This new issue of  Revista ARTA takes off, as it often happens in Romania, in urgency. The urgency to catch up on 10 years of utter silence, after several more years of chaotic releases, both situations occurring because of the twisted period of post-communist transition in the last 20 years. Then there is the urgency to settle in a routine and a fluidity that is vital in making the Romanian art scene to be aware of its own evolution, as well as initiating a mature and lucid dialogue with the international art scene.

Started in the last moments of 2010, this issue inevitably plants to artistically summarize the year 2010. It is also inevitable, because of the short amount of time, that this summary is provisional and unable to mention all of the numerous artistic events that deserved a place in this issue. We took the risk of presenting a concise but believable version of the exciting things that happened in the Romanian visual landscape in 2010, hoping that the later issues would fill in the gaps of this bigger picture and give it more consistency and legitimacy.

While rapidly putting together this issue, we relied on blogs and internet websites dedicated to Romanian art, but we also counted on the swiftness of our collaborators – and I can’t help but be enthusiastic about the responsible solidarity of artists, critics and curators from Bucharest and the rest of the country. All generations, the youths especially, confirmed with promptitude that there was an absence, a need, an expectancy for an art magazine – decent and believable, the guild’s magazine, Revista ARTA with its long standing tradition – to return and build the documental, the interface, the mirror or the screen in which Romanian art can be objectified and self-aware.

ARTA will put creativity and value in the spotlight.
ARTA will favor the new and the real artistic substance.
ARTA will incite to healthy competition and overcoming one’s self.
ARTA will fight for a Romanian art that has international bearing.

Magda Cârneci, Editor-in-chief