Advance Prep for “Communism Never Happened” (I)

April 3, 2009 | by YTJ | "YTJ" Events

There are several discussions and musical performances taking place at the New Museum in conjunction with “The Generational: Younger Than Jesus.” Posts labeled “Advance Prep” offer suggested reading, listening, or watching that might help set the context for the events.

On Thursday, April 9 at 7 PM, the New Museum presents a panel discussion titled “Communism Never Happened” and moderated by art historian Charity Scribner. Here are four books likely to be relevant to that night’s discussion.

requiem_for_communismCharity Scribner, Requiem for Communism (MIT Press, 2003)
In Requiem for Communism Charity Scribner examines the politics of memory in postindustrial literature and art. Writers and artists from Europe’s second world have responded to the last socialist crisis with works that range from sober description to melancholic fixation. This book is the first survey of this cultural field.

groys_art_power

Boris Groys, Art Power (MIT Press, 2008)
Art has its own power in the world, and is as much a force in the power play of global politics today as it once was in the arena of cold war politics. Art, argues distinguished theoretician Boris Groys, is hardly a powerless commodity subject to the art market’s fiats of inclusion and exclusion. In Art Power, Groys examines modern and contemporary art according to its ideological function. Art, Groys writes, is produced and brought before the public in two ways—as a commodity and as a tool of political propaganda. In the contemporary art scene, very little attention is paid to the latter function; the official and unofficial art of the former Soviet Union and other former Socialist states, for example, is largely excluded from the field of institutionally recognized art, usually on moral grounds (although, Groys points out, criticism of the morality of the market never leads to calls for a similar exclusion of art produced under market conditions). Arguing for the inclusion of politically motivated art in contemporary art discourse, Groys considers art produced under totalitarianism, Socialism, and post-Communism. He also considers today’s mainstream Western art—which he finds behaving more and more according to the norms of ideological propaganda.

public_spheres_after_socialismPublic Spheres After Socialism, edited by Angela Harutyunyan, Kathrin Hörschelmann, and Malcolm Miles (University of Chicago Press, 2009)
The idea of public spaces—city parks, waterfront bike paths, and bustling squares—has long been associated with urban environments. Public Spheres After Socialism challenges this idea in light of the end of the cold war and the disintegration of the Soviet Union.  Drawing together experiences from across Europe, this innovative volume reconsiders the public sphere as a figurative, or mythical, location where members of society shape and determine its values. This book examines monuments, reconstruction, film, and new media to ask whether public spaces are viable in an age of globalized consumerism.

art_and_theory_after_socialismArt and Theory After Socialism, edited by Mel Jordan and Malcolm Miles (Intellect Ltd., 2008)
Art, theory, and criticism faced radical new challenges after the end of the cold war. Art and Theory After Socialism investigates what happens when theories of art from the former East and the former West collide, parsing the work of former Soviet bloc artists alongside that of their western counterparts. Mel Jordan and Malcolm Miles conclude that the dreams promised by capitalism have not been delivered in Eastern Europe, and likewise, the democratic liberation of the West has fallen prey to global conflict and high-risk situations. This volume is a revolutionary take on the overlap of art and everyday life in a post–cold war world.

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