What is to be done?: art practice, theory, and promotion in late Imperial and Soviet Russia

Abstract

"Addressing a century of change from late nineteenth-century realism to late 1970s Sots Art, this volume presents new research on how art making, criticism, and promotion responded dynamically to the fast-moving social, cultural, and political contexts of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union. Case studies of artists reveal how figures such as Viktor Vasnetsov and Kazimir Malevich [Kazymyr Malevych] incorporated contemporary debates into their artworks and expanded their visual expressiveness. Analyses of writings by Wassily Kandinsky and Nikolai Punin illustrate the central role played by critics, theorists, and artists' societies in catalyzing new approaches. Lastly, essays focusing on the Society of Art Exhibitions (1874-83), the diverse displays at exhibitions in the Soviet era, and national themes in Ballets Russes productions rethink binaries between collaboration and enmity, between nationalism and internationalism, and between east and west in art presentation and promotion. This analytical triad is complemented by an epilogue by Russian emigre artist Pavel Otdelnov, who shares how his personal history and identity shape his art, especially since Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine."-- Back cover.

Contents

Editor's preface: What has been done? / Ludmila Pieters-Hofman -- Art practice -- Ivan Kramskoi's Unknown Woman and the embarassment of modernity / Trenton Olsen -- Interwoven identities: church Slavonic in folklore-based late-imperial Russian art / Ludmila Piters-Hofman -- Iconic revolution: the asceticism of old-style icons and the avant-garde / Tatiana Levina -- Theory -- Before and beyond the avant-garde: the forgotten art histories of Nikolai Punin and Nikolai Tarabukin / Maria Taroutina -- "A shift in art's center of gravity... from West to East? Kandinsky's essay "Abstract art" (1925) and the "Slavic Principle" / Sebastian Borkhardt -- Discussing modernism: how the Moscow Union of Artists questioned its art theory / Vera Otdelnova -- Promotion -- Make academic art great again: exhibitions of the Society of Art Exhibitions in the St. Petersburg Press from 1876 to 1883 / Marat Ismagilov -- Between enmity and patronage: Sergei Diaghilev, Vladimir Stasov, and the promotion of Neo-national art and design / Louise A. Hardiman -- From the Marxist display to Sots Art: museum exhibitions of Soviet-era art and the East-West divide -- Epilogue -- A critical juncture / Pavel Otdelnov.