Contemporary Art and Capitalist Modernization

Octavian Esanu is an assistant professor of Art History at the American University of Beirut (AUB) and Curator of AUB Art Galleries.

Introduction (Octavian Esanu); Part I; 1. Towards a Historical Understanding of Post-Soviet Presentism (Angela Harutyunyan); 2. The Long-Lasting Present: Art, Duration, and Contemporaneity (Pedro Erber); 3. Periodizing Latin American Art Since the 1960s (Karen Benezra); 4. Neue Östeuropäische Kunst: The Global Contemporary and the Eastern European Retrocontemporary (Ivana Bago); 5. Art Form and Nation Form: Contemporary Art and the Postnational Condition (Octavian Esanu); 6. Three Questions for Terry Smith: Peripherality, Postmodernity, Multiplicity – Reconceiving the Origins of Contemporary Art (Interview with Terry Smith, with Octavian Esanu); Part II; Case Study 1: Nove Tendencije 2 [New Tendencies 2], Gallery of Contemporary Art Zagreb, 1963 (Ivana Bago); Case Study 2: Rabinec Studio: The Commodification of Art in Late Socialist Hungary, 1982–83 (Kristóf Nagy); Case Study 3: The 3rd Floor Cultural Movement, Yerevan 1987–1994 (Angela Haratyunyan); Case Study 4: The First Sanayeh Plastic Arts Meeting, Ashkal Alwan Beirut 1995 (Natasha Gasparian); Case Study 5: CarbonART 96 and The 6th Kilometer, SCCA Chișinău 1996 (Octavian Esanu); Case Study 6: Meeting Point, SCCA Sarajevo 1997 (Amila Puzicì); Case Study 7: Khoj International Artists’ Workshop, Khoj International Artists’ Association, Modinagar 1997 (Sabih Ahmed and Nida Ghouse); Case Study 8: Janja Žvegelj: Squash, Škuc Gallery Ljubljana 1998 (Tevž Logar and Vladimir Vidmar); Case Study 9: Al-Nitaq Festival of Art, Cairo 2000 and 2001 (Dina A. Mohamed)