This project examines international and transnational art exhibitions organized, between 1947 and 1989, in and by socialist countries, including China, North Korea, Cuba, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Angola, as well as the Soviet Union and its allies in Eastern Europe, among others. So far, international art exhibitions within the socialist world have been viewed from an exclusively Western perspective that has figured them either as part of isolated national histories, or as symbolic gestures of international solidarity and friendship. This project considers Cold War socialist exhibitions instances of a curatorial culture that developed independently from the capitalist art market and its outlets, according to its own set of demands and prerogatives.
And while many of the art shows we consider were officially planned by special agencies set up by the state, it is worth noting that in several of the countries concerned, the boundary between official and alternative, parallel, or self-organized (art) worlds was porous, with any number of translations and transfers occurring between them, interactions that form an intricate part of the process we call socialist exhibition cultures.
Socialist exhibition cultures didn’t espouse the ideals of Western-style modernism—in some cases favoring home-grown versions of modernism instead—nor did it function as an arbiter in art’s global commodification. At the same time, it did not form a monolithic bloc, instead comprising a broad spectrum of strategies and attitudes whose relationship with capitalist art production was complex and subject to considerable change over time. Consequently, we should not underestimate the range of themes, art forms, styles, and artists or art movements represented by the exhibitions covered by this project, from canonical socialist realism to international abstraction and socialist modernism, from surrealism to social realism. The shows we examine fall into three broad categories:
- International art exhibitions that present artists from socialist countries, or communist western artists, such as the retrospective of Italian painter Renato Guttuso in Moscow in 1972.
- International art exhibitions “exported” by socialist countries either to other socialist or capitalist countries, such as Czechoslovak Contemporary Art (West Berlin, 1966).
- Exhibitions of Western art shown in the countries of the socialist world, including the 1961 Henry Moore exhibition in Budapest.
By treating global exhibition history both within a national context and transnationally, we also propose a paradigm shift in how we view the Cold War, shedding light on the way socialism during this time allowed for cooperation and exchange between the second and the so-called Third World. We want to pivot away from the traditional emphasis on East/West competition to a more layered model that includes instances of extensive cultural exchange and cooperation between the socialist countries and the rest of the world.