Networks and Sociability in East European Art

Courtauld Institute of Art
23 October 2010

This seminar explores the ways in which unauthorised artistic ideas were able to transgress national and ideological boundaries through networks of friendship and artistic collaboration that flew in the face of an official culture of isolationism, censorship and political control. It focuses on processes of artistic exchange that took shape at a grass-roots level, inventive strategies to surmount bureaucratic obstacles, and the specific meaning of ‘networking’ in the context of communist Eastern Europe...(more)

The Possibility of the Post-National in Contemporary East European Art

Paper given at the CAA Conference in Chicago in February 2010 on the panel Transformation Reconsidered: ‘Utopias’, Realities and National Traditions in Post-1989 Central Europe. This paper discusses the changing understanding of the national in contemporary art since the End of Communism and the shift of interest during the second post-communist decade away from issues of identity in both its national and regional formulations towards an exploration of the possibilities of a post-national sense of belonging, associated with the deterritorialisation and synchronicity of the globalised cultural scene in the era of post-transition...(more)

Revolutionary Decadence:
Foreign Artists in Budapest since 1989
(Catalogue MMU/Museum Kiscell, Oct 2009)

The Revolution Trilogy closes with the sequence that began in 1989 and focuses on the effect of the changes on a single community in one locality, namely the enclave of foreign artists within the Budapest art world, and examines their participation in libratory forms of sociability, negotiation of the politics of belonging, and contribution to a post-national understanding of contemporary art in post-communist Europe...(more)

Special Issue: Socialist Eastern Europe (Introduction)
(Third Text, Vol. 23, Issue 1, January, 2009)

The SocialEast Forum considers the art and visual culture of Eastern Europe through collaborative projects, exhibitions and seminars. The forum is based on cooperation between leading scholars from across Europe, as well as the involvement of curators, artists and other professionals who deal in their work with issues of art and memory. The goal of SocialEast is to encourage comparative research into the art history of the countries of Eastern and Central Europe, as well as to examine how a revised understanding of the achievements and circumstances of East European art impacts on global interpretations of art history. This special issue of Third Text is made up of a selection...(more)

From Post-Communism to Post-Transition:Art in Eastern Europe
The Art Book (Feb 2009)

In the first decade after the Fall of the Berlin Wall the label ‘post-communism’ appeared as the most appropriate term to refer to the overall situation in Eastern Europe and was applied in the first major survey show of the contemporary art of the region. Today, the pressures of the present outweigh the burden of the past to such an extent that contemporary art in Eastern Europe is fast moving beyond the ‘transition’ into uncharted territory...(more)

The Essential 1956: Album of the Revolution
Time Out Budapest (October 2009)

The events of 1956 remain a live issue for Hungarian society and even after 53 years, the anniversary still rekindles ideological passions, ruffles the feathers of the political elite, and runs up against basic arguments about how to interpret the collective trauma of the revolution. For the Right, the essential 1956 was a national uprising against communist dictatorship, while for the Left, the revolution was at heart an attempt to reform communism and win freedom from Soviet control. Every year contemporary political battles are fought around the symbols and disputed memories of of 1956, famously leading to a riotous reenactment of the uprising on the 50th anniversary, when the authorities lost control of the streets to protesters swathed in the colours of the revolution. Everyone has their own 1956, and picks and chooses from the album of recollections and urban myths to create a personal mix of hot memories, cherished heroes and political ideals...(more)

Soviet War Memorials in Eastern Europe

Figuration/Abstraction: Public Art in Europe 1945-68, edited by Charlotte Benton (Ashgate, 2004)

The first wave of war memorials were erected for primarily geo-political reasons. They acted to mark on the map the area of Europe liberated by the Soviets, and to claim that territory as part of the Soviet zone of influence. It is no coincidence that some of the earliest monuments were erected at the extremities of Soviet military activity, in Berlin, Vienna and Kaliningrad and often have a visibly aggressive character. Later Soviet memorials took on new and sometimes paradoxical roles, taking as their idealistic focus the social transformations that following the establishment of Communist power, or even shifting the emphasis back into the distant past in search of the ‘roots’ of the Liberation in national history...(more)