Mythmaking Eastern Europe: Art in Response

The conference 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 conference initiates a critical debate on this topic within the Swiss research community together with art historians from Eastern Europe and touches upon the problem of historical compromising attitudes and different systematic alliances of artistic personalities and milieus with state authorities. Also treated will be nationalistic tendencies in art and art promotion after 1989. The presentations by researchers from Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Hungary, Slovenia, Serbia as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina offer a multifocal and transnational insight into the contemporary reception of Eastern European art. Thus, the conference 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.

International Symposium

Thursday, 18th October 2012
University of Zurich
Karl Schmid-Strasse 4, 8006 Zurich
Room KO2-F-152
(entrance also through the main hall of the UZH, Rämistrasse 71)

Organization: Mateusz Kapustka

Institute of Art History at the University of Zurich in cooperation with the Swiss Institute for Art Research SIK-ISEA in Zurich

Program

9.00-9.30

Coffee and Welcome

9.30-10.00
Mateusz Kapustka (Zurich): Collective Eastern Europe in the Present Discourse of Art History – Opening Remarks

Chair: Beat Wyss (Berlin / Karlsruhe)

10.00-11.00
Piotr Juszkiewicz (Poznań): Farewell to a Myth. On Close Relationships between Modernism and Totalitarianism

– Coffee break –

11.15-12.15
Milena Bartlová (Prague): Supporting Insecure Identities: Political Engagement of Czechoslovak Art History

– Lunch –

Chair: Ákos Moravánszky (Zurich)

13.30-14-30
Liviana Dan (Sibiu): Romanian Classical Avant-garde and the Modern Tyranny of Images

14.30-15.30
Zdenka Badovinac (Ljubljana): “Institutional Critique”

– Coffee break –

Chair: Annika Hossain (Zurich) and Jörg Scheller (Zurich)

16.00-16.30
Daria Ghiu (Bucharest): Mythmaking Eastern Europe on a National Scale: The Legacy of Constantin Brancusi in Rom

16.30-17.00
Kinga Bódi (Budapest): The Heritage of „Cultural Centres” in Hungary. Andreas Fogarasi at the Venice Biennale in 2007

– Coffee break –

17.15-17.45
Seraina Renz (Zurich/Belgrade): “Art and Revolution” – The Student Cultural Center Belgrade as Place between Affirmation and Critique

17.45-18.15
Mirela Ljevakovic (Florence/Munich): Art in “No Man’s Land”: Case Study Bosnia and Herzegovina

– Closing Discussion –
 

Quelle: Universität Zürich