David Crowley. Guernica after 1945
Art against War and Fascism in the 20th and 21st centuries

The first part of the conference “Never Again” entitled “Art Against War and Fascism in the 20th and 21st Centuries”, takes up the debate underway in the field of art and elsewhere on the forms of engagement by the artistic community and cultural institutions in historically crucial moments. 

Lecture „Guernica after 1945” by David Crowley

In this short talk David Crowley will reflect on the ways in which 'Guernica', Picasso's powerful indictment of fascism, was mediated in print, on film and on TV during the first decades of the Cold War. Remediation in these ways was not just a matter of extending the reach of the painting: it was also a means of engaging other political concerns such as the existential threat of nuclear weapons, the project of denazification in post-war Germany and American violence in Vietnam. What was lost in these post-war transmissions and what was gained?

David Crowley

historian, lecturer at NCAD in Dublin. Author of Socialism and Style. Material Culture in Post-war Eastern Europe (2000), Warsaw (2003), Socialist Spaces. Sites of Everyday Life in the Eastern Bloc (2003) and Pleasures in Socialism: Leisure and Luxury in the Eastern Bloc (2010). Curator of a.o.: "Cold War Modern" (with Jane Pavitt) at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (2008–2009) and "Notatki z podziemia. Sztuka i muzyka alternatywna w Europie Wschodniej 1968–1994" (with Daniel Muzyczuk) at Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź (2016-2017) and Akademie der Künste in Berlin (2018).

See also:

Other events from that cycle: