Hungarian Art in the Journal for the Association of Art History
The latest issue of Art History features a review by Andrew McNamara, “Modernism Non-Central,” including Éva Forgács’s book, Hungarian Art: Confrontation and Revival in the Modern Movement.
Forgács works backwards to trace the evolution of modernism in Hungary earlier in the century from her perspective in the dissident scene from the late 1960s to the fall of the Berlin Wall. She also wrote her history once transplanted to Los Angeles, a place where many displaced European modernist figures ended up earlier during and after World War Two, looking out over the Pacific and away from Europe. […] Everybody likes to visit Modernism Central (aka MoMA), but scholars love to rebuke what it stands for. [Forgács’s book] shows that modernism non-central is where this history was forged [and] that the wider transnational approach can transform perspectives on modernism and its histories.
– Andrew McNamara, Art History