PROGRESS REPORT
A. ACTIVITY
I. January – December 2013
a) Bibliographic research in the field of public art.
b) Analysis of documents related to public monuments installed in Timisoara and Bucharest in the
1970s and 1980s (legislation, archives, art journals and other documents that have been consulted at
the Administration of Monuments and Touristic Heritage of Bucharest, the Library of Bucharest
and the Library of the Union of Artists).
c) Field research in Timisoara and Bucharest – observation of public monuments, semi-directed
interviews with artists, representatives of institutions in the field, such as Administration of
Monuments and Touristic Heritage of Bucharest and the Union of Artists as well as specialists –
historians, art critics. In general, the interviews focused on understanding the broader context in
which they were public monuments were commissioned. In the analysis of public monuments,
various aspects have been examined – authors, theme, locations, materials, aesthetic style.
d) Dissemination of partial results of the research:
- Participation in two international conferences: L'état des lieux en sciences sociales. Vingt ans
après, organized by Ecole Doctorale en Sciences Sociales, 17-18 September 2013, Bucharest. Title of
presentation: ”Communisme et postcommunisme: cadre et sujet de la réflexion en sciences socials”;
Regional Identity and Social Cohesion, 24-25 October 2013, organized by Central University Library
”Eugen Todoran”, Timisoara. Title of presentation: ”Public art in the communist regime”.
- Publication of the article "Cultural Heritage, a Common Responsibility", in Transylvanian
Review vol. XXII, no. 3, 2013 (Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Social Science Citation Index).
II. January – December 2014
a) Bibliographic and documentary analysis on public monuments in Timisoara and Bucharest
installed during the 1950s – 1990s.
Integrating the research results obtained in 2013 in the historical, social and cultural context of the
last decades of the communist regime was an important stage of the research, enabling a
comparative perspective on public art.
b) Field research in Timisoara and Bucharest, semi-directed interviews.
The field research helped understanding the larger context in which public artworks were
commissioned and created, the institutional logic of bodies involved in the field and the relation
built between artists and political and administrative institutions.
c) Interpretation of data from field research and bibliographic and documentary analysis –
comparing and corroborating all these data and consulting the mentor of the project.
d) Dissemination of results and final part of the research:
- Participation in an international conference – the Annual Conference of the British
Association of Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES), Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, 5-7
April 2014. Title of presentation: "Public Art in Socialist Romania. The Cases of Bucharest and
Timisoara".
- Publication of the article "Public Art in Post-Socialist Romania. The Cases of Bucharest
and Timisoara" in Zivot umjetnosti, ”Art Practices in Post-Socialism”, no. 94, 2014 (Arts & Humanities
Citation Index).
- Organization of the international conference ”Art, Society and Politics in the (Post)
Socialism”, 17-18 November 2014, West University of Timişoara. The conference was attended by
28 doctoral and post-doctoral students, researchers and academics from institutions such as the
Institute of Social Sciences of Belgrade, Institute of History of the Slovak Academy of Sciences,
Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales Paris, Bangor University (UK ), National
Gallery in Prague, Humboldt University of Berlin, Södertörn University (Sweden), University of Arts
in Belgrade, Bucharest University, West University of Timisoara and others.
B. SCIENTIFIC RESULTS
Following the research conducted in Bucharest and Timisoara in the period 2013 – 2014, the
following results have been obtained:
1. Identification of the key stakeholders in the field at national and local level.
Although there are differences between the two cities, the relevant actors are in both cases the
artists, the Union of Artists as an institution that mediated between commissioners and artists, the
commissioners (usually public institutions), the art historians and the art critics. Two important
observations regard, on the one hand, the importance of mediation in the production of public art
(falling upon the UA) and, on the other hand, the key role of some personalities in this process
(especially in the case of Timisoara).
2. Expanding the research to the period 1971 - 1989.
The Theses of July 1971 (under the full title - Proposed measures for improving the political and ideological
activity, the Marxist-Leninist education of party members, of all working people) are a turning point in the
Romanian cultural production. The broadening of the surveyed period allowed the development of a
more refined and comprehensive perspective on the subject of research.
3. Examining the relations between the key stakeholders.
The relations between the key social actors are, both in Timisoara and Bucharest, subject to
negotiation and compromise. The economic dimension of commissioning art is essential, because
the state - through its institutions - is almost the only contracting public art. Direct dependence of
artists on the political factor leads to conformist attitude, even though this is not always obvious in
the themes of public artworks. Moreover, the privileged status of artists in society is an additional
influencing factor. In this process, the institution of art criticism stands out as an actor situated
between the political and the artistic pole in the sense that, most often, it legitimizes the political
ideology and transmits to the art field the suitable directions to be followed.
4. Comparing public art of 1970s and 1980s with the previous decades and the following ones.
The differences between these periods have been investigated in relation to the concept of
"collective memory", which allows understanding how public art and the political regime generally
relate to past and present. One of the most important conclusions is that the art of the period of
1950s – 1960s points toward the revolutionary present time and its heroes – workers, peasants,
communists – and, later, to the national history and its great figures and events, including those
related to the revolutionary past of the country. These become landmarks and sources of legitimacy
for the political system that public art consolidates and places in the collective consciousness. Later,
in the 1970s and 1980s, with the sharp nationalist turn of the political ideology, public art
increasingly relates to folklore, which becomes a source of inspiration for artists, both as topic and
stylistic expression. Also, many monuments of the past two decades of the socialist regime cover
topics seemingly ideologically neutral, but nevertheless coherent with the official standpoint of the
leadership and the state institutions. For example, ”youth”, ”childhood” and/or ”motherhood” are
approached by numerous public works of art in Bucharest and Timisoara, while being explicitly
valued by the political power. The main feature of public art of the 1970s and 1980s is that it
fundamentally loses its memorial character and returns to an original, mythical past, materialized in
various forms of the Romanian folklore.
5. Analyzing the social and political role of public art.
The social and political role of public art becomes visible when studying and interpreting the themes
of public art, the process of commissioning and creating it, the social actors’ discourses, and the
texts of art criticism. Its main role appears to be to instruct people and to legitimize the political
power. But public art links also with the ideas of putting in order and systematizing nature, which
becomes obvious when considering the locations chosen for many of the public artworks.