In a mediated history the introduction of modernism and international art after 1945 is equated with a movement from international centres such as New York in a one-way direction to a Northern periphery. (Werner 2000, Öhrner 2010). This “American story” follows a structure with four distinct components; first, the Second World War as a turning point, second, in the mid 1950s the transfer of the art world’s “centre” from Paris to New York, then the predominant position of American art in the following decades and last the reappearance of a European avant-garde in the 1980s (Dossin 2008). The tacit political dimension in this “American story” and its implicit west-east hierarchy is present also in Swedish art history.
The title of this project Exhibiting in a European Periphery? International Art in Sweden During the Cold War refers to key concepts for how art has been narrated. First, in what sense was an exhibition peripheral in other regions than the major capitals such as Paris or New York? For the artists and curators involved in the project? For the bodies distributing financial support? When revisiting documents in the archives of museum and public art galleries a much more heterogenic history unfolds where the seemingly self-evident hierarchy of the Western/Eastern Europe or centre/periphery dichotomies disappear. We find galleries across Sweden that were not just “the periphery” in the far north but in some cases a platform for international experimental art such as Fluxus events in 1965 at Lunds Konsthall and frequent cultural exchanges during the 1970s with Polish artists through exhibitions and art journals.
Sweden’s combination of geographical position and political neutrality enabled it to maintain good trade and cultural relations on both sides of the iron curtain. Ambitious new arts institutions were created outside of the main cities, particularly in the 1960s and early 1970s, with a mandate to challenge the status quo and these took advantage of the political landscape to create international artistic collaborations. This project will reveal how during this important period in Swedish Art history during, through this unique set of circumstances, things became possible in the “periphery” which may not have happened in the “centres”. It is a story that has not previously been told.
The Cold War era is characterised by the idea of division. But this is contradicted by the striking presence of artists from Eastern Europe and the Baltic sea area in Sweden. These relations often show more than mere influence and one-way effects, instead we often find mutual dependence and exchange between centres (as e.g. Stockholm or Warsaw), regions, or artists. Such archival evidence reveals the biased position from which art history has been written. We suspect that peripheral is an art historical post-construction.