Art in Europe

Art in Europe: The 1990s brings together essays of some of today's most aware art critics, together with extensive photographic documentation of the works of the more significant European artists to have emerged in the 1990s. It was a period characterized by rapid transformations and by attempts at economic, social and political reconfiguration following events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, the fragmentation into new states, the wars in the former Yugoslavia, the introduction of the euro and the debate on the role of the European Union. It was a decade when the concept known as "globalization" imposed itself, but at the same time it saw the rise of nationalisms and claims to specific cultural identity. Apparently contradictory tendencies occurred in the visual arts, too. On one hand, a transnational scenario seems to have been consolidated through museums, specialist reviews, the spreading of I.T. communication and the birth of important new exhibitions (not only European). At the same time, newfound vigor was acquired by artistic expressions with a local character, often little known outside the respective national confines. The essays collected here offer a first clear, informed mapping of these phenomena. Art in Europe: The 1990s is in fact an introduction to the artistic production of the last decade in the Old Continent, an overview, an interweaving of testimonies, of arbitrary stories, of paths trodden between history and chronicle. A didactic tool, a prologue, a premise for an in-depth critical analysis, the sketch for a new kind of essay, a non-compilative formula to find our bearings in today's tidal, fleeting consumption of art.