ABSTRACT
What does Piotr Piotrowski target while considering Western discourses in his writings on East European art? Examining his texts and the reflections he shared accompanying the “To Each His Own Reality. The notion of the real in the fine arts of France, West Germany, East Germany and Poland between 1960 and 1989” project, this contribution analyses what the notion of the West signals and what it marginalizes. Piotrowski’s horizontal geographical historical perspectives invite us to consider the very political and ideological orientation of categories and methods used in art historical writings on the Cold War (both during and after the period). From this viewpoint, the notion of the West is significant because it covers many different realities. Interrogating Piotrowski’s use of this notion, we can identify the series of differentiations he made in his thinking. It sheds light on how, through his search to integrate Eastern European fine arts into art history, he questioned the unifying discourses of the discipline. The Cold War art history he developed from differentiated perspectives captures Europe’s constitutive diversity and conflictuality, rather than rendering a smooth and uniform image detaching it from the rest of the world.
