The postsocialist contemporary: The institutionalization of artistic practice in Eastern Europe after 1989
The postsocialist contemporary joins a growing body of scholarship debating the definition and nature of contemporary art. It comes to these debates from a historicist perspective, taking as its point of departure one particular art programme, initiated in Eastern Europe by the Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros. First implemented in Hungary, the Soros Center for Contemporary Art (SCCA) expanded to another eighteen ex-socialist countries throughout the 1990s. Its mission was to build a western ‘open society’ by means of art. This book discusses how network managers and artists participated in the construction of this new social order by studying the programme’s rise, evolution, impact and broader ideological and political consequences. Rather than recounting a history, its engages critically with ‘contemporary art’ as the aesthetic paradigm of late-capitalist market democracy.
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The postsocialist contemporary: The institutionalization of artistic practice in Eastern Europe after 1989
The postsocialist contemporary joins a growing body of scholarship debating the definition and nature of contemporary art. It comes to these debates from a historicist perspective, taking as its point of departure one particular art programme, initiated in Eastern Europe by the Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros. First implemented in Hungary, the Soros Center for Contemporary Art (SCCA) expanded to another eighteen ex-socialist countries throughout the 1990s. Its mission was to build a western ‘open society’ by means of art. This book discusses how network managers and artists participated in the construction of this new social order by studying the programme’s rise, evolution, impact and broader ideological and political consequences. Rather than recounting a history, its engages critically with ‘contemporary art’ as the aesthetic paradigm of late-capitalist market democracy.
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The postsocialist contemporary: The institutionalization of artistic practice in Eastern Europe after 1989

The postsocialist contemporary: The institutionalization of artistic practice in Eastern Europe after 1989

by Octavian Esanu
The postsocialist contemporary: The institutionalization of artistic practice in Eastern Europe after 1989

The postsocialist contemporary: The institutionalization of artistic practice in Eastern Europe after 1989

by Octavian Esanu

Hardcover

$120.00 
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Overview

The postsocialist contemporary joins a growing body of scholarship debating the definition and nature of contemporary art. It comes to these debates from a historicist perspective, taking as its point of departure one particular art programme, initiated in Eastern Europe by the Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros. First implemented in Hungary, the Soros Center for Contemporary Art (SCCA) expanded to another eighteen ex-socialist countries throughout the 1990s. Its mission was to build a western ‘open society’ by means of art. This book discusses how network managers and artists participated in the construction of this new social order by studying the programme’s rise, evolution, impact and broader ideological and political consequences. Rather than recounting a history, its engages critically with ‘contemporary art’ as the aesthetic paradigm of late-capitalist market democracy.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781526158000
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Publication date: 11/23/2021
Series: Rethinking Art's Histories
Pages: 288
Product dimensions: 6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

Octavian Esanu is Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the American University of Beirut (AUB) and Curator of AUB Art Galleries

Table of Contents

Introduction
1 Sorosart: how Eastern Europe got the idea of contemporary art
2 New norms and procedures: the introduction of the curatorial function
3 Art in the 'open society': the aesthetics of problem-solving
4 Antipolitics: the ideological bedrock of the postsocialist contemporary
5 Can there be contemporary art in North Korea? Methodological epilogue
Index

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