ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses selected Polish artists and artworks exhibited at the Venice Art Biennale as examples of the globalization of east–central European art in the context of large-scale exhibitions around 1900. Art history, art criticism, and curators have paid much attention to globalization in relation to art after World War II, and in particular after 1989. The example of Poland around 1900, in particular, provides relevant case studies of phenomena now commonly associated with contemporary globalization, such as migration, cosmopolitanism, diaspora, hybridization, transculturality, cohabitation, and imagined communities and worlds. "Globalizing eastern European art" ought also to account for more subtle instances of globalization, which took place before the term "globalization" obtained its current purchase, and which took place in less-expected contexts. After all, Polish folkloric and neo-classicist art from the 1920s carries aspects of modern globalization just as the allegedly boring late academic salon art at the Venice Biennale does.
