“Between Las Vegas and Golgotha” – The East German Reception of Post-War US Art

Divided post-war Germany was at the Eastern and Western frontline of the Cold War in Europe. As such, it was more than a mere socio-economic product of allied occupation, but also a cultural laboratory in which role, function, importance, and figurations of the visual arts were continuously negotiated. Recent studies have shown that despite the strong Soviet influence between 1949-90, the cultural scene in the GDR was not a simple reflection of the cultural policies of the Soviet Union. It was much more diverse, challenging the dogma of Socialist realism. This paper takes the first official appearance of the so-called “famous four” GDR artists (Bernhard Heisig, Wolfgang Mattheuer, Willi Sitte, Werner Tübke) at documenta 6 in Kassel in 1977 as a starting point to claim that not only was GDR-art staged in exhibitions in the FRG, which generated interest in the GDR’s varieties of Socialist realism, but that this development found an echo in the GDR in the 1970s. For example, during that period, journals such as Bildende Kunst increasingly discussed American art. This paper presents arguments brought forward by selected voices from the East, which compared their “own” (“Socialist”) with “Western” (American) art to explore and establish the differences between both. In doing so, this paper offers a new perspective regarding discourses revolving around what contemporary and modern art meant in the historical context of the global 1970s.