Writers' Bloc: reading into late Soviet experience through Latvian artists' books.

Previously in the University eprints HAIRST pilot service at http://eprints.st-andrews.ac.uk/archive/00000364/Article 1 of 6 in an issue devoted to Scandinavian and Baltic visual cultureThis article focuses on book works by Latvian artists during the late-Soviet period, and also offers an initial discussion of the peculiarities of the Soviet publishing environment, as it existed shortly before the USSR’s annexation of Latvia at the end of World War II, and the roughly concurrent publication experiences of progressive artists in inter-bellum Latvia, the so-called First Republic. During its heyday in the 1960s and 70s the artist’s book was hailed by many practitioners in the West as the superlative democratic art form, due to the hypothetical possibility of the widespread ownership of the art object. An examination of how artist-authored books developed amid Latvian society's repeated, abrupt transitions between democracy and totalitarianism during the past century may further illuminate this concept of a democratic art medium.Postprin

Writers' Bloc: reading into late Soviet experience through Latvian artists' books

This article focuses on book works by Latvian artists during the late-Soviet period, and also offers an initial discussion of the peculiarities of the Soviet publishing environment, as it existed shortly before the USSR’s annexation of Latvia at the end of World War II, and the roughly concurrent publication experiences of progressive artists in inter-bellum Latvia, the so-called First Republic. During its heyday in the 1960s and 70s the artist’s book was hailed by many practitioners in the West as the superlative democratic art form, due to the hypothetical possibility of the widespread ownership of the art object. An examination of how artist-authored books developed amid Latvian society's repeated, abrupt transitions between democracy and totalitarianism during the past century may further illuminate this concept of a democratic art medium

Socialist Dandies International: East Europe, 1946-1959

This article maps the looks and lifestyle choices of small groups of young, like-minded people who emerged in the postwar Soviet Union and East Europe in the background of huge political, social, and cultural changes. With their androgynous bodies wrapped in drape jackets and narrow trousers, and their love of jazz and swing, these young men stood in a sharp contrast to the official ideology that promoted socialism as a new, pure, and highly rationalized project, its ideal robust and strong man, and its mass culture that insisted on educational and restrained forms of entertainment. Through the categories of dress, body, and big city, the article investigates the clashes, and the eventual truce, between the socialist streamlined and rationalized master narrative and the young dandies' fragmented and disordered narrative. The article argues that the socialist dandies were not politically minded, and that their challenge to the officially proclaimed values was informed by their adolescent recklessness and a general postwar desolation. They were declared state enemies because the socialist regimes did not allow for alternative types of modernity. Consequently, the authorities condemned the young dandies' looks and interests as cosmopolitan, because they originated in the West, and as artificial, since they belonged to the culture that had preceded a new socialist world

AIDS : The Artists' Response

The collected essays attempt to analyse the impact of AIDS on American culture and artistic practices including photography, film, video, performance, theatre, painting and installation. Statements by the 65 participating artists. CIrca 32 bibl. ref