Vratskidou Bookcover

The Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies supports Princeton graduate students and postdoctoral and visiting fellows who conduct research on Hellenic studies topics at the University. Alumni and former fellows have published hundreds of books and thousands of articles. Their scholarship reflects the broad, interdisciplinary nature of Hellenic studies, spanning fields from history to religion to literature and periods from antiquity to the present.

In the May 13, 2025, edition of Director’s Bookshelf, Seeger Center Director Dimitri Gondicas speaks with Eleonora Vratskidou about “L’émergence de l’artiste en Grèce au XIXe siècle,” published by Mare & Martin, Paris in September 2023. Vratskidou is an assistant professor in the Department of Art Theory and History at the Athens School of Fine Arts. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Seeger Center in 2012-13.  

How did this book project begin?

This book grew out of my doctoral research at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, where I explored the emergence of the figure of the artist in nineteenth-century Greece. I was captivated by the question: How does a completely new cultural practice, like “fine arts,” become socially instituted? Rather than viewing such emergence as invention, I approached it as a process of complex transnational exchanges and local adaptations. I was also intrigued by how the modern figure of the artist – the paradigm of the modern subject, a marker of individuality and subjectivity – was accommodated in a traditional society that was forming into a nation-state. In a context where nation-building and cultural identity were deeply entwined, this process revealed a rich and layered story.

Please share some highlights from your experience as a postdoctoral fellow at the Center.

My time at the Seeger Center was a formative transition, opening unexpected possibilities and helping to shape my academic path. The Center provided ideal conditions for sustained research: superb library resources and a vibrant interdisciplinary community constantly revitalized by international conferences and invited lectures. Beyond its scholarly richness, that year provided many sources of inspiration: amazing co-fellows, Monday lunches, history lectures at the Davis Center, visits to the Institute for Advanced Study, trips to New York, a concert by Maria Farantouri and Charles Lloyd, film screenings, lakeside walks, and the unforgettable glow of firefly-lit trees.

How did the research you conducted at Princeton impact your work as a whole and this book project?

I made progress on the manuscript, and I initiated a transcultural study on the teaching of art history in nineteenth-century art academies across Europe and the Americas, which I later developed in Berlin as a Humboldt Research Fellow. Princeton introduced me to two areas that proved crucial: digital humanities and the spatial and global turns in art history. For instance, learning Geographic Information System mapping techniques reshaped how I visualize historical data and became integral to the book and future projects. An encounter with network visualization tools bore fruit in later research on art biennials. This period of intellectual openness helped me reconceive the book not simply as an extension of my Ph.D., but as part of a broader comparative and theoretical framework.

What would you like your readers to learn?

I hope readers gain a deeper understanding of how the figure of the artist is historically constructed, not only in Greece but more broadly. The book traces how a modern “art world” emerged through specific institutional and discursive mechanisms, shaping artistic identity and value in a rapidly changing society coming to terms with its recent independence. The aim is to challenge narrow national narratives by revealing the deeply entangled relationship between the Greek and broader European art worlds, while also highlighting the specificity of local debates around heritage, authenticity, and cultural sovereignty. By positioning Greece as both a recipient and a transformer of European cultural models, the book rejects the idea of one-way influence. Instead, it emphasizes the dynamic, often poetic, nature of reception, especially in asymmetrical contexts. I hope to contribute to rethinking the historiography of modern art through perspectives that foreground marginal contexts – not as exceptions, but as essential to understanding the plural and contingent nature of modernity.

A transformative journey to Greece inspired Stanley J. Seeger to found Hellenic Studies programs at Princeton. Please tell us about a journey that expanded your intellectual horizons or influenced your research.

My research path has been a series of such journeys, beginning with my move from Thessaloniki to Paris for my doctoral studies. If that Greek–French axis laid the foundation, its first major expansion came through a German triangulation. In 2008, I spent two months in Munich conducting research and (re)learning the language. It was my first immersion in the “adamantine” world of German-speaking art history – a tradition that had long held a mythical status for me – and my introduction to the experience of working in German archives. My time at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, with its exceptional library, seminars, and conferences, proved pivotal in orienting my scholarly focus more explicitly toward historiography. That journey marked the beginning of an enduring engagement with the intellectual frameworks and institutional legacies of German-speaking art historical thought, which have become increasingly central to my work.

Photo of Dimitri Gondicas by Sameer A. Khan/Fotobuddy. Photo of Eleonora Vratskidou by Markus Hilbich. 


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