Art of Two Germanys

Posted by admin on February 18, 2009


The flood of stories and images from the former Communist block continues. The Los Angeles Museum of Art is putting on an exhibit, Art of Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures, that serves as a comparison/contrast of the art in the former West and East Germany covering the period from 1945 to 1989, the year the Berlin Wall came down. Socialist Realism versus the (and I admit I had never heard this term before) Capitalist Realism. From what I can see, the West German work seems squarely in the modern art mainstream, recognizing that those are contradictions in terms, while the East German paintings seem to hew to the heroic socialist realist aesthetic. The New York Times had an article on the exhibit last week. 

Couple this exhibit with the great East Side Story documentary on Warsaw Pact era musicals, and the Animated Soviet Propaganda DVD set Kino did a while ago, and we are getting more and more of a look at the cultural life that was going on behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. 
It’d be nice to get out to Art of Two Germanys, but if not, the LAMOA site has both a nice slideshow walkthrough of the show and what it calls a digital timeline that gives a historical context to the linked pieces. 

Last modified on February 18, 2009

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2 Responses to “Art of Two Germanys”

  1. Derek Johnson Says:
    February 24th, 2009 at 8:16 pm

    Any idea if the exhibit will come to Austin?

  2. Paul Miles Says:
    March 18th, 2009 at 5:13 am

    No, I doubt it unfortunately. If I had to guess, somewhere like the Amon Carter would be the closest the exhibit would get to us.

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