a perspective of a feminist art historian working on women artists active on the peripheries. First, I present a short gendered history of Piotrowski’s horizontal art history of Eastern European art demonstrating how its development remains in an awkward relationship with feminism. In Piotrowski’s texts, this alliance appears as a similarity between the position and identity of women (artists) and Eastern Europe (Eastern European countries). Second, I change perspective and demonstrate how this revisionist mode of art historical writing can be inspirational for rewriting a history of feminist art from Eastern Europe from a global perspective. My starting point here is a revised concept of a horizontal art history termed by Piotrowski alter-globalist. Alter-globalist art history can be seen as a response to the failed attempt to rewrite art history globally in a horizontal way, which is observed also in the field of feminist art history. I claim that if an alter-globalist history of feminist art from Eastern Europe is to be written, a more radical challenge to the feminist art history narrative is necessary, one that would demand questioning its conceptual framework’s basic elements.
