Von Edelbert Köb.
Von Edelbert Köb.
The Erste Bank Group’s economic expansion into central and south-eastern Europe is taking place hand in hand with the building up of the new art collection.
The bank’s new economic operating range also defines the territory covered by this new collection. At a time when increasing internationalisation and globalisation – from which the art business is by no means immune – tend to make private and public collections increasingly similar there is naturally increasing pressure to develop an individual and unmistakeable profile for a collection. In this respect the decision to opt for the art of former Eastern Europe can truly be described as intelligent and farsighted, also from the viewpoint of art history. When one thinks here of the earlier involvement of the Erste Bank Group in these countries, for example in the area of the tranzit projects it becomes clear that this is not a hasty strategic decision but represents a logical deepening and development of the serious-minded work carried out to date. By supporting a wide variety of artistic activities with an east-west connection and in particular with its new collection Erste Bank clearly signalises its long-term intention not only to review and analyse the more recent art history of these countries and to collect according to systematic historical viewpoints, but also to encourage and promote this art by means of a lively dialogue. This also means integrating the art in the previous view of history (where this has not already occurred) or, to put it more precisely, means correcting and differentiating the existing understanding of history. In this context when we speak of the former Eastern Europe, logically we ought also speak of the former Western Europe, as with the fall of the Iron Curtain and the dissolution of the Eastern bloc the structures and tasks of western Europe have also altered and now present themselves in a new light.
When we look at the earlier work of those responsible for building up the collection we clearly see that it is not instructing others but learning from others that forms the basis for the new collecting policy. This goal has led to concentrating on collecting those artistic tendencies since the 1960s in which the major role is played by conceptual and performance art with a direct reference to society and that existed parallel to contemporary international developments. This offers us a sound reason for the optimistic hope that this collection will establish itself as a constructive and discursive work on the history of such art rather than merely existing as a gathering of art historical artefacts. To achieve this goal Erste Bank has put together a professional selection and working team that operates in the international exhibition and art business. It is precisely this flexibility and professionalism that offers a chance to advance and position in an appropriate way areas that, in terms of art history, have previously been neglected – even by the museums. The aim here is to correct a view of the history of art since the start of modernism that regrettably is still one-sided and Western-biased. Particularly with regard to the relationship between art and social reality – a central theme since the 1960s – the works on which the Erste Bank Collection’s focuses provide decisive new insights. Here one thinks about the shift that Lawrence Weiner’s concept art, for example, would undergo if it were made under repressive political conditions. But many artists were confronted with precisely such a situation, which meant that their works were not just forbidden but could not even be realised in the first place.
Especially since the late 1990s and parallel to the political opening up of Eastern Europe, under Lóránd Hegyi, its Hungarian director at that time, MUMOK increased its efforts in the area of art from the central and eastern European area. Thematic exhibitions on abstract art since the 1950s (“Reduktivismus”) as well as exhibitions offering an overview of the more recent art history of these countries (“Aspekte – Positionen”) parallel to and alongside numerous individual exhibitions of important artists, at least from eastern Europe and the countries of former Yugoslavia, gave the Austrian public a more differentiated picture of the history of European art. In this context it also proved possible to acquire important works for the museum collection. And yet within the framework of our mission as a museum it was not possible to show or collect in a truly systematic way performance, conceptual and media-related art that would have allowed an appropriate comparison with the established Western history of such art or could have complemented and completed it.
The fact that now precisely these areas are being developed and expanded in the Erste Bank Collection must surely be seen as a stroke of good fortune for Vienna’s future as a museum location that, in geopolitical terms, seems predestined to be a meeting point and interface of different cultural reflections.