Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Westkunst, 1981: A Historiography of Modernism Exhibited

Westkunst, 1981: A Historiography of Modernism Exhibited

Arnoux, Mathilde
Bremer, Maria
Geimer, Peter

Paperback

Series: Passages, Book 68

Art Criticism & TheoryArt HistoryGeneral World History

ISBN10: 2735130576
ISBN13: 9782735130573
Publisher: Editions de la Maison Des Sciences de l'Homme
Published: Apr 17 2025
Pages: 475
Weight: 2.16
Height: 1.20 Width: 6.70 Depth: 9.50
Language: English

In 1981, the Cologne Trade-Fair centre hosted a large exhibition titled Westkunst: Zeitgenössische Kunst seit 1939 (Western Art: Contemporary Art since 1939). Organized by art critic Laszlo Glozer and curator Kasper König, the Western-centric survey highlighted avant-garde art and the politically charged themes of freedom and individual expression. By examining Westkunst's historiographical stakes in light of the Cold War division of Europe, the show is revealed as paradigmatic of the ways in which hegemonic concepts of 'Western art' and the accompanying processes of othering were fashioned in the art world. In this collective volume, Westkunst's universalising claims are scrutinised by focusing on the artistic tendencies exhibited; on exhibitionary discourses and practices of decontextualisation, comparison, and appropriation; on the alleged realisation of the values of progress, freedom, and autonomy; on the enacted conceptions of temporality and the architectural devices of narrativisation; on the exhibition's blind spots and exclusions and the critical reactions it elicited. This analytic output makes fresh use of the archival materials, which are neither centralised nor systematized, with significant excerpts republished throughout the book. Seen through the lens of exhibition history, this revisiting of Westkunst sheds light on a broader trend of cultural conservatism that was gaining strength in the 1980s, just before the end of the Cold War, and on the start of a new form of globalisation.

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