In the following, I want to address one of the core issues of “L’Internationale”, which is the East-West relations in the framework of the international, and in this context, the international of course means the notion and the concept of communism. As we obviously know, the symbol of communism, the international, has been given up during Stalinism – since during Stalinism and particularly in Central Europe, which was seized by the communists up to 1945 – it was something like an empty signifier. The real core of the ideological state apparatus was much more national than international. If we investigate politics in Central Europe during that period I think we find a much more national than an international orientation in these countries.
This is a sort of paradox, but the much more interesting paradox is that the cultural opposition to the official ideology and the official art, which used to be socialist realism, had a different dynamics in many countries. For instance, in Yugoslavia it would be hard to find socialist realism since they broke down the relations to the Soviet Union in the late 1940’s. In Poland it was completed in the mid 1950’s. The problem is that in many countries the opposition to the official ideology brought up the concept of the international. That was something really important, namely that both modernism like Informel or neo constructivism as well as the new neo-avant-garde were supposed to be international. However, due to the historical circumstances, namely, a political isolation, in fact it was national, too, i.e. we can observe something what I would like to call nationalization of modernism/ neo-avant-garde.
So, the one paradox is that the system – even if it called itself “international” – was in fact national. The second paradox is that the opposition to this – even if it called itself “international”, as well – was somehow national, too. I would even say that the international exchange between East and East nationalized modern art in Eastern Europe – and the international exchange between East and West nationalized modern art in the East as well. To give a few examples: The first is the exhibition of the Czech Informel, called “Arguments”, was organized by the Crooked Circle Gallery in Warsaw in 1962. This exhibition has been perceived by the Polish art criticism exactly as Czech Informel. That it was Czech Informel was very much stressed by the press and also by the organizers. As František Šmejkal who was the organizer of this show and even smuggled some pieces – it was not fully legal – mentioned, he was able to see what had been produced in Czechoslovakia – mostly in Bohemia – as the national contribution to the international Informel. Even more, Mahulena Nešlehová, one of the experts of Informel in Czech scholarship, repeated in her concepts and statements that this was the real impact to emphasized the national character of art – what she called – Czech Modernism or Czech Informel. The second example in terms of East-East-relations or the East-East-exchange (or international exchange, for that matter) was an exhibition of Hungarian neo-avant-garde at the Foksal Gallery in 1972, which was also perceived by the critics as a national version of Hungarian (sic) neo-avant-garde. The point is that the international relations between East European countries nationalized modern art.
The second framework to be considered here is the East-West-exchange and this went very much in the same direction. Artistic exchange between East and West also somehow nationalized modern art in Eastern Europe. Here I would like to mention just one example – namely the exhibition of Romanian neo-avant-garde at the beginning of the 1970’s in Edinburgh organized by Richard Demarco, an important person in terms of the promotion of East European art in the West. The whole discourse that went along with this exhibition very much stressed the national background of the Romanian neo-avant-garde, even the very essential national background of this kind of art production. Of course the artists didn’t follow these arguments, they didn’t like this explanation, but never mind, there was this interpretation in place. Demarco and other people who wrote about the Romanian neo-avant-garde at that time did not mention the contemporary situation in Romania, which was highly interesting because at the beginning of the 1970’s and the end of Ceauşescu early period; as you know Ceauşescu emerged in the Romanian political scene as liberal. After his trip to China and North Korea he changed his mind and published the so-called „July Theses“ – which was the beginning of the end. But anyway, those critics did not mention the contemporary Romanian situation, but rather nationalized the Romanian neo-avant-garde by using essentialist arguments.
This is the historical perspective, but the question here is also very much about the contemporary. In the framework of “L’Internationale”, I would still stress 1989 rather than 1986, as a crucial date. First of all, 1989 is not only the collapse of communism, but it also signifies much deeper changes in the world. I would say that 1989 is a global date – it changed the world order and was not only important for the East European experience. The second point is: the context in East European countries has changed a lot – those countries are not isolated anymore. The third reason is: since those countries are not isolated anymore, since they can see more than only West-East relations they realized that those changes around 1989 were somehow part of the broader changes in the world. For example, almost at the same time the apartheid system collapsed in South Africa and by the end of the 1980’s also some military regimes collapsed in South America. That is why it is important to think about parallels here – about South America and Eastern Europe for instance – as a result of changing our perception, our historical perspective. The fourth point is that the changes are even deeper in terms that right now it is much more fruitful to talk about the cosmopolitan than about the international, not only around the world, but also in (former) Eastern Europe.
The cosmopolitan means something different than the international – the latter means something between one national and the other national, but the cosmopolitan is much more local, it’s cosmos and polis at the same time as the Greeks used to call it, it’s something which is here or there. This is a different prospect and although the cosmopolitan is somehow connected with the international, it is stressing completely different things – it’s stressing the local. Not only the word, but the localities are changing because of the world.
In Eastern Europe we are facing big changes in the society, particularly in the big cities. Moscow for example turned out as one of the real cosmopolitan cities, or Berlin which used to be divided into two different cities and two different countries, today, it is less a German city but more a cosmopolitan one. As Moscow, for example, is less Russian, at least regarding the culture, Berlin is less German, as well, regarding culture, not (official) politics, of course. Certainly, the smaller cities like Warsaw or Belgrade are less cosmopolitan than Moscow and Berlin, but there are also a lot of changes happening there. In Warsaw for example there are lots of people living in this city who come from Vietnam, from Korea, from Ukraine and other parts of the world. They are not so visible in the cultural landscape, but they are altogether very important.
The cosmopolitan provokes a revision of art history and cultural discourse as well, particularly in terms of the geography of art. I don’t want to abandon geography of art, rather we have to make the categories of art geography much more complicated than we used to do – even some years ago. Nevertheless, the real challenge for a new approach in art historical discourse is a shift from geography to topography – a shift from the regional, from countries to particular places – especially because these places have changed into the cosmopolitan places in their character. So the cosmopolitan that we are facing – among others also in Eastern or Post-communist Europe – provoke a sort of shift from geography of art to topography of art. So, finally, the year 1989 – this is the conclusion – was a historical turning point, i.e. the nationalization of modern art in Eastern Europe, used to be observed during communism, does not take place anymore.
