ABSTRACT
This contribution addresses the challenges of putting into practice the paradigm of Piotr Piotrowski’s horizontal art history, adapting its title from his article “How to Write a History of Central-East European Art?” published in the 2009 special issue of Third Text on “Socialist Eastern Europe”. Bringing his art historiographical insights into new constellations with the most pressing current theoretical and planetary concerns, this chapter poses a readjusted set of questions to test the axioms of the art history of the region. At this moment in time, is it still possible or desirable to write a comparative history of Central and Eastern European art? What is the role of Eastern Europe in the construction of an inter-regional, decentred and decolonial global art history? How does the shift from the art historical paradigm of Cold War polarities to a pluralised, multi-focal and polyvalent approach reconfigure the concerns of East European art history? The postulates of art history are treated here as problems or propositions for disputation that are discussed under the headings of horizontality, chronopolitics, decoloniality, the principles of regionalism, the primacy of the political, the globalism of art styles, the plurality of art under socialism and the alterity of global socialisms.
