In the Shadow of Yalta

There was one exception to the binary division of the Romanian art scene, namely Ion Bitzan, an artist who became one of the most frequently ‘exported’ Romanian artists of the Ceaus¸escu era. His international career began in 1964 when he was awarded a fellowship in Italy. Within two years, he had two shows in Poland (in Poznan´ in 1966 and in Sopot in 1967), exhibitions in The Hague and Amsterdam, a fellowship from the Stedelijk Museum and shows in New York, Paris and Northern Ireland, as well as visiting lectureships in the United States (New York, Washington dc, San Francisco and Philadelphia).51 Bitzan’s work during the 1960s and ’70s was seemingly in a state of suspended animation. In the 1950s the artist, who scrupulously avoided Socialist Realist formulas (he began showing in 1953), produced more or less conventional still lifes and landscapes that incorporated elements of abstraction.52 In 1964 he had an opportunity to visit the Venice Biennale and to see Robert Rauschenberg’s work (Rauschenberg won the Grand Prix that year). Kristine Stiles writes that Rauschenberg’s exhibition made a lasting impression on the Romanian artist, prompting him to investigate object art, collage, assemblage and other neo-avant-garde modes of production over the course of the 1960s.53 These experiments produced such works as Small Sacks (1969), Generator of Images (1976) and Towers (1977–8). Those were not radical statements exploring the identity of an artwork as an object, a subject discussed by Arthur Danto in relation to Pop art, in particular Andy Warhol.54 Bitzan’s works (and the majority of similar East European neo-avant-garde experiments) were implicated in poetics that underscored the importance of the creative function understood within traditional aesthetic categories. In general, they did not produce a critique of Modernist painting, so pervasive in the Western neo-avant-garde. Bitzan wrote that he wanted to see in his ‘poetic objects’ that which was invisible.55 Those were entirely different motivations from those inspiring Western artists associated with Anglo-American neo-Dada and Pop art, or French new realism. Bitzan’s attitude was to a large extent shaped by the absence of such a ‘negative’ tradition within the East European neo-avant- garde, as well as a certain hesitation in formulating a critique of painting in a situation where the value of art and the status of autonomous artworks were threatened by the cultural policies of the Communist regime. The regime’s preference for far-reaching instrumentalization of art posed a challenge to the ideal of art’s autonomy and the artist’s right to subjective production of works. In Bizan’s case there were also political reasons why the artist avoided taking more radical steps and tended to practice a form of parallelism in his representational and object-based works. Radicalism could have resulted in the 257 loss of the privileges, such as freedom to travel and to exhibit, that Bitzan enjoyed during the Ceaus¸escu reign. After the dictator was executed in 1989 and his regime had failed, Bitzan began to work much more freely. Until his death in 1997, he worked on a series that used books to construct various Libraries, some of which had a directly political character, such as the work from 1990 that used portraits of Lenin and Stalin. Bitzan was an exception among the Romanian artists of the 1970s (and not only then). However, one should not assume that his career functioned as the only point of contact between the ‘experimental’ and the ‘non-experimental’ sectors. Such contacts also occurred within the institutional sphere. There were certainly official venues where artists of the ‘experimental’ sector could show their works. In particular, one should mention here the gallery Apollo, which actively exhibited neo-avant-garde works during the 1970s, and, above all, Studio 35, created in 1972 on the initiative of younger artists, among them Ana Lupas¸, as a ‘branch’ of the official artists’ union.56 Dedicated to showing works by artists under 35 years of age, Studio 35 aimed to support and showcase experimental art in a national arena. Moreover, the geography of Romania, the number of art centres and a certain decentralization of the neo-avant-garde art scene allowed a freedom that was greater than one might have expected. While the capital of Bucharest was home to such leading figures of the Romanian neo-avant-garde as Geta Brtescu and Ion Grigerescu, Group 111 and Sigma were active in Timis¸oara, a city with a strong tradition of neo-Constructivism. Mihai Olos created some of the first Romanian happenings in the mining and agricultural region of Baia Mare (25, Baia Mare, 1969; Gold and Wheat, Herja Mine, 1972). And finally, Ana Lupas¸worked at an art school (a thoroughly ‘official’ institution) located in the town of Cluj.57 However, this mixing and interaction between the different spheres did not mean that the very real differences between official and unofficial art disappeared in Romania in the 1970s, as they did in Poland. That tension persisted within the Romanian art scene, especially since Ceaus¸escu’s cultural policies did not favour neo-avant-garde attitudes. If these were tolerated, sometimes even within official art institutions, this was done with the conviction that such experiments would only have a limited impact and could not influence public opinion. In reality, well-educated Romanian intellectuals were isolated as an elite within the poorly educated Romanian society and as such had no way to have a broader social impact. The situation was very different in Poland, a fact that was not lost on the Polish regime, which was aware of the fact that a writer could have potentially a much greater impact on social attitudes than the entire, very expensive, apparatus of the Communist propaganda. Paradoxically, then, it was the marginal character of the Romanian 258.

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