Алтернативни модели в българското изкуство от края на XX век - външен и вътрешен поглeд
Alternative Models of Bulgarian Art from the End of the 20th Century - an External and Internal View

Summary/Abstract: Eastern Europe, which after the Second World War was subjected to Soviet colonization in all spheres of public shaped its receptive artistic life which withstood in a similar way to its imposed totalitarian norm. Thus the idealization of the West, which emerged, was to a great extent the outcome and mirror projection of the Soviet cultural paradigm. However, within the framework of this similarity in the various countries from Eastern Europe, a number of differences are noticeable in the genesis and evolution of their alternative tendencies. Thus countries to the east of the Berlin wall cannot be seen as a homogenous entity. They are known as Central and Eastern Europe, the Baltic region, and the Balkans (also differing politically in its Communist part). After 1990 the differences between the situations in the post-Communist countries eased and tendencies became synchronous. Nevertheless the road before paintersfrom Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary retained their differences with their colleagues in the Balkans, while the countries from the countries from the former Soviet Union such as the Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia etc followed another course. With the rejection of Socialist Realism from the end of the 50s, we could not claim, that Bulgarian art could develop adequately to artistic quests in societies with a democratic political organization. For instance the already archaic “Paris school” is still seen as a form of dissent, at the same time the totalitarian system seeing it as a defense against the then topical forms of Western neo-avant-garde art (pop-art, minimal art, conceptualism). Nevertheless such a cultural strategy could not be a barrier to the penetration of new values after 1989. Yet even then, the “transition” in contemporary art in Bulgaria is contradictory - owning to the clash between “local” and external artistic models. For this reason today we see the birth of a number of deep cultural contradictions and allowing the course of an incomplete and uneven modern trend.

• Details
• Contents