Contemporary Russian Art


Book Description

The author discusses how Russian art has evolved from icon painting through to Socialist Realism. He examines the work of approximately 50 contemporary artists, all of whom are living and working in the Soviet Union and conveys a general view of life in the USSR.




Cosmic Shift


Book Description

A TLS Book of the Year 2017 In this, the first anthology of Russian contemporary art writing to be published outside Russia, many of the country’s most prominent contemporary artists, writers, philosophers, curators and historians come together to examine the region’s contemporary art, culture and and theory. With contributions from Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Boris Groys, Dmitri Prigov, Anton Vidokle, Keti Chukhrov, Oxana Timofeeva, Pavel Pepperstein, Arseny Zhilyaev and Masha Sumnina amongst many others, this definitive collection reveals a compelling portrait of a vibrant and complex culture: one built on a contradicting dialectic between the material and the ideal, and battling its own histories and ideologies.




Russian and Soviet Views of Modern Western Art, 1890s to Mid-1930s


Book Description

From the first Modernist exhibitions in the late 1890s to the Soviet rupture with the West in the mid-1930s, Russian artists and writers came into wide contact with modern European art and ideas. Introducing a wealth of little-known material set in an illuminating interpretive context, this sourcebook presents Russian and Soviet views of Western art during this critical period of cultural transformation. The writings document complex responses to these works and ideas before the Russians lost contact with them almost entirely. Many of these writings have been unavailable to foreign readers and, until recently, were not widely known even to Russian scholars. Both an important reference and a valuable resource for classrooms, the book includes an introductory essay and shorter introductions to the individual sections.




Explodity


Book Description

The artists’ books made in Russia between 1910 and 1915 are like no others. Unique in their fusion of the verbal, visual, and sonic, these books are meant to be read, looked at, and listened to. Painters and poets—including Natalia Goncharova, Velimir Khlebnikov, Mikhail Larionov, Kazimir Malevich, and Vladimir Mayakovsky— collaborated to fabricate hand-lithographed books, for which they invented a new language called zaum (a neologism meaning “beyond the mind”), which was distinctive in its emphasis on “sound as such” and its rejection of definite logical meaning. At the heart of this volume are close analyses of two of the most significant and experimental futurist books: Mirskontsa (Worldbackwards) and Vzorval’ (Explodity). In addition, Nancy Perloff examines the profound differences between the Russian avant-garde and Western art movements, including futurism, and she uncovers a wide-ranging legacy in the midcentury global movement of sound and concrete poetry (the Brazilian Noigandres group, Ian Hamilton Finlay, and Henri Chopin), contemporary Western conceptual art, and the artist’s book. Sound recordings of zaum poems featured in the book are available at www.getty.edu.




Art without Death


Book Description

According to the nineteenth-century teachings of Nikolai Fedorov—librarian, religious philosopher, and progenitor of Russian cosmism—our ethical obligation to use reason and knowledge to care for the sick extends to curing the dead of their terminal status. The dead must be brought back to life using means of advanced technology—resurrected not as souls in heaven, but in material form, in this world, with all their memories and knowledge. Fedorov's call to redistribute vital forces is wildly imaginative in emancipatory ambition. Today, it might appear arcane in its mystical panpsychism or eccentric in its embrace of realities that exist only in science fiction or certain diabolical strains of Silicon Valley techno-utopian ideology. It can be difficult to grasp how it ended up influencing the thinking behind a generation of young revolutionary anarchists and Marxists who incorporated Fedorov's ideas under their own brand of biocosmism before the 1917 Russian Revolution, even giving rise to the origins of the Soviet space program. This book of interviews and conversations with today's most compelling living and resurrected artists and thinkers seeks to address the relevance of Russian cosmism and biocosmism in light of its influence on the Russian artistic and political vanguard as well as on today's art-historical apparatuses, weird materialisms, extinction narratives, and historical and temporal politics. This unprecedented collection of exchanges on cosmism asks how such an encompassing and imaginative, unapologetically humanist and anthropocentric strain of thinking could have been so historically and politically influential, especially when placed alongside the politically inconsequential—but in some sense equally encompassing—apocalypticism of contemporary realist imaginaries. Contributors Bart De Baere, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Boris Groys, Elena Shaposhnikova, Marina Simakova, Hito Steyerl, Anton Vidokle, Brian Kuan Wood, Arseny Zhilyaev, Esther Zonsheim Published in parallel with the eponymous exhibition at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. Series edited by Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Stephen Squibb, Anton Vidokle Design by Jeff Ramsey, front cover design by Liam Gillick




New Narratives of Russian and East European Art


Book Description

This book brings together thirteen scholars to introduce the newest and most cutting-edge research in the field of Russian and East European art history. Reconsidering canonical figures, re-examining prevalent debates, and revisiting aesthetic developments, the book challenges accepted histories and entrenched dichotomies in art and architecture from the nineteenth century to the present. In doing so, it resituates the artistic production of this region within broader socio-cultural currents and analyzes its interconnections with international discourse, competing political and aesthetic ideologies, and continuous discussions over identity.




The Miraculous


Book Description

"One day a writer becomes convinced that the artistic avantgardes of the last five decades present a tapestry of incidents as fascinating and unlikely as any collection of myths or legends. Thinking more of Kafka's Parables than Vasari's Lives of the Artists, he composes a series of micro-narratives celebrating the mystery and ingeniousness of these human activities which, for lack of a better term, we call "contemporary art."-- Back cover.




Russia - Art Resistance and the Conservative-Authoritarian Zeitgeist


Book Description

This book explores how artistic strategies of resistance have survived under the conservative-authoritarian regime which has been in place in Russia since 2012. It discusses the conditions under which artists work as the state spells out a new state cultural policy, aesthetics change and the state attempts to define what constitutes good taste. It examines the approaches artists are adopting to resist state oppression and to question the present system and attitudes to art. The book addresses a wide range of issues related to these themes, considers the work of individual artists and includes besides its focus on the visual arts also some discussion of contemporary theatre. The book is interdisciplinary: its authors include artists, art historians, theatre critics, historians, linguists, sociologists and political scientists from Russia, Europe and the United States.




Exhibit Russia


Book Description

Exhibit Russia is the first publication to reveal how the Russian art scene connected to the rest of the world during the turbulent decade following the adoption of the economic reforms known as perestroika. Focusing on those major group exhibitions and events which jettisoned Russian artists to international attention, or introduced Russian publics to Western art stars, the book provides readers with a unique perspective into the dawning of the global art world. First-hand accounts from leading curators, artists and writers of the time describe the stories behind each exhibition, which are illustrated through rare installation views and archival material. These are accompanied by reprinted articles from magazines, including Flash Art, Art in America and Moscow Art Magazine. The book concludes with a chronology, in which exhibitions are listed in relation to the key historical moments of the decade. Featured artists, curators and critics include: Jan Aman, Joseph Backstein, Veronika Bode, Shaun Caley, Ekaterina Degot, Sandra Frimmel, Jamey Gambrell, Vladimir Gorainov, Michael Govan, Boris Groys, Alanna Heiss, Georgy Litichevsky, Natalia Nikitina, Simon de Pury, David Ross, Tair Salakhov, Aidan Salakhova, Lisa Schmitz, Sergei Serp, Olga Sviblova, Zelfira Tregulova, Margarita Tupitsyn and Amei Wallach.




An Alternative History of Art


Book Description

This catalogue presents the artwork of three fictitious Russian artists, all inventions of Ilya Kabakov, and intervviews of Ilya Kabakov.