The Hungarian Avant-Garde and Socialism

The Art of the Second Public Sphere

The Hungarian Avant-Garde and Socialism

The Art of the Second Public Sphere

Katalin Cseh-Varga (Author)

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Description

The emergence and the activities of a second public sphere in the areas of Soviet influence were intricately linked to the performative and intermedial production and usage of alternative spaces. Applying a multitude of perspectives and networked topography, The Hungarian Avant-Garde and Socialism investigates artistic strategies of spaces – namely those of the artist's studio, exhibitions, installations, clubs, apartments, cellars, event halls, and chapels – all of which existed parallel to or were interwoven with the regulated public sphere in Hungary from the beginning of the 1960s to the era immediately following the Kádár regime.

This book captures and discusses the exclusionary and inclusionary mechanisms inscribed into public spheres behind the Iron Curtain in all their paradoxes through the looking glass of an artist generation that was controversially labelled “neo-”, and later, “post-avant-garde”. Cross-referencing the international tendencies in the marginal art worlds that existed between and beyond the Cold War reality of Blocs, The Hungarian Avant-Garde demonstrates how mostly non-conformist artists in Hungary, and by extension the spaces they created, reacted to the conflicting, contradictory nature of public spheres in the post-totalitarian condition.

1. Acknowledgements

2. Introduction

3. Public Spheres and Spatiality

4. The Happening and the Consolidation of the Art of the Second Public Sphere

5. Places of Resonance – Artist Studios

6. Official Venues, Semi-Official Art: Party-Run Locations

7. Turning Private into Public – Apartment Culture

8. Avant-Garde above the Ground

9. Conclusion

10. Bibliography

Product details

Published	Oct 06 2022
Format	Ebook (PDF)
Edition	1st
Extent	264
ISBN	9781350211599
Imprint	Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Illustrations	25 bw illus
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing

Author

Katalin Cseh-Varga

Katalin Cseh-Varga is a Hertha Firnberg Fellow at…

This astute monograph offers a survey of Hungarian avant-garde art of the 1960s-80s that is at once accessible and methodologically rigorous. Its elucidation of the entanglements between the first (official) public sphere and its counterpart, the second (unofficial) public sphere, is thoroughly invigorating.

Klara Kemp-Welch, The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, UK
'This timely and expertly researched study of unofficial Kádár-era art explores the resourcefulness and ingenuity of Hungarian artists keen to push the limits of artistic freedom. The book is indispensable for anyone interested in the question what it meant to be radical for an artist in post-1956 Hungary, and beyond.'

Sven Spieker, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
Drawing on a wealth of research, Cseh-Varga provides a new and accessible interpretation of radical art phenomena in Hungary under socialism. The book points to the importance of the public sphere for the democratic ambitions and battles with authority of the East European neo-avant-garde.

Edit Sasvári, Art historian and Director of the Kassák Múzeum, Budapest, Hungary