1st Edition

Hot Art, Cold War – Western and Northern European Writing on American Art 1945-1990

Edited By Claudia Hopkins, Iain Boyd Whyte Copyright 2020
    578 Pages 40 Color Illustrations
    by Routledge

    578 Pages 40 Color Illustrations
    by Routledge

      Hot Art, Cold War – Northern and Western European Writing on American Art 1945-1990 is one of two text anthologies that trace the reception of American art in Europe during the Cold War era through primary sources.

      With the exception of those originally published in English, the majority of these texts are translated into English for the first time from eight languages, and are introduced by scholarly essays. They offer a representative selection of the diverse responses to American art in Great Britain, Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, West Germany (FRG), Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. There was no single European discourse, as attitudes to American art were determined by a wide range of ideological, political, social, cultural, and artistic positions that varied considerably across the European nations.

      This volume and its companion, Hot Art, Cold War – Southern and Eastern European Writing on American Art 1945-1990, offer the reader a unique opportunity to compare how European art writers introduced and explained contemporary American art to their many and varied audiences.

      Whilst many are fluent in one or two foreign languages, few are able to read all twenty-five languages represented in the two volumes. These ground-breaking publications significantly enrich the fields of American art studies and European art criticism.

      This book, together with its companion volume Hot Art, Cold War – Southern and Eastern European Writing on American Art 1945-1990,, is a joint initiative of the Terra Foundation for American Art and the editors of the journal  Art in Translation at the University of Edinburgh. The journal, launched in 2009, publishes English-language translations of the most significant texts on art and visual cultures presently only available only in their source language. It is committed to widening the perspectives of art history, making it more pluralist in terms of its authors, viewpoints, and subject matter.

       

       

      Editors’ Introduction and Acknowledgments by Claudia Hopkins, Iain Boyd Whyte

      PART 1: CONTEXTUAL ESSAYS

      Western Europe

      1. A ‘Special Relationship’: British and American Art 1945–89 - David Hopkins

      1. The Irish Diaspora, the Cold War and American Art in Ireland - Brenda McCann
      2. With Love (and Hate) from Paris - Serge Guilbaut

      4. Art on its Head: American Art in Belgium 1958-1978 - Johan Pas

      5. The Reception of American Art in the Netherlands - Jonneke Jobse

      1. American Art in Cold War West Germany - Iain Boyd Whyte
      2. "Muses with a Cold"- Austria, the visual arts and the Cold War - Oliver Sukrow and Iain Boyd Whyte
      3. Isle of the Blessed—audiences shocked: American Art in Switzerland 1945-1990 - Nathalie Ritter and Thomas Schmutz

      Northern Europe:

      1. American Art Viewed from Denmark: From Skepticism to Acceptance - Tania Orum

      1. Norway and American Postwar Art during the Cold War - Åsmund Thorkildsen
      2. American Art in Swedish Art Criticism: An Introduction - Annika Oehrner and with Karolina Uggla

      12. An Introduction to American Art in Finland after 1945 - Maritta Mellais

      Part 2: TEXTS 1945-1990

      1. Great Britain

      2. Ireland

      3. France

      4. Belgium

      5. The Netherlands

      6. West Germany

      7. Austria

      8. Switzerland

      9. Denmark

      10. Norway

      11. Sweden

      12. Finland

      Biography

        Claudia Hopkins is Senior Lecturer in History of Art at the University of Edinburgh.

        Iain Boyd Whyte is Professor of Architectural History at the University of Edinburgh.

        "Put simply, these volumes are an incredible resource for any scholar of American or European art during the Cold War period, as English readers can access overviews and archival examples of the reception of American art from the entirety of Europe and from 20 different languages. With its more honest and complete accounting of American art during the Cold War, material from these books will certainly find their way into many undergraduate and graduate syllabi."

        --Critique d’art