Search results

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, scales, and distances constructed? How did (neo)avant-garde tendencies relate with officially sanctioned socialist realism? 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.

"This book explores how contemporary art can alter the ways in which we visualise and conceptualise the world and the social relations that shape it. Drawing from the writings of philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, it spotlights the concept of 'world-forming' and the political significance of art-making and viewing. The central theme of 'world-forming' focuses attention on the processes of globalisation. The book explores how artists can facilitate shared creative spaces within and beyond the apparatuses of global capitalism. The book traces a philosophical progression from ontology to the political through a series of participatory practices. It forwards Jean-Luc Nancy's idea of 'world-forming' in order to show how contemporary art sustains critical and creative engagement with social practices. The overall objective of the book is to show, through participatory practices, how contemporary art can facilitate social change. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, contemporary art, philosophy, and politics"--

"This book addresses the art historical category of "contemporary art" from a transregional perspective, but unlike other volumes of its kind, it focuses in on non-Western instantiations of "the contemporary." The book concerns itself with the historical conditions in which a radically new mode of artistic production, distribution, and consumption - called "contemporary art" - emerged in some countries of Eastern Europe, the post-Soviet republics of the USSR, India, Latin America, and the Middle East, following both local and broader sociopolitical processes of modernization and neoliberalization. Its main argument is that one cannot fully engage with the idea of the "global contemporary" without also paying careful attention to the particular, local, and/or national symptoms of the contemporary condition. Part One is methodological and theoretical in scope, while Part Two is historical and documentary. For the latter, a number of case studies address the emergence of the category "contemporary art" in the context of Lebanon, Egypt, India, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Armenia, and Moldova. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, globalism, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies"--

"This book focuses on the expanding contemporary art scene in Syria, particularly Damascus, during the first decade of the twenty-first century. The decade was characterized by a high degree of experimentation as young artists began to work with artistic media that were new in Syria, such as video, installation and performance art. They were rethinking the role of artists in society and looking for ways to reach audiences in more direct manners and address socio-cultural and socio-political issues. The book will be of interest for scholars of global and Middle Eastern art studies, and also for scholars interested in the recent social and cultural history of Syria and the wider Middle East"--

This book provides an in-depth and thematic analysis of socially engaged art in Mainland China, exploring its critical responses to and creative interventions in China's top-down, pro-urban, and profit-oriented socioeconomic transformations. It focuses on the socially conscious practices of eight art professionals who assume the role of artist, critic, curator, educator, cultural entrepreneur, and social activist, among others, as they strive to expose the injustice and inequality many Chinese people have suffered, raise public awareness of pressing social and environmental problems, and invent new ways and infrastructures to support various underprivileged social groups.

Czechoslovakia was subject to authoritarian rule of the Communist Party since 1948 and any research had to comply with Marxism-Leninism as the sole acceptable scientific method. Czech art history (as different form art criticism) lacked any experience with Marxism. Around and after 1950, there continued the quest for a method that would be both compatible with the scholarly tradition following the Vienna School and acceptable to the ideologues of the political regime. Jaromír Neumann found the best result in his invention of "formalist iconology" around 1960: a strange hybrid of Panofsky's post-war iconology and the late Dvořák's "spiritual art history" has served Czech art history well until today.

This dissertation investigates the ways in which traditional Native American and Canadian First Nations ideas and concepts of history influence contemporary art made by artists with these backgrounds. It further takes into account an understanding of historicity as an approach to the philosophies that underlie concepts of history. The methodologies used in this analysis include investigations of mythology and ritual practice, ideas about landscape, and the roles of personal lives and biographies as forms of historical documentation. It also includes an examination of specific government laws and treaties, which are forms of more standard historical sources. Throughout the text, there is a concern with the ways in which artists use their practice to reclaim historical agency lost in the process of colonization. This agency is manifest in myriad ways, including the reference of traditional myths and ritual practices described in academic texts and artistic critiques of the laws enacted by settler governments. This dissertation also considers the manner in which this agency is transferred from artist to art object, allowing the artwork to manifest and display the agency of the artist herself or himself. Through the use of traditional concepts of history and historicity, Native American and Canadian First Nations artists reassert their rights of agency within the historical record. They do so through reference to traditional ideas and as full participants in the contemporary art world. In so doing they reclaim a degree of control over their own histories, producing works and discourses that present, or intentionally refuse to present, a continuity with the historical past that has otherwise often been denied to modern indigenous Americans

This paper will examine the expanded role Contemporary art has assumed in rebranding Paris, France's flagship capital, as a cutting edge, technological, innovative and competitive global city. Paris has effectively incorporated contemporary art into the fabric of the whole city with exhibitions such as those originating at the Grand Palais spreading to venues throughout the inner and outer 'quartier'. France has used arts and culture to claim supremacy in the world whether colonial or local for centuries with Paris the ultimate 'brand'. Post WWII Paris however, saw this brand diminished and claims to artistic supremacy replaced by New York. In an effort to regain some relevancy Paris, and by extension France, began the process of re-branding concordant with political, economic and technological advancement through the fervent promotion of contemporary art. Contemporary Paris through contemporary art aspires to a transnational and post-national site of spectacle; a leading locus for art to be consumed. Paris's mass contemporary art consumption era began in 1972 with De Gaulle's efforts to replace military and imperial power with cultural dominance (though the recent concurrent inaugurations of outposts for the French military and the Louvre in Abu Dhabi may suggest a 'rapprochement' of the domains), inaugurating a litany of new contemporary exhibitions, art fairs, monuments and museums. Furthermore, with the redefinition of contemporary French art from an art produced by French artists to art produced in the "territory of France", this universalizing re-branding of contemporary art attempts to validate Paris's claim to global cultural supremacy. I discuss particular events such as the art fair FIAC, La Force de L' Art and Monumenta to illustrate the use of Contemporary art to shape and brand contemporary Paris.

This panel, convened from September 4 to October 10, 2009, is the second of a three-part series on issues in contemporary African art. The first panel, which appeared in issue 22/23 of Nka, focused on large-scale exhibitions, which have been instrumental in bringing the work of African artists to global attention, and the third will examine the politics of contemporary African art and the art museum. What concerns the panel here is the scholarship of contemporary African art: the teaching, research, and publishing in the field. The discussion considers such questions as the place of contemporary African art in art history programs and its relationship with contemporary Western art as a subfield within art history, as well as the challenges involved in training graduate students. The panel also walks on such gritty grounds as the relationship between contemporary and traditional or classical African art history.

Contemporary art more and more actively interacts with the nonartistic museums. For instance, biological, historical as well as anthropological museums become spaces for contemporary art exhibitions or initiate collaborative projects. This process seeks to link different types of materials to make the interaction successful. Thus, several questions appear: can we talk about interaction, if the museum becomes a place for the exhibition devoted to the topics of history, ethnography or biology? Does any appearance of contemporary art in the museum territory become a part of intercultural dialogue? And how do we assess and analyze the process of interaction between these two spheres? Among nonartistic museums working with contemporary art the museums of conscience appear to be one of the most interesting. This type of museums is quite new – it developed in 1990s when the International Coalition of Sites of Coscience was created and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum was founded. The interaction between contemporary art and museums of conscience starts to develop in the context of changing attitudes towards historical memory as well as widening the notion of museums. In this situation museums need new instruments for educational and exhibitional work. Contemporary artists work with the past through personal memories and experience, when museums turn to documents and artifacts. So, their collaboration connects two different optics: artistic and historical. Thus, it is possible to use the Michel Foucault term dispositif to analyze the collaboration between artists and museums. Foucault defines the dispositif as a link between different elements of the system as well as optics that makes us to see and by that create the system. The term allows us to connect the questions of exhibition work with philosophical and historical issues when we analyze the projects in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yad Vashem and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

This paper will examine the expanded role Contemporary art has assumed in rebranding Paris, France's flagship capital, as a cutting edge, technological, innovative and competitive global city. Paris has effectively incorporated contemporary art into the fabric of the whole city with exhibitions such as those originating at the Grand Palais spreading to venues throughout the inner and outer 'quartier'. France has used arts and culture to claim supremacy in the world whether colonial or local for centuries with Paris the ultimate 'brand'. Post WWII Paris however, saw this brand diminished and claims to artistic supremacy replaced by New York. In an effort to regain some relevancy Paris, and by extension France, began the process of re-branding concordant with political, economic and technological advancement through the fervent promotion of contemporary art. Contemporary Paris through contemporary art aspires to a transnational and post-national site of spectacle; a leading locus for art to be consumed. Paris's mass contemporary art consumption era began in 1972 with De Gaulle's efforts to replace military and imperial power with cultural dominance (though the recent concurrent inaugurations of outposts for the French military and the Louvre in Abu Dhabi may suggest a 'rapprochement' of the domains), inaugurating a litany of new contemporary exhibitions, art fairs, monuments and museums. Furthermore, with the redefinition of contemporary French art from an art produced by French artists to art produced in the "territory of France", this universalizing re-branding of contemporary art attempts to validate Paris's claim to global cultural supremacy. I discuss particular events such as the art fair FIAC, La Force de L' Art and Monumenta to illustrate the use of Contemporary art to shape and brand contemporary Paris.

This essay looks at modern Italian art circulating in the United States in the interwar period. Prior to the canonization of recent decades of Italy's artistic scene through MoMA's 1949 show Twentieth-Century Italian Art, the Carnegie International exhibitions of paintings in Pittsburgh were the premier stage in America for Italian artists seeking the spotlight. Moreover, the Italian government actively sought to promote its own positive image as a patron state in world fairs, and through art gallery exhibitions. Drawing mostly on primary sources, this essay explores how the identity of modern Italian art was negotiated in the critical discourses and in the interplay between Italian and American promoters. While in Italy much of the criticism boasted a self-assuring "untranslatable" character of national art through the centuries, and was obsessed by the chauvinistic ambition of regaining cultural primacy, especially against the French, the returns for those various artists and patrons who ventured to conquer the American art scene were meager. Rather than successfully affirming the modern Italian school, they remained largely entangled in a shadow zone, between the glaring prestige of French modernism and the glory of the old masters (paradoxically enough, the only Italian "retrospective" approved by MoMA before 1949). Some Italian modernists, such as Amedeo Modigliani, Giorgio de Chirico, and Massimo Campigli, continued to be perceived as French, while the inherent duality and ambiguity in the critical discourse undergirding the Novecento and the more expressionist younger generation – which struggled to conflate Italianism and modernity, traditionalism and vanguardism – made the marketing of an Italian school more difficult. Therefore, despite some temporary critical success and sales, for example for Felice Carena, Ferruccio Ferrazzi, and Felice Casorati, the language of the Italian Novecento was largely "lost in translation."