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The Aesthetic Surveillance of Performance Art by

the Romanian Securitate in the 1970s and 1980s

Caterina Preda

To cite this article: Caterina Preda (2021): The Aesthetic Surveillance of Performance Art by the
Romanian Securitate in the 1970s and 1980s, Third Text, DOI: 10.1080/09528822.2021.1916219

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1 Performance art is the term
consecrated by art critics to
designate performative
artistic practice described by
artists in a variety of ways:
‘happenings, Fluxus, actions,
rituals, demonstrations,
direct art, destruction art,
event art, and body art’,
Kristine Stiles, ‘Chapter 8
Performance Art’, in Kristine
Stiles and Peter Selz, eds,
Theories and Documents of
Contemporary Art: A
Sourcebook of Artists’
Writings, University of
California Press, Berkeley,
California, 1996, p 680;
Amy Bryzgel, Performance
Art in Eastern Europe since
1960, Manchester University
Press, Manchester, 2017, p
7; Katalin Cseh-Varga and
Adam Czirak, eds,
Performance Art in the
Second Public Sphere:
Event-Based Art in Late
Socialist Europe, Routledge,
New York, 2018.
Third Text, 2021
https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2021.1916219
The Aesthetic Surveillance of
Performance Art by the
Romanian Securitate in
the 1970s and 1980s
Caterina Preda
Introduction
In the mid 1970s Romanian artists started using their bodies to create per-
formance art in what has been called the ‘second public sphere’.1
Although this type of art was not officially encouraged, it was tolerated.
Because it was not openly political, it was also often too cryptic to be
understood by the officers of the secret police. Other artists considered
these artistic gestures oppositional, anti-system artworks, an assessment
that is echoed after 1990 in art history evocations. In fact, during the
communist regime in Romania, artists were mostly under the surveillance
of informers, often members of the artistic sphere themselves.
In this context, this article examines the strategies and the impact of
the surveillance by the Romanian secret police, the Securitate, of visual
artists who engaged in performance art in the 1970s and 1980s. In
doing so, this article has three objectives.
First, it conveys insights from a case study that has not been investi-
gated thoroughly by the interdisciplinary scholarship of ‘art and politics’
under communism, bringing attention to the role of secret police forces in
the visual arts. The decision to discuss Romanian art is based on the
specific nature of its artistic sphere compared to that of its communist
neighbours. If the countries in Eastern Europe witnessed a destalinisation
within artistic circles that tolerated a certain degree of freedom of artistic
expression besides Socialist Realism, in Romania the opposite was true,
as the regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu (1965–1989) was accompanied,
especially after 1971, by a strengthening of art’s role as propaganda.
Moreover, Romanian artists lived in isolation, as they were, with some
exceptions, not able to travel abroad and did not have immediate
© 2021 Third Text
2
2 Cristina Vătulescu, Police
Aesthetics: Literature, Film,
and the Secret Police in
Soviet Times, Stanford
University Press, Stanford,
California, 2010, p 23, p 41
3 Petricã Mogos and Pauwke
Berkers, ‘Navigating the
Margins between Consent
and Dissent: Mechanisms of
Creative Control and Rock
Music in Late Socialist
Romania’, East European
Politics and Societies and
Cultures, vol 32, no 1, 2018,
pp 56–77
4 Actionism is a term
encompassing several
practices, from tactile
objects, land art, and
performance in front of an
audience, to body art with
no witness that was
performed only for the
camera. Ileana Pintilie,
Acționismul în România în
timpul comunismului
(Actionism in Romania
during Communism), Idea
Design & Print, Cluj, 2000,
p7
5 Barney G Glaser and Anselm
L Strauss, The Discovery of
Grounded Theory: Strategies
for Qualitative Research,
Aldine, New York, 1967
quoted in Colin Robson,
Real World Research:
Second Edition, Blackwell
Publishing, Malden,
Massachusetts, Oxford, UK,
Victoria, Australia, 2004,
p 193, p 178
access to the artistic developments of their time. This also meant that their
access to performance art was rather delayed compared to the other com-
munist countries.
Second, the role of the Securitate is still surrounded by misconceptions
concerning its influence on the development of certain artistic trends such
as performance art. This article seeks, then, to disentangle the role of the
Securitate as a cultural agent during the Nicolae Ceaușescu regime
through a focus on the surveillance of performance artists. Cristina Vătu-
lescu has argued that policing had a deep influence on artistic genres,
leading to what she calls ‘police aesthetics’.2 Moreover, the aesthetic sur-
veillance by the Securitate used several strategies in its control of visual
artists in the 1970s and 1980s, altering the political potentiality of
artists’ actions. I analyse here three such ‘mechanisms of creative
control’,3 which ranged from control or censorship to domination or dis-
couragement, and support or help given to complying artists. Therefore,
by aesthetic surveillance I mean both the effects of the use by the secret
police of special recording devices that led to a particular aesthetic (as
examined by Vătulescu) and the repressive mechanisms used by the Secur-
itate against artists. By putting these two together, this article aims to
provide a more comprehensive image of the Securitate’s role in the ideo-
logical control of artists.
Third, in order to render the theoretical proposal concrete, and to
examine the three tactics of aesthetic surveillance, I analyse in more
detail the files of three artists who practised performance. There are
several criteria that support the selection of the three case studies. They
have been documented using the archival files of the Securitate and
were chosen from the list of twenty-four artists included by art historian
Ileana Pintilie in her investigation of performance art, which she calls
‘action art’, in Romania.4 From this list, only five artists have files at
the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives
(ACNSAS), which since 2006 has administered the secret police files.
These are: Alexandru Antik, Imre Baász, Rudolf Bone, Constantin
Flondor and Paul Neagu. From these five artists, I will analyse two files
that make explicit reference to performance art: Alexandru Antik (b
1950) and Imre Báasz (1941–1991). To these I have added the case of
Wanda Mihuleac, who was an artist who created performance (which
she called ‘furtive actions’) at the time, although these do not appear in
her file as a motive for surveillance.
The three files represent a good starting point for understanding how
the Securitate targeted performance artists because they include both
Romanian and Hungarian artists who had different stances towards the
regime (acting against or supporting it); came from diverse backgrounds
(Mihuleac’s was an important family); and they comprise several decades
of surveillance. The three artists were born between 1941 and 1950, part
of the generation formed during the communist regime, and they were not
marginal, but representative artists of that generation.
Using as a method qualitative analysis, this article combines a case
study approach with the ‘grounded theory method’, in the sense that
the theory is derived from the case studies.5 The three strategies I
analyse are in fact based on the information, which appears in Báasz’s
file, that, according to the Securitate, there were ‘two types of visual
artists, those that were helped because they collaborated and those that

6 ACNSAS, File I 0235147,
vol 1, 26
7 Glajar, Lewis, Petrescu, eds,
Secret Police Files from the
Eastern Bloc, op cit
8 Ibid
9 Stiles, ‘Chapter 8
Performance Art’, op cit, p
680; Diana Taylor,
Performance, Duke
University Press, Durham,
North Carolina, 2016, p 45;
RoseLee Goldberg,
Performance: Live Art, 1909
to the Present, Harry N
Abrams Inc, New York,
1979, p 7
10 Performance can be
conceptual or include
‘physical manifestations’, it
can be made of ‘intimate
gestures or visual theatre on
a grand scale’; it can last a
few minutes or hours, be
represented only once or
several times, be
improvised or follow a
script; it can be silent or
include autobiographical or
fictional narratives. It can
take place in private and
without a public, it can be
organised in museums or
galleries, in bars or on the
street. Performances can be
made by an artist, or by a
group and can ‘occur
without witness or
documentation, or they
might be fully recorded in
photographs, video film, or
computers’. Stiles, ‘Chapter
8, Performance Art’, op cit,
p 680; RoseLee Goldberg,
Performance Art: Desde el
futurismo hasta el presente,
Ed Destino, Thames &
Hudson, 1996, p 8; Stiles,
‘Performance Art’, in
Thomas DaCosta
Kaufmann, ed, Oxford
Bibliographies in Art
History, Oxford University
Press, New York, 2014;
Taylor, Performance, op
cit, p 47.
11 Amelia Jones and Andrew
Stephenson, eds,
Performing the Body/
Performing the Text,
Routledge, London and
New York, 2005, p 1
12 Taylor, Performance, op
cit, p 10, p 19, p 40, p 41
3
were dominated’.6 In fact, domination was achieved either through
repressive (control) or persuasive means (help). Thus the Securitate
used three strategies: 1) control (Antik); 2) discouragement (Baász); and
3) support (Mihuleac).
Through a close reading of the Securitate files I show the logic of the
artists’ secret surveillance files or of the ‘file stories’.7 These included
information provided by institutions, by people who were close to
those placed under surveillance, and the testimonies of several informers
with whom the subjects were in contact. There are differences in the files;
for example, the one that the ACNSAS kept on Mihuleac is a microfilm,
with only partial, selected information still available. The Securitate
opened the files at different moments and then closed them, opening
others several years later in relation to the topics that concerned the insti-
tution, and not in relation to persons, but rather to groups of interest; so
the information they include is rather fragmentary and often repetitive.
The first section, below, provides a short overview of the surveillance
of artists in Eastern Europe and of visual artists in Romania by the Secur-
itate. The section following discusses the three cases that exemplify the
three mechanisms used to alter the cultural policy for Romanian visual
artists. The analysis is based on two types of primary sources: the
artists’ (auto)biographies as offered by the ‘file stories’ compiled by the
Securitate;8 and the photographs of performances realised by artists influ-
enced by the ‘police aesthetics’ (to use Vătulescu’s term). The conclusion
offers some comparative insignts into these three case studies and the
three strategies they illustrate.
The Surveillance of Performance Artists by the
Secret Police in Eastern Europe and in Romania
Performance art (body art, live art, action art) developed in Western
Europe especially in the 1960s and 1970s, and the term, in common
usage by art critics by 1973, designates artistic practices that saw the cen-
trality of the living body, of artworks that took life as their subject.9 Per-
formance art covers a diversity of methods, places, forms and materials,
but what is paramount is that it concentrates on the body of the artist.10
At the same time, the meaning of a performance is not prescribed, and its
open-endedness is rather an act, the result of ‘interpretative engagements
that are themselves performative in their intersubjectivity’.11 Their mean-
ings can change in accordance with time, the context, and the framing,
therefore ‘performance is radically unstable’.12 So, as Kristine Stiles
argued, performance is ‘an interstitial continuum operating at the
dynamic intersection of intentionality, presentation and representation,
and the complex context of interpretation where the transaction of
social and political meanings occurs’.13
In what concerns the political character of performance, Peggy Phelan
‘considered liveness, next to ephemerality and immateriality, as ground-
ing performance’s political potential within capitalism’.14 For Ana Vuja-
nović and Aldo Milohnić, the politicality of performance or its ‘latent
political dimension’,15 is connected to ‘the direct interaction and live
copresence of people in public’.16 In the West, performance art was
4
13 Stiles, ‘Performance’, in
Robert S Nelson and
Richard Shiff, eds, Critical
Terms for Art History,
University of Chicago,
Chicago, Illinois, 2003, p
95, pp 75–97
14 Peggy Phelan, Unmarked:
The Politics of
Performance, Routledge,
London and New York,
2005, quoted in Ana
Vujanović and Livia
Andrea Piazza,
‘Introduction: People are
missing… ’, in Ana
Vujanović and Livia
Andrea Piazza, eds, A Live
Gathering, B books, Berlin,
2019, p 11, pp 9–22
15 James Garratt, Music and
Politics A Critical
Introduction, Cambridge
University Press,
Cambridge, 2019, p 65
16 Ana Vujanović and Aldo
Milohnić, ‘Performance: A
Few Introductory
Remarks’, in Politicality of
Performance, bilingual
issue of TkH (Walking
Theory), Journal for
Performing Arts Theory
19, 2011 (translated from
Serbo-croat by Žarko
Cvejić), p 95
17 Taylor, Performance, op
cit, p 49
18 Bryzgel, Performance Art
in Eastern Europe since
1960, op cit, p 3
19 Ibid, p 103, p 105
20 Pavlína Morganová, Czech
Action Art: Happenings,
Actions, Events, Land Art,
Body Art and Performance
Art Behind the Iron
Curtain, Daniel Morgan,
trans, Charles University in
Prague, Karolinum Press,
Prague, 2015, p 30
21 Ibid, p 31
22 Pintilie, Acționismul în
România în timpul
comunismului, op cit, p 5
23 Cristian Nae, ‘Basements,
Attics, Streets and
Courtyards: The
Reinvention of Marginal
Art Spaces in Romania
during Socialism’ in Cseh-
Varga and Czirak, eds,
Performance Art in the
‘anti-institutional, anti-elitist, anti-consumerist’ and ‘came to constitute,
almost by definition, a provocation and a political act, even though the
political could be understood more as a rupture and challenge’.17
Conversely, as Amy Bryzgel argues, ‘more often than not, perform-
ance offered artists in Central and Eastern Europe an arena of freedom
in which to experiment, rather than comprising a vehicle of dissident pol-
itical activity’.18 The public space was under constant supervision, and
‘surveillance took varying forms’, but at the same time, ‘actions created
by artists in private or semiprivate settings were not considered works
of art, and therefore not subject to governmental regulation’.19 In fact,
if in the United States happenings and performance art arose ‘as a
revolt against the art market’,20 in the East it was rather a response to
politics that tried to oppress art, and thus artists wanted more to
change life itself than to change art as was the case in the American
neo-avant-garde movement.21
In Romania these manifestations involving the public were not possible,
or only had a small audience. As Ileana Pintilie has noted, in the 1970s
Romanian artists carried out actions in private rather than in public
spaces or galleries. These actions were underground, the artists who prac-
tised them were unknown, and many legends about their actions circu-
lated.22 Cristian Nae discusses the case of performances staged in the
1980s as part of what he labels the ‘informal public sphere’, or a ‘semi-
public sphere’ transformed by ‘counter-cultural performative gestures’.23
These were marginal, liminal spaces in which artists performed alone or
collectively for fellow artists, in their apartments, in attics and basements,
but also occasionally on the street. These performances were not directly
criticising ‘the socio-political or artistic system in Romania’, but ‘remained
isolated from the larger, official layer of the cultural public sphere’.24
The surveillance of Eastern European intellectuals and artists was
among the tasks carried by the communist secret police forces.25 The
analysis of how this mission evolved has included looking at the structure
of the secret police forces,26 and, more recently, an examination of the
types of collaboration that it led to.27 When attention has been granted
to the surveillance of intellectuals,28 and more specifically artists, it has
often referred to writers29 or musicians,30 and less often to visual
artists.31 Glajar, Lewis and Petrescu, who analysed the surveillance of
writers, conclude that ‘the files are bureaucratic texts – cold, dry
records that capture lives in a typically impersonal manner’ and so,
‘rather than thinking of them as mere sources, it seems therefore useful
to think of the files as containing fragments of lives, or life stories’, or
to think of them as ‘file stories’.32 Moreover, according to Cristina Vătu-
lescu the surveillance by the secret police led to a particular aesthetic:
The secret police use of visual images from mug shots to moving pictures
played an important role in defining the status of visual evidence, and
vision in general, in Soviet times… The secret police’s aesthetic reeduca-
tion of socialist man was well under way. The personal file was the artifact
where the elusive precepts of this aesthetic were made manifest.33
If these studies have documented several roles played in relation
to artistic expression by the secret police forces, the contribution to

Second Public Sphere, op
cit, p 79, p 80, pp 75–87
24 Ibid, p 85
25 Lavinia Stan,
‘Introduction’, in Stan, ed,
Transitional Justice in
Eastern Europe and the
Former Soviet Union:
Reckoning with the
Communist Past,
Routledge, London and
New York, 2009, p 6;
Dennis Deletant, ‘The
Securitate and the Police
State in Romania, 1964–
89’, Intelligence and
National Security, vol 9, no
1, 1994, pp 22–49
26 Jens Gieseke, The History
of the Stasi: East
Germany’s Secret Police,
1945–1990, Berghahn
Books, New York and
Oxford, 2014; Jonathan R
Adelman, Terror and
Communist Politics: The
Role of the Secret Police in
Communist States,
Routledge, New York,
1984/2019; Krzysztof
Persak, Łukasz Kamiński,
eds, A Handbook of the
Communist Security
Apparatus in East Central
Europe 1944–1989, IPN,
Warsaw, 2005
27 Péter Apor, Sándor
Horváth, James Mark, eds,
Secret Agents and the
Memory of Everyday
Collaboration in
Communist Eastern
Europe, Anthem Press,
London, 2017
28 Katherine Verdery, My Life
as a Spy: Investigations in a
Secret Police File, Duke
University Press, Durham,
North Carolina, 2018;
Lauren Weiner, ‘What is a
Dissident? The Travails of
the Intellectuals in The
Lives of Others’, in Carl
Eric Scott, F Flagg Taylor
IV, eds, Totalitarianism on
Screen: The Art and Politics
of the Lives of Others, The
University Press of
Kentucky, Lexington,
Kentucky, 2014, pp 35–56
29 Annie Ring, After the Stasi:
Collaboration and the
Struggle for Sovereign
Subjectivity in the Writing
of German Unification,
Bloomsbury, London,
5
knowledge that this article seeks to make is to show how the Secur-
itate, in an effort to root out the smallest act of dissent, was monitor-
ing even artists who engaged in artistic performance that did not have
an important impact, because they were rather rare, temporary, had
small audiences, and were somewhat ambiguous in what they pro-
posed. And so, by including this rather ambiguous form of dissent,
this article extends Cristina Vătulescu’s ‘police aesthetics’ to incorpor-
ate visual art practices that she did not cover in her book. Mogoș and
Berkers consider that the Securitate acted as a ‘mechanism of creative
control’ through ‘surveillance, recruitment, and harassment’ with the
goal of ‘preventing, detecting and annihilating hostile attitudes
toward the state’.34
The aim of the aesthetic surveillance deployed by the Securitate was to
make sure that artists were not influenced by anything that was at odds
with the party or its objectives. This strategy was adapted in relation to
individual artists, and thus I delineate further at least three mechanisms
of creative control that the secret police used in relation to performance
artists: control, discouragement and support.
With regard to performance art, in other Eastern European
countries authors such as Sylvia Sasse and Kata Krasznahorkai
have observed how it was this art movement of which the commu-
nist Eastern European regimes were most afraid, as it was ‘an art
form that was considered particularly dangerous’.35 The fear of it
‘was so great that the secret services dealt more intensively with
the art projects and the theory behind them than the artists them-
selves’, infiltrating the art scene as they did in the GDR, devising
counteractions, and introducing spies into artists’ groups, an act
known as ‘disintegrating creativity’.36 Most importantly, the repres-
sive states were afraid of performance art because it was unpredict-
able.37 Aesthetic surveillance designates the types of strategies used
by the Securitate to prevent politically problematic art from being
created by artists. In this sense, it can be similar to what Sasse
called ‘disintegrating creativity’, except that in the Romanian case
it was intended to prevent and discourage rather than to dismantle
already existing actions or practices.
The analyses dedicated to the evolution of the visual arts during
communism in Romania have emphasised the influence of the pre-
vious cultural models (Cărăbaș), of the USSR (Enache, Vasile), the
role of the Romanian Communist Party (Cârneci), of other cultural
institutions (Predescu, Vasile), and of the leader (Mocănescu) in struc-
turing the cultural field.38 Conversely, and despite scholars’ growing
interest in the study of the relationship between visual artists and
power, there have been relatively few studies on the topic of the influ-
ence of the Securitate in Romania. There are broad overviews of this
relationship in several volumes of archival documents, but also several
analyses that deal with specific artists’ cases.39 For example, in his
analysis of the files of seven visual artists, Dumitru Lăcătușu supports
the idea that aspects relating to artists’ political biographies counted
more for the Securitate than did their artistic activity.40 In terms of
the Securitate’s interest in its surveillance of artists from Târgu
Mureș, Oradea and Sfântu Gheorghe, as Mădălina Brașoveanu
observed, this was based on their ethnic belonging and the accusation
6
2015; Valentina Glajar,
Alison Lewis, Corina L
Petrescu, eds, Secret Police
Files from the Eastern Bloc:
Between Surveillance and
Life Writing, Camden
House, 2016; Cristina
Petrescu, ‘Aktionsgruppe
Banat Reconstructs Its Past,
I: Personal Memories and
Collective Identity’,
Arhivele Totalitarismului,
vol 13, no 1–2, 2015, pp
180–193
30 Petricã Mogoș, Pauwke
Berkers, ‘Navigating the
Margins between Consent
and Dissent: Mechanisms
of Creative Control and
Rock Music in Late
Socialist Romania’, East
European Politics and
Societies and Cultures, vol
32, no 1, 2018, pp 56–77
31 Kata Krasznahorkai,
‘Heightened Alert: The
Underground Art Scene in
the Sights of the Secret
Police – Surveillance Files
as a Resource for Research
into Artists’ Activities in the
Underground of the 1960s
and 1970s’, in Jérôme
Bazin, Pascal Dubourg
Glatigny and Piotr
Piotrowski, eds, Art
Beyond Borders: Artistic
Exchange in Communist
Europe (1945–1989),
Central European
University Press, Budapest,
2015
32 Glajar, Lewis, Petrescu,
eds, Secret Police Files from
the Eastern Bloc, op cit, p 9
33 Vătulescu, Police
Aesthetics, op cit, p 23,
p 41
34 Mogoș, Berkers,
‘Navigating the Margins
between Consent and
Dissent’, op cit, p 65
35 Sylvia Sasse, Kata
Krasznahorkai, Inke Arns,
‘Artists and Agents:
Performancekunst und
Geheimdienste, HMKV
Dortmund, 26.10.2019–
19.04.2020’ (‘Artists and
Agents: Performance Art
and Intelligence, HMKV
Dortmund, 26.10.2019–
22.03.2020’), Performance
Art, http://www.
performanceart.info/blog/
artists-agents-
of having a ‘nationalistic attitude’ rather than on their artistic
expressions, which were secondary for the secret agents.41
Even today we do not have a definitive understanding of the true
scale of the Securitate’s surveillance of visual artists. The archives of
the ACNSAS include several types of resources for the monitoring
of the visual arts field (called arte plastice in Romanian, from the
French arts plastiques) by the Securitate. The first resource is the
‘Problem File Art and Culture’, which was created in 1974 and has
files about the Union of Romanian Artists (Uniunea Artiștilor Plastici,
UAP), the creative professional artists’ union (1950). The Problem File
offers a general overview of the field and includes data about artists
and information provided by collaborators. The archives of the
ACNSAS also contain personal surveillance files (DUI) of artists,
and sometimes the network (rețea) file, that is, the file of an informant
or collaborator of the Securitate. The personal files usually include
reports about the person under surveillance and their character, infor-
mation that was provided by informants and the institutions they
belonged to, such as the UAP. They also sometimes contain the
artist’s signed pledge to collaborate with the Securitate and in rare
cases informative notes (included in the appendix folder, or the
‘mapa anexă’) that they gave to the liaison officer. In 1974 there
were 108 people under surveillance in the UAP, and ten informers.
There were thirty people connected to the Problem File, twenty-five
artists who had remained abroad, and thirty-three artists who had
their correspondence under surveillance.42 In the 1980s, the informa-
tive network included around thirty-two to thirty-seven sources inside
the UAP (which had 1,249 members in 1983 and 1,143 in 1985), so
only around two to three per cent of members.43
Apparently, and although only a relatively small number of artists
seem to have been under surveillance, the Securitate was quite success-
ful in convincing visual artists that they were supervised all the time.
The reasons for monitoring artists included, in the 1980s: negative
comments about the party’s cultural policy; unofficial contacts with
foreign diplomats and with foreign citizens in general, and staying
abroad (fifty-three in Bucharest between 1978 and 1983); or listening
to and circulating news from Radio Free Europe (RFE). The Securitate
sought to discourage or prevent the spread of anti-regime ideas and
dissent and looked for signs of opposition such as artworks with an
‘ideologically interpretable content’. These included (neo)fascist or
mystical elements, or the demythisation of national heroes; the
refusal of the topics of struggle provided by the party; and a preoccu-
pation with astrology, theosophy, esoteric ideas or free masonry.44
Even artists who were recommended for leadership positions were
monitored. They were considered to have problems that included:
having kulak (chiaburi) parents, relatives who stayed abroad,
ex-legionaries, fathers who were priests, etc.
In what follows, through the cases of Alexandru Antik, Imre Baász
and Wanda Mihuleac, I will discuss in more detail the three strategies
used by the Securitate with regard to visual artists: the control of artists
who acted against the socialist order; the discouragement of those who
created art that was not compliant to the official ideology; and the
support granted to those who accepted to collaborate.

performancekunst-und-
geheimdienste-hmkv-
dortmund-26-10-2019-22-
03-2020/, accessed 15 April
2021; HMKV, https://
www.hmkv.de/_en/
programm/
programmpunkte/2019/
Ausstellungen/2019_
AGENTS.php, accessed
April 2020; Kata
Krasznahorkai, ‘Curator’s
Note: “Artists and
Agents”’, https://archive.
newsletter2go.com/?n2g=
kg4ufirn-yi7a0stz-b8g
&fbclid=IwAR10cqJHPna
FacRlUkBUsD1L_Yrq4lu-
tIHaepR5VY0e3ewDqU_
B6XfuoyU, accessed April
2020
36 Sylvia Sasse in conversation
with Massimo Maio, ‘Wie
Geheimdienste Künstler
überwachtenMit
zersetzender Kreativität’
(‘How Secret Services
Artists Monitored with
Disintegrating Creativity’),
Deutschlandfunk Kultur,
24 October 2019, https://
www.deutschland
funkkultur.de/wie-
geheimdienste-kuenstler-
ueberwachten-mit-
zersetzender.2156.de.html?
dram%3Aarticle_id=
461784&fbclid=IwAR30-
pGHNjvIhcv2Td-rnDR
CrJbw-Vvil50PrHqzw5nu
5K1NjSQcm4OendM
37 Ibid.
38 According to Magda
Cârneci, the communist
regime in Romania
imposed a totalitarian
triangle formed of the
party–state, the creative
union, and the artist; for
Alice Mocănescu, what was
paramount was the
relationship between
nationalism and art
through the influence of
Nicolae Ceaușescu. Cristi
Vasile privileged the role of
cultural institutions such as
the Ministry of Culture –
which changed its name
several times – the
Agitation and Propaganda
Section of the Central
Committee of the PCR, but
also the Union of Artists
and the Artistic Fund, with
regard to the evolution of
the artistic field. If Irina
Cărăbaș emphasised how
7
I Control: Artists as Threats against the
Socialist Order: The Case of Alexandru Antik
The first example, that of the artist Alexandru Antik, shows how the
Securitate placed under surveillance artists who were considered a poten-
tial danger to the socialist state because of their influence on fellow artists.
Thus, the Securitate supervised the ‘reactionary circles [that aimed] to
create a political dissidence among people of the arts and culture’,
those who ‘exacerbated human rights, the freedom of expression or
who wanted to leave the country illegally or who tried to give political sig-
nificance to personal lack of satisfaction’.45 When Western artistic ideas
were at stake, it struggled to understand their meaning and thus it used
other artists as informers to make sense of it all and to control non-com-
plying artists.
Alexandru Antik (b 1950) is a Magyar artist who graduated from the
Art Institute Ion Andreescu of Cluj, the Department of Ceramics, in 1975.
Thereafter, according to his Securitate file, he was assigned to the Iris
factory in Cluj, from where he resigned after one or two years to
become a full-time artist.46 According to his own account, he worked
at the Iris factory until 1987 and became a member of the UAP in
1980.47 Antik engaged in performances in the late 1970s and 1980s,
including The Role of Documentation in the Activity of the Creator
(1977), and Sociological micro-event/Who are you? What are you?
(1980).48
His best-known performance is The Dream Still Lingers (1986),
which he performed as part of the Young Art colloquium in Sibiu.
Organised by the Atelier 35/Studio 35, the branch of the Union of
Romanian Artists for young artists under thirty-five, the event in
Sibiu was one of the landmarks of performance events in Romania
(visual art and art criticism) organised by Liviana Dan, where
several artists did installations and performances.49 As part of the
action, which lasted for thirty-five minutes and took place in two
rooms in the basement of the Pharmaceutical History Museum in
Sibiu, the artist read a manifesto.50 In the first room ‘Antik’s
Pseudo-Objects’ were exhibited while an obsessive, monotonous
melody was heard in the background. The artist then read fragments
of an acting course, an assistant cut his hair short, and Antik took his
clothes off before entering a barred cell in a place signalled as ‘a place
for unrealized deeds’, a place forbidden to the public.51 He then lit a
candle and started to dance to the music while the audience followed
from behind the bars. Those who were part of the audience started
pouring cement into cow organs while the artist tried to write
on the wall ‘the dream still lingers’. He could not do it, because
apparently officials interrupted the action.52
Part of the manifesto that the artist recited to the public said, ‘There’s
one thing when you speak in a cave, and another when you talk in a
square!’ The Lászlo feLugossy poem from which he recited said, ‘I see
brutal and hard things’ and ‘this is why I become brutal and stupid…
in the long term the lie doesn’t hold, I feel, I imagine what’s
allowed, I don’t want to imagine what’s not possible, so I don’t
imagine anything.’53
8

Alexandru Antik, The Dream Still Lingers, 1986, artistic action (35 minutes), photographs by Radu Igazsag, 1986, photo-
montage by Alexandru Antik, 2013, © Alexandru Antik

the socialist model was
organised in the period
1944–1953 through a
series of continuities,
transformations and
adaptations of the previous
models, for Monica
Enache, who focused on the
period 1944–1965, the role
of the Soviet Union was
foremost in establishing the
socialist model, and Magda
Predescu used Michel
Foucault’s concept of
‘heterotopia’ (a resistance
to power that modifies
power) to discuss the
period 1950–1970. Magda
Cârneci, Artele plastice în
România 1945–1989,
Editura Meridiane, 2000;
Alice Mocănescu, ‘Artists
and Political Power: The
Functioning of the
Romanian Artists’ Union
during the Ceauşescu Era,
1965–1975’, History of
Communism in Europe 2,
2011, pp 95–122; Irina
Cărăbaș, Realismul
socialist cu fața spre trecut:
Instituții și artiști în
România: 1944–1953, Idea
Design & Print, Cluj, 2017;
Monica Oana Enache, Arta
și metamorfozele
politicului: Tematica
istorică în arta oficială
românească între 1944–
1965 (pictură, sculptură,
gravură), Târgovişte
Editura Cetatea de Scaun,
2018; Cristian Vasile,
Literatura şi artele în
România comunistã 1948–
1953, Humanitas,
Bucureşti, 2010; Magda
Predescu, Utopie și
heterotopie în arta din
România 1950–1970:
variaţile canonului artistic,
Idea Design & Print, Cluj,
2018.
39 Carmen Chivu, Mihai
Albu, Dosarele Securităti̦ i.
Studii de caz, Polirom, Iași,
2007; Dan Cătănuș and
Mioara Anton, eds,
Intelectuali români în
arhivele comunismului,
Nemira, București, 2006;
Liviu Ț ar̆ anu, ed,
Securitatea și intelectualii
în România anilor ’80,
Cetatea de Scaun,
Târgoviște, 2013; Silviu B
Moldovan, ed, Arhivele
Securităti̦ i, Nemira,
București, 2004; Dumitru
9
According to the archival documents I consulted, there were no
obvious ‘counter actions’ by the secret police against artists doing
performance, but there are still many rumours that inform the history
of visual arts, which continues to be dominated by an oral history.
For example, the rumour concerning the 1986 event in Sibiu, where
Alexandru Antik performed in the underground space of the Museum
of Pharmacy, says that the Securitate shut down the event.54 However,
Antik’s Securitate file makes no reference to the closing of the exhibition
by the secret police.
The Securitate’s surveillance file on Alexandru Antik was opened
much later, on 28 November 1988, and closed on 7 November
1990. His file was not opened because of his very daring performance
in Sibiu, but because he protested against the socialist order, con-
sidered himself an opinion leader among visual artists, and ‘polarized
young people with negative ideas’.55 According to the ‘Plan of
measures’ included in his file, the officers took several actions in
terms of surveillance and influence: the informer ‘Thread’ was encour-
aged to get to know the artist’s entourage and preoccupations; infor-
mer ‘Victor’ was encouraged to attend the UAP meetings and write
down what ‘Attila’ (the code name given to Antik) said; another
artist was to be contacted to get information about the artist under
surveillance; and students from the Art Institute in Cluj were to be
contacted to verify Attila’s influence. As is the case with other surveil-
lance files, Antik’s includes two drawings of the studios on Brassai
Street in Cluj.
Several notes from informers (sources) are included in Antik’s surveil-
lance file. They analyse the type of art he created and comment on his
character, his connections in the artworld, and his ideas and political
opinions. The event in Sibiu appears in two notes from two different
sources: ‘Alexandra’ in August 1986, and ‘Maier’. They both reflect on
the Western artistic influence on Antik’s performance (source ‘Maier’
notes that Antik ‘borrowed a lot from the ideas of some Western
artists, rather difficult to understand in our country’);56 furthermore,
they evoke his capacity to influence young artists. Commenting
on Antik and his activity, a note by Alexandra includes a definition of
performance:
He is one of the best artists of his generation, considered in most of the
milieus as a genius, he has a great capacity for influencing Magyar
artists in Romania and is a kind of representative of the good art
outside of Romania… and is very admired in Budapest… He does exper-
imental art, very daring, but very professional. [The] Performance (a
very modern artistic genre, a full show in which the public participates
without intervening), presented in the Sibiu Camp was one of the best in
the world… As these kinds of experiments are shocking for the public,
which still remains further behind with visual perception, the organizers
decided that in the experimental exhibitions (Pharmaceutical History
Museum) one should enter using a badge of the camp, but many
came from outside the camp and the risk of not letting them in was
too high. The dishonour and the false ideas started from the fact that
at some point during the performance, the artist took his clothes off,
a thing that is more than normal for people in the art world, for
whom the human body is as normal as any other artistic component,
10
Lăcătușu, ‘Evoluția relației
dintre artiştii plastici şi
Securitate în perioada
1950–1990’, in Caterina
Preda, ed, The State Artist
in Romania and Eastern
Europe The Role of the
Creative Unions, Editura
Universităti̦ i din Bucureșt,
București, 2017, pp 91–
128; Mădălina Brașoveanu,
‘Gânduri pentru o expoziție
documentară: urme ale
rețelei artistice Oradea-
Târgu Mureș-Sfântu
Gheorghe în Arhiva fostei
Securităti̦ ’, Caietele
CNSAS, 2/14, 2014, pp 85–
166; Monica Enache,
‘Coborâri în subteran.
Câteva cazuri de critici de
artă și artiști plastici în
arhivele Securităti̦ i’,
Caietele CNSAS, 1/15,
2015, pp 301–334
40 Lăcătușu, ‘Evoluția relației
dintre artiştii plastici şi
Securitate în perioada
1950–1990’, op cit
41 Brașoveanu, ‘Gânduri
pentru o expoziție
documentară’, op cit
42 ‘Proces verbal de predare/
primire materiale Direcția I
IMB Securitate’, ACNSAS,
D016298, vol 1, 292, 293
43 ACNSAS, File D010784,
vol 1, 22
44 ‘Plan de căutare a
informațiilor în problema
artă-cultură pe 1987’,
ACNSAS, D0120, vol 1, 46
45 Ibid
46 ACNSAS, File I 234058
47 Sebestyén G Székely and
Alexandru Antik, eds,
Inventar Alexandru Antik,
Vellant, Bucharest, 2015,
p 190
48 The first title of the artwork
appears in Ileana Pintilie’s
book, while the second
appears in the book Antik
himself supervised: Székely
and Antik, eds, Inventar
Alexandru Antik, op cit.
49 Magda Cârneci, ‘A
Ferment to Freedom:
House pARTy’, in Roxana
Gibescu, Dan Mihălțianu,
Decebal Scriba, Raluca
Voinea eds, house pARTy
1987, 1988, tranzit.ro, Idea
and there was no justification as the artist wanted to represent in
the performance nudity, purity, the sincerity of the creator in front of
his public… In fact, it was a very good artistic experiment and
nothing else.57
In the accounts of several sources (‘Maier’, ‘Thread’), Antik was
considered influential in the visual artistic sphere as a close collabor-
ator of Ana Lupaș, who was in charge of the UAP branch in Cluj.
According to ‘Maier’, Antik thought he was misunderstood and
demanded at a meeting of the UAP to be given contracts and public
commissions. In the source’s opinion, the artist was in fact lazy and
took advantage of the work produced by students or graduates
from the Art and Design University in Cluj, which he sold through
the Fondul Plastic (Artistic Fund) shops.
Three of the sources comment on Antik’s political stance. In October
1989, source ‘Victor’ informed the Securitate that Antik had discussed
articles published by Scânteia referring to the establishment of a new
party in Hungary, the Marxist-Leninist Workers’ Party. Antik said that
in that year there was another article about a similar group in
Hungary, but then nothing was heard about it so it was probably dis-
mantled. He thought that the foundation of this party was not the
result of a coalition of ‘nationalist dissident peaks’ and that it would
have problems gaining the support of the population. In his opinion the
creation of the party could only be the result of peripheral elements of
a Stalinist type, few in numbers, who would never manage to obtain auth-
orisation to organise politically.
Antik manifested very hatefully concerning the realities in our country,
affirming that the Magyar intellectuals have started to lose ground –
they will be unable to survive, the writers can’t publish their works,
painters under different pretexts are excluded from exhibitions – con-
cluding that if you want to remain Magyar it’s better to leave
Romania.58
His file also notes that the source tried to influence him positively,
which meant, in the jargon of the Securitate, changing his ideas to
conform to their perspective. The informer ‘Marius Bunea’, who
appears in the surveillance files of other visual artists as well, said that
Antik liked to joke sometimes, morally and even politically. In 1989,
the informer ‘Thread’ had seen nothing ‘interpretative’ in his works
and they had not discussed any political topics.59
The example of Alexandru Antik illustrates a primary motive of the
Securitate in their surveillance activities: the potential influence of an
artist on other artists, and their acting against the socialist order. While
aesthetic aspects are mentioned here by the sources, they do not appear
to have been essential in the decision to open the file. What matters
most is the Western influence on Antik’s artistic practice and the possi-
bility of his co-opting other artists into engagement in these perform-
ances. Antik’s case exemplifies one of the strategies the Securitate used
to try to change ideas and make artists more compliant: it placed infor-
mers in an artist’s close circle and controlled them.
 11

Design & Print, București,

Cluj, 2016, p 22

Imre Báasz, The Birth of a Myth, 1981, © Palma Baasz Szigeti

50 Székely and Antik, eds, 2) Discouragement: Artists Coerced into

Inventar Alexandru Antik,
op cit, p 78
51 Ibid
52 According to Antik, ‘This
could not happen because a
man in a costume showed
up, who ordered the action
to be finished and to erase
all of its traces. For
example, the organs full of
blood had to be transported
at the margin of the city.
The next day was full of
mixed feelings because the
representative of
authorities stayed with us,
and the atmosphere seemed
to have frozen among the
participants. My girlfriend
and I felt some people were
trying to avoid us. Others
were winking at us as
accomplices, sending us the
sign of their sympathy.’
Submission for ‘Hostile Preoccupations’.
The Case of Imre Báasz
The second case is that of the artist Imre Báasz, who was placed
under surveillance several times for both his artistic practice and his
intention to leave the country, and who was, according to the
Securitate, convinced to change his opinion and to comply with the
regime.
Imre (Emeric Ladislau) Báasz (1941–1991) was a graphic artist who
graduated from the Cluj Art and Design University in 1972 and
worked in Sfântu Gheorghe from 1976 onwards. In the 1980s artists
from Transylvania and the Banat were more open to neo-avant-garde
experiments and the most important events were organised in cities
other than Bucharest, such as Timișoara (Study I [1978] and II [1981]),
or Sfântu Gheorghe.60 Báasz is mostly remembered for having organised
the ‘Medium’ exhibition for young artists in 1981 at the Gallery of Art at
the Museum in Sfântu Gheorghe, where alternative artistic expressions
were possible.
12
Alexandru Polgár, Timotei
Nădăsa̦ n, eds, Alexandru
Antik: Articole, interviuri,
studii, Idea Design & Print,
Cluj, 2018, p 121; author’s
translation from
Romanian.
53 Ibid p 78, p 80, quoted in
Caterina Preda, Art and
Politics under Modern
Dictatorships: A
Comparison of Chile and
Romania, Palgrave,
New York, 2017
54 See for example the text by
Adrian Guța,̆ ‘The Apollo
Gallery in Bucharest and
the “Sibiu ’86
Phenomenon”: Aspects of
the Alternative Dimension
in Romanian Art and
Artistic Life from 1968 to
1989’, in Cristian Nae, ed,
(In)visible Frames:
Rhetoric and Experimental
Exhibition Practices in
Romanian Art between
1965–1989, Ideea, Cluj,
2019, p 222.
55 ACNSAS, File I 234058, 1
56 Ibid
57 Ibid, p 8
58 Ibid, p 24
59 Ibid, p 17
60 Pintilie, Acționismul în
România în timpul
comunismului, op cit, p 52
61 ‘Báasz Imre 1941–1991,
Spărgătorul de gratii’,
Magma Gallery, Sfântu
Gheorghe, 2011
62 ACNSAS, File I 0235148,
16, 23
63 ‘Programul de măsuri pe
1980 în problema
“Activitatea dușmănoasă
desfăsu ̦ rată de unele
persoane din sectoarele de
artă și cultură”’, Vasile
Mălureanu, Cultura și
elitele române sub
comunism, din perspectiva
Securităti̦ i (1964–1989),
Rao, București, 2019, p 398
64 ACNSAS, File I 0235148,
16, 23
65 Ibid, p 16
66 Ibid, p 48
67 ACNSAS, File I 0235147,
vol 1, 4
In one of his best-known performances, The Birth of a Myth (1981),
realised on the sixtieth anniversary of the PCR (the Romanian Commu-
nist Party), Báasz, accompanied by four friends, camouflaged leaflets –
which said ‘Read and pass it on’ – as invitations to the exhibition. The
text of the manifesto was, in fact, the invitation:
The Socialist Council of the Covasna County, the Sfântu Gheorghe branch
of the R S R Artists’ Union, is opening the exhibition of painting, sculp-
ture, decorative art for the sixtieth anniversary of the PCR on May 6,
1981. We await your visit to the exhibition at the Art Gallery. READ
and pass on!61
The work included black and white photos, which show a policeman next
to Imre and his friends pasting up their manifestos/invitations at night.
Báasz’s surveillance file was opened on 3 November 1989. He was,
according to his Securitate file, a graphic artist who was followed
because he had ‘hostile preoccupations that could be seen in his art-
works’, and elsewhere it was noted that he was under surveillance as
part of the ‘File 85 Art and Culture’ because in his ‘graphic works he
expressed interpretative conceptions with a hostile content’.62 The aim
of the Securitate was to prevent the spreading of such artworks.63 This
strategy of prevention and ‘positive influence’ led to an aesthetic surveil-
lance that, through self-censorship, altered the type of art created.
The document indicated that after being in Finland on a scholarship
from the Modern Art Academy in Helsinki, where he stayed six months
longer than authorised (three, according to other documents in his file),
Báasz was flagged up by the Securitate because he intended to make per-
formances in his studio, or ‘a micro theatre show after his own scenario
but with a character and an interpretable tint, nationalist-irredentist’.64
According to this document, the show was meant to ‘symbolize the
border between Romania and Hungary in the current political conjunc-
ture’ and
to be done in front of an audience of around 20–25 people specially chosen
by the author, with guests such as Kantor Lajos and Jozsa Istvan from
Cluj, the latter being asked to immortalize the scene on a video cassette,
which would then be taken outside the country to be seen.65
Báasz’s file includes a declaration signed by him from 1985, which
could have been given upon his return from Finland. It is a self-character-
isation, including a list of all the people he knew outside the country and
in other cities. He also refers to the importance of the 1981 exhibition
‘Medium’ in Sfântu Gheorghe, and says: ‘I felt more possibilities are
open for art and the contemporary artist if he gets out of the framed paint-
ing and favours instead an interdisciplinary expression.’66
The second file on Baász, which has two volumes, mentions a docu-
ment that cited him as a member of the clandestine cenacle at a
Magyar newsroom; he was also part of a group who met at the cafeteria
Tutun (Tobacco) where adepts of the ‘hippi’ (sic) type listened to folk and
‘rock-end-rock’ (sic) music transmitted by RFE.67 According to the Secur-
itate he had been flagged since he was a student as having intentions to

68 Wanda Mihuleac
interviewed by Roxana
Gibescu, in Gibescu et al,
eds, house pARTy 1987,
1988, op cit, p 140
69 Igor Mocanu, ‘Selective
Chronology 1970–1990’,
in Gibescu et al, eds, house
pARTy 1987, 1988, op cit,
p 236
70 Brașoveanu, ‘Gânduri
pentru o expoziție
documentară’, op cit, p 131
13
escape the country; they tried to entice him to collaborate but he refused.
The file notes that in 1984 secret agents threatened Baász because he was
suspected of intending to flee and was conducting himself in a nationalist-
chauvinist way; upon searching his studio and home, they confiscated art-
works that did not correspond to the politics of the party and the state.
During the investigation he admitted that he regretted it and said that
he would behave well in the future.
Báasz’s case illustrates how an artist could be placed under surveil-
lance because he showed ‘hostile preoccupations’ in his artworks, lis-
tened to forbidden music, and was believed to have the intention of
leaving the country; and how, according to the surveillance files, he
could be coerced into submission by the Securitate. His case is that
of an artist whom the Securitate discouraged following the failure
of secret agents to convince him to collaborate with them to better
supervise Magyar artists.
3) Support: Supervision of Trustworthy Artists.
The Case of Wanda Mihuleac
The third case study is that of the artist Wanda Mihuleac, who had
several surveillance files despite being considered a reliable artist, well
placed in the institutional structure of the Artists’ Union and supportive
of the regime’s official line. Mihuleac (b 1946), a graphic artist now
based in Paris, where she emigrated in 1990, graduated from the Art Insti-
tute Nicolae Grigorescu in Bucharest in 1970. She was an important per-
sonality on the Romanian neo-avant-guard scene during late
communism.
As part of the recent exhibition ‘Wanda Mihuleac – Contextualiza-
tion’ curated by Magda Cârneci and Mica Gherghescu at the MNAC
(2017–2018), one could see photographs of the performances that she
calls ‘furtive actions’, enacted by the artist in the 1970s and 1980s. The
most interesting and explicitly political artwork is the video The
Hammer and the Sickle (1974, 16 mm, black and white film). This
video documents an action by a group near the village of Bragadiru, in
which they use bricks to build a wall in the form of the hammer and
sickle. According to the artist, the artwork was first proposed collectively
for the Biennial in Paris but was not approved.68 Wanda’s parents, her
father Emil and her mother Maria Mihuleac, participated in the collective
action in Bragadiru along with her husband Decebal Nițulescu, Peter
Pusztai, Anca Ș esan and Beatrice Perisianu. The action was filmed by
Cristian Müller.69
A lesser-known event was Multimedial/Multidimensional Birthday
Action, organised by Nagy Árpád and Elekes Károly on 17 July 1982
at Nagy’s house in Târgu Mureș by sending invitations to other artists
from Oradea, Bucuresti and Cluj. As Mădălina Brașoveanu observed,
the event, which was presented to their fellow artists as Nagy’s birthday
party, was the occasion to organise an art action.70 The Securitate officers
surveyed those present (including Wanda Mihuleac) throughout 17–18
July 1982. As Brașoveanu noted, the artists’ own documentation of this
‘performative moment’, in parallel with that of the Securitate, allows us
14
71 Ibid, p 132
72 For example, Andrei
Oișteanu has a surveillance
file that includes four
separate folders; he was
followed several times,
between 1976 and 1977,
then again from 1979,
between 1984 and 1986,
and from May 1989. Thus
his files do not record the
period when the two events
were organised. ACNSAS,
File I 0002625/2 vol; File I
0002607; File I 157086
(digital).
73 Wanda Mihuleac
interviewed by Roxana
Gibescu, in Gibescu et al,
eds, house pARTy 1987,
1988, op cit, p 139
74 ACNSAS, File 016298, vol
XVI, 130–145
75 Ibid, p 135
76 This file was for her visa for
Greece, Yugoslavia, Italy,
France, RFG (Federal
Republic of Germany),
RDG (German Democratic
Republic), and West Berlin.
to see what the secret police followed, photographed and analysed, and
what the participating artists did, wanted and archived.71
A milestone event of Romanian performance art was house pARTy
(first edition in 1987, second edition in 1988), an alternative artistic
manifestation initiated and organised by Decebal and Nadina Scriba at
their house in Bucharest. In 1987 they were joined by Călin Dan, Dan
Mihălțianu, Wanda Mihuleac, Andrei Oișteanu, Decebal Scriba,
Nadina Scriba and Dan Stanciu. In 1988 Teodor Graur and Iosif Kiraly
accompanied them, and Ovidiu Bojor and Dan Mihălțianu filmed both
actions. Although some of the participants have surveillance files
(Andrei Oișteanu, Decebal Scriba, Wanda Mihuleac), none of these
mention the two events.72 Concerning her participation in house
pARTy (1987, 1988) and the idea of self-censorship, Mihuleac recalls:
we did actions in the public space that were much more courageous, and
nobody came to arrest us, that wasn’t my fear. Rather I expected some-
body amongst those present to inform on us; luckily this time it wasn’t
the case. However, I remember another time, at a film projection by
Mihai Olos in my studio in Calea Grivitei, we were only six participants;
we stayed until 11 p m and in the morning, at 9 a m, I was called to the
Artists’ Union to account for the ‘madness’ that went on in my studio.
One of the six ‘friends’ had woken earlier and had time to denounce us.
Things happened the same way with the exhibition Photography and
Experimental Film (1979), on the first floor of Căminul Artei gallery,
where Ionică Grigorescu’s film triggered, following a ‘collegial’ reporting,
the closing of the exhibition and the reprimand that the vice-president of
the Artists’ Union… addressed to me. I believe there are many clichés
about the ways in which censorship worked in Romania.73
According to Wanda Mihuleac, several colonels dressed in civilian
clothes visited the exhibitions that she organised and asked her different
questions concerning the artists and the artworks exhibited, but, as the
artist recollects, it was easy to divert their ideas. Mihuleac appears in
several files at the ACNSAS. The general file, the Problem File Art and
Culture, includes information about her: she was a member of the PCR
from 1973 (as was her husband Decebal Nițulescu), had no vices, and
created an ‘abstract modern art’.74 Wanda was the head of the Youth
Organisation of the Communist Party (UTC) within the UAP and a
deputy member of the party committee. The file mentions her as ‘an
avid excursionist’ who had ‘effectuated numerous trips abroad’,75 and
both she and her husband offered guarantees that they would not stay
abroad because she ‘was noted by the group for her activities and had
accomplished duties on the line of the state and the Party’.76 The Secur-
itate file does not mention any of her performances, and is in fact
focused on her foreign trips, her good character, her important father,
and her infirmity.
The ACNSAS only has a microfilm network (rețea) file on Wanda
Mihuleac. The file is very small and includes a list at the end, a sort of
abstract of the investigations into her case, which is not exhaustive.
There was a surveillance file (SI) in 1978, which wanted to verify why
she was at the embassy of the RFG (Federal Republic of Germany) (for a
visa) and her links with a British citizen, Bryley Stephan, who was an art

Wanda Mihuleac’s photo in her surveillance file, source: ACNSAS Fund Microfilms Network file 154584, © CNSAS,
Wanda Mihuleac, photo by Caterina Preda
77 ACNSAS, File I 002625 vol
1, 21
15
impresario. The file was closed the same year. In 1979 she had a file of
informative surveillance (DUI), which was closed because the Securitate
found that ‘she had no preoccupations’ (meaning the agents did not find
information to support the claims) and wondered if she had been ‘influ-
enced positively’. It was initially opened because a source indicated that
after discussions with Sanda Miller (the Belgian cultural attaché) she had
said that Wanda Mihuleac was reactionary. According to Miller, Mihuleac
was against the dissolution of the party cell inside the UAP; she had been
solicited by the Central Committee of the Communist Youth Union
(UTC) for works; she reported having relations with American art
people, and with the art critics Dan Hăulică and Mihai Drișcu; she was
appreciated by important artists; in 1980 she had had a show in the
United States; she was a very intelligent person, and had a forceful person-
ality; and in 1981 she was in Japan and England, and had an exhibition in
West Germany. She was also investigated because she had relations with
‘ERVIN’, who was placed under surveillance because of a manifesto con-
sidered nationalist-irredentist. In fact, from the file about Karoly Elekes
(Objective ERVIN), which was opened in 1982 by the Securitate, we
also find out about Wanta (sic) Mihuleac. One of Andrei Oișteanu’s files
also mentions Wanda Mihuleac as one of his connections, and the Securi-
tate notes that she was investigated in the period 1979–1981 through a sur-
veillance file (DUI) for hostile manifestations against the regime and for
unofficial connections with foreign citizens; according to this note, her
file was closed after she was ‘influenced positively’.77
Wanda Mihuleac’s file records that she is the daughter of Emil Mihu-
leac, who was a general in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and a professor
16
78 Vasile Mălureanu, who
was in charge of the
surveillance of the art and
culture field, notes that one
of the few means by which
agents could convince
artists to collaborate was
that they would more easily
obtain the approval to
travel abroad after doing
so. Mălureanu, Cultura și
elitele române sub
comunism, op cit, p 402.
at the party school Ș tefan Gheorghiu as a pensioner. She was an art
student (1964–1970) and then teacher at High School twenty-five, and
a member of the UAP from 1971/72. Her file also records the trips she
made abroad, which seem impressive for the period. She went to: Casa-
blanca (1950), Austria (1957) and (unreadable) (1962) for medical treat-
ment; to Yugoslavia (1967, 1969, 1973, 1975, 1981), Austria, and Italy
(1968, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1976, 1981, 1982); to Turkey and Greece
(1969, 1975, 1979) for documentation; to the RFG (1971, 1977, 1980,
1982) and France (1971, 1980, 1982) to participate in cultural events;
to Spain (1972), Switzerland (1973, 1976, 1982), the USSR, and Czecho-
slovakia (1973); Poland (1974), Holland (1976), and to the United States
(1979) for training.78 Wanda Mihuleac says that she did not have to
identify those she had met when travelling abroad to the authorities, a
practice very common at the time for those that travelled outside the
country.
Source ‘Paul’ noted in 1983 that Wanda Mihuleac, a graphic artist
with the UAP, travelled to foreign countries on her own (without financial
support from the Union) for exhibitions. The source says that she was
ambitious and tried to be presented positively in the press as she
attempted to obtain a position within the UAP. She had relations with
foreign citizens because she remained friends with those who emigrated
(Sergiu Dinculescu, Labin Casian). According to Mihuleac, she travelled
only by using her own funds and not through the UAP because she had
contacts abroad, sold artworks in foreign countries (in foreign currency)
and used that money to travel.
The characterisation given by her neighbours, and included in her file,
says that she was well behaved and that she was not designated as having
the desire to leave the country, or to stay abroad. The note also observed
that the artist had a physical infirmity and owned a car, a Trabant
Nicomat.
According to Mihuleac, the Securitate did not arrest artists for staging
a courageous performance in a public space; it was, instead, fellow artists
who were responsible for reporting to the Securitate on their colleagues’
activities. Mihuleac’s case demonstrates how the Securitate placed under
surveillance even those artists who were considered to be dependable and
who were supported for their ‘duties on the line of the state and the Party’,
that is, artists who collaborated with the regime. In this case, the surveil-
lance was necessary to verify the trustworthiness of artists who were
already helping the regime. Although she was part of the party structures
of the Union of Artists, was verified several times and given the right to
travel abroad multiple times, Mihuleac was still under surveillance for
contacts with Magyar artists and with foreigners both inside Romania
and abroad.
Conclusion
This article has put forward an argument about the role played by the
Securitate in altering the cultural policy for Romanian visual artists
through an analysis of three artists who engaged in performance art
and who were monitored by the secret police. A close reading of their
files has provided an understanding of the approach used by the Securi-

79 Vujanović and Piazza,
‘Introduction’, in
Vujanović and Piazza, eds,
A Live Gathering, op cit,
p 11
80 ‘The relationship between
artist and viewer is often
complicated. The artist has
many ways to be present
and absent, and the viewer
also has many possible
positions, made evident by
the many words that exist
to designate this role:
participant, witness,
onlooker, audience (a term
originally used to designate
those who listen),
spectator, voyeur, critic,
observer, bystander.’
Taylor, Performance, op
cit, p 61.
81 Nicolas Bourriaud,
Relational Aesthetics, Les
Presses Du Réel, Dijon,
2002, p 5, p 20
82 Claire Bishop, ‘Antagonism
and Relational Aesthetics’,
October 110, autumn
2004, pp 51–79, p 54
17
tate, who regarded artists as being of two types: those who collaborated
and were helped by the secret police; and those who were dominated. I
have further clarified this aesthetic surveillance as encompassing three
strategies – of control, discouragement and support – through the study
of the files of Alexandru Antik, Imre Baász and Wanda Mihuleac.
The qualitative analysis of these cases has shown that this tripartite
understanding is more nuanced. In fact, several motives, and sometimes
several strategies, were used in the case of one artist. The secret police
considered artists ‘threats against the socialist order’ and tried to
control them through censorship (Antik), or by being dominated or
forced into compliance for their ‘hostile preoccupations’ (Báasz). This
applied even to those artists who were helped by the regime and con-
sidered trustworthy – they were still followed and under control, or
even ‘influenced positively’ by the Securitate (Mihuleac).
The first two cases (Antik and Báasz) testify to how the Securitate
gathered and interpreted information about performance art from other
artists active in the social circles of those under surveillance. While Alex-
andru Antik’s file includes a reference to his performance in Sibiu, which
is defined by an informer as ‘a full show in which the public participates
without intervening’, the rest of his file is not concerned with further
investigating his use of the body in his artworks, but prioritises his suppo-
sedly problematic political opinions. The surveillance file on Baász pro-
poses another definition of performance, as a ‘micro theatre show after
his interpretable scenario’, but also does not record the agents’ interest
in further investigating these artistic practices.
The understanding of performance by the Securitate through the nar-
rative of the informers shows us that, if in the case of Antik the definition
given of performance accentuates the limited participation of the public,
in Báasz’s case the performance was perceived as a small play based on a
script realised by the artist. In this sense, there is a distinction between the
acting in a show designed by the artist and the unpredictableness of an
open-ended performance enacted in public as in Antik’s case.
Going back to the politicality of performance that is the result of its
being organised in the public space,79 the importance of the relation
between the artist and the viewer is what seems to have preoccupied
the Securitate.80 In a sense, this interest in the relations created by per-
formance art calls to mind Nicolas Bourriaud’s definition of ‘relational
art’, although this is in reference to new practices of contemporary art
in the 1990s. Bourriaud’s definition of this evolving art practice accentu-
ated its character as an art interested in creating human interactions, and
the social context in which it took place:81 ‘rather than a one-to-one
relationship between the work of art and viewer, relational art sets up
situations in which viewers are not just addressed as a collective, social
entity, but are actually given the wherewithal to create a community,
however temporary or utopian this may be.’82 In the case of Romanian
performance artists, the Securitate was clearly concerned to prevent any
artistic activity that could lead to human interactions in a space that
was not or could not be supervised by the state.
Accordingly, Baász was warned by the secret police and the agents
could convince him to change his mind. Finally, while Mihuleac also
engaged in performances, which she filmed with the help of friends in
the 1970s and 1980s, her file focuses on her trips abroad and on her con-
18

nections with artists who were being investigated. In her case, one can
only speculate on whether her privileged position, based on her family’s
status within the regime, was the reason for the absence in her file of refer-
ence to any of her performances.
We can conclude, therefore, that the ideological role of the Securitate
in the Romanian visual arts consisted in surveilling important artists,
trying to turn them into allies, and convincing their peers that it was
omniscient. Perhaps the most important effect of all this was self-censor-
ship: artists were discouraged from engaging in what could have been
interpreted as ‘problematic art’ for fear of being under constant surveil-
lance. The Securitate convinced several artists to collaborate and to
help prevent the spreading of ideas contrary to official ideology. In
order to understand the content of more complicated artistic expression
such as performance art, the secret agents could count on fellow artists
acting as sources to describe it to them. Through the help it granted to
artists, the state tolerated certain types of non-conforming artistic
expression as long as the proponents of such art did not openly express
political ideas. So art was considered as having an ‘interpretative’ or
‘hostile content’ depending on the status of the artist who practised it.
If it was a trustworthy state artist (Mihuleac), performance art was not
considered dangerous; if, on the contrary, the artist in question was
potentially politically dangerous, their art was also more thoroughly cen-
sored or at least controlled (Antik, Baász).

This work was supported by a grant of Ministry of Research and Innovation, CNCS –
UEFISCDI, project number PN-III-P1-1.1 – TE 2016–0346, within PNCDI III.

ORCID
Caterina Preda http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4685-0823