”Consumer Art” and Other Commodity Aesthetics in Eastern Europe under Communist Rule

After acting as a curatorial consultant to Tate Modern’s ‘World Goes Pop’ exhibition and catalogue in 2015, Crowley was invited to present a paper at Centrum Sztuki Wspolczesnej, a national contemporary art centre, in Warsaw in late 2015 at an international conference on the work of artist Natalia LL. Natalia LL is the author of a series of works known as ‘Post-consumer Art’ (1972) that were shown in London on Crowley’s recommendation. This paper has subsequently been published as an essay by CSW. Crowley’s essay critiques existing characterisations of socialist consumption which, hitherto, have tend to be framed by concepts of shortage and need. Instead he demonstrates the circulation of relatively sophisticated consumer advertising in the Eastern Bloc in the period, as well as critical commentaries in the form of Pop Art and ‘Pop Cinema’. Crowley’s research for this essay involved a systematic survey of the largely overlooked ‘how to’ literature on socialist advertising published in the 1960s. The essay also presents an argument about proto-femininist art practices before the formation of a self-conscious feminist politics in Poland