ABOUT THIS BOOK

This book presents and analyzes artistic interactions both within the Soviet bloc and with the West between 1945 and 1989. During the Cold War the exchange of artistic ideas and products united Europe’s avant-garde in a most remarkable way. Despite the Iron Curtain and national and political borders there existed a constant flow of artists, artworks, artistic ideas and practices. The geographic borders of these exchanges have yet to be clearly defined. How were networks, centers, peripheries (local, national and international), scales, and distances constructed? How did (neo)avant-garde tendencies relate with officially sanctioned socialist realism?The literature on the art of Eastern Europe provides a great deal of factual knowledge about a vast cultural space, but mostly through the prism of stereotypes and national preoccupations. By discussing artworks, studying the writings on art, observing artistic evolution and artists’ strategies, as well as the influence of political authorities, art dealers and art critics, the essays in Art beyond Borders compose a transnational history of arts in the Soviet satellite countries in the post war period.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Jérôme Bazin is associate professor in history of art and history at the University of Paris-Est.

Pascal Dubourg Glatigny is senior researcher at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), Paris

Piotr Piotrowski (1952-2015) was professor of art history at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań.

REVIEWS

"À l’origine de cet ouvrage collectif, il y a la volonté des éditeurs Jérôme Bazin, Pascal Dubourg Glatigny et Piotr Piotrowski (1952-2015), de contribuer à un mouvement de décloisonnement en favorisant les croisements des outils, des méthodes, des angles d’analyse et des objets d’étude de chercheurs(-ses) éloignés en termes géographiques et disciplinaires. En encourageant une appréhension transnationale et circulatoire de l’art dans l’Europe communiste et au-delà, Art beyond Borders s’inscrit dans une démarche scientifique proche de celle du programme de recherche Art@s dirigé par Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel et Catherine Dossin, qui contribue actuellement à un renouvellement de l’écriture de l’Histoire de l’art, envisagée dans une perspective globale et interconnectée. Les éditeurs signalent « le déplacement de la guerre idéologique de l’Europe vers le Tiers monde, vers des contextes où les “États modernes” étaient encore à créer, particulièrement en Asie et en Afrique ». L’exemple de Algérie est abordé (à travers l’exposition Algérie 1952 organisée en 1953 à Paris) pour ce qui concerne le continent africain."
-- Cahiers d'études africaines

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations1. Introduction: Geography of InternationalismJérôme Bazin, Pascal Dubourg Glatigny, and Piotr Piotrowski Part I: Moving People 2. The Moscow Underground Art Scene in an International PerspectiveLola Kantor-Kazovsky 3. The British Art Critic and the Russian Sculptor: The Making of John Berger’s Art and RevolutionKai Artinger4. Pop Art in the GDR: Willy Wolff’s Dialogue with the WestSigrid Hofer 5. Twinkling Networks, Invisible Ties: On the Unofficial Contacts of Byelorussian Artists in the 1980sAliona Gloukhova6. Chocolate, Pop and Socialism: Peter Ludwig and the GDRBoris Pofalla7. Gabriele Mucchi’s Career Paths in Italy, Czechoslovakia and the GDRFabio Guidali8. The Murals by Spanish Exile Josep Renau in Halle-Neustadt, a Socialist Town Built for Chemical Workers in the GDRAnja Jackes9. Women Artists’ Trajectories and Networks within the Hungarian Underground Art Scene and BeyondBeata Hock10. Heightened Alert: The Underground Art Scene in the Sights of the Secret Police—Surveillance Files as a Resource for Research into Artists’ Activities in the Underground of the 1960s and 1970sKata KrasznahorkaiPart II: Moving Objects11. Remapping Socialist Realism: Renato Guttuso in PolandKatarzyna Murawska-Muthesius12. Picasso behind the Iron Curtain: From the History of the Postwar Reception of Pablo Picasso in East-Central EuropePiotr Bernatowicz13. On Propagarde: The Late Period of the Romanian Artist M. H. MaxyErwin Kessler14. Realism and Internationalism: On Neuererdiskussion by Willi Neubert (1969)Jérôme Bazin 15. Socialist Realism in Greece (1944–67)Costas Baroutas16. Constructive-Concrete Art in the GDR, Poland, and HungaryDoris Hartmann17. Nationalizing Modernism: Exhibitions of Hungarian and Czechoslovakian Avant-garde in WarsawPiotr Piotrowski18. Avant-garde Construction: Leonhard Lapin and His Concept of Objective ArtMari Laanemets 19. Fluxus in Prague: The Koncert Fluxu of 1966Petra Stegmann20. International Contact with Mail Art in the Spirit of Peaceful Coexistence: Birger Jesch’s Mail Art Project (1980–81)Stefanie SchwabePart III: Gathering People21. (Socialist) Realism Unbound: The Effects of International Encounters on Soviet Art Practice and Discourse in the Khrushchev ThawSusan E. Reid22. “Friendly Atmospheres”? The Union Internationale des Architectes between East and West in the 1950sAlexandra Köhring23. Zagreb as the Location of the “New Tendencies” International Art Movement (1961–73)Ljilana Kolesnik24. The Graphic Arts Biennials in the 1950s and 1960s: The Slim “Cut” in the Iron Curtain—The Bulgarian CaseIrina Genova25. The Biennale der Ostseeländer: The GDR’s Main International Arts ExhibitionElke Neumann26. Czechoslovakia at the Venice Biennale in the 1950sVeronika Wolf27. “Biennale of Dissent” (1977): Nonconformist Art from the USSR in VeniceJan May28. Correcting the Czech(oslovakian) Error: The Cooperation of Hungarian and Czechoslovak Artists in the Face of the Warsaw Pact Invasion of CzechoslovakiaMagdalena Radomska29. Crossing the Border: The Foksal Gallery from Warsaw in Lausanne/Paris (1970) and Edinburgh (1972 and 1979)Thomas Skowronek30. To Each Their Own Reality: The Art of the FRG and the GDR at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1981Mathilde ArnouxPart IV: Defining Europe31. Moscow–Paris–Havana–Mexico, 1945–60Serge Fauchereau32. A Dying Colonialism, a Dying Orientalism: Algeria, 1952Sarah Wilson33. Global Socialist Realism: The Representation of Non-European Cultures in Polish Art of the 1950sAndrzej Szczerski34. The Influence of Käthe Kollwitz on Chinese Creation: Between Expressionism and Revolutionary RealismEstelle Bories35. The Eastern Connection: Depictions of Soviet Central AsiaAliya Abykayeva-Tiesenhausen36. The Visualization of the Third Way in Tito’s YugoslaviaTanja ZimmermannList of ContributorsIndex