Contemporary artist and the notion of center and periphery
Contemporary artist and the notion of center and periphery

Summary/Abstract: Taking into account the division into centers and peripheries was an important component of modern artistic consciousness. Given the development of global culture in the second half of the twentieth century, one might think that this division has become outdated. Such a view, however, is overly simplistic. First of all, there are many models of globalization (imperial, network, reception, institutional). Each of them takes into account the tension between the center and the periphery and the desire to change their mutual relations. In my article, I will briefly characterize individual models of globalization, and then move on to discuss the work of Mirosław Bałka and Zbigniew Libera. These artists make the complexity of the contemporary relationship between the central (associated with the pursuit of generality) and the local the subject of their creative reflection. Bałka transforms the provincial into a component of the global culture, while Libera focuses on the implicit meanings of the products of the global culture. The discussed examples show that the boundaries between the center and the periphery in contemporary art have become complicated. The most important thing is not to keep up with what is happening in the center, but to observe how artists creatively and individually combine global with local elements.

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