Behind the Artwork. Thinking Art Against the Cold War’s Bloc

How did Central European contemporary artists and art theoreticians engage with and absorb the dominant intellectual currents that washed over Europe during the Cold War? The proposed research project will be the first comprehensive study of the circulation of ideas within and across the artificial borders of the Iron Curtain, aimed at the reconstruction of the complex conditions of art production in the period between 1956 and 1990. Figures like art mediator Éva Körner embraced and, at the same time, modified methodologies based on the idea that elements of human culture must be understood in terms of their relationship to a larger, overarching system or structure, as forms of sign processes and communication. This went hand in hand with a growing cult of the ready-made, Wittgenstein and minimal art in the Hungarian art scene during the 1970s, while contemporary artists, whose style did not (necessarily) conform to the doctrines of socialist party politics, such as Dra Maurer and Anna Kutara, managed to travel to the West and imported/exported ideas in ways that challenged the claims of ideological insulation by the Iron Curtain. Focusing on the geopolitical areas of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania, the project will investigate the roles of mediators, trends in philosophy, and the course of ideas that influenced the intellectual production of art in late socialism. This will require a critical analysis of the supposedly strict division between the Blocs. Important figures of art theorizing and artists themselves in Soviet-type peoples democracies absorbed, translated and networked philosophies. This journey of traveling ideas resulted in discussions, publications, events and in works of art. The three factors mediators, philosophies, and the course of ideas that influenced the production of and reflection on contemporary art will be examined with regard to their local, regional and international influences. I will also pay due attention to the paradoxes inherent in these processes as well as the various forms of transmission through applying oral history interviews, archival work and discourse analysis to the research material. The ideas of contact zones (Debeusscher) and cultural translation (Slavova) are central to thinking art that overcomes Cold War bipolarity. Both concepts bring together information, knowledge, and their material carriers in order to create a counter- narrative to the overly simple distinctions and the homogeneity that certain cultural histories of real existing socialisms are based on. Going beyond the focus on the art object, the research projects spotlight, namely the act of transmission as a critical fact and a tool for writing history, offers ways to engage with theories and methods debated in contemporary digital and digitally informed humanities.

How did Central European artists engage with and absorb the dominant intellectual currents that washed over Europe during the Cold War? The research project is the first comprehensive study of the circulation of ideas in the arts within and across the artificial borders of the Iron Curtain, aimed at the reconstruction of the complex conditions of art production in the period between 1963 and 1990. Figures like art mediator Lszl Beke embraced and, at the same time, modified methodologies based on the idea that elements of human culture must be understood in terms of their relationship to a larger, overarching system or structure, as forms of sign processes and communication. This went hand in hand with a growing cult of Marcel Duchamp in the Hungarian art scene during the 1970s, while artists, whose style did not conform to the doctrines of socialist party politics, such as Dra Maurer and Milan Knžak, managed to travel to the "West" and imported/exported ideas in ways that challenged the claims of ideological insulation by the Iron Curtain. Focusing on the geopolitical areas of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania, the project investigated the roles of mediators, trends in philosophy, and these ideas' forms of implementation that influenced the intellectual production of art in state socialism. This required a critical analysis of the supposedly strict division between the Blocs. The three aspects of inquiry were often interrelated: the dominant figures of art theorizing in socialist people's democracies were networkers and mediators of philosophies who inspired artists to absorb intellectual trends and to pursue their own strategies of networking and knowledge production in spite of any physical or mental borders. The three factors - mediators, philosophies, and the media of the latter - that influenced the production of and reflection on contemporary art will be examined with regard to their local, regional and international influences. The PI also payed due attention to the paradoxes inherent in these processes as well as the various forms of transmission through applying oral history interviews, archival work and discourse analysis to the research material. The idea of transmission is central to an art theory that goes against the idea of Cold War bipolarity. The concept of transmission brings together information, knowledge, and their material carriers in order to create a counter-narrative to the overly simple distinctions and the homogeneity that certain cultural histories of existing socialisms are based on. Going beyond the focus on the art object, the research project's central question, namely that of the act of transmission as a critical fact and a tool for writing history, offers ways to engage with theories and methods debated in contemporary digital and digitally informed humanities.