At the height of the Cold War, art produced in divided Germany contested the cultural demarcation of East and West. Here Claudia Mesch shows how a wide group of artists struggled to take visual art beyond the crude separations of the 'Iron Curtain', and to transcend the first global cultural divide of the twentieth century. Artists in Berlin produced artworks-including painting, performance and film-that engaged critically with imposed national and global identities, and with issues of memory and trauma. 'Around the Berlin Wall' presents a new picture of the Cold War border between East and West as a dynamic and international cultural space, and is essential for all those interested in art history, modernism, the Cold War and the cultural history of the twentieth century.
Joseph Beuys is one of the most important and controversial German artists of the late twentieth century, an artist whose persona and art is so tightly interwoven with Germany’s fascist past—Beuys was, after all, a former soldier in the Third Reich—that he has been a problematic figure for postwar and post-reunification Germany. In illuminating the centrality of trauma and the sustained investigation of the notion of art as the two defining threads in Beuys's life and art, this book offers a critical biography that deepens our understanding of his many works and their contribution. Claudia Mesch analyzes the aspects of Beuys’s works that have most offended audiences, especially the self-woven legend of redemption that many have felt was a dubious and inappropriate fantasy for a former Nazi soldier to engage. As she argues, however, Beuys’s self-mythology confronted post-traumatic life head on, foregrounding a struggle for psychic recovery. Following Beuys’s exhibitions in the 1970s, she traces how he both expanded the art world beyond the established regional centers and paved the way for future artists interested in activism-as-art. Exploring Beuys’s expansive conceptions of what art is and following him into the realms of science, politics, and spirituality, Mesch ultimately demonstrates the ways that his own myth-making acted as a positive force in the Germany’s postwar reckoning with its past.
Contemporary art is increasingly concerned with swaying the opinions of its viewier. To do so, the art employs various strategies to convey a political message. This book provides readers with the tools to decode and appreciate political art, a crucial and understudied direction in post-war art. From the postwar works of Pablo Picasso and Alexander Deineka to thie Border Film Project and web-based works of Beatriz da Costa, Art and Politics: a Small History of Art for Social Change after 1945 considers how artists visual or otherwise have engaged with major political and grassroots movements, particularly after 1960. With its broad definition of the political, this book features chapters on postcolonialism, feminism, the anti-war movement, environmentalism, gay rights and anti-globiliaztion. It charts how individual artworks reverberated with enormous idealogical shifts. While emphasising the West, Art and Politics takes global developments into account as well - looking at art production practiced by postcolonial African, Latin American and Middle Eastern artists. Its case-study approach to the subject provides the reader with an overview of a most complex subject. This book will also challenge its readers to consider often devalued and marginalised political artworks as properly part of the history of modern and contemporary art.
At the height of the Cold War, art produced in divided Germany contested the cultural demarcation of East and West. Here Claudia Mesch shows how a wide group of artists struggled to take visual art beyond the crude separations of the 'Iron Curtain', and to transcend the first global cultural divide of the twentieth century. Artists in Berlin produced artworks-including painting, performance and film-that engaged critically with imposed national and global identities, and with issues of memory and trauma. 'Around the Berlin Wall' presents a new picture of the Cold War border between East and West as a dynamic and international cultural space, and is essential for all those interested in art history, modernism, the Cold War and the cultural history of the twentieth century.
Contemporary art is increasingly concerned with swaying the opinions of its viewier. To do so, the art employs various strategies to convey a political message. This book provides readers with the tools to decode and appreciate political art, a crucial and understudied direction in post-war art. From the postwar works of Pablo Picasso and Alexander Deineka to thie Border Film Project and web-based works of Beatriz da Costa, Art and Politics: a Small History of Art for Social Change after 1945 considers how artists visual or otherwise have engaged with major political and grassroots movements, particularly after 1960. With its broad definition of the political, this book features chapters on postcolonialism, feminism, the anti-war movement, environmentalism, gay rights and anti-globiliaztion. It charts how individual artworks reverberated with enormous idealogical shifts. While emphasising the West, Art and Politics takes global developments into account as well - looking at art production practiced by postcolonial African, Latin American and Middle Eastern artists. Its case-study approach to the subject provides the reader with an overview of a most complex subject. This book will also challenge its readers to consider often devalued and marginalised political artworks as properly part of the history of modern and contemporary art.
Joseph Beuys is one of the most important and controversial German artists of the late twentieth century, an artist whose persona and art is so tightly interwoven with Germany’s fascist past—Beuys was, after all, a former soldier in the Third Reich—that he has been a problematic figure for postwar and post-reunification Germany. In illuminating the centrality of trauma and the sustained investigation of the notion of art as the two defining threads in Beuys's life and art, this book offers a critical biography that deepens our understanding of his many works and their contribution. Claudia Mesch analyzes the aspects of Beuys’s works that have most offended audiences, especially the self-woven legend of redemption that many have felt was a dubious and inappropriate fantasy for a former Nazi soldier to engage. As she argues, however, Beuys’s self-mythology confronted post-traumatic life head on, foregrounding a struggle for psychic recovery. Following Beuys’s exhibitions in the 1970s, she traces how he both expanded the art world beyond the established regional centers and paved the way for future artists interested in activism-as-art. Exploring Beuys’s expansive conceptions of what art is and following him into the realms of science, politics, and spirituality, Mesch ultimately demonstrates the ways that his own myth-making acted as a positive force in the Germany’s postwar reckoning with its past.
Drawing on the latest research, theory and practice, this is the first book to provide social workers with an evidence-based, practical guide to safeguarding children and young people from abuse, in a world of sexting, selfies and snap chat. It presents an overview of the key e-safety and online risks to children and young people, including dark play, digital self-harm, and online grooming, sexualisation, bullying, offending and radicalisation. It also examines online boundaries, relationships and identity and the future of technologies. Case study examples and discussion of key principles will help social workers consider, mitigate and manage online risks and their effects for safeguarding children and young people, and their families and carers.
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