Mythmaking Eastern Europe: Art in Response

Redaktion: Mateusz Kapustka

Ausgabedatum: 15.10.2014

The present volume contains papers given at the conference “Mythmaking Eastern Europe: Art in Response“ which was organized on 18th December 2012 in Zurich by the Institute of Art History of the University of Zurich in cooperation with the Swiss Institute for Art Research (SIK-ISEA). It explores the issue of collective imagination of Eastern European art after 1945. Art history from this region, freed from political burdens after 1989, is an essential part of present scholarship with its new comprehensive methodical approaches and contemporary claims for global perspectives. The presence of Eastern European art in the discourse of the post-hegemonic, post-colonial and transnational art history is, however, constantly obstructed by such barriers as e.g. the myth of a collective identity of artists active behind the (former) Iron Curtain. These are nowadays often labeled with an avant-garde mark of anti-socialist nonconformists and hence their artistic oeuvre appears immediately as a struggle for freedom. This volume initiates a critical debate on this topic and touches upon the problem of historical compromising attitudes and different systematic alliances of artistic personalities and milieus with state authorities. Thus, it contributes to the current general debate on the present borders and aims of art history as an academic discipline searching for its new identity beyond politicized geographical concerns.