Explorations of the radical film praxis and extensive oeuvre of filmmaker Želimir Žilnik. Shadow Citizens offers insights into the radical film praxis and extensive oeuvre of filmmaker Želimir Žilnik (b. 1942). Since his beginnings in the lively amateur film scene of Yugoslavia in the 1960s, Žilnik has made more than fifty films, often in the genre of docudrama. Many of Žilnik's films have anticipated real-world events--the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the economic transition from socialism to a...
Dialogues
Artists in the Soviet Union faced a difficult choice: either join the official academies and make art that conformed to the state’s aesthetic and ideological dictates, or attempt to develop alternative artistic practices and spheres for exhibiting their work. In the early 1970s, conceptual artists Ilya Kabakov and Viktor Pivovarov chose the latter option, turning their limited resources into an asset by pioneering an entirely new artistic genre: the album. Somewhere between drawings and novels,...
Treasures of Catherine the Great
by Geraldine Norman and Mikhail B. Piotrovski
Catherine the Great was one of the greatest and most astute art collectors of all time. During her reign she amassed an astonishing collection, now kept in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia's foremost museum and one of the world's great encyclopaedic collections of art. This catalogue is tied to the year-long exhibition running at the first 'foreign branch' of the State Hermitage, opening this year at Somerset House in London. Reproduced here are some of the finest holdings in Cather...
This publication is dedicated to the history of Russian drawing and watercolours of the first half of the nineteenth century. The book is aimed at combining various methods of studying this vast material: chronological, genre, stylistic, artistic, analytic, historical and everyday. Drawing is presented here as an independent creative sphere as well as collaborating with other forms of art. The catalogue introduces individual peculiarities of outstanding artists of that period and researches draw...
Russian Art and the West (NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies)
This book addresses the lively artistic dialogue that took place between Russia and the West—in particular with the United States, Britain, and France—from the 1860s to the Khrushchev Thaw. Offering stimulating new readings of cross-cultural exchange, it illuminates Russia's compelling, and sometimes combative, relation with western art in this period of profound cultural transformation. Russian Art and the West breaks new ground in the range of its material and its chronological span. Attending...
Explodity - Sound, Image, and Word in Russian Futurist Book Art
by Nancy Perloff
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 (...
Russian painter Olga Suvorova is internationally known for her brilliant reinterpretations of English Pre-Rafaelite art, described by critic Viktoriya Syslova as "amazingly modern in their exquisite theatricality." Both exuberant and philosophical in mood, her richly detailed worlds depict people who are somehow familiar to us, even in their extravagant costumes. In this first-person account, accompanied by over 150 images of her colorful paintings, Suvorova describes her backgro...
This book examines the legacy of international interwar modernism as a case of cultural transfer through the travels of a central motif: the square. The square was the most emblematic and widely known form/motif of the international avant-garde in the interwar years. It originated from the Russian artist Kazimir Malevich who painted The Black Square on White Ground in 1915 and was then picked up by another Russian artist El Lissitzky and the Dutch artist Theo van Doesburg. It came to be understo...
Performance art in Western Europe and North America developed in part as a response to the commercialisation of the art object, as artists endeavoured to create works of art that could not be bought or sold. But what are the roots of performance art in Eastern Europe and Russia, where there was no real art market to speak of? While many artworks created in the 'East' may resemble Western performance art practices, their origins, as well as their meaning and significance, is decidedly different....
Focusing on Kazimir Malevich (1878-1935), one of the great pioneers of 20th-century abstract art, this is one of a series of illustrated monographs which offer introductions to modern art and artists. Each book presents a profile of the artist and analysis of his distinctive style. Malevich was a major figure in the Russian avant-garde, and a founder of Suprematism, which became the basis for most later trends in abstract painting. His life and work are traced from his early years to his triumph...
The all-encompassing mass culture of today is not an invention of the late 20th century. Contrary to what might be assumed, given the capitalist under- and over-tones of contemporary mass media, our visual culture has its roots in the totalitarian regimes of the 20s and 30s. Back then, the main venue for visual communication was the reproduction and circulation of pictures via posters and films. Fascism and communism made radical use of these new opportunities for the consistent transformation o...
Ilya Kabakov is regarded as Russia's most important living artist. Together with his wife Emilia, he has conceptualized "Monument to a Lost Civilization." The project reconstructs the condition of life in the Soviet Union and its institutional paradigms through the voices, false hopes, and dreams of the people. This project represents the main dream of the two artists for the last ten years. The book brings together sketches, drawings, and photographs of thirty-eight of the artists' installation...
One of the most exciting movements in 20th century art, Russian constructivism radically reassessed the role of the artist and his work. Here, Lodder provides a detailed account of this complex movement and the reverberations it had on Western culture.
Comradely Objects (Studies in Design and Material Culture)
by Yulia Karpova
The Russian avant-garde of the 1920s is broadly recognised to have been Russia’s first truly original contribution to world culture. In contrast, Soviet design of the post-war period is often dismissed as hack-work and plagiarism that resulted in a shabby world of commodities. This book offers a new perspective on the history of Soviet design by focusing on the notion of the comradely object as an agent of progressive social relations that state-sponsored Soviet design inherited from the avant-g...
Kunstschätze der Zaren
Zar Peter der Große legte 1714 nahe St. Petersburg den Grundstein zu Schloss Peterhof, dem „russischen Versailles", das zwei Jahrhunderte lang als Sommerresidenz der Zaren diente. Während die Schlossbauten im Zweiten Weltkrieg beinahe vollständig zerstört wurden und bis heute aufwendig rekonstruiert werden, gelang es, viele der Kunst- und Ausstattungsgegenstände des Palastkomplexes zu evakuieren. Der Katalog stellt mit zahlreichen Abbildungen und Textbeiträgen die im Augsburger Schaezlerpalais...
"Born in the 1360s, Andrey Rublev was a Muscovite monk and icon painter who died between 1427 and 1430 in Moscow. He is acknowledged as the supreme medieval Russian painter of icons and frescos, yet much about him remains mysterious. To date there is no volume in English on him or his work. This book addresses the gap, giving an overview of Rublev’s own times and later reputation, and taking in the most recent Rublev scholarship. It uses Russian-language material (including Old Russian), but is...
Can great art be produced in a police state? Josef Stalin ran one of the most oppressive regimes in world history. Nevertheless, Stalinist Russia produced an outpouring of artistic works of immense power. More than a dozen great artists were visible enough for Stalin to take an interest in them - which meant he chose whether they were to live in luxury and be publicly honoured or to be sent to the Lubyanka for torture and execution. Journalist and novelist Andy McSmith brings together the storie...
Assembled during the last twenty years, the José Maria Castañé collection of paintings, drawings, and prints constitutes a panorama of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Russian art, one of the most exciting moments of modern cultural history. Unlike other representations in the West, however, the Castañé collection does not focus exclusively on the avant-garde, Socialist Realism or the dissident movement, but, instead, offers a broader and sometimes alternative enquiry into the history...
Punk Orientalism: The Art of Rebellion explores the spaces and places associated with the former Soviet Union, focusing on the artists and ideas hailing from Central Asia and the Caucasus, which were long perceived as an extension or “client” states of the USSR. The theme of non-conformity and the punk rejection of state authority is a continuous thread throughout the book, which highlights changing and divided societies and their evolving norms in the post-Soviet period. Inspired by the titula...
This highly readable introduction to the abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky reveals why he remains one of the most influential and imitated artists. This book explores all facets of Kandinsky s life and career, from his radical work as the founder of the Blue Rider group and his escape from Weimar Germany to Paris, to his stormy love affair with the painter Gabriele MAnter and his many friendships with leading artists of his generation. Color reproductions of Kandinsky's works are presented along...
This richly illustrated catalogue documents the exhibition organized by the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, in partnership with the State Russian Museum, St Petersburg. Featuring celebrated paintings by such pioneering artists as Wasilii Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin and Natalia Goncharova, it also includes the work of more than 20 other innovative artists of the Russian avant-garde, some of whose art has rarely been reproduced in colour. These intriguing paintings are juxtaposed w...
Published to accompany an exhibition at The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, this catalogue beautifully presents a history of Russian collage, with an emphasis on the middle and later years of the 20th century. Works by Popova, Rodchenko, and Malevich allow the reader to see the roots of later constructions, in chapters organised by application, including texture, assemblage, decoupage, and photomontage.
"It is clear from the creations of this outstanding artist that his soul absorbs all the profound beauty of nature through his intoxicated eye, and new beauty is born from his overflowing soul..." These are the words of an enthusiastic visitor to Alexej von Jawlensky's first ever one-man show, published in the communications of the Barmer Kunstverein in 1911. Sadly, von Jawlensky (1864-1941) remains unacknowledged in Russia to this day, even though the rest of the world has long since discovered...