East European Artists' Ecological Critique Under Socialism Examined in ARTMargins Article

An article by Maja Fowkes and Reuben Fowkes, published on June 5, 2014, explores how East European artists engaged with ecological thought during the socialist era. It analyzes the work of the Slovenian OHO Group, Croatian group TOK, Slovak artist Rudolf Sikora, and Czech artist Petr Štembera, who employed dematerialized practices to critique the communist system's promethean approach to nature. These artists addressed environmental pollution, which was often concealed by the party, while investigating cosmological dimensions to avoid ideological contamination. Their interest in phenomenological encounters with nature and new-age communal living on society's margins is highlighted. The article suggests that the fusion of ecology and conceptual art after 1968 may have contributed to socialism's eventual crisis under social, political, and environmental pressures. Content is available via MIT Press under a subscription model.