Beyond ideology: Representations of the Baroque in socialist Czechoslovakia as seen through the media

This paper focuses on representations of the Baroque in Czechoslovakia under state socialism (1948–1989). In this period, policies and politics had a huge impact on the ideological discourses that determined how the Baroque was to be officially interpreted. However, the communist regime and its ideology were not the only determinants of how the Baroque was evaluated. In fact, mechanisms of cultural remembrance, divergent strategies of different mass media, adopting their representations of the Baroque to their respective algorithms, mutual influences from within Czechoslovakia and from abroad, as well as the urge to propagate, on an international scale, the touristic qualities of Czechoslovakia and her cultural heritage, all had their share in shaping diverging representations of the Baroque. Hence the study analyses mnemonic, functional and medial aspects of how the Baroque was perceived in the public sphere and shows how they accorded, respectively clashed, with government ideologies and politics