Jonson, Lena Art and Protest in Putin's Russia (review)

Abstract

SEER, 96, 4, OCTOBER 2018 776 on the otherwise hidden, typical life of a working musician across baroque Europe. Second is Owens’s ability to create this narrative around Cousser with a relatively small amount of surviving music. The former approach helps move the discipline from the ‘popularity contest’ and hagiographic approaches that are still too often found in writing history, while the latter brings a welcome focus on the core thread of the book: musical exchange. This book will be of interest not only to musicologists, but anyone with an interest on social and cultural exchange across Europe in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Canterbury Christ Church University Robert G. Rawson Jonson, Lena. Art and Protest in Putin’s Russia. Routledge Contemporary Russia and Eastern Europe Series, 61. Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2015. xv + 266 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliographies. Index. £95.00. Art and Protest in Putin’s Russia by Lena Jonson is based on an extensive original piece of research and is a skilfully crafted, valuable scholarly contribution to Russian cultural studies. The fate of perhaps the most widely known example of Russian protest art, the feminist group, Pussy Riot, mirrors the restrictions of the existing space for questioning and opposing Putin’s consensus. Even though perfectly reflecting the current situation of protest art and dissent in contemporary Russia, the harsh treatment of Pussy Riot, who dared to speak up about Russia’s soaring issues, such as the authoritarian nature of its government, widespread misogyny and homophobia, was not the only instance of a crackdown on protest art in Russia. Rather, it was yet another reflection of an authoritarian patriotic paranoia that targets anyone who dares to question or oppose Putin’s new consensus, based on a mixture of extreme nationalism and Russian Orthodox dogma. This collection of essays discusses Russian counter-culture, which has been emerging over recent decades and has offered society a critical and dogma-free view on its most important issues. The volume consists of seven topic-based chapters, through which the reader is led ‘closer and closer to politics in art’ ( p. 15). An introduction is followed by the chapter, ‘A history of dissensus, consensus and illusion of a new era’, in which the reader is introduced to the dissensus of Russian art of the twentieth century. It sets the stage by explaining the context of contemporary Russian art and its relation to the dynamics of the regime, in particular the development of Putin’s consensus during his first two presidential terms. Chapter three, ‘An Other gaze in art’, analyses the most subtle form of dissensus in art, which emerged as a contrast to the REVIEWS 777 discourse on identity employed by Putin’s consensus. Despite the expansion of the Russian art scene in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the artists of an Other gaze opposed commercialized mainstream art and questioned the glossy ideology of Russian glamur. Its aim was not to take a political stand, but it was political in the sense that it represented dissensus in opposition to official consensus. Amongst many others, the chapter discusses the work of Anya Zhelud, whose art reflects the chaos and disorder in the environment, Aleksandr Brodskii, whose works depict ‘the frailty and vulnerability of the city and the individual’ (p. 54), as well as the group, ‘Sinii sup’ (Blue Soup) and Andrei Kuzkin, who explored feelings of being stuck. The fourth chapter, ‘Art on trial’, explores the conflict between art and the church, and examines the crackdown on art that represented even the mildest questioning of Orthodox religion and the role of the Orthodox Church in the ongoing construction of Russian identity. The chapter analyses the circumstances of the trial of the exhibition ‘Forbidden Art 2006’, which is considered a critical point in the development of contemporary Russian art counterculture. From here, Jonson invites us to explore the art of open disagreement with the ‘proper order of things’. Dissent in the art of the early 2000s discussed in chapter five contrasts with the more subtle message of an Other gaze. It was aimed at emphasizing the divide between ‘we’ — society — and ‘they’ — those in power — and expressed open...