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Dissidents and Wanderers: Wim Master’s Thesis Dissidents and Wanderers: Wim Beeren’s Exhibitions of Eastern European Art at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam by Joanna Mardal 4009088 Research Master’s Art History Dr. Sjoukje van der Meulen Utrecht University August 2020 ii Acknowledgements This thesis was made possible with the help of several people. First and foremost, I would like to express my boundless gratitude to my thesis supervisor Dr. Sjoukje van der Meulen. Her encouragement and constructive feedback proved irreplaceable at every stage of the writing process. It is thanks to her invaluable guidance that I conclude this thesis a significantly better writer and researcher than I was when I started. I am also very grateful to Dr. Victor Schmidt, the coordinator of the master’s programme, who generously offered to be the second reader. My sincere thanks also to all the wonderful colleagues I met during my nine-month research internship at the Stedelijk Museum between 2016 and 2017, and especially my internship supervisor Frank van Lamoen. It was during this internship that I was given the opportunity to research contemporary Eastern European art in the collection, sparking my initial interest in this topic. Furthermore, I would like to thank Hetty Wessels and Karin Balog of the Stedelijk’s reproductions department for their help in locating and requesting the images necessary for the recreation of the exhibition floorplans. My thanks also go to Mr. Maarten Bertheux who kindly made the time to answer some of my questions about his experience of working on both In the USSR and Beyond and Wanderlieder. Finally, my endless love and gratitude to my late father, Piotr Mardal, whose stories of a youth spent in Cold War-era Poland inspired my fascination with this part of European history. Joanna Mardal 14th of July 2020, Utrecht iii Summary This thesis examines two exhibitions of Eastern European art organized by Wim Beeren during his directorship of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. The first of these, In the USSR and Beyond (21st of September 1990 – 4th of November 1990), was the first large-scale exhibition of Soviet art at a museum in the Netherlands and was intended to introduce artists from the USSR to the Stedelijk’s Western European audience. It was also remarkably early, having taken place before the Soviet Union itself collapsed just over one year later. The second exhibition, titled Wanderlieder, was inspired by Beeren’s existing interest in the question of Europe, first demonstrated in his 1986 exhibition Correspondence Europe. In light of the importance of these exhibitions, this thesis poses two questions. Namely, what kind of conclusions can be drawn from reconstructing Wim Beeren’s In the USSR and Beyond and to what extent was the exhibition succeed at introducing this topic to an unfamiliar Western public? And how did Wim Beeren approach the question of East and West in Wanderlieder, and to what extent was the exhibition an effective answer to the changing Europe of the early 1990s? In addressing these sub- questions, this thesis ultimately answers the overarching research question: what place did In the USSR and Beyond and Wanderlieder occupy in Wim Beeren’s later career and what is the importance of these exhibitions within the context of a changing Europe in the early 1990s? This thesis owes a great deal of influence to the work of Christian Rattemeyer, who used a combination of research and installation photographs to recreate the floorplan of an earlier Beeren exhibition, On Loose Screws. Further inspiration was taken from Reesa Greenberg’s argument for the importance of reconstructing and remembering historical exhibitions. In light of these influences, this thesis uses photographs and archival research to create walkthroughs of the exhibitions, which allows for a better understanding of how the works were installed. Methodologically speaking, the thesis then proceeds to analyse the exhibition through the Former West framework, and particularly the concepts of ‘horizontal art history’ and the ‘post-communist condition’ developed by two leading scholars of Eastern European art history, Piotr Piotrowski and Boris Groys. Using this perspective, this thesis demonstrates that In the USSR and Beyond and Wanderlieder were premature exhibitions made through a predominantly Western lens, and that they would have benefitted from more critical perspectives that would have allowed the Stedelijk to reflect on itself as a Western institution representing the East. However, it is equally important to recognize that the exhibitions were symptomatic of the socio-political climate of the early 1990s and that their significance rests with the specific historical moment they addressed. They remain relevant today, particularly in light of the continuation of the European project. As such, this thesis concludes that it is imperative that they not be forgotten. iv Table of Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 1 In the USSR and Beyond: Contemporary Soviet Art in the Stedelijk .................................................... 14 Wanderlieder: Wim Beeren’s Vision of Europe .................................................................................... 50 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 77 Bibliography .......................................................................................................................................... 80 v List of Figures Figure 1: Zaven Arshakuni, Landscape with a Horse, 1976. ................................................................. 16 Figure 2: Eustachy Kossakowski, Kazimir Malevich Exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam 1, 1989. ............................................................................................................................... 18 Figure 3: Eustachy Kossakowski, Kazimir Malevich Exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam 2, 1989................................................................................................................................ 18 Figure 4: The outer walls of To the Object. Visible are the circular cutouts representing the portholes of the ‘ship’. ............................................................................................................................................ 21 Figure 5: Inside To the Object. .............................................................................................................. 22 Figure 6: In the USSR and Beyond floorplan. .......................................................................................23 Figure 7: The introductory room of In the USSR and Beyond.............................................................. 24 Figure 8: Work by Yakovlev (left) and Arshakuni (right) on display. ................................................... 26 Figure 9: Zaven Arshakuni, Friends, 1979. ............................................................................................ 27 Figure 10: Vladimir Yakovlev, Clown, 1969. ......................................................................................... 28 Figure 11: Vladimir Yakovlev, Religious Curtain, 1969. ....................................................................... 28 Figure 12: Francesco Infante’s work on display. ................................................................................... 30 Figure 13: Vladimir Nemukhin, Black Cardtable no. 1, 1987 - 1988. .................................................... 31 Figure 14: Eduard Steinberg, Composition, 1988. ................................................................................. 31 Figure 15: Komar & Melamid, Nikolai Buchumov, 1973........................................................................33 Figure 16: Komar & Melamid, 60 Framed Landscapes, 1973. ..............................................................33 Figure 17: Erik Bulatov, I Live, I See, 1982. ........................................................................................... 35 Figure 18: Erik Bulatov, Sunset - Sunrise, 1989. ................................................................................... 35 Figure 19: Ilya Kabakov, The Rope of Life on display. ......................................................................... 36 Figure 20: The work of the Necrorealist group on display. ................................................................... 37 Figure 21: Vladimir Kustov, If the Boys from Around the World…, 1989. ........................................... 38 Figure 22: Afrika, Tractor, 1990. .......................................................................................................... 40 Figure 23: Afrika, Head, 1990............................................................................................................... 40 Figure 24: Timur Novikov, Pyramids, 1990. ......................................................................................... 41 Figure 25: Timur Novikov, Penguins, 1989. .......................................................................................... 41 Figure 26: Oleg Tistol, The Reunion, 1989. .......................................................................................... 43 Figure 27: Wim Beeren (left) and his large Wanderlieder team, standing in front of Ion Grigorescu’s mural Recommendation for Golania (Romania and
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