At the height of the Cold War, art produced in divided Germany contested
the cultural demarcation of East and West. Here Claudia Mesch shows how
a wide group of artists struggled to take visual art beyond the crude
separations of the 'Iron Curtain', and to transcend the first global
cultural divide of the twentieth century. Artists in Berlin produced
artworks-including painting, performance and film-that engaged
critically with imposed national and global identities, and with issues
of memory and trauma. 'Around the Berlin Wall' presents a new picture of
the Cold War border between East and West as a dynamic and international
cultural space, and is essential for all those interested in art
history, modernism, the Cold War and the cultural history of the
twentieth century.