From Central Europe to the Baltics Before and After 1989: The State of Contemporary Art Canons

Three concrete instances of modern and contemporary art development in the former Soviet bloc are addressed in the study. Comparing three particular cases of post-socialist countries (Czechoslovakia, Poland and Lithuania), three distinctive situations are identified in order to establish a link between modern and contemporary art and the emergence of canonized stories of their development. Although these concrete cases turned out to represent a certain range of situations-models that have taken place, the study indicates a variety of omissions and unrecognized vital moments in the currently prevailing canons, which puts the connection of the shifting point of 1989 and the transition from modern to contemporary art into a new light.