Photo by Michele Bressan

We came across Tom Wilson via our friend Gabi from the New York office. Tom and his co-author, Milos Jovanovic, have just released 100 To Watch, a sort of directory of the new wave of Romanian art. They made 1,000 limited-edition copies, and an accompanying website. Chances are that even if you fancy yourself to be pretty ‘up’ on art and all that, then you could still do with learning a bit more about art in Romania. Tom sent us 20 copies of the book, BUT WE’VE NOW GIVEN THEM ALL AWAY TO YOU GUYS, SO DON’T EMAIL US. Read this chat we had with Tom about art, Romania, himself and our ignorance instead.

Romanian Peasant History, 1088-2008 - Sorin Tara

Vice: So, Tom, tell us about the art scene in Romania. Being pig-headed and British, I hadn’t really thought about Romania as a hotbed of new art.
Tom: Some fields, like film, have seen a massive boom in Romania recently. Directors like Cristian Mungiu, Radu Muntean, Cristi Puiu, etc. have been scooping top awards at film festivals all over the world, and features like The Death of Mr Lazarescu have been picked up by the global media. The idea behind the book was to try to show that the scene here in Romania is bigger than this, and spills across into all the artsy areas.

Photos by Andrei Butica

What is your background in the Romanian art scene? How did you get involved?
Me and Milos Jovanovic, who ran the project, are both foreigners. I’m from the UK, Milos is Serbian, and we’ve both been here for far too long. I work as a journalist, screenwriter and DJ, while Milos runs a small design boutique. He also publishes Hardcomics, Romania’s only real independent comics producers. Last year, the two of us got money from the Romanian Cultural Institute’s Cantemir programme to do a monthly comic newspaper. This year we thought we’d do something more ambitious. As soon as we realised we’d actually got funding, we kind of wished we hadn’t – we had to do a 360-page book and website in four and a bit months.

For those readers that know nothing about Romania or art, tell us about art in Romania. How is it different to art in the UK?
The scene in Romania is close and compact for a very good reason – mainstream culture in Romania has become more and more unpleasant lately. The rush of new money during the boom since the start of the decade meant that the place started looking like the American dream gone wrong. Status starts to mean the size of the car you drive, and all the bars suddenly decided that what they really needed was a huge plasma screen on every wall. Most of the clubs look like Chinawhite on a bad LSD trip, full of fat mafia-looking guys and scantily clad girls listening to – rather inexplicably – minimal techno. The good thing to come out of this was to bring the arts scene together. When there are only a few places you can go, it brings people together. Plus, there’s a good chance that the man at the next table is a Cannes-winning director.

Pie Fight Study - Adrian Ghenie

A Romantic Christmas - Ana Banica

Did the fall of the Iron Curtain spark an explosion in young artistic efforts?
Before the revolution, the arts were collectivised, rather like agriculture, and the Artists’ Union was the result of this. The Artists’ Union still has clout – they give out studio spaces and own all the big, central galleries in Bucharest. Think watercolour paintings by elderly ladies. Actually, watercolours would be OK by comparison. Their gallery spaces basically look like charity shops. So the resurgence of the arts has been entirely in spite of bodies like the Artists’ Union. That said, the Romanian Cultural Institute has been shockingly progressive: I mean, they funded two of our projects. Plus they did a show in New York last year, and invited over a bunch of graffiti kids – which is a pretty bold move out here. Needless to say that they got into loads of trouble in the press over the resulting scandal – especially as one of the exhibits was a My Little Pony with a swastika on it. That said, Linda Barkasz, the lady responsible is actually in our 100 To Watch. She’s great.
The fall of the Iron Curtain – it didn’t really have much impact on the arts, because the 90s were so unrelentingly grim for ordinary people. Lots of families were struggling to have enough to eat, so reinterpreting Joseph Beuys has to pretty low down on your list of priorities. The real explosion only started after the millennium.

The book focuses exclusively on current Romanian artists, right? Or is it the art scene in Romania?
Yup, the book is only about Romanian artists. There are lots of cool foreign artists working in Bucharest, but we decided to keep it a Romanian-only affair. It’s comparatively easy for foreigners living in Romania to get press abroad – there are more channels for promoting yourself, and you can always attract attention back home. If you’re actually coming from Romania, the scene here can start to seem rather claustrophobic. Often, young artists don’t realise the huge advantages Bucharest has over, say, London. People imagine that London has a cultural scene that’s much better than it actually is. The UK has had decades of great cultural PR. We want to do the same for Romania. Some of the people in the book are now based in other countries, but we wanted to keep it as much as possible about what’s happening inside the country. The idea was to present a cross-section of the scene. For this reason, we had real trouble in balancing the big-hitters of the scene, such as film director Cristian Mungiu, with the kids coming up right now, like 19-year old painter Dani Zanga. Zanga got in the book, Mungiu didn’t – which, I think, is the way it should be. If you’re into film, you’re going to know about Mungiu anyway. We wanted to give a leg-up to people who are under the radar at the moment.

Brainless - Saddo & Heliana

How did you start making this book, and why? How long did it take?
How long? Don’t ask. At the end of June we convened our jury to choose the 100, and by October we had to have completed 100 interviews and produced a 360-page book, and the site. Plus all the reporting and bureaucracy that a publicly funded project entails. It’s worth knowing that our long list of artists was more than 250 people – all of them exciting artists who really deserved to get in. We might have to keep a low profile in Bucharest for a few weeks, since there are going to be lots of pretty miffed artists about. And the project’s not yet over. We’re going to send out 850 copies of the book to galleries, magazines and critics all over the world. Which is why we’re sending 20 copies to Vice. It was either Vice or Amateur Watercolours Monthly, and Vice won out in the end.

BRUNO BAYLEY