Piotr Piotrowski: In the Shadow of Yalta: Art and the Avant-garde in Eastern Europe, 1945-1989 (2005/2009)

“In the Shadow of Yalta is a comprehensive study of the artistic culture of the region between the Iron Curtain and the USSR, taking in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia. Piotr Piotrowski chronicles the relationship between art production and politics in this zone between the end of World War II and the fall of Communism, focusing in particular on the avant-garde.

Beginning with an analysis of Surrealism in Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary, Piotrowski then examines the evolution of Modernism against the backdrop of the decline of Stalinism. He follows with an account of the neo-avant-garde experience: the body art and conceptual art made during the volatile political circumstances of the 1970s, the times of ‘real Socialism’. The book concludes with an epilogue describing the end of the Communist system in East-Central Europe, and the art that served witness to that end. Alongside the portrayal of the frequently challenging art that was made in response to such difficult circumstances, the common threads that emerge from the narrative are the erosion of ideology, the rise of consumerism and the emergence of political pragmatism.

Featuring more than 220 images by artists frequently unfamiliar to an English-speaking audience, In the Shadow of Yalta is a fascinating portrait of the art made in an area and during a time of crucial importance to the development of Europe as we know it today. The book will have much to say to art historians, art critics, and students of art history interested in Central and Eastern European art, as well as general historians of the region.”

First published by Rebis, Poznań, Poland, 2005.

Translated by Anna Brzyski
Publisher Reaktion Books, 2009
ISBN 1861894384, 9781861894380
487 pages

Reviews: Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius (Umění, 2007, repr.), Piotr Bernatowicz (Nordlit, 2007), Dorota Biczel Nelson (2008), Éva Forgács (ARTMargins, 2009, repr.), Magdalena Cześniak-Zielińska (Facta Simonidis, 2009, PL), Henning Küpper (kunsttexte.de Ostblick, 2010, DE), Andrzej Szczerski (Journal of Architecture, 2010), Pál Deréky (Balkon, 2010, HU), David Crowley (J European Studies, 2011).

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2019-2-2)

Alain Badiou: The Century (2005–)

“Everywhere, the twentieth century has been judged and condemned: the century of totalitarian terror, of utopian and criminal ideologies, of empty illusions, of genocides, of false avant-gardes, of democratic realism everywhere replaced by abstraction.

It is not Badiou’s wish to plead for an accused that is perfectly capable of defending itself without the authors aid. Nor does he seek to proclaim, like Frantz, the hero of Sartre’s Prisoners of Altona, ‘I have taken the century on my shoulders and I have said: I will answer for it!’ The Century simply aims to examine what this accursed century, from within its own unfolding, said that it was. Badiou’s proposal is to reopen the dossier on the century – not from the angle of those wise and sated judges we too often claim to be, but from the standpoint of the century itself.”

First published as Le Siècle, 2005.

Translated, with a Commentary and Notes by Alberto Toscano
Publisher Polity, 2007
ISBN 0745636314, 9780745636313
233 pages

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2020-7-5)

Zdeněk Pešánek: Kinetismus: Kinetika ve výtvarnictví – barevná hudba (1941) [Czech]

Zdeněk Pešánek (1896-1965) was one of the most inventive and original Czech sculptors of the 20th century, who pioneered experiments in light- and kinetic sculptures. His works, highly abstract and biomorphic, made use of neon and incandescent lighting as part of the sculptural elements. He also was a designer for both architectural and interior structures, and worked with the fusion of light and music, developing the use of “clavieres a lumieres” and light-organs. His aesthetic was more informed by sound and tonality than visual precedent, and is quite original. At this date almost no sculptures exist in private hands and the public sculptures have been largely damaged or destroyed. The book Kineticism: Kinetics in Fine Arts – Color Music is the only publication in his lifetime in which his theories were given exposition and is his creative credo as well, replete with b/w and color illustrations. Amazingly published during the Nazi occupation.

Edited by Josef Vydra
Publisher: Česká grafická unie, Prague, October 1941
Edice výtvarné výchovy, svazek 8
144 pages

PDF (no OCR, updated on 2013-2-12)