ART HISTORICAL WRITING DURING GHEORGHE GHEORGHIU-DEJ’S REGIME. THE CASE OF ACADEMIC PAINTING IN THE ROMANIAN ACADEMY’S SCHOLARLY JOURNAL Roxana MODREANU* Abstract: This study follows the way in which Academism was discussed in the pages of the academic journal Studii și cercetări de istoria artei [Studies and Research of Art History] from 1954, the first year the magazine was issued, until 1964. This was the Institute of Art History’s academic journal and can be considered the official scholarly publication of the time in the field of art history. This paper aims at showing that even in the discourse about Academism there is a loosening of ideological restrictions in the late 1950s and the first half of the 1960s. There is a direct relationship between Socialist Realism and art historical discourse from this time and it can be felt especially in the texts dating from the 1950s. Key Words: Art historiography, art history, painting, Communism, Academism, SCIA, George Oprescu. Rezumat: Studiul are ca obiect modul în care este discutat în paginile revistei Studii și cercetări de istoria artei academismul începând cu 1954, primul an de apariție al revistei, până în 1964. Fiind vorba despre revista Institutului de istoria artei, aceasta poate fi considerată o sursă științifică oficială. Articolul arată că, până și în cazul discursului despre academism, se fac resimțite relaxarea restricțiilor de la finalul anilor 1950 și începutul anilor 1960, existând o corelație directă între realismul socialist și discursul de istoria artei care se poate resimți mai ales în textele de la începutul anilor 1950. Cuvinte cheie: istoriografie de artă, istoria artei, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, pictură, comunism, academism, SCIA, George Oprescu. The year 1947 marks the beginning of the Communist regime in Romania. Starting with this year, everything began to change, including the cultural life. While the arts underwent a massive change because of the necessity to engage with the Socialist Realist method, art history also suffered transformations. One by one, artistic movements were sanctioned as bourgeois or, on the contrary, were considered beneficial, thus leading to their shunning or inclusion. In this context what can be considered the official line of art history? The Communist regime established the research institutes of the Romanian Academy – at that point, named Academy of Romanian People‟s Republic, or Academy of R.P.R. 1 – in 1949. This was when the Institute of art history in Bucharest was founded. Starting with 1954 the Institute had its own academic journal, Studies and Research of Art History – in Romanian: Studii și cercetări de istoria artei – named SCIA after the Romanian acronym. The texts from this journal can be considered the official line of art history because it was issued by the main scholarly authority in the field: the Academy‟s Institute of art history. The Institute‟s director, George Oprescu, was the one who founded an art history department at the Faculty of Letters 1 R.P.R. stands for Romanian People‟s Republic, founded in 1947, and was the official name of the state until 1965, when the Socialist Republic of Romania was proclaimed. During the first part of the Communist regime, the name of the Romanian state was very often written using this acronym. *University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca, roxana.modreanu@uad.ro 349