Modern art at the Berlin Wall

the long version

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, such as Joseph Beuys, Allan Kaprow, Gerhard Richter, Carolee Schneemann, Ed Kienholz, Yvonne Rainer, Jorg Immendorff and Nam June Paik, 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 nation.