Full Description
At the height of the Cold War, art produced in divided Germany contested the cultural demarcation of East and West. Here Claudia Mesch shows how a wide group of artists struggled to take visual art beyond the crude separations of the 'Iron Curtain', and to transcend the first global cultural divide of the twentieth century. Artists in Berlin produced artworks-including painting, performance and film-that engaged critically with imposed national and global identities, and with issues of memory and trauma. 'Around the Berlin Wall' presents a new picture of the Cold War border between East and West as a dynamic and international cultural space, and is essential for all those interested in art history, modernism, the Cold War and the cultural history of the twentieth century.
Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
I. Recuperating the Modern
II. Marking the Postwar City
III. Bonjour Monsieur Courbet: Realist painting and the defector dialectic
IV. Performance West and East: the freedom of failure
V. Art on TV: the other Cold War divide
Epilogue
Index
