|
Awangarda w cieniu Jalty.
Sztuka Europy Środkowo-wschodniej w latach 1945-1989 [Avant-Garde in the Shadow of
Yalta. Art in Central-Eastern Europe,
1945-1989]. Poznań:
Rebis, 2005. English edition: In the Shadow
of Yalta. Art
and the Avant-garde in Eastern Europe, 1945-1989, London: Reaktion Books, 2009
East-Central Europe, i.e. Europe in the shadow of Yalta, is a historical discursive construct
of a purely political character, which came into being as a result of World
War II. This term refers to the territory between the "iron
curtain" and the USSR
- that part of the continent which in consequence of an agreement between the
West and the USSR
fell under the political control of the latter. The USSR itself did not fall
under the "shadow of Yalta" since it remained one of the powers
deciding about Europe's future, which is why - apart from other reasons - its
art has not been taken into consideration in the present study. East-Central
Europe is not what used to be called Central Europe (" Mitteleuropa "), though the
latter remains in part one of its components: East-Central Europe consists of
the eastern segment of the former Central Europe (without Austria, but with
the eastern provinces of Germany) and the western segment of the former
Eastern Europe. In short, East-Central Europe included the following
countries which since the mid-1940s till 1989, under the terms of the Yalta
treaty, remained more or less strictly dominated by the USSR: Czechoslovakia,
the GDR, Poland, Hungary, and - to some extent - Bulgaria, where the avant-garde
tendencies were, however, rather insignificant. Besides, the area includes
two countries which for various reasons and with different consequences broke
the "friendly" relations with the USSR:
Yugoslavia and Romania.
The analyses which make up the book focus on the history of the art of
the aformentioned countries, which is called - somewhat conventionally - the
"avant-garde." It comprises what the Anglo-American tradition has
been calling "modernism," as well as the neo-avant-garde and its
later mutations.Geographically, emphasis is not distributed in a uniform
manner: the historico-artistic analyses are more penetrating with reference
to those countries where the postwar experience of the avant-garde was richer
and more dynamic, and perhaps less so wherever it did not play an important
role.
The present book is by no means a definitive monograph of the art of East-Central Europe - it is not a complete overview,
but rather, as it seems, an analysis of some selected, arguably crucial,
historico-artistic questions. Neither is it an account of the art of
particular East-Central European countries, since it does not pass from one
country to another. Instead, specific artistic problems, tendencies,
attitudes, kinds of expression, etc. have been put together and compared
within appropriate time frames to create a map of the region, an outline of
its geographical dynamic. Thus, the diachrony of the art of the area has been
constructed of several synchronic cross sections. On the other hand, in each
synchronic segment art has not been approached as an automous domain, but on
the contrary, as an activity involved in politics. The art of the countries
under scrutiny has been analyzed in comparable historical frames, which does
not mean, however, that those were politically identical. The communist
system differed from country to country as regards its dynamic and intensity:
while one country might have been entering a phase of liberalization, another
might have been simultaneously taking a much stricter course. Under such
circumstances, one and the same type of artistic activity must have acquired
different local meanings.
The book has been composed as follows: after introductory remarks on
artistic geography, the reader comes across an analysis of surrealism,
observed, as it were, in the very heart of East- Central Europe, i.e. in
Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary, where in the short period between the
end of World War II and the proclamation of Stalinism in culture some artistic
developments were locally referred to as surrealist. The next step is an
analysis of the artistic culture during the de-Stalinization of East-Central Europe, i.e. modernism appearing within
the still totalitarian system which, however, depending the situation in each
country, underwent the process of erosion. Various kinds of artistic practice
have been taken into consideration in this context: the informel painting, neoconstructivism,
figurative tendencies, and the rising art of the neo-avant-garde. What follows
is an account of the neo-avant-garde experience: the body art and the
conceptual art in the changing political situation of the 1970s, in the times
of the so-called real socialism. Obviously, just as the "thaw," the
latter process looked different in each country, still, all of them underwent
changes which brought about de-ideologization of the regime, introduced some
elements of consumerism, and, last but not least, political pragmatism. The
final chapter is an epilogue - a description of the end of the communist
system in East-Central Europe and the art
which witnessed that end.
Translated by Marek
Wilczynski
Visit: Piotr Piotrowski
home page
|
