Contemporary Art Theory

This book brings for the first time a comprehensive selection of Igor Zabel’s writings in the English language. This important translation brings forward Zabel’s extraordinary analytical and emphatic thinking and writing on modern and contemporary art from Socialist Realism and Conceptual Art to Post-Modernism and 1990s art, particularly in Slovenia and Eastern Europe. 

Focusing on the complex East-West relations within the international art system, this publication brings forth a critical reflection on the position of art linked to deep changes society underwent following the fall of the Berlin Wall. It also traces contemporary culture to avant-garde practices and provides insight into Zabel’s curatorial strategies. Structured like a portrait of the art scene in Slovenia and Eastern Europe over the last few decades, the book raises issues of identity by confronting this specific geopolitical context with emerging global paradigms and serves as a methodology model for research into Eastern European art practices.

The book is divided into four chapters: East, West and Between (dialogue and perception of the Other in the context of the complex relations established after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989), Strategies and Spaces of Art (strategies of representation and theories of display, the role of the curator and the new understanding of the white cube), Ad Personam (individual artists and thematic phenomena) and Extras (selected columns on arts and culture). The volume is introduced by Igor Španjol, its editor.