ИСТОРИЯ ТВОРЧЕСКОГО ОБЪЕДИНЕНИЯ «ЭРМИТАЖ»

Abstract

An increasing amount of investigations and publications in the sphere of the history of the Soviet underground art signifies the expanded interest to this problem. However the history of the Amateur creative associations in the soviet underground has not received all the attention it deserves yet. The analysis of the Amateur creative associations could deepen our understanding of the soviet art process. Thereby the overall goal of this paper is to analyze the history of the Amateur Association "Hermitage", which was created by L. A. Bazhanov in 1986. To provide greater depth of knowledge about the “Hermitage’s” history the great amount of archival sources will be engaged. Among these sources are materials from Tsalim, Tsaopim, the Hermitage archive Fund, which is stored in THE NCCA, and the Fund of the collector Leonid Talochkin. The Hermitage was one of the first Amateur creative associations that received an official status. During its short existence, members of the Hermitage have held ten large-scale exhibitions in the exhibition hall in Belyaevo. “Retrospec-tion” was considered to be the most provocative “Hermitage’s” exhibition. Cu-rators arranged the exposition according to their vision of Soviet post war art. This exhibition made the Department of culture of the MGK raise the issue of the lack of ideological and methodological control over all Amateur societies. The political authorities made a decision to dissolve “Hermitage”. The “Her-mitage” administration made unsuccessful attempts to formalize its activity un-der the patronage of other organizations (the Union of cinematographers, ZNUI). Finally Hermitage was renamed to Center for Art Culture but in a year its administration run out of money and had to eliminate the organization. It appears from conducted research that the party leadership tried to make rela-tionship with Amateur organization but they were unable to accept the new concept of the Museum and exhibition hall, which was promoted by the participants of the "Hermitage". Moreover the revision of the official Soviet art history during Perestroika stepped out of line.