ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the changing sociopolitical and cultural landscape pre- and post-1989 has determined Central European artists' use of particular art languages – that is, both the languages of verbal communication and the visual languages of art. French started giving way to English at the beginning of the 1970s, when British and American conceptual art became more recognized and influential. The overblown, pseudo-intellectual jargon used by art professionals is baffling and irritating to many, both outside and within the art world. The resistance towards the forceful imposition of Soviet culture that made these art scenes look towards the West also affected their communication with each other. The concept of Central Europe as a source of cultural identity started gaining traction in the 1980s, but it was then more in intellectual and literary circles, rather than artistic ones. The sense of a common, Central European identity came to the Polish, Czech, Slovak and Hungarian art world only in the 1990s.
