Reframing Interwar Legacies: The Politics of Memory in Central and Eastern European Art

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel explores the intersections of art, politics, and cultural memory in Central and Eastern Europe, with a particular focus on how artistic legacies of the interwar period—ranging from Socialist Realism to historical avant-gardes—have been reinterpreted and mobilized in postwar and contemporary contexts. Adrienn Kácsor investigates the role of migration and selective memory in the transformation of Socialist Realism and its dissemination across Eastern Europe after World War II, focusing on Hungarian artists and theorists who had lived in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Barbora Bartunkova examines the Cold War reframing of 1930s antifascist art and exhibitions, focusing on the 1964–1965 traveling exhibition of John Heartfield’s photomontages and its role in mobilizing antifascist memory in the service of cultural diplomacy between the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and the German Democratic Republic. Anna Pravdová explores the artistic dialogues between post-1989 Czechoslovak Surrealists and their interwar predecessors, highlighting the political and historical resonances of artistic memory. Finally, Meghan Forbes considers contemporary interventions into historical avant-garde practices, focusing on Dezider Tóth’s 2021 painting of a “lost original” picture poem, which challenges Karel Teige’s notion of photomechanical reproducibility and the legacy of the interwar Czechoslovak avant-garde group Devětsil a century later. By tracing these continuities and ruptures from the interwar years to the present, this panel seeks to offer new insights into the politics of memory in Central and Eastern European art.

Sub Unit

• Arts I: Visual Culture, Material Culture, Applied and Fine Arts

Chair

• Jindrich Toman, U of Michigan

Papers

• The Memory Politics of Antifascism: Exhibiting John Heartfield During the Cold War - Barbora Bartunkova, Independent Scholar / The Museum of Modern Art

• Intergenerational Dialogues inside the Group of Surrealists in Czechoslovakia - Anna Pravdová, National Gallery Prague (Czech Republic)

• 'Searching for the Missing Picture Poem': Contemporary Artistic Engagements with the Historical Czechoslovak Avant-Garde - Meghan Leigh Forbes, Independent Scholar & Curator

Discussant

• Julia Secklehner, Constructor U (Germany)