Slavic & Eastern European Studies: Music & art

This richly illustrated publication showcases a new generation of artists from the diverse cultural and historical backgrounds and Central and Eastern Europe. Looking both to the past and the future, these 22 artists engage post-conceptual strategies and forms and collectively challenge accepted notions of this region of Europe as a social, political and art historical monolith. Three essays are accompanied by individual presentations on each participating artist.

From Russia to Poland and Romania, and from the Czech Republic to Yugoslavia and East Germany, Contemporary Art in Eastern Europe is an ambitious attempt to chart the changing realities of the eastern half of the continent, as seen through the eyes of the artists, critics, photographers and curators. If the iron curtain and the antagonisms of the Cold War era had often kept the richness and diversity of Eastern European art hidden from the rest of the world, the contemporary era has been witness to its unparalleled creative explosion and fruitful dialogue with the global art scene. The work featured in this book explores the correlations between shifts in the political, cultural, economic and geographical realities of Eastern Europe and the region's contemporary art. The artists in this book revisit the region's past to envision a better future, reaching challenging conclusions and creating some of the most powerful and inspiring art being produced today. The book features essays from respected writers in the field and profiles the most influential artists producing work in and from the region today, including Marina Abramovic, Christo, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Zofia Kulik, Komar and Melamid, IRWIN, Natalia Lach-Lachowicz, Alexander Brodsky Ewa Partum, NSK, Group OHO, Stano Filko, Laibach, KwieKulik, Post Ars, Weekend Art, Zbigniew Libera, Marjetica Potrc, and Mladen Stilinovic. The following countries are covered in this anthology: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, East Germany, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovenia and Yugoslavia. AUTHOR: Marina Abramovic is a Yugoslavian artist and pioneer of performance art. Her work has been included in many large-scale international exhibitions including the Venice Biennale (1976 and 1997) and Documenta VI, VII and IX, Kassel, Germany (1977, 1982 and 1992). In 2004, she also exhibited at the Whitney Biennial in New York and had a significant solo show, The Star, at the Maruame Museum of Contemporary Art and the Kumamoto Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan. Christo is a US-based Bulgarian artist. He is world famous for his enormous installations in outdoor environments realised with the help of his wife Jeanne-Claude. His projects have included wrappings of the "Berne Kunsthalee" in 1968, a coastline area in Australia; the Reichstag, in Berlin; and the Pont Neuf in Paris. Krzysztof Wodiczko is a Polish, US-based artist who has held retrospective exhibitions at institutions such as the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, the Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Stichting de Appel, Amsterdam. He represented Poland in the 2009 Venice Biennale. ILLUSTRATIONS 213 colour & b/w illustrations

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.

Art Always Has Its Consequences: Artists' Texts is a collection of manifestos, critical texts, and writings addressing public issues written by artists and artist groups from Eastern Europe between 1947 and 2009. The reader is result of an international curatorial research collaboration of four organizations: What, How and for Whom/WHW, Croatia; New Media Center_kuda.org, Serbia; Museum Sztuki in L d z; and tranzit.hu. Contributors G bor Altorjay, Dimitrije Basicevic Mangelos, Dunja Blazevic, kos Birk s, Wlodzimierz Borowski, Zbigniew Dlubak, Goran ordevic, Orshi Drozdik, Stanislaw Dr zdz, R za El-Hassan, Mikl s Erd ly, EXAT 51, Group February, The Group of Formalist Artists, Tibor Hajas, horrorkatze, Gy rgy Jov novics, Tadeusz Kantor, Lajos Kass k, Tam s Kasz s, Boris Kovac, KwieKulik, Sinisa Labrovic, Led Art, Vlado Martek, Slavko Matkovic, Teresa Murak, Orange Alternative, Andrzej Partum, Ewa Partum, Jerzy Rosolowicz, Tam s St.Auby, Mladen Stilinovic, J nos Sug r, Tam s Szentj by, Josip Vanista, Peda Vranesevic, Branko Vucicevic, Workers in Culture, Andrzej Wr blewski, Zelimir Zilnik, and Artur Zmijewski.

This massive book of Soviet propaganda posters, many rare and never before published, is at once a revealing historical document and a sublime example of graphic art at its best. Dating from 1917 to the beginning of the Cold War, the posters in this book feature the work of such major Russian ground-breaking avant-garde designers as El Lissitzky and Alexander Rodchenko as well as extraordinary works by anonymous artists. Presented in full color, the 250 posters gathered here range in themes from warnings about the dangers of alcohol abuse and the creeping Nazi menace to illustrations of utopian harmony and the Soviet industrial machine. A brief illustrated introduction offers a chronological overview of the period that produced such eloquent art, which has long been a major source of inspiration to artists and designers.

The tumultuous events of the Russian Revolution were matched by dramatic shifts in graphic art and design that continue to influence our visual landscape. David King, an expert on Soviet art and an internationally acclaimed graphic designer, selected the more than 165 posters reproduced here from his own unparalleled collection. Constructivist posters, socialist advertising, 1920s film posters, classic photomontage, the heroic posters of the Great Patriotic War, biting political satire, and the cult of personality of the Stalin years are all represented, as are artists such as Alexander Rodchenko, El Lissitzky, Gustav Klutsis, Dimitri Moor, Viktor Deni, and Nina Vatolina. King sets the posters in context and profiles the art directors and creative directors whose vision played such a vital role in creating these striking works.