Hot Art, Cold War. Supplements, Extensions, Alternative Narratives

International Symposium

Poznań, June 2nd, 2023

Symposium will be streamed live under the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhOsOF4KoK4

Terra

The symposium Hot Art, Cold War. Supplements, Extensions, Alternative Narratives, organized by the Institute of Art History at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art, is intended as a platform for rethinking the presence of American art and visual culture in East-Central Europe under communism. The idea and title originated from the Hot Art, Cold War (Routledge 2020) two-volume anthology of translations of texts which were evidence of the reception of American art between 1945-1990 in continental Europe. The Poznań symposium expands on and supplements that publication, particularly with reference to the period of the 1960s and 1970s in East-Central Europe. The presentations will focus on the permeation of American pop aesthetics and consumerism behind the Iron Curtain, as well as impulses related to counterculture, queer culture and civil rights that made it through to the art of the Eastern bloc. At the same time, rather than prove the hegemony of American influences, the invited scholars will look at how they functioned in different geo-political and economic contexts, creating a dynamic, often hybrid field of cultural production. The ambition of the symposium is to reflect on issues relevant for both American and East-Central European art, which hitherto have not been primarily discussed in critical writings, and thus open new two-way paths for considering art practices on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Symposium programme - download PDF