Romania

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Cities

Bucharest, Cluj, Timisoara, Arad, Oradea.

Summary

On the international stage, the ’60s and ’70s have constituted a period of intense research into what was called the impact of digital technology upon art. Prestigious names and consecrated works of art, but especially worth mentioning international exhibitions, such as the first world exhibition of computer graphic, in 1965, at Howard Wise Gallery in New York, then the 1968 Cybernetic Serendipity in London, and the Stuttgart Impulse Computerart, in 1969. The latter was an itinerant one, so that I was able to see it in 1974 at the Goethe Institute in Bucharest, presented by Herbert W. Franke, who edited too a substantial catalog.

The same year, 1974, visual artist Florian Maxa presented a computer graphics work at the collective exhibition Art and Energy in Bucharest, and researcher Mihai Jalobeanu has an exhibition at the students’ House of culture in Cluj, exhibition I was able to see in may ’74 at the Alfa Gallery in Arad. Next, the same Mihai Jalobeanu is present with a personal exhibition, Computer Graphics, at the Galeria Noua in Bucharest, in January 1976, and, a month later, Florian Maxa has a new exhibition at the Eforie hall, entitled Metamorphoses. Other Romanian artists, interested rather in kinetic art, optical art and constructivism, but not lacking interest in the new digital technology were Adina Caloenescu, Serban Epure, Savel Cheptea, Cristian Bruteanu, Ileana Bratu, Francis Goebész and others, from university centers in Cluj and Bucharest.

Finally, at the Electronic Computing Center in Arad, whose director was no one else than mathematician Lucian Codreanu, one of the founders of the Timisoara Sigma group, a collective of young computer specialists having artistic interests, started producing at the beginning of the ’80s, in the workshop lead by mathematician Emil Giurgiu, computer-assisted graphical works. So that, in July 1985, an exhibition was organized with all these works, in the Forum gallery, under the title Art and Computer, starting controversies in the city’s artistic world, as well as inside the ki group, which had, at the time, among its members, at least two or three computer specialists, used as sound engineers or DJs, because the thing called computer couldn’t even be mentioned. The exhibition was accompanied by a pamphlet, where art critic Horia Medeleanu made a synthetic presentation, while the opening was made by artist Valentin Stache. The young artists were Mihai Sabaila, Stelian Porumb, Gheorghe Cheveresan, Sorin Gules and Traian Rosculet, the latter, becoming, after ’89, an active member of the Kinema Ikon group in its Mixed Media stage, and of the Conversatia [The Conversation] magazine, whose computerized layout he made, until its transformation in 1993.

All this frail practice of computer graphics in Romania before ’89 was preceded and accompanied by a few attempts of informing the potentially interested audience. Thus, in 1972 was published anthology edited by V. E.Masek, Estetica. Informatie. Programare [Aesthetics. Information. Programming], comprising important texts by A. Moles, M. Bense, H. Frank, S. Maser, K. Alsleben, but also Mihai Dinu, Cezar Radu, Stefan Niculescu, and others. In 1974 was translated Abraham Moles’ book, Arta si ordinator [Art and Computer], then, in 1982, Radu Bagdasar publishes a book, Informatica Mirabilis, with the subtitle Arta si Literatura de calculator [Computer Art and Literature]. The same year, edited by professor Solomon Marcus, is published the collective work Semiotica matematica a artelor vizuale [Mathematical Semiotics of Visual Arts], containing two substantial texts in the field of the computer – art relationship, namely, Mihai Jalobeanu, Imaginile, producerea si prelucrarea lor cu sistemele actuale de calcul [Images, their Production and Processing with today’s Computing Systems] and Mihai Brediceanu, Timpul polimodular în artele vizuale [Polimodular Time in Visual Arts].

Source: George Sabau, "Contextual history of Kinema Ikon" (2005) [1]

Predecessors

Exhibitions
  • 1924, Contimporanul’s international exhibition at Bucharest’s hall of the Artists’ Union in which almost the entire Romanian avant-garde exhibit together for the first time (M. H. Maxy, Marcel Janco, Mattis Teutsch, Victor Brauner, Constantin Brancusi, Miliţa Petraşcu, Dida Solomon).
  • surrealist group: Ghérasim Luca, Gellu Naum, Trost, Paul Păun, Virgil Teodorescu
Writings
  • Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto published in Romanian in Craiova in a local newspaper, on the same date (20 February 1909) as in the Parisian Le Figaro.
Journals
  • Contimporanul, 1922/1924?-1932, Bucharest, Edited by Ion Vinea and Marcel Janco. Most widely regarded of the modernist periodicals, [2]
  • 75HP (Horsepower), 1924, Bucharest, 1 issue, Edited by Ilarie Voronca, Stéphane Roll and Victor Brauner. Brauner and Voronca created their picto-poetry, non figurative oil paintings, with words culled from dada-futurist vocabulary manipulated into geometric forms. [3]
  • Punct (Full stop), 1924-1925, Bucharest, edited by Victor Brauner (nos. 2-9) and Stéphane Roll. An imaginative integration of constructivist art, architecture and literature. [4]
  • Integral, 1925-1928, Bucharest. Edited by Max Herman Maxy. Published by Maxy, Voronca and Brauner includes non-representational linocuts, reproductions of constructivist collages, stage designs, non-figurative sculpture. Both Contimporanul and Integral promote constructivism, a synthesis of literary genres, represented by Ion Vinea, B Fundoianu, Ion Calugaru, Ilarie Voronca, Marcel Janco. Integral later adds another publishing office in Paris under Benjamin Fondane and Hans Mattis-Teutsch. [5]
  • Periszkóp, 1925-?, Arad, Hungarian avant-garde journal, edited by György Szántó
  • Unu (One), 1928-32, a monthly magazine of the literary avant-garde. Edited by Saşa Pană (1902–1981), the poet and apologist of Romanian Surrealism. Included contributions not only from prominent Romanian surrealists, such as Ilarie Voronca, Geo Bogza, Stephane Roll (the literary pseudonym of Gheorghe Dinu) but also from foreign contributors like Louis Aragon, André Breton, René Crevel, F T Marinetti, and Paul Éluard, and which was richly illustrated with the art work of Marc Chagall, Yves Tanguy, Osip Zadkine, and Man Ray, among many others
Literature
  • "Moments in the Romanian Literary Avant-Garde", [6]
  • Dan Gulea, Gentlemen, Tovarishes, Comrades. A History of Romanian avant-garde, Paralela 45 Publishing, “Deschideri” Series, Piteşti, 2007, 484 pp. [7] [8]

Artist groups

Arts and engineering groups and collectives in CEE#Romania

Experimental film, avantgarde film

Artists

Ion Grigorescu, Sergiu Lupse [9]

Literature
  • George Sabau, "Contextual history of Kinema Ikon" (2005) [10]

Performance art

Literature
  • Ileana Pintilie, "Performance Art In Romania. Between gesture and ritual", [11]

Computer and computer-aided art

Video art

Equipment
  • VCR were available on the black market in 1980s. Video cameras became available in a second wave, however they were more expensive than VCRs and therefore did not spread as quickly or easily. In the black market, a video camera cost approximately the equivalent of a yearly salary for someone from the upper echelons of society (Ian Bogdan Lefter, "On the Romanian Video Context", in: Ex Oriente Lux, 1994).
Artists
Exhibitions
  • Ex Oriente Lux. Curated by Calin Dan, Dalles Hall, 1993.
  • Media Culpa. Curated by Irina Cios, Soros for Contemporary Arts Bucharest, 1995.
  • Transferatu: New Tendencies in Rumanian Art. Curated by Dan Mihaltianu and Barbara Barsch, IFA Gallery Berlin/Bonn, Institut fur Auslandsbeziehungen, 2000/2001.
  • Context Network. Curated by Alexandru Patatics and Sebastian Bertalan, 49 Venice Biennial Romanian Pavilion, 2001.
  • Romanian Video Art- Looking East: Contemporary Art from Eastern Europe. Curated by Zygmunt Bauman, Romanian Cultural Institute London, 2007.
  • Personal Places. Curated by Mona Vatamanu and Florin Tudor, Gallery A+A, Slovene Central Visual Art, 2003.
  • Portraits of the Artists as Young Artists. Curated by Andreiana Mihail, Andreiana Mihail Gallery, Bucharest, 2009.
Literature
  • Calin Dan (ed.), Ex Oriente Lux, Bucharest: The Soros Center for Contemporary Arts, 1994. (catalogue)
  • "Videokunst in Rumänien", (German), [12]
  • Natalie Musteata, "Wired to History: Romanian and Lithuanian Video Art Post-1989", PhD Program in Art History, CUNY Graduate Center, 2010. [13]

Electroacoustic and experimental music, sound art

Literature
  • Breve Histoire de la Musique Electroacoustique en Roumanie. 2007. [14] (French)

New media art, Media culture

Exhibitions
  • [R][R][F] 2004, section: "Young media art from Romania", 2004. [15]

Art history, art theory

Alexandra Titu [16], Adrian Guţă

Bibliography

  • Alexandra Titu, "Experimentalism in Romanian Art after 1960" (Experimentul în Arta Românească după 1960), 2003 [17]
  • Contimporanul. Istoria unei reviste de avangarda?, Institutul Cultural Roman, Bucuresti 2007
  • Irina Carabas, "Can Aesthetics Overcome Politics? The Romanian Avant-garde and its Political Subtexts", lecture for 'New Histories of Politics' a conference at Central European University, Budapest (18-20 May 2007). [18]
  • Andrei Oisteanu, "The Romanian Avant-Garde And Visual Poetry", in Exquisite Corpse. A Journal of Letters and Life. The original study was published for the exhibition 'Dada East? The Romanians of Cabaret Voltaire = Dada Est? Romanii de la Cabaret Voltaire', curated by Adrian Notz, Raimund Meyer, and Juri Steiner for the Cabaret Voltaire Dadahaus, Zurich (20.09.06 - 22.02.07) [19]
  • Calin Dan, "Media Arts Get Media Free: A Small Anthology of Older Views", in: Transitland: Video Art From Central and Eastern Europe: 1989-2009, 2009.


Countries
avant-garde, modernism, experimental art, media culture, social practice

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