Westkunst, 1981
A Historiography of Modernism Exhibited
In 1981, the Cologne Trade-Fair centre hosted a large exhibition titled Westkunst: Zeitgenössische Kunst seit 1939 [Western Art: Contemporary Art since 1939]. Organised by art critic Laszlo Glozer and curator Kasper König, the Western-centric survey highlighted avant-garde art and politically charged themes of freedom and individual expression.
By examining Westkunst’s historiographical stakes in light of the Iron Curtain division of Europe, the show is revealed in this collective volume as para...
Note de l’éditeur
This electronic edition replicates the printed version in content, text, and images. The exhibition plan (featured on pp. 32–33 in print) and the installation views (which appear throughout the book) have been relocated to the Documents section. Internal cross-references that cite print page numbers now include hyperlinks for easier navigation to the corresponding content.
Éditeur : Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art
Lieu d’édition : Paris
Publication sur OpenEdition Books : 17 avril 2025
ISBN numérique : 978-2-7351-3058-0
DOI : 10.4000/13rop
Collection : Passages | 68
Année d’édition : 2025
ISBN (Édition imprimée) : 978-2-7351-3057-3
Nombre de pages : 384
Mathilde Arnoux et Maria Bremer
Introduction: Unlearning Westkunst, 1981Britta Hochkirchen
An Exhibited Historiography of the Present: Historical References and Temporal Constellations of Comparison in the Westkunst ExhibitionMathilde Arnoux
Fabricating the Universal: The Westkunst DocumentariesKristian Handberg
The Threshold of the West? Danish Cobra Artists Exhibited at Westkunst and behind the Iron Curtain, 1948–1988Friederike Sigler
Curating Critique: On passiv explosiv as Counter-ExhibitionAndrea Bátorová
Peripheralism as a Cultural Privilege? Investigating the ‘Ostkunst’ and ‘Westkunst’ Discourse before and after 1989Documents
Sira Luthardt et Louisa Stank
About the Installation ViewsIn 1981, the Cologne Trade-Fair centre hosted a large exhibition titled Westkunst: Zeitgenössische Kunst seit 1939 [Western Art: Contemporary Art since 1939]. Organised by art critic Laszlo Glozer and curator Kasper König, the Western-centric survey highlighted avant-garde art and politically charged themes of freedom and individual expression.
By examining Westkunst’s historiographical stakes in light of the Iron Curtain division of Europe, the show is revealed in this collective volume as paradigmatic of the ways in which hegemonic concepts of ‘Western art’ and the accompanying processes of othering were fashioned in the art world. Westkunst’s universalising claims are scrutinised here by focusing on the artistic tendencies exhibited; on exhibitionary discourses and practices of decontextualisation, comparison, and appropriation; on the alleged realisation of the values of progress, freedom, and autonomy; on the enacted conceptions of temporality and the architectural devices of narrativisation; and on the exhibition’s blind spots and exclusions and the critical reactions it elicited.
This analytic output makes fresh use of the archival materials, which are neither centralised nor systematised, with significant excerpts republished throughout the book. Seen through the lens of exhibition history, this revisiting of Westkunst sheds light on a broader trend of cultural conservatism that was gaining strength in the 1980s, just before the end of the Cold War, and on the start of new forms of globalisation.
Mathilde Arnoux (dir.)
German Centre for Art History Paris – Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte Paris (DFK Paris), Research Director and Head of French Publications
Maria Bremer (dir.)
Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Kunstgeschichtliches Institut, Akademische Rätin a. Z.
ORCID : 0000-0002-4221-6710
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