Soviet Nonconformist Art
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The term Soviet Nonconformist Art refers to art produced in the former Soviet Union from 1953-1986 (after the death of Stalin until the advent of Perestroika and Glasnost) outside of the rubric of Socialist Realism. Other terms used to refer to this phenomenon are "unofficial art" or "underground art."
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[edit] History
During the Soviet period (1922-1991), official artistic policy required that artists subscribe to the doctrine of Socialist Realism. Artists who chose their own form of expression, whether it was abstraction, expressionism, conceptual art or performance art were unable to show their work publicly. Soviet Nonconformist Art therefore includes a variety of artists and different styles that were produced unofficially during the Soviet period.
The death of Stalin and Khrushchev's denunciation of his crimes and cult of personality in 1956 created a liberal atmosphere wherein artists felt more freedom to create expressive or personal work without the fear of negative repercussions. Still, none of the official policies regarding the production of art had changed, which is why the majority of the art that falls under this category remained underground.
Once Glasnost and Perestroika were initiated in the mid-1980s there was no longer a need for the art to remain underground, and thus for all intents and purposes it ceased to exist.
[edit] Contributors to the movement
Notable Soviet Nonconformist artists from Russia include Ilya Kabakov, Oleg Vassiliev, Komar and Melamid, Leonid Sokov, Boris Sveshnikov, Vladimir Yakovlev, Anatoly Zverev, Ylo Sooster, Vladimir Nemukhin, Ernst Neizvestny and Oscar Rabine, Alexander Yulikov, Andrey Grositsky, Igor Shelkovsky, from Moscow, and Timur Novikov and Afrika (Sergei Bugaev), from St. Petersburg.
[edit] The Stretensky Boulevard Group and the Moscow Conceptualists
A group of artists that lived on Sretensky Boulevard, Moscow, became loosely associated by their like-minded ideas in the 1960s. Primarily identified as Ilya Kabakov, Eduard Shteinberg, Erik Bulatov, Viktor Pivovarov and Vladimir Yankilevsky, the group also included Oleg Vassiliev, Ulo Sooster and others with the same pre-occupation. The artist's studios were also used as venues to show and exchange ideas about unofficial art. The majority of visual artists who became part of the Stretensky Boulevard Group worked officially as book illustrators and graphic designers. There were in strong contrast to a group called the Lianozovo artists, a loose group around Oscar Rabine, who were primarily abstractionists. This group in particular was often harassed and in some cases imprisoned or exiled. It is apparent that Kabakov and his associates were conformist as a survival strategy, a tactic which began at the art academies. Kabakov reports that during school and throughout his early career he did everything expected of him and, on the surface, accepted the Soviet reality.
In the 1970s, rather than be anti-Soviet and pro-Western, many artists took a neutral position that would allow them to question and analyze the perceived gap between the ideologies. These developments led to friends and colleagues forming a group that became known as the Moscow Conceptualists, which developed out of the Stretensky Boulevard Group. It is problematic to determine exactly who was a member of the group, as the term is fluid, broadly encompassing the Sots (art) artists and the Collective Actions group, which both were influential in the construction of Russian conceptualist art. The group included Ilya Kabakov, Komar and Melamid, Eric Bulatov and Viktor Pivovarov.
[edit] The Petersburg group
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The Petersburg Non-conformist Group was formed in Leningrad in the 1960s. The Group concentrated on still lifes, stylistic searches and illustration. An exhibition in the Hermitage Museum in 1964 included the following artists: V. Kravchenko, V. Uflyand, V. Ovchinnikov, M.Chemiakin and O. Liagatchev. The official name of the exhibit was Exhibition of the artist-workers of the economic part of the Hermitage. Towards the 200 anniversary of Hermitage. Exhibition opened on 30-31 March of and on 1 April it was closed by the authorities. The Hermitage director, Mikhail Artamonov, was removed from his post.
In 1967 the Manifest Peterburg Group was written, and signed by M.Chemiakin, O.Liagatchev, E. Yesaulenko and V. Ivanov. Previously V. Ivanov and M. Chemiakin had written the theoretical essay Métaphysique Synthétisme. M. Chemiakin's paintings realized the ideas of the "Métaphysique Synthétisme". In the essay Ivanov and Chemiakin created illustrations for the works E.T.A. Hoffman and Crime and Punishment by Fyodor M. Dostoevsky.
Since 1968 O. Liagatchev was fascinated by semiotic searches and manufactures his visual-ornamental style; characteristic of picturesque style are the works Kafka and Intimeniy XX (1973), Composition - Canon (1975).
A. Vasiliev also joined this group, as the master of picturesque invoices and technical improvisations along with V. Makarenko, as miniature-painter and metaphysical painter.
In 1971 Chemiakin emigrated to France, and later the United States.
Liagatchev and Vasiliev participated in the exhibitions of non-conformist artists at the Cultural Center Gaza in 1974 and at the Cultural Center Nevsky in 1975.
In 1975 Liagatchev emigrated to France. The Group did not have any joint exhibitions and became defunct in 1979.
[edit] Collections
The collectors of Soviet and Russian Nonconformist art include Tatiana Kolodzei and her daughter, Natalia Kolodzei. In 1991 they founded the Kolodzei Art Foundation which has presented many exhibitions on Russian Nonconformist art.
[edit] References
- Irène Semenoff-Tian-Chansky, Le pinceau, la faucille et le marteau: les peintres et le pouvoirs en Union Soviétique de 1953 à 1989, Institut d'Études Slaves, 1993
- Norton Dodge and Alla Rosenfeld, eds. From Gulag to Glasnost: Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1995.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
| Russian art movements |
| Stroganov School | Peredvizhniki | Abramtsevo Colony | Russian Symbolism | Mir iskusstva | Cubo-Futurism | Suprematism | Constructivism | Russian avant-garde | Socialist realism | Nonconformism |
