Abstrakt
In the presentation of three situations of post-socialist countries, we try to answer the question how diverse changes of political regimes influenced the ways of collecting, presenting and canonizing the development of modern and contemporary art as well as establishing the new modern and contemporary art museums in the post-socialist region. As the shifting point, we took the breakthrough year of 1989, respectively the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, which besides the restoration of independence and the demise of the real-socialism system, in the sphere of art is represented by the shifting conception and prevalence of the term 'contemporary'.
In this perspective, we identify the regional divergences frequently perceived in quite homogenous terms and, for that matter, we detect three distinctive situations: 1) Considering the Polish case, Polish neo avant-garde art was created not beyond, but within the communist system or not necessarily in direct clash with it (Piotr Piotrowski). Surprisingly, talking about our region, the first museum of current art even before 'contemporary' came into existence in Łódź in 1932.
It has held the international collection of art from the very beginning. Now it is presenting its collection in the conceptual trans-historical and geographical way.
How slowly emerging Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw is going to mark the 'contemporary' in the view of art since the 1960s? 2) In the Czech case, it seems that exhibition of the post-Soviet invasion 1970's and 80's art in the Trade Fair Palace (Veletržní palác) - the modern and contemporary art section of the National Gallery is restrained and partial in the proportional sense (in view of the size of premises available). Is that due to limited acquisitions of the National Gallery at the time (displacement of the actual existing late 1960's "contemporary art scene" into the illegality and grey zones and consequently no institutional acquisitions of art pieces in the 1970's and 1980's), or are there other post 1989 reasons at play? 3) In the Lithuanian case, as facing 'silent modernism' thesis, it is claimed that between 1960 and 1980s there had not been a significant movement of independent art.
Both the art history accounts and the collection of National museum of art are formed in this sense. Showing 'the continual development' of art in Soviet times implying simultaneously that even the semi-official art might be followed as continuous and lacking much of the traces of Western contemporary art influences at that time.
But is this perception of continuity and homogeneity regarding the neo avant-garde/contemporary art before 1989 right?