Kundera's essay is marked with the nostalgia for the Golden Age of Central European culture which, in his view, was founded on the cornerstone of the Austro-Hungarian Empire of Franz Joseph. Its fall, caused mainly by the pressure of nationalisms emerging at the turn of the century, was concluded by the general division of Europe into two blocs in 1945, the question is, however, whether the parts were homogeneous. Was the expansion of the Soviet Empire on the territory of Central Europe - as tragic as it was - a cause of a crisis of its cultural identity? Does the fact that Western politicians as well as some scholars regarded the middle part of the continent as a uniform realm of the Soviet East imply that the Central Europe disappeared? These are the key issues that must be addressed by artistic geography.
The territory of the German Democratic Republic and Poland in the North, Czechoslovakia and Hungary in the middle, and Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Romania in the South was not a uniform region either in terms of its political history, or economic condition, or, for that matter, cultural traditions. What is more, the countries in the middle of the continent, politically dominated by the Soviet Union, were all trying, in one way or another, to manifest their independence, even under the communist rule. In some cases, independence was political, as, most distinctly, in the case of Yugoslavia ruled by Jozif Broz-Tito and later of Nicolae Ceaucescu's Romania, where the end turned out much more tragic, but also, if only for a short time, in Władysław Gomułka's Poland and Imre Nagy's Hungary of 1956, or Dubcek's Czechoslovakia with its "socialism with a human face" of 1968. However, in the first place, the search for local identities was manifest in culture, particularly that created on the margins of the official cultural policy of each state, or even in overt opposition to it. Thus, most likely, any common Central European tradition is hardly conceivable.
In spite of that, though, looking for some common denominator of the artistic strategies of resistance against the ideological indoctrination of communism identified with the socialist realism, we should point to neo-constructivism which was widespread in Central Europe since the political "thaw" of the late fifties. Neo-constructivism was recognized everywhere, perhaps with the exception of Bulgaria. Of course, many artists all over the world would refer to the constructivist heritage, but here, in Central Europe, the role of such references was unique. Notably, its high status related to the mythology of the art persecuted in the times of Stalinism in the Soviet Union. The great masters of the Soviet avant-garde, such as Malevich or Rodchenko, whose artistic achievements are unquestionable, were recognized (not always and not in all cases quite correctly) as the victims of Stalinism, which endowed neo-constructivism with the aura of resistance against the official art associated with the communist regime that contributed to the fall of the avant-garde in Russia. Moreover, in some countries there was biographical continuity between the constructivist tradition and contemporary art: in the GDR lived Hermann Glöckner, a very active artist almost till the end of his very long live, i.e. till the eighties, however, his influences among young East-German artists were not very significant; in Hungary lived Lajos Kassak, not very active after World War II but still extremely influential, while in Poland Henryk Stażewski, a member of many international groups before the war, not only remained influential, but continued his artistic career almost till the end of his long life (he died in 1988 at the age of 94, while Glöckner died in 1987 at the age of 98). Other Polish artists whose impact was significant were Katarzyna Kobro and Władysław Strzemiński who both died in the early fifties. The neo-constructivist trends were also quite strong in the sixties and seventies in Czechoslovakia and in Romania, although there the ties with the pre-World War II heritage were not so prominent. I mean here such Czech artists as Hugo Demartini, Stanislav Kolibal, Jan Kubiček, and Zdenek Sykora, or the Rumanian groups "111" and "Sigma."
All neo-constructivists favored the discourse of freedom expressed in a more or less orthodox language of geometry. The crucial question, however, to repeat after Rosalind Krauss, is: how was the expression of freedom possible in that way, if the "grid," a system of intersecting lines, allegedly discovered anew again and again, is one of the most stereotypical visual devices? Furthermore, as the American art historian suggests, all the artists who started using "grid" as their "own" means of expression brought their artistic evolution to an end, since in many respects (structural, logical, as well as commonsensical) that particular figure can only be repeated.2 What was then the justification of the discourse of freedom or, more precisely, of its mythologization in the artistic practice of the Central European neo-constructivists? Most likely, it was the negative function of that art; the fact that under the specific historical circumstances it was directed against the socialist realism, absolutizing "form" (or even "pure form") while the authorities, particularly in the early fifties, were conducting a campaign against the so-called "formalism" identified with the bourgeois culture. According to the doctrine of the socialist realism, the form was supposed to be "national" ("narodnaya"), and the content "socialist." On the contrary, the neo-constructivists preferred the form to be universal, whereas the so-called content did not exist for then at all.
The significance of neo-constructivism in Central Europe, particularly when the socialist realism entered the phase of its decline, that is, depending on a specific country, from the late fifties till the early sixties or even later, is connected with a more general problem, namely that of the autonomy of the work of art. One can say that at that time the discussions on the autonomy of art started in all Central European countries, signifying mainly the resistance against the Soviet model of art understood primarily as propaganda. In the context of the official politicization of the artistic culture, autonomous art was perceived as an expression of freedom. Hence, freedom in art was associated with the right to remain non-committed, to practice art as an independent activity. The freedom to choose one's own means of expression, which at that time meant referring to all kinds of abstraction, or at least to a non-realistic poetics opposing the official realism, was connected with the right to create an autonomous work of art. The autonomy of art was supposed to be a domain of universal meanings, of the true sense of European culture opposed to the Soviet one associated with art as political propaganda.
The problem of universalism understood in this particular way and related to the autonomy of art as well as to the idea of freedom is one of the most mythologized aspects of the Central European culture. I cannot consider this fascinating issue in more detail here, let me just stress - referring to an argument of Magda Cârneci - that such a perspective gave the local intellectuals a chance to develop their cultural identity by integration with the European universe of values.3 It was a strategy of compensation for traumatic experiences, aimed at the "evil" of politics and history. The mythology of universalism was a background of cultural self-defense; of the resistance against the totalitarian oppression and the so-called Soviet internationalism. While the latter (i.e. the communist internationalism) was commonly associated with the culture involved in the party propaganda, the former (i.e. the European universalism) implied the autonomy of the work of art and its existential dimension, absolute or (most often) ahistorical.
The problem of the autonomy of the work of art has its own historical dynamic. In Central Europe, it surfaced quite distinctly at the moment of the decline of the socialist realism, and - next to neo-constructivism discussed above - it was associated with a more or less direct reception of the French informelle. At first, that process began as early as around 1955 in Poland.4 Tadeusz Kantor, one of the most prominent practitioners of that kind of art, would bring from Paris the models of the painting of gesture, then to show his pictures in Cracow and Warsaw. What seems rather interesting, shedding also some light on the reception of the informelle in the whole region, Kantor was not interested in the contemporary subversive trends, such as the painting of Jean Dubuffet, the COBRA group or the situationists. Instead, he would rather focus on the "museum" version of the informelle, quickly evolving towards the painting of the matter (la peinture de matiere), that is, towards a par excellence aestheticized conception of representation.5 This means that what the artists in Central Europe really needed was not the subversion of culture but its defense - the defense against the involvement of art in politics. Aestheticization and the autonomy of the act of creation were considered the remedies for the damaged prestige and status of the work of art defiled by the politics of the socialist realism. Later on, to keep to the Polish example, along with the political changes and the seizure of power by an anti-Stalinist faction of the Polish communists, such tendencies would distinctly increase so that in the late fifties certain forms of abstraction permeated into the official artistic culture. A good example in this respect was a 1958 Exhibition of the Countries of Peoples' Democracy in Moscow, where the Polish pavilion proved quite different from all the others (being almost exclusively filled with the works of the socialist realism), and as such it provoked a genuine interest of the public as well as a critique of the official delegations of other socialist countries. In Czechoslovakia the interest in the informelle began not much later, but little of it could be seen in the official manifestations of the local art.6 In Hungary, mainly due to the repressions after the Budapest insurrection, the art of that kind appeared only in the mid-sixties, almost simultaneously with the reception of the "new figuration" connected with different variants of pop-art.7 In Hungarian art, these two currents would sometimes overlap, as for instance in the works of Endre Tót, which once again confirmed the idea of the autonomy of art. It was not only the socialist realism (art as propaganda) which was rejected, but also critical art understood as subversion (pop-art and neo-dadaism), followed almost exclusively its aesthetic conventions.
In the remaining countries of the region - Bulgaria, the GDR, and Romania - a similar pattern of reception is difficult to detect. Nevertheless, in Romania the debate on the autonomy of art also began in the early sixties, bringing, however, visible artistic results only after Nicolae Ceaucescu came to power in the middle of the decade. A direct catalyst of change was a 1965 exhibition of the late Ion Juculescu, a classic of the modern Romanian art.
In as much as the fifties and early sixties were a period of a strong interest in various forms of non-figurative art, the late sixties and early seventies brought a more and more widespread reception of the neo-avant-garde: conceptual art, happening, object art, etc. Even though the problematic of the autonomy of art was still relevant, somehow it started to differentiate. In Czechoslovakia before 1968 there appeared various forms of engaged art making comments on reality, exemplified, for instance, by the works of the "Aktual" group, and particularly of its best known member, Milan Knižák. In fact, the year 1968 itself was uniquely recorded as an amalgam of personal and historical facts in Jiři Kolař's "Newsreel". Then, as a result of the so-called normalization which included police repression, the military intervention of the Warsaw Pact, and the end of the Prague Spring, all the manifestations of neo-avant-garde, which by definition could not be tolerated by the authorities, were interpreted in a political context. Since all forms of independent artistic activity were prohibited, all art - by the very fact of its appearance - had political significance, even if it did not happen to refer directly to politics, such as, for example, picnics and trips into the countryside organized by the School of the Knights of the Cross [Křižovnická ąkola], or the performances of such artists as Jan Mleoch, Tomáą Ruller, and the most influential of them, Petr Štembera. Of course, at that time there was in Czechoslovakia some artistic activity which openly criticized various aspects of social life; for instance, the work of Jiři Sozanský, nevertheless, the problem lies more in the contextualization of the Czech and Slovak art of the times of "normalization," than in any kind of overt critique of the power system. Even the apparently neutral work of the conceptualist Jiři Valoch from Brno could not escape the context of the "forbidden art."8
On the contrary, in Poland, which after the 1970 revolt of the Gdańsk shipyard workers and the ensuing change of the power elite was in a completely different situation, critical art turned out extremely rare. The Polish artists of the neo-avant-garde, enjoying almost total freedom of choice as far as their means of expression were concerned, were quite reluctant to use the idiom of political critique, since that would have violated the agreement between them and the authorities. The message of the party was clearly the following: "use any forms you like, but don't get involved in politics." Paradoxically, then, Polish artistic practice combined the models of the neo-avant-garde or, in other words, of critical postmodernism, with the modernist values such as, particularly, the autonomy of the work of art. There was no political reception of the neo-avant-garde determined by the context, since in fact almost everything was allowed, with the single exception of a direct critique of the regime. Of course, there were some attempts at such a critique, for instance at the Repassage Gallery in Warsaw,9 yet they did not affect the general artistic atmosphere of the seventies, unfavorable to any form of political commitment and primarily concentrated on the principle of ars gratia artis.10
In Hungary, together with the slow but steady liberalization of social life and the advent of "goulash communism," some artists - most notably Sandor Piczehelyi and Tamas Szentjóby - levelled an open critique against the Eastern European totalitarian system. Szentjóby was sometimes very specific in this respect, as in the case of the "Portable Trench for Three Persons" from 1968 made after the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact troops. However, such attempts were not frequent; on the contrary, they were quite rare in all Central European countries, and, for example in the GDR even very unique: Robert Rehfeldt's "Ou est le diable" (1969) was a quite unusual case.
In the other countries of the region the situation was indeed very different. In Bulgaria, the avant-garde tendencies appeared much later than in Czechoslovakia, Hungary or Poland (in fact only in the late eighties) to be adopted in uniquely syncretic forms, since the tradition of the neo-avant-garde overlapped with the reception of neo-expressionism. Romania resembled Czechoslovakia, although on a much smaller scale: in the early seventies, the political situation was becoming tenser and tenser after Ceaucescu had proclaimed in 1971 his so-called "July theses" anticipating a more strict control over culture. His declarations were put into practice in the mid-seventies when he was "elected" President of the Republic and combined the positions of the party leader and the nominal head of state (practically every party leader was the head of state, but in order to maintain the appearance of the division of power and democracy some countries of the Soviet bloc, including the USSR, would separate the two posts). From that moment on, just like in Czechoslovakia, all the manifestations of the neo-avant-garde were not approved by the authorities, i.e. the work of such artists as Ion Grigorescu, Geta Bratescu, Paul Neagu (who in the early seventies emigrated to the UK) which had nothing to do with the critique of the regime was recognized as critical.11 No doubt, it was the context that determined the political significance of art explicitly endorsing the autonomy of the artifact. In the German Democratic Republic, the early seventies, marked by the replacement of the hard-liner Walter Ulbricht by Erich Honecker, brought a promise of some liberalization of the state cultural policy which, although it was never fulfilled, provoked the aspirations to artistic freedom that with time became difficult to muffle. Later on, alternative artistic groups, such as those in Berlin Prenzlauer Berg, Dresden-Neustadt or Leipziger Osten, came into being in various East German cities, but that would happen already in the eighties with their characteristic atmosphere of the "new expression."12
The eighties, witnessing the decline of communism taking place in various ways in all Central European countries (in Poland it was the political confrontation of the martial law, in Hungary growing economic and political liberalization) were the next - in fact the last - "turning point" in the artistic culture of the region under the communist rule. The common convention of the "new expression" or neo-expressionism in painting, sculpture, and installations acquired a number of different meanings. In Poland it functioned in the domain of the culture which opposed the system, both in direct contact with the political centers of opposition (the underground institutions of Solidarity and the Catholic Church), and somewhat detached from them in the so-called "third circuit" trying to find some independent space free from the pressure of the politicians of the regime and the opposition alike, but by no means apolitical in itself.13
For sure, an artistic alternative to the dwindling communist power system, additionally undermined by Gorbachev's perestroika in the USSR, was the "new expression" in Romania (holding its own lively debate on postmodernism)14 and in the GDR.15 On the other hand, the situation in Czechoslovakia and Hungary was somewhat different. In Czechoslovakia, the first official (that is, permitted by the authorities) display of the "new art" was probably an exhibition of a group ironically calling themselves "Tvrdohlavy" organized in Prague in 1987.16 That act of coming out of the underground into the open seems quite symptomatic, for in fact it meant the end of resistance against the "normalization," which was becoming much less strict anyway, and the acceptance of the political situation as it was. Such an attitude was completely different from the one characteristic of the Czechoslovakia of the seventies, immediately after the suppression of the Prague Spring, when various forms of the neo-avant-garde had subversive political significance. Of course, in the eighties the Czech underground also generated some variants of the "new expression," but the decision of the young artists from the "Tvrdohlavy" group indicated a turning point - the epoch of resistance was over to give way to a new perspective of consent, and - contrary to what was going on at the same time in the GDR and Romania - neo-expressionism was a sign of that process.17 In Hungary, where the seventies were not, like in Czechoslovakia, a decade of a strong political tension and resistance against the official culture, since the authorities started introducing more liberal cultural and economic policies, neo-expressionism, which appeared already in the early eighties, quite swiftly entered the domain of the official.18 Represented by such artists as Imre Bak, Ákos Birkás, Károly Keleman, and István Nádler, it was shown at the 1986 Biennale in Venice in the Hungarian pavilion organized by Katalin Néray, the director of Mücsarnok, one of the most prestigious exhibition centers of the country, which most definitely indicated its officially recognized status. Incidentally, in Hungary, in contrast to both Poland and Czechoslovakia, the "new expression" was not only an object of interest of the young generation beginning their careers in the eighties, but also of the older artists rooted in the art that was criticized and superseded by neo-expressionism, that is, in neo-constructivism and neo-avant-garde (this refers, for instance, to the aforementioned participants of the 42nd Venetian Biennale). The new art was also interpreted in the context of Kadar's "new economic policy" introduced at the end of his rule, including an adjustment of the Hungarian economy to the free market and the rise of the private sector.19 Parallel to the new developments, it accompanied not just the process of the economic transformation, but also the emergence of new social strata of Hungarian society involved in business and of new social mores - the rhetoric of individualism in economy corresponded to the mythology of artistic individualism conveyed in the language of the "new expression." One of the most outstanding artists of the Hungarian neo-avant-garde, Miklós Erdély, has even made a comparison between the social status of the "new painter" and that of another new figure - a private cabdriver.20
Thus, looking at the postwar art of Central Europe, we are likely to realize that together with the dismantling of the Stalinist cultural policy dating back to the mid-fifties, which finally coincided with the decline and fall of communism in the eighties, the idea of the autonomy of art was gradually becoming less and less compelling and influential. That process was directly proportional to the pressure of the socialist realism understood as the party doctrine of art as propaganda. When the ideological pressure happened to be strong, or at least as long as it was well remembered, the autonomy of art as a key to independent artistic creation was respectively stressed as well. However, as time passed, communists would attach less and less significance to art as an instrument of propaganda, which brought about a less and less dogmatic endorsement of the autonomy of art that in various ways became involved in political and social processes. A good example in this respect may be provided by the history of Polish art. The reception of the informelle which took place in Poland in the mid-fifties was directly connected with the problem of the artistic independence. On the contrary, in the eighties, when the political situation was very tense under the martial law, the communists not only did not make any attempts to use art for the purposes of propaganda or, for that matter, to impose some ideologically motivated artistic doctrine, but even tempted artists with a kind of liberalism, encouraging them to remain on the institutionalized state-controlled artistic scene. The point was, however, that Polish artists would for a long time unanimously boycott official institutions, getting involved in unofficial artistic enterprises and criticizing the system in their art in various ways. Hence, under such circumstances, the conception of the autonomy of art was questioned, and what is more, it was questioned quite deliberately, if not programmatically. Of course, that was possible only because the regime ceased to have the ambition to impose any obligatory artistic doctrine. However, in those countries where such an ambition of the authority was still vivid, and the administration tried to continue the "hard," in the matter of fact the Stalinist cultural policy, i.e. in the GDR and in Romania, an alternative culture stressed the notion of the autonomy of art, as a main oppositional strategy. In East Germany many alternative artistic groups and circles came into being in various cities: Berlin, Dresden, Halle, Leipzig, and Karl-Marx-Stadt, but almost all of them built their theoretical approach around the problem of the autonomy of art.21 In Romania, in turn, a widespread discussion on post-modernism among artists and intellectuals was mostly associated with an understanding the right to express the autonomous values in art and culture, free from political pressure.22 Here, both in the GDR and Romania, in the countries ruled by the strongest "hard liners", the autonomy of art still meant freedom from the communist oppression.
Still, no matter how advanced the process of the de-autonomization of art in some Central European countries became in the eighties, it was hardly comparable to the critical art in the West, and particularly in the USA, but also in Russia, where soc-art and conceptualism were largely involved in the critique of the social condition of the country.23
At the moment, after the fall of communism in 1989 and a kind of liberation of the societies of Central Europe, a question of the cultural identity of the region arises once more. Until recently, it had been determined by the specific status of this part of the continent - the territory between the West and the Soviet Union, where culture was the primary domain in which autonomy could be manifested. Now, when the negative point of reference is gone and the Central European countries are trying to join the Western institutions, one may ask a question whether they will be able to maintain their cultural identity which has always - not just under the Soviet domination - been constructed in opposition to major cultural centers. Will the growing commercialization and commodification of culture, the pressure of mass culture, and the globalization of artistic models justify Kundera's argument about the "tragedy" of Central Europe? Needless to say, no answer to these questions can be provided today, since it requires both time and reflection. What we can say, however, right now, is that the key to a definition of the region's identity - its unique genius loci - lies not so much in the historical or artistic processes, but in our interpretive strategy; in - as Norman Bryson has put it, following Culler and Derrida - "framing."24 This is an active strategy, since the choice of the context depends on the scholar's effort, on his or her interpretive perspective. A context "is just more text," writes Bryson, thus, it is there that we can find the meaning of the text. In our case, that is, in the case of the geographers of art, the context is constituted by many elements. Just as we used to decipher the meanings of the autonomous art of Central Europe by referring them to particular stages of historical processes which determined the identity of our part of the continent, now, witnessing the occidentalization of Central European culture, we must view it in a proper context again. This con-text is history - both remote, and, paradoxically, the most recent that we are perhaps trying to forget - the history of the Soviet domination and of the states of the so-called "people's democracy." It constitutes a direct frame of reference for all the contemporary ambitions to participate in Western culture, and - most probably - it will also determine the cultural characteristics of the region after 1989.
Translated by Marek Wilczynski
Copyright by Piotr Piotrowski, 1998
Krasnogruda nr 8, Sejny 1998, Pogranicze.
Przypisy:
1. I am referring to a Polish translation of Kundera's essay, "Zachód porwany albo tragedia Europy Środkowej," trans. from French M.L., Zeszyty Literackie, No. 5 (Winter 1984): 14-31.
2. R. Krauss, The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1987).
3. M. Cârneci, "Another Image of Eastern Europe," Revue Roumaine d'Histoire de l'Art, Vol. XXX, 1993
4. Cf. Odwilż. Sztuka ok. 1956 [The Thaw. Art ca. 1956], ed. Piotr Piotrowski (Poznań: Muzeum Narodowe, 1996).
5. A. Markowska, "Wielkie «teraz», czyli o sztuce" [The Great Now or, On Art], in Odwilż...
6. Ohniska znovuzrozeni: âeske umini, 1956-1963 [Focal Points of Revival: Czech Art 1956-1963] (Praha: Galerie hlavniho mesta Prahy, 1994); Sest'desiate roky [The Sixties], ed. Z. Rusinova (Bratislava: Slovenska narodna galeria, 1995).
7. Hatvanas évek [The Sixties], eds. L. Beke, I. Devenyi, G. Horvath (Budapest: Magyar Nemzeti Galeria, 1991); K. Keserü, Variations on Pop-Art (Budapest: Ernst Museum, 1993).
8. Cf. Vytvarné umeni. The magazine for Contemporary Art [issue titled "Zakazane umeni" (Forbidden Art)], Nos. 3-4, 1995; Nos. 1-2, 1996.
9. Repassage, ed. M. Sitkowska (Warsaw: Galeria Zachęta, 1993).
10. P. Piotrowski, Dekada (Poznań: Obsarwator, 1991).
11. Experimental Art in Romania, 1960-1990, ed. M. Cârneci (Bucharest: Soros Center for Contemporary Art), in press.
12. Cf. P. Kaiser, C. Petzold, Boheme und Dictatur in der DDR. Gruppen. Konflikte, quartiere, 1970-1989 (Berlin: Deutsches Historiches Museum, 1997).
13. Cf. Polish Realities. New Art from Poland (Glasgow: Third Eye Center; Łódź: Muzeum Sztuki, 1988); Ekspresja lat osiemdziesiątych [Expression of the Eighties], ed. R. Ziarkiewicz (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo A. Bonarskiego, 1990); Realizm radykalny. Abstrakcja konkretna. Sztuka drugiej połowy lat osiemdziesiątych [Radical Realism. Concrete Abstraction. The Art of the Late Eighties], eds. J. Zagrodzki, R. Ziarkiewicz (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo A. Bonarskiego, 1990).
14. M. Cârneci, Arta Anilor'80 [Art in the Eighties) (Bucharest: Litera) [no date].
15. Cf. P. Kaiser, C. Petzold...
16. J. Olić, "Tvrdohlavi, 1987-1990," Vytvarné umini, No. 1 (1991).
17. Cf. "Zajimalo nas rozbit urăity model, ktery tady byl", Rozhovor Marty Smolikové s Janou a Jižim Ševăikovymi, "Vytvarné umini [issue titled "Zakázané umini"], Nos. 1-2 (1996): 136-144.
18. For the documentation of the movement, cf. Uj szenzibilitas IV, New Sensibility IV, ed. L. Hegyi (Pécsi Galéria, 1987). Cf. also 80-as Évek Képzömüvészet/Hungarian Art of the Eighties, ed. K. Keserü (Budapest: Ernst Museum, 1994).
19. Cf. M. Peternák, "Who Is (Was) the Victim, Who is (Was) the Culprit and What Happened?/Hungarian Art in the Eighties," Modern and contemporary Hungarian Art. Bulletin, 1985-1990 (Budapest: Soros Foundarion, 1991).
20. Peternák, 20.
21. Cf. Jenseits der Staatskultur. Traditionen autonomer Kunst in der DDR, ed. G. Muschter, R. Thomas (München: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1992); P. Kaiser, C. Petzold, Boheme und Dictatur in der DDR. Gruppen, Konflikte, Quartiere, 1970-1989 (Berlin: Deutsches Historisches Museum, 1997); M. damus, Malerei der DDR. Funktionen der bildenden Kunst in realen Sozialismus, (Hamburg: Rewohlt, 1991), pp. 357-361.
22. M. Cârneci, Arta Anilor'80 [Art in the Eighties] (Bucharest: Litera) [no date].
23. Nonconformist Art. The Soviet Experience, 1956-1986, eds. A. Rosenfeld. N. T. Dodge (Rutgers, N. J.: Thames & Hudson, Jane Vorheer Zimmerli Art Museum, 1991).
24. N. Bryson, "Art in Context, " in studies in Historical Change, ed. R. Cohen (Charlotteville: The University of Virginia Press, 1992).