Art Practices in Cold War Socialisms
Matteo Bertelé
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice; University of California Santa Barbara; Universität Hamburg
Art Practices in Cold War Socialisms
The research project is intended as a cultural history of compared art practices in Europe during the Cold War, focussing on countries such as the Soviet Union, the two German republics, Yugoslavia and Italy. The comparative approach and inter-disciplinary structure of the current research is targeted at providing a polycentric perspective on the multilateral, multi-cultural and trans-ideological practices in the visual arts, in order to challenge traditional bi-polar narratives commonly associated to Cold War Studies. In this context, art practices will be approached as “cultural encounters”, a term adopted to replace “discovery”, considered (West)-eurocentric and inappropriate (Peter Burke, What is Cultural History?). Rather than as events dictated from above as State policies or as cultural actions in an international context, such practices will be considered as adaptations, reactions and negotiations by the involved artists and art professionals.
Common historical criteria among the focus countries include their experiences under interwar totalitarian regimes, which provide a further subject for a comparative approach to the visual discourse in the second half of the 20th century. As a result of the polarization that followed the Cold War, those countries underwent different schisms: a geo-political one (such as the occupation and division of Germany and the isolation of Yugoslavia from the two blocks as leader of the non-aligned movement), an inner political one (such as the political party landscape of Italy, marked by the tension between the Christian Democracy in power and the cultural hegemony of the largest Communist party in Western Europe), and a socio-cultural one (such as the confrontation between official and non-official Soviet cultures). As a consequence, those countries experienced different ways to Socialism, be it real or ideal. A significant study case in this context is the Art Exhibition of Socialist Countries, held in Moscow in 1958, with artworks from twelve East-European and Asian republics. Promoted as the first large show ever held in the socialist hemisphere, the exhibition addressed to “progressive” artists and art professionals at large, residing also outside real socialism. The show was intended as an unprecedented art encounter referring to a worldwide socialist transnational art community, expected to lay the ground for a global socialist art and visual culture.
In order to find eloquent cases to study, the first objective of the project is a mapping of the art practices through the following coordinates:
1) Time through an art chronology: a comparative timeline of the main art encounters that occurred between 1945 and 1990
2) Space through art locations: private and public art collections, regular international group exhibitions of contemporary art across the Iron Curtain (e.g., the Venice Biennale, documenta in Kassel, “New Tendencies” group show in Zagreb), as well as retrospective, solo or one-time shows.
3) Action through the actors: a survey on the activity and role of artists, curators, art historians, art critics, collectors, gallerists, diplomats, politicians.
Art exhibitions will be regarded as an exclusive phenomenon within the Socialist visual culture: in a society imbued with “poor images” and devoted to the serial production and reproduction of pictures, the exhibitions represent a one-time confrontation with original artworks, with “rich images” whose mediality comes to terms with their materiality. As far as it concerns the actors involved, one of the main issues inquiries to what extent they adapted their practice to the cultural Cold War rhetoric and imagery. For example, how Soviet unofficial artists - be they emigrants in the West or still living in the USSR - were ascribed - or ascribed themselves - to the Western discourse on dissent, dissidence and counter-cultures. How did they negotiate their political and social status in order to achieve international exposure?
Particular attention will be paid to virtual encounters and unmet expectations among the interested European art socialist and pro-socialist art communities, as a result of mutual isolation and political control: instances thereof include missed connections between the “classical” understanding of fine arts in Socialist Europe, rooted in academic West-European art, and the “progressive” ambitions and utopian speculations ascribed to real socialism by the Western intelligentsia and public opinion; between the ubiquitous beliefs and myths of the East-European art community about its Western counterpart, and their actual encounters with that counterpart through their emigration to the West or through their first shows organized there.
The results will amount to an exhaustive investigation based on personal experiences and collective art events, considered not from a binary point of view, but through different actors and perspectives, providing a polycentric and inter-European dimension of socialist arts and visual cultures.
- Dauer: 01.02.2020-31.07.2020
- Projektleitung: Dr. Matteo Bertelé