Die achtziger Jahre / The 1980s (German and English Edition)

"MUSA is now turning its attention to the 1980s as it looks back on the fourth decade in the history of its collection. This phase in the hotly debated postmodernism is characterised by a strengthening art market which, initially, focused on the male dominated painting of the Neue Wilden, or nouveaux fauves. Such was the degree of attention garnered by this international movement that it all too easily obscured the fact that many other contemporaneous genres were beginning to establish themselves. Geometric abstraction, i.e. Neue Geometrie or Neo Geo, was seen as an alternative concept to the expressive tenor of figurative painting. Kitsch and irony were among other anti-stylistic means frequently used. Of particular importance was the trend towards the dematerialisation of art, a trend driven by a variety of objectives. For the first time since 1945 photography had fought hard to gain a position of prominence in Viennese art, and concept and new media played just as important a role as the computer, which had also begun its successful advance as a form of artistic expression. This particular domain as well as the extension of Viennese Actionism saw many women artists playing a lea