- Naturally there was, and this would actually bring us directly to our theme. I have had discussions with two well-known American publishers, namely The MIT Press, and The University of California Press, who initially showed interest but eventually said that in the American world there is no widespread interest in a specialized field such as Central and Eastern European art. I have recently had more feedback from Hungary and Germany, but up till now those publishers have not decided about it.

- The situation is still that, generally speaking, these art histories do not exist in the Western reception of art, and where they do then only as a single, homogeneous art history of “Eastern European art” that does not deal with the differences and the extremely heterogeneous developments. These art histories do not exist in the Western consciousness because so little has been published about them there.This, by the way, does not apply to Russia: Russian art has and still is being received in the West in an exemplary fashion.

- You are right but at the Yalta conference the people in the East got the worse end of the deal and eventually semi-totalitarian systems were imposed on them, whereas in the West democracy and freedom held sway. Therefore in my opinion the political aspect must always be included in any analysis of the production of art in the East, even though everybody is not of the same opinion. Many artists maintain that politics did not influence their work. This is, actually, not true. In such a system as in communist Europe, everything was political, particularly that what seemed to be not-political. However, I would say that it does apply to the West as well. Maybe the political is less seen, but still it is for me the most important point of reference in Western culture, too. Finally, I am absolutely convinced that in the West art was in the shadow of Yalta, too. One can only read the history of art in Europe as separate art histories; therefore analysing "Eastern European Art" is an exellent way of learning to think in a pluralistic i.e. European way.

- In the so called formal terms and particularly seen from the outside the art movements were similar, yet in terms of content they mean very different things in the West and in each of the individual socialist countries. In my book I illustrate this fact with examples. Let’s take conceptual art. In Eastern Europe for political reasons it was under local influence, whereas in the West it was far more international in orientation. For this reason conceptual art from the East is still dismissed as provincial and the mere reproduction of a Western style. But one can only analyze it seriously if one knows the historical and political background and has a specialized set of instruments that one cannot take one for one from the Western reception of art. Conceptual art as a term in Western art is certainly something homogeneous, but in Eastern Europe it is not. In Poland, for example, it was never very political whereas in Hungary, where censorship was far more repressive, it shows a strongly political character.It touches the question of differentiation of East European art scene. Let me give one example. In 1958 the important “Exhibition of Fine Art of the Socialist Countries” was held in Moscow at which art from twelve „brother states“ was shown. The majority presented Socialist Realism, but even back then Poland was different and exhibited abstract art because around that time that was what was happening in Poland. One has to go into the details to understand the fact that everything was not the same throughout Eastern Europe.

- That’s how I see it. Terms such as “Informel painting” or „Body art“ are Western constructs that one cannot apply one to one to these art histories. One of the greatest challenges of the future for an art historian such as myself is to develop an individual language and the appropriate methods. The terms mentioned were adopted in Eastern Europe at the time but they were differently defined and interpreted. And people were informed about them in a very different way.
The Yugoslavs were completely in the know about art trends in the West, whereas in Romania or Hungary there were many difficulties to had an idea about them. In those countries if someone wanted to access information then they did it with the help of Polish literature, particularly Czechs and Hungarians did so. The reason was that in Poland there was no censorship of art historical research, in contrast in Czechoslovakia the authorities were particularly strict in this regard.

- This is only partly true. In Poland many publications on this theme have appeared over the last decades. The first books like that were published in the 1970s, if not earlier. However, it is true that in Romania the first book about post-war art with the title “Experiments in Romanian Art since 1960” appeared only in 1997. It was the first comprehensive study of Romanian art in Romania but now, thank God, it is no longer the only one.
The art magazine “Výtvarné umění” made the first attempt to summarize Czech art of the 1970s and 1980 as late as the mid-1990s. (no. 3-4/ 1995 and 1-2/ 1996.) under the title “Zákazené umění” (forbidden art). These two issues then provided the spark for a series of interesting articles, books and catalogues on this theme.
When researching my new book in Romania I was kindly given a huge amount of archive material but there was little I could do with it. What I am trying to say here is that some of these countries have to process their primary sources more rapidly so that international scholars can work on this basis. These countries should be doing this not just for researchers from the West but, above all, for colleagues from Eastern Europe who perhaps understand the environment, as this is where they come from.
It is no accident that art from those countries where this process of examination has already taken place to some extent are successful on the international art market: for example the countries of former Yugoslavia and Poland. Art historians should finally do their job and place art in a context that allows it to be received.