Revolution: Russian art 1917-1932

Abstract

'Revolution: Russian Art, 1917-1932' encapsulates a momentous period in Russian history that is vividly expressed in the diversity of art produced between 1917, the year of the October Revolution, and 1932 when Stalin began to suppress the avant-garde and its debates. Based around the great exhibition of 1932 held at the State Russian Museum in Leningrad, the book explores the fascinating themes and artistic developments of the first fifteen years of the Soviet state, including painting, sculpture, ceramics, posters, graphics and film. The exhibition itself was to be the swansong of avant-garde art in Russia: new policies quickly ensured that Socialist Realism - collective in production, public in manifestation and Communist in ideology - was to become the only acceptable art form. This volume is a timely and authoritative exploration of how modern art in all its forms flourished, was recognised, celebrated, and broken by implacable authority all within fifteen years.

Contents

Introduction / John Milner -- 'The new world of the mass man' / Natalia Murray -- Soviet art in review : 'fifteen years of artists of the Russian Soviet Republic' in Leningrad, 1932 / Masha Chlenova -- The 'most important art'? : Soviet film-making in the 1920s / Ian Christie -- Chronology / Natalia and Nicholas Murray -- 1. Salute the leader. Creating the Soviet myth / Natalia Murray -- 2. Man and machine. Mechanisation takes command / John Milner -- 3. Brave new world. Constructors of the future in search of the new / Zelfira Tregulova and Faina Balakhovskaya -- 4. Cultural heroes. Heroes of the past living in the future / Natalia Murray -- 5. Kazimir Malevich. Kazimir Malevich / John Milner -- 6. Fate of the peasants. Farming and famine / John Milner -- 7. Eternal Russia. Echoes of orthodoxy / Nicoletta Misler -- 8. New city, new society. The life of artists in 1920s Russia / Evgenia Petrova ; Building for socialism / Christina Lodder -- 9. Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. The active gaze / John E. Bowlt -- 10. Stalin's utopia. Soviet sports and games as propaganda / Mike O'Mahony.