Maja Fowkes

Reuben Fowkes

A groundbreaking introduction to the contemporary art of central and Eastern Europe, this wide-ranging study explores painting, sculpture, photography, performance, and conceptual work. In this pathbreaking new history, Maja and Reuben Fowkes introduce outstanding artworks and major figures from across central and Eastern Europe to reveal the movements, theories, and styles that have shaped artistic practice since 1950. They emphasize the particularly rich and varied art scenes of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Yugoslavia, extending their gaze at intervals to East Germany, Romania, the Baltic states, and the rest of the Balkans. This generously illustrated overview explores the richness of this region’s artists’ singular contribution to recent art history. Tracing art-historical changes from 1950 to now, the authors examine the repercussions of political events on artistic life—notably the uprisings in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the Solidarity movement in Poland, and the collapse of the communist bloc. But their primary interest is in the experimental art of the neo-avant-garde that resisted official agendas and engaged with global currents such as performance art, video, multimedia, and net art. Central and Eastern European Art Since 1950 is a comprehensive, transnational survey of the major movements of art from this region.

Central and Eastern European Art Since 1950 (World of Art)

Gabby Dawnay

From the award-winning duo behind If I Had a Dinosaur comes this humorous and imaginative celebration of kangaroos. Have you ever given any thought to what the perfect jumping pet would be? Wombats are cute, and koalas can cling, but what about a springy kangaroo? Being an ace on the trampoline is a breeze when you have a kangaroo for a pet, but hold on to your stomach during the school run—it’s pretty bumpy being bounced around in a pouch. In this charming, rhyming bedtime story, a young protagonist imagines what it would be like to have an outrageously impractical pet. Laugh-out-loud details in Alex Barrow’s bold, graphic illustrations, along with Gabby Dawnay’s sweet text, make If I Had a Kangaroo a soon to be favorite in the If I Had A...series.

If I Had a Kangaroo

Matthew S. Witkovsky

Václav Macek

Jolana Havelková

Eugénia Sikorová

Sám s fotografiou

Rudolf Sikora

In this path-breaking new history, Maja and Reuben Fowkes introduce outstanding artworks and major figures from across central and eastern Europe to reveal the movements, theories and styles that have shaped artistic practice since 1950. They emphasize the particularly rich and varied art scenes of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia, extending their gaze at intervals to East Germany, Romania, the Baltic states and the rest of the Balkans. While politics in the region have been marked by unstable geography and dramatic transitions, artists have forged a path of persistent experiment and innovation. This generously illustrated overview explores the richness of their singular contribution to recent art history. Tracing art-historical changes from the short-lived unison of the socialist realist period to the incredible diversity of art in the post-communist era, the authors examine the repercussions of political events on artistic life notably the uprisings in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the Solidarity movement in Poland, and the collapse of the communist bloc. But their primary interest is in the experimental art of the neo-avant-garde that resisted official agendas and engaged with global currents such as performance art, video, multimedia and net art.

Central and Eastern European Art

Ilona Nemeth

A look, through the work of Ilona Németh, at the transitioning social and economic infrastructure of Eastern Europe. The dramaturgy of neo-liberal capitalism's spread throughout Central and Eastern Europe appears today in the wake of the financial and political crises of the last decade, refracted in a new light. Taking as its starting point artist Ilona Németh's multifaceted investigation of the de-industrializing history of Slovak sugar refineries in the post-communist period, this collective volume brings together critical and artistic reassessments of the processes of social and economic transformation, the dislocation and re-composition of labor relations and working practices, as well as the disintegration and rekindling of notions of community and social well-being. Challenging the inevitability of the adoption of the western capitalist system, it examines how, in the rush to uproot the institutions and structures of socialism, the communitarian, microeconomic, and ecological potentialities of non-capitalist modes of living have been lost or endangered. The literal and metaphorical ruins of Eastern Sugar also offer themselves as a site to extend and expand upon the discussion of economic forces to incorporate environmental and decolonial approaches, for example present in the parallels and discrepancies between colonial and neo-colonial histories in the disparate geographies of sugar beet and sugar cane production. Through newly commissioned texts, conversations and focused contributions by artists, critics and curators, the publication Eastern Sugar restores complexity to the history of the rapid decline of the Slovak sugar industry, and by extension the entire social and economic infrastructure of transition in Central Europe, while at the same time opening up planetary trajectories for post-capitalist alternatives. copublished with Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava Contributors Edit András, Ayesha Hameed, Brian Holmes, Joanna Sokolowska and Nick Srnicek, Ilona Németh, Annalee Davis, Aaron Cesar, Kathrin Böhm, Matthew Smith, Sidney W. Mintz, Dusan Janiček, Christian Laur, Jane Rendell, Cooking Sections, Anetta Mona Chisa, Ferenc Grof, Raluca Voinea

Reuben Fowkes

Books

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