ABSTRACT
This book analyses the intermeshing of state power and art history in Europe since 1945 and up to the present from a critical, de-centered perspective.
Devoting special attention to European peripheries and to under-researched transnational cultural political initiatives related to the arts implemented after the end of the Second World War, the contributors explore the ways in which this relationship crystallised in specific moments, places, discourses and practices. They make the historic hegemonic centres of the discipline converse with Europe’s Southern and Eastern peripheries, from Portugal to Estonia to Greece.
By stressing the margins’ point of view this volume rethinks the ideological grounds on which art history and the European Union have been constructed as well as the role played by art and culture in the very concept of ‘Europe.’
TABLE OF CONTENTS
section Section 1|78 pages
Europe After the Rain
chapter 2|16 pages
The Allied Cultural Policies in Germany
chapter 4|16 pages
Curatorial Experiments at the National Gallery After the Second World War
section Section 2|92 pages
Re-Reading Cold War Narratives
chapter 6|22 pages
Artists in Service of the Masses
chapter 7|24 pages
The Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade and Post-Revolutionary Desire
chapter 8|18 pages
Simultaneous Equations
chapter 9|12 pages
Cold War Art Historiography
section Section 3|76 pages
A New Europe?