Riga's capital modernism

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For years, art historians have explored the concept of East Central Europe as an artistic region. Steven Mansbach provides a compelling perspective, illustrating that from the Fin-de-siècle to the onset of World War I, the area from the Baltic to the Balkans formed a coherent art-historical meso-region with distinct national traditions and innovations. He emphasizes the critical role of urban centers in shaping artistic movements, particularly in a predominantly rural Eastern Europe where cities are scarce. In his 2013 Oskar Halecki Lecture, Mansbach focuses on Riga, Latvia’s capital, as a pivotal hub for the Baltic countries and the broader Baltic Sea Region. He employs Klaus Zernack’s meso-regional concept of “Nordosteuropa,” likening it to a ‘Mediterranean of the North’ that fostered economic, military, cultural, political, and ethnic interactions from the early modern period through the interwar years. Mansbach showcases how Riga’s modernism was influenced by Hanseatic commercialism, Russian imperialism, Latvian nationalism, and Soviet communism, resulting in a “novel eclecticism” that blends inventive modernism with the constraints of Soviet politics. The legacy of this region, including its Soviet past, remains integral to its identity, as exemplified by Riga.