Postmodernism and the Postsocialist Condition: Politicized Art under Late Socialism (Ahmanson-Murphy Fine Arts Book)

The Berlin Wall was coming down, the Soviet Union was dissolving, Communist China was well on its way down the capitalist path; the world was witnessing political and social transformations without precedent. Artists, seeing it all firsthand, responded with a revolution of their own. What form this revolution took—how artists in the 1980s marked their societies' traumatic transition from decaying socialism to an insecure future—emerges in this remarkable volume. With in-depth perspectives on art and artists in the former Soviet Union, the Balkans and Mitteleuropa, China, and Cuba—all from scholars and art critics who were players in the tumultuous cultural landscapes they describe—this stunningly illustrated collection captures a singular period in the history of world art, and a critical moment in the cultural and political transition from the last century to our own. Authors Ales Erjavec, Gao Minglu, Boris Groys, Péter György, Gerardo Mosquera, and Misko Suvakovic observe distinct national differences in artistic responses to the social and political challenges of the time. But their essays also reveal a clear pattern in the ways in which artists registered the exhaustion of the socialist vision and absorbed the influence of art movements such as constructivism, pop art, and conceptual art, as well as the provocations of western pop culture. Indebted to but not derived from capitalist postmodernism, the result was a unique version of postsocialist postmodernism, an artistic/political innovation clearly identified and illustrated for the first time in these pages. The Berlin Wall was coming down, the Soviet Union was dissolving, Communist China was well on its way down the capitalist path; the world was witnessing political and social transformations without precedent. Artists, seeing it all firsthand, responded with a revolution of their own. What form this revolution took how artists in the 1980s marked their societies' traumatic transition from decaying socialism to an insecure future emerges in this remarkable volume. With in-depth perspectives on art and artists in the former Soviet Union, the Balkans and Mitteleuropa, China, and Cuba all from scholars and art critics who were players in the tumultuous cultural landscapes they describe this stunningly illustrated collection captures a singular period in the history of world art, and a critical moment in the cultural and political transition from the last century to our own. Authors Ales Erjavec, Gao Minglu, Boris Groys, Péter Gyo��rgy, Gerardo Mosquera, and Misko Suvakovic observe distinct national differences in artistic responses to the social and political challenges of the time. But their essays also reveal a clear pattern in the ways in which artists registered the exhaustion of the socialist vision and absorbed the influence of art movements such as constructivism, pop art, and conceptual art, as well as the provocations of western pop culture. Indebted to but not derived from capitalist postmodernism, the result was a unique version of postsocialist postmodernism, an artistic/political innovation clearly identified and illustrated for the first time in these pages. -- Amazon.com FIGURES......Page 11 Foreword......Page 18 Introduction......Page 24 The Other Gaze: Russian Unofficial Art’s View of the Soviet World......Page 78 Art as a Political Machine: Fragments on the Late Socialist and Postsocialist Art of Mitteleuropa and the Balkans......Page 129 Neue Slowenische Kunst— New Slovenian Art: Slovenia, Yugoslavia, Self-Management, and the 1980s......Page 174 Hungarian Marginal Art in the Late Period of State Socialism......Page 214 The New Cuban Art......Page 247 Post-Utopian Avant-Garde Art in China......Page 286 Contributors......Page 324 Index......Page 326 The other gaze: Russian unofficial art's view of the Soviet world / Boris Groys Art as a political machine: fragments on the late socialist and postsocialist art of Mitteleuropa and the Balkans / Miško Šuvaković Neue Slowenische kunst - new Slovenian art: Slovenia, Yugoslavia, self-management, and the 1980s / Aleš Erjavec Hungarian marginal art in the late period of state socialism / Péter György The new Cuban art / Gerardo Mosquera Post-utopian avant-garde art in China / Gao Minglu. On December 31, 1990, Marina Grzinic and I wrote the following: The numerous events of the 1980s . . . prepared and foretold the current social and political conditions in Slovenia and in Ljubljana as its capital and major urban center.