How do artist archives survive and stay authentic in radically changed contexts? The volume addresses the challenge of continuity, sustainability, and institutionalization of archives established by Eastern European artists. At its center stands the 40th anniversary of the Artpool Art Research Center founded in 1979 in Budapest as an underground institution based on György Galántai's »Active Archive« concept. Ten internationally renowned scholars propose contemporary interpretations of this concept and frame artist archives not as mere sources of art history but as models of self-historicization. The contributions give knowledgeable insights into the transition of Cold War art networks and institutional landscapes.

This edited collection, bringing together art historians and curators working both in the ‘East’ and the ‘West’ of Europe, is a result of a growing interest in the theorisation and historical analysis of feminist curating as a distinct practice with its own transnational history and politics. In most former state-socialist countries of Eastern Europe, the emergence and public visibility of feminist curating and exhibitions usually dates back to the 1990s and is associated with the radical transformation of art practices, ideologies and art systems as well as with wider socio-political and intellectual changes, and challenges, of post-socialist transition. This history, and its legacy, is addressed in this book through national and regional case-studies ranging from the Baltics to the Balkans. An equally significant part of the book is dedicated to the present and future of feminist curating, as well as of other politicised forms of curatorial activities (e.g. queer curating). In addition to the theoretical or historical accounts presented, the collection includes two highly relevant interviews with curators: Bojana Pejic on the block-buster exhibition Gender Check(2009–2010) in Vienna and Warsaw; and Airi Triisberg and Rebeka Põldsam on Untold Stories (2011), the first international queer exhibition in Tallinn, Estonia.

A groundbreaking introduction to the contemporary art of central and Eastern Europe, this wide-ranging study explores painting, sculpture, photography, performance, and conceptual work. In this pathbreaking new history, Maja and Reuben Fowkes introduce outstanding artworks and major figures from across central and Eastern Europe to reveal the movements, theories, and styles that have shaped artistic practice since 1950. They emphasize the particularly rich and varied art scenes of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Yugoslavia, extending their gaze at intervals to East Germany, Romania, the Baltic states, and the rest of the Balkans. This generously illustrated overview explores the richness of this region’s artists’ singular contribution to recent art history. Tracing art-historical changes from 1950 to now, the authors examine the repercussions of political events on artistic life—notably the uprisings in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the Solidarity movement in Poland, and the collapse of the communist bloc. But their primary interest is in the experimental art of the neo-avant-garde that resisted official agendas and engaged with global currents such as performance art, video, multimedia, and net art. Central and Eastern European Art Since 1950 is a comprehensive, transnational survey of the major movements of art from this region.

Over the past 50 years, East European artists have seen the virtual breakdown of their societies and their cultures. Instead of seeking to replace their devalued ideologies with new belief systems, many have profoundly challenged the very concept of belief systems. In this provocative exhibition catalogue, artists and essayists from Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgari and Slovakia confront Eastern Europe's cultural watershed head on. In addition to the excellent illustrations, the book includes a foldout timeline of noteworthy events since 1945, plus regional maps and a statistical profile of each country.

No matter how one defines its extent and borders, Eastern Europe has long been understood as a liminal space, one whose undeniable cultural and historical continuities with Western Europe have been belied by its status as an “Other” in the Western imagination. Across illuminating and provocative case studies, The World beyond the West focuses on the region’s ambiguous relationship to historical processes of colonialism and Orientalism. In exploring encounters with distant lands through politics, travel, migration, and exchange, it places Eastern Europe at the heart of its analysis while decentering the most familiar narratives and recasting the history of the region.

Arguably more than any other region, the area known as Eastern Europe has been defined by its location on the map. Yet its inhabitants, from statesmen to literati and from cultural-economic elites to the poorest emigrants, have consistently forged or fathomed links to distant lands, populations, and intellectual traditions. Through a series of inventive cultural and historical explorations, Eastern Europe Unmapped dispenses with scholars’ long-time preoccupation with national and regional borders, instead raising provocative questions about the area’s non-contiguous—and frequently global or extraterritorial—entanglements.

The book distinctive is listed in points (i) it focuses on Eastern European art covering the historical avant-garde to the post-war and contemporary periods of; (ii) it looks at some key artists in the countries that have not been given so much attention within this content i.e. Georgia, Dagestan, Chechnya and Central Asia; (iii) it looks beyond Eastern Europe to the influence of Russia/Soviet Union in Asia. It explores the theoretical models developed for understanding contemporary art across Eastern Europe and focus on the new generation of Georgian artists who emerged in the immediate years before and after the country’s independence from the Soviet Union; and on to discuss the legacy and debates around monuments across Poland, Russia and Ukraine.helps in Better understanding the postwar and contemporary art in Eastern Europe.

A reconstruction of the missing history of contemporary art, art networks, and art conditions in Eastern Europe from the East European perspective. The artistic map of Europe contains different degrees of detail and resolution. Italy, France, and Spain are presented in fine grain, but the Balkan peninsula is little more than a vague outline. England, Germany, and Scandinavia have many features filled in, but to the east of Germany things are blurred. Until recently, cities like Sofia, Odessa, Skopje, and Belgrade had next to no definition. Further to the East, Moscow comes into focus, but this is no compensation for the Baltics, sentenced for the last half-century to blank space. In the West, virtually every move of the artist, the art market, and the art public is documented. But in Eastern Europe, no such system of documentation or communication exists. Instead, we encounter systems that are not only inaccessible to the West, but incongruous from one country to the next. Beside the official art histories there is often a whole series of stories and legends about "unofficial," unapproved art and artists. East Art Map: Contemporary Art and Eastern Europe is an ambitious attempt to reconstruct the missing histories of contemporary art in Eastern Europe from an East European and artistic perspective. It is perhaps the widest ranging art documentation project ever undertaken by the East on the East, involving a large network of artists, scholars, curators and critics coordinated by the IRWIN group over several years.The editors invited eminent art critics, curators, and artists to present up to ten crucial art projects produced in their respective countries over the past 50 years. The choice of the particular artworks (many of them reproduced in color), artists, and events, as well as their presentation, was left exclusively to the individual selectors. In addition, the editors asked experts from both East and West to provide longer texts offering cross-cultural perspectives on the art of both regions. Afterall Books are distributed by The MIT Press.

This volume offers a comprehensive perspective on the relationship between the art scene and agencies of the state in countries of the region, throughout four consecutive yet highly diverse historical periods: from the period of state integration after World War I, through the communist era post 1945 and the time of political transformation after 1989, to the present-day globalisation (including counter-reactions to westernisation and cultural homogenisation). With twenty-three theoretically and/or empirically oriented articles by authors from sixteen countries (East Central Europe and beyond, including the United States and Australia), the book discusses interconnections between state policies and artistic institutions, trends and the art market from diverse research perspectives. The contributors explore subjects such as the impact of war on the formation of national identities, the role of artists in image-building for the new national states emerging after 1918, the impact of political systems on artists’ attitudes, the discourses of art history, museum studies, monument conservation and exhibition practices. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, cultural politics, cultural history, and East Central European studies and history.