Identity Crisis: The Return of East European
Art Monthly issue 265, April 2013

The reorientation of attitudes to everything East European has also come about through a change in how the communist past is perceived both in society and through contemporary art. In the 1990s, socialism was a bad dream from which all were glad to have awoken and was only recalled by artists in order to make moralistic judgements that appealed to Western curiosity. In the 2000s, a depoliticised version of the communist past was rediscovered by globally-oriented artists who were enthused with the eclectic sampling of socialism’s unique cultural artefacts. In the third post-communist decade, socialism has reappeared as a fairy tale, in which we are confronted with the almost unbelievable fact that under socialism everyone had a job, there was free health care, equal access to higher education and everyone went on holiday through a network of factory-owned resorts...(more)

The Post-National in East European Art
History of Art History in East Central Europe (Torun, 2012)

With integration in the globalised art world, the ever elusive notion of contemporary East European Art is today becoming increasingly intangible and diverse. The changed circumstances are reflected in the East European art scene which now includes artists that are not necessarily based in their native countries, but may still work with the legacy of shared histories and experiences, artists living in the region, but working internationally without the burden of their own socio-political past, as well as non-native artists, either in collectives or individually, who have settled in the capitals of the former Eastern Bloc, or simply chosen Eastern Europe as the focus of their artistic research...(pdf)

Heroes of the Basic Law
Time Out Budapest
February 2012

The habit of using art to dictate a political message has a long and colourful history in Eastern Europe. Back in the Stalinist 1950s, artists were given a list of approved themes for state-run exhibitions, from Life is Good on the Collective Farm to portraits of socialist heroes from the national past. Echoes of such practices can be felt in the decision to commission Ft20 million worth of new paintings from contemporary artists dealing with approved topics from the last 150 years of Hungarian history as illustrations for the controversial new Hungarian constitution or Basic Law, which has been criticised at home and abroad for undemocratic measures that seem blatantly designed to concentrate power in the hands of the current Fidesz government. This eyebrow-raising series of official paintings are now on show in the Hungarian National Gallery, alongside a more grandiose exhibition of Old Masters designed to celebrate the heroic ups and downs of Hungarian history...(more) 

Reclaim Happiness: Opposing Systems
Tranzitdisplay, Prague
24 May 2011


Tamas St.Auby, Centaur, 1973-5

This symposium considers East European socialism and post-communist capitalism as opposing systems and explores the tactics devised by artists, dissidents and social activists to circumvent, escape or resist them. Issues to be discussed include the question of how connected the artistic avant-garde and political dissidence were under socialism, especially in the wake of the protest movements of 1968. More generally, how capitalistic in practice was the system disparagingly labelled ‘really existing socialism’ by leftist dissidents, especially in terms of economic and working practices?  In terms of opposition to the system, the symposium will discuss the inventive methods of everyday resistance against both totalitarianism in politics and society and exploitative conditions in the workplace. Why does the hidden history of opposition to the socialist system continue to fascinate and how have contemporary artists tried to salvage the submerged experience of resistance. Is there perhaps an untapped reserve of oppositional energy in Eastern Europe, and if so, can it be turned back on? Speakers include Franco Bifo Berardi, Tamás St.Auby, Miklós Haraszti, Jiří Skála, Fedor Blascak and Adam Chodzko...(more)

You Only Live Twice: the Strange Afterlife of Socialist Realist Sculpture
Published in Matter and History (Bucharest: Centre for Visual Introspection, 2011)

This essay aims to locate socialist realist public sculpture within the ideological and material framework of Stalinist Eastern Europe and examine how these monuments functioned at the time, their importance to the ideological system of socialist utopianism, and the peculiar radicalism of this totalizing artistic experiment without borders, which coexists uneasily with its ostensible aesthetic conservatism...(more)

Too Big To Be Forgotten
Time Out Budapest, May 2011

One of the most visible signs of radical change in Eastern Europe following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Communism in 1989 was the demolition of hundreds of statues of Lenin. Each country in the former Soviet Bloc took a different attitude to the monuments erected to celebrate the values and heroes of the communist regime, from cinematic beheadings to discreet removal by council workers. How the newly democratic countries treated the public art of the communist system reflected the depth of the political changes, the level of revolutionary violence, and the strength of public feelings towards the recent past...(more)

Orienting the Market
Sothebys Institute of Art
22 February 2011

One of the major characteristics of East European art during socialism - which still has a strong influence today - was the fact that there was no or little market for East European contemporary art. In fact, what has been seen as distinctive about East European art was its freedom from market pressures -  while conceptual art in the West quickly adapted to the art market, finding ways to sell even dematerialised art practices, in Eastern Europe this process took much longer...(more)

Networks and Sociability in East European Art
Courtauld Institute of Art
23 October 2010

This seminar explores the ways in which unauthorised artistic ideas were able to transgress national and ideological boundaries through networks of friendship and artistic collaboration that flew in the face of an official culture of isolationism, censorship and political control. It focuses on processes of artistic exchange that took shape at a grass-roots level, inventive strategies to surmount bureaucratic obstacles, and the specific meaning of ‘networking’ in the context of communist Eastern Europe...(more)

The Possibility of the Post-National in Contemporary East European Art

Paper given at the CAA Conference in Chicago in February 2010 on the panel Transformation Reconsidered: ‘Utopias’, Realities and National Traditions in Post-1989 Central Europe. This paper discusses the changing understanding of the national in contemporary art since the End of Communism and the shift of interest during the second post-communist decade away from issues of identity in both its national and regional formulations towards an exploration of the possibilities of a post-national sense of belonging, associated with the deterritorialisation and synchronicity of the globalised cultural scene in the era of post-transition...(more)

Revolutionary Decadence:
Foreign Artists in Budapest since 1989
(Catalogue MMU/Museum Kiscell, Oct 2009)

The Revolution Trilogy closes with the sequence that began in 1989 and focuses on the effect of the changes on a single community in one locality, namely the enclave of foreign artists within the Budapest art world, and examines their participation in libratory forms of sociability, negotiation of the politics of belonging, and contribution to a post-national understanding of contemporary art in post-communist Europe...(more)

Special Issue: Socialist Eastern Europe (Introduction)
(Third Text, Vol. 23, Issue 1, January, 2009)

The SocialEast Forum considers the art and visual culture of Eastern Europe through collaborative projects, exhibitions and seminars. The forum is based on cooperation between leading scholars from across Europe, as well as the involvement of curators, artists and other professionals who deal in their work with issues of art and memory. The goal of SocialEast is to encourage comparative research into the art history of the countries of Eastern and Central Europe, as well as to examine how a revised understanding of the achievements and circumstances of East European art impacts on global interpretations of art history. This special issue of Third Text is made up of a selection...(more)

From Post-Communism to Post-Transition:Art in Eastern Europe
The Art Book (Feb 2009)

In the first decade after the Fall of the Berlin Wall the label ‘post-communism’ appeared as the most appropriate term to refer to the overall situation in Eastern Europe and was applied in the first major survey show of the contemporary art of the region. Today, the pressures of the present outweigh the burden of the past to such an extent that contemporary art in Eastern Europe is fast moving beyond the ‘transition’ into uncharted territory...(more)

The Essential 1956: Album of the Revolution
Time Out Budapest (October 2009)

The events of 1956 remain a live issue for Hungarian society and even after 53 years, the anniversary still rekindles ideological passions, ruffles the feathers of the political elite, and runs up against basic arguments about how to interpret the collective trauma of the revolution. For the Right, the essential 1956 was a national uprising against communist dictatorship, while for the Left, the revolution was at heart an attempt to reform communism and win freedom from Soviet control. Every year contemporary political battles are fought around the symbols and disputed memories of of 1956, famously leading to a riotous reenactment of the uprising on the 50th anniversary, when the authorities lost control of the streets to protesters swathed in the colours of the revolution. Everyone has their own 1956, and picks and chooses from the album of recollections and urban myths to create a personal mix of hot memories, cherished heroes and political ideals...(more)

Soviet War Memorials in Eastern Europe

Figuration/Abstraction: Public Art in Europe 1945-68, edited by Charlotte Benton (Ashgate, 2004)

The first wave of war memorials were erected for primarily geo-political reasons. They acted to mark on the map the area of Europe liberated by the Soviets, and to claim that territory as part of the Soviet zone of influence. It is no coincidence that some of the earliest monuments were erected at the extremities of Soviet military activity, in Berlin, Vienna and Kaliningrad and often have a visibly aggressive character. Later Soviet memorials took on new and sometimes paradoxical roles, taking as their idealistic focus the social transformations that following the establishment of Communist power, or even shifting the emphasis back into the distant past in search of the ‘roots’ of the Liberation in national history...(more)