Michael Blackwood Productions

ART SURVEYS

Germany’s Cold War Cultures 1949-1989
Re-thinking the Art History of a Politically Divided Country
60 minutes, color

During the Cold War (1949-89) in both Germanys, the creation of art, its reception, and its theorization were closely linked to the respective political systems: the Western liberal democracy of the Federal Republic of German ( FRG ) and the Eastern communist dictatorship of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). In reaction against the legacy of Nazism, both Germanys revived pre-World War II German artistic traditions. This exhibition examines the internalization of historic German art, the increasing importance of popular and mass culture, the fashioning of two distinct national identities, and the engagement with Germany ’s political and artistic past. By tracing the political, cultural, and theoretical discourses in both German art worlds, the exhibition shows the role of conventional art, new media, new art forms, popular culture, and particular domestic and international contemporary art exhibitions that played a role in the establishment of German art in the postwar era.


Karl Hofer Totentanz (Dance of the Dead) 1946	Herbert List, Gipsmodelle in der Akademie I, München (Plaster Casts in the Academy I, Munich) 1946	Heinz Löffler, Aufbau der Stalinallee (Construction of the Stalinallee), 1953


Heinz Mack Relief Wand (Relief Wall); ca. 1960	Wolf Vostell Coca-Cola, 1961	A. R. Penck Der Übergang (Passage), 1963


Georg Baselitz Bild für die Väter (Picture for the fathers) 1965	Wolfgang Mattheuer Kain (Cain) 1965	Gerhard Richter View of Volker Bradke exhibition space at Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf, 1966


Bernhard Heisig Unterm Hakenkreuz (Under the Swastika), 1973	Sibylle Bergemann Ohne Titel (Gummlin) (Untitled [Gummlin]), 1984	Martin Kippenberger Zwei Proletarische Erfinderinnen auf dem Weg zum Erfinderinnenkongreß (Two Proletarian Women Inventors on Their Way to the Inventor's Congress), 1984

We accompany Stephanie Barron, curator of the exhibition, and Sabine Eckmann, curator of the exhibition catalogue on a walk-through of this critical re-consideration of German post-WWII art. They retrace the curatorial reasoning for the selection of works by artists which would best reflect the key social and political developments on both sides of the iron curtain during those 4 decades. “Art of Two Germanys: Cold War Cultures” is the third ambitious exhibition on 20th century German art curated by Stephanie Barron at the Los Angeles County Museum, after “Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany” and “Exiles and Emigrés: The Flight of German Artists from Hitler”.

The walk-through of the exhibition is enriched by rare historic film footage of East and West Germany as well as of the participating artists.

The exhibition “Art of Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures, 1945-1989” was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in cooperation with Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH, Dr. Eckhart Gillen, co-curator.