Avant-garde Art Research Articles

Кураторские стратегии СССР на Венецианской биеннале 1956-1990: между идеологией и искусством

The article highlights the key principles of organizing exhibitions in the USSR and their implementation in the projects of the national pavilion at the Venice Biennale. At the beginning of the period under study, the Soviet pavilion is organized according to the principle of all-Union exhibitions: the national and cultural diversity of the country and the continuity of generations are demonstrated in the group exhibitions. Various types of fine art are presented, glorifying the ideals of socialism. Subsequently, political changes in the country are reflected in the exhibition of the national pavilion. The promotion of Soviet realistic art occurs through cultural policy, with an increased focus on the tastes of the audience and adjustment to the format of the Biennale. Criticism becomes less harsh, and solo exhibitions of once banned avant-garde artists are held. There is an increasingly noticeable integration into the pan-European artistic context. This trend reached its culmination in 1990, when a Russian exhibition was devoted to pop-artist Robert Rauschenberg. The article also explores the question of who performed curatorial functions in the Soviet Union. The Venice Biennale is examined as an artistic, economic and political event, based on an analysis of its most striking projects and scandals. Based on archives, interviews and articles, a curatorial system is recreated. The need for a non-binary approach to the study of Soviet culture is noted, in which the official and the private or underground cannot be opposed, just as the artistic and ideological aspects of the exhibition cannot exist in isolation.

Theory and practice of pictorial avant-garde in the creation of the Ukrainian artist David Burlyuk

Modeling the theory of the Ukrainian pictorial avant-garde based on the study of the theoretical views of avant-garde artists is an urgent scientific task of art history. The theory of the avant-garde unites a number of concepts of co-existing artistic currents with its ideals of the human creator and constitutes a certain integral essence of various aesthetic and artistic features. Avant-garde art, as the art of a new and unknown future, needed a theoretical basis for explaining the nature of artistic creation, interpreting it as a synthesis of the conscious and unconscious, the role of the artist and the viewer in their dialectical unity, the importance of the artistic process in social progress. Davyd Burlyuk became a bright follower of the ideas of the avant-garde, which stood out in addition to artistic creativity and its theoretical justification. The Ukrainian avant-garde is built on David Burlyuk’s concept of movement and change. At the center of the artist’s theoretical views is the creative personality with its freedom of choice of individual self-expression. The artist’s views on the essence of avant-garde art became the theoretical basis of the avant-garde in the crowd of traditional ones, which allowed the new art to occupy its own separate place. David Burlyuk’s theoretical canons for the construction of the composition of the work by the method of shifted construction, multiple perspective, texture, color space, free drawing are the basis of the creation of a new pictorial language, new aesthetics and the reconstruction of the artistic space of culture and a contribution to its development. The formation of the worldview basis of the artist’s creativity took place on the basis of the traditions of his own national culture in organic unity with the European trends of renewal of the artistic space, which is a significant contribution to the development of the world avant-garde.

Pictorial Modernism(s) in an Interdisciplinary and Cross-Cultural Context

This paper delves into the reception and adaptation of Modernism in early 20th-century China, emphasizing the role of Chinese literary magazines and art publications in disseminating Western avant-garde art. Publications such as Eastern Miscellany and Yishu Xunkan played pivotal roles in introducing movements like Post- Impressionism, Cubism, and Futurism. The paper highlights how Chinese literary figures and art critics not only translated Western art terms but also engaged deeply with the philosophical and aesthetic principles underlying these movements. By examining key exhibitions and intellectual discourses, the paper illustrates how the vibrant exchanges within Chinese cultural circles facilitated a nuanced understanding and creative integration of Modernist principles, thereby reshaping China’s artistic landscape.

Remo Bianco, plastic and the trauma of the post-war Italian artist

This article examines how Italian artist Remo Bianco (1922–88) used plastic to manage the traumatic transition from Fascism to the post-war period. It contends that the post-war optimism and enthusiasm associated with plastic that is evident in the art of Bianco’s compatriots (Alberto Burri, Carla Accardi, Piero Gilardi and Gino Marotta) masks a dark undercurrent of the past, one expunged from later narratives of Italian art, but which can be found in Bianco’s works. Beginning by examining plastic as material, signifier and artistic medium, the article analyses plastic’s development and adoption by artists in Italy from Fascism to the post-war period. Unlike his contemporaries, such as Piero Manzoni and Yves Klein, who created sculptural works that engaged with the live human body, or Christo, who packaged objects for their contents to be guessed, Bianco used plastic to wrap and encase objects and humans so as to anxiously yet methodically sort, organize, seal off and safeguard people and things. While Bianco’s use of plastic refers to broader repressed cultural anxieties, his art also expressed personal concerns associated with his troubled sexuality, from disturbed relationships with women to his closeted homosexuality, which he blamed on his rigid upbringing under Fascism. As this article demonstrates, this interweaving of art, history and autobiography fuelled Bianco’s idiosyncratic use of plastic, resulting in a sense of detachment overshadowed by the avant-garde art of his time.

A Precipitate of Collective Dreams: Piglia, Stern, and Jacoby on a New Art of the Media

ABSTRACT: Whereas Ricardo Piglia's work has often been read through the literary traditions he so neatly sketched out, this article situates Ricardo Piglia's La ciudad ausente in the artistic avant-garde of the mid-twentieth century in Buenos Aires. We focus on two significant moments in Argentine cultural history that appear within the novel that, we argue, suggest an approach to resistance as informed by a technique of infiltration: Grete Stern's Sueños photomontages (1948-1952, 1968) and the Happening por un jabalí difunto (1966) by the group Arte de los medios de comunicación. The strains of utopia that appear throughout La ciudad ausente are considered in light of the possible utopianism present as well in these artistic initiatives, which undermine and reveal hegemonic narratives transmitted through mass media with a parodic and dissenting appropriation of these forms of communication.

Review of the exhibition and catalog: Girlfriends. For the anniversary of Varvara Stepanova. Exhibition catalog. Moscow: Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (2024)

The exhibition "Girlfriends. To the anniversary of Varvara Stepanova", (curators A.A. Danilova, A.A. Savinov, A.N. Lavrentiev), which opened in July 2024 at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts reveals the contribution of Russian avant-garde artists to the formation of constructivism as an influential global trend in architecture and design, the development of domestic fashion design, graphic design, theater. The exhibition presents the works of A.I. Akhtyrko (students of A.M. Rodchenko in VKhUTEMAS), E.A. Ignatovich (a photojournalist and journalist who worked with V.F. Stepanova), L.S. Popova, O.V. Rozanova, V.F. Stepanova, G.D. and O.D. Chichagov (artists of children's books). The cultural and educational foundation "Magic of Fashion" under the leadership of N.B.Kozlova provided reconstructions of clothing models according to the projects of N.P.Lamanova, V.I. Mukhina, L.S.Popova and V.F.Stepanova. 15 museums and private collections provided works from their collections for the exhibition: paintings, graphics, photographs, drawings for fabric and theatrical costume designs (Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, GTG, RGALI, Theater Museum, museums of St. Petersburg, Saratov, Ulyanovsk and other collections). The unifying historical and documentary space of the exhibition was excerpts from the diaries of V.F.Stepanova about the avant-garde exhibitions held in 1915-1920, where artists participated, documents and articles by O.V. Rozanova. The exhibition catalog, prepared by a team of authors (design by the ABCdesign publishing group), reflects the main sections of the exhibition: "Acquaintance", "The Birth of constructivism", "Theater", "Fashion", "From a futuristic book to a new layout". The publication was recognized as the "Book of the Year" by experts of the Annual National Competition 2024. The exhibition and catalog reflect the bright innovative nature of the art of the artists of the 1920s, who boldly invaded new areas of the designer's activity, such as cinema, photography and mass media, poetry and fashion. They have left a significant mark on Russian art, pedagogy and art criticism.

Nadezhda Dobychina (1884–1950)

Abstract The opening of the first commercial art gallery in Russia by Nadezhda Dobychina (1884–1950) heralded surprising female dominance in the national art business sector, which appears even more remarkable considering that up until the early 1910s art dealers were virtually absent from the archaically pre-capitalistic Russian art market. On that account Dobychina’s Art Bureau, which opened in St. Petersburg in October 1911 was an entirely pioneering business project. Dobychina laid the groundwork for several innovative approaches which foreshadowed many aspects of modern gallery practice. Exhibitions in her Art Bureau were accompanied by talks, disputes, concerts and performances, bringing artists and public in a close contact with each other and thus providing a useful forum for the exchange of views and ideas. Dobychina’s Art Bureau aimed at showcasing the most original and distinctive artistic trends in Russia and abroad, ranging from realism, symbolism and post- impressionism to provocatively cutting-edge avant-garde. In a short span of less than a decade she organised the first exhibitions in Russia of Wassily Kandinsky and Marc Chagall and famously exhibited Malevich’s Black Square in the ground-breaking 0.10 exhibition, which was held at the Bureau in 1915. Over the years Dobychina has also assembled an important collection which included works of the World of Art and Avant-garde artists. The Art Bureau emerged as the most influential and ideologically independent centre of the contemporary art in Russia, which in turn secured artistic dialogue between Russia and Western Europe.

George Costakis and the Confines of His Collection

Abstract As George Costakis pointed out: “One of the most important precepts for the collector is that he must precisely, even ruthlessly, define the limits of his collection, and he must resolutely remind himself that – on this particular matter – his reach should never exceed his grasp.” Known as the most famous collector of Russian avant-garde, Costakis, never lost his parallel interest in collecting lubki, religious icons, Russian folk toys and also in the art of the so-called “Non-conformists or the alternative art of the 1960s. He had a twin goal: on the one hand, to expand the confines of his collection of Russian avant-garde, by including the early sources of inspiration of avant-garde artists; and, on the other hand, to demonstrate that this art can provide inspiration to the next generation. In fact, he “exceeded his grasp” only in order to make the art of Russian avant-garde better understood, both in its historical and future context. At the same time he followed Sergei Shchukin’s ethical and educational tradition of keeping his collection in public view, turning his typical Soviet apartment into an open house and finally an unofficial museum of modern art.

Gustav Klucis (1895–1938): a Complex Transformation from “Soviet Artist” to “Russian Avant-Gardist”

Abstract The two main elements that render the case of Gustav Klucis unique among other Russian Avant-garde artists are: his nationality which was the cause of his tragic death during Stalin’s Great Purge but also what determined the fate of his creative legacy; and his political engagement in the development of mass (propaganda) art, which is behind the current controversial evaluation of his legacy today, and had influenced his own complicated career. Although both the circumstances of the artist’s life and the historical context are familiar to scholars, archival studies provide new materials, revealing less-known aspects of the artists’ creative biography. My paper addresses two topics. In the introduction I recall some notable facts about the “Riga Collection” of Klucis’ works, kept at the Latvian National Museum of Art, and discuss how its interpretation and interrelation to other collections of Klucis’ works were developed with an eye towards the artist’s reintegration in the context of the Russian Avant-garde. In the main part of my paper, I share some thoughts about Klucis as a theorist, related to the study of the second version of his manuscript “The Right to Experiment” and other less known materials, found in the Nikolai Khardzhiev archive.

Genesis of Music Video Clip as a Popular Form of Modern Audiovisual Culture: Experiments with Music Visualisation

The purpose of the article is to reveal the peculiarities of the development of the music video clip in the context of the historical interaction of musical and audiovisual culture. Research methodology. General scientific methods of cognition were applied, in particular analysis and synthesis, systematisation of theoretical data, the method of structural-functional analysis, which made it possible to reveal specific aspects of the interaction of music and various forms of artistic practices in the space of audiovisual culture; a typological method, with the help of which various features of the music video clip in the structure of modern audiovisual culture are revealed. Scientific novelty. The genesis of the music video clip as a popular form of modern audiovisual culture is studied; the problem of integration of visual images and music as part of artistic practices in historical retrospect is considered. Little-known works of foreign scientists, the problems of which are correlated with the subject area of research were introduced into scientific circulation. Conclusions. The genesis of the music video clip testifies to the significant role of artistic practices in the process of image and music interaction at the early stages, which contributed to the invention of new creative ways of representing the imaginary – animation and montage proposed by avant-garde artists; videos and video installations created by mastering the television image; music videos that opened a new dimension for experimentation, becoming an influential form of modern culture. Artistic history of analogue interactions between cinema and music during the 20th century demonstrates the antecedent conditions of production, perception, and socio-political context that were necessary for the mass popularization of the music video as an established form. Thanks to the early experiments in the formation of visualised music, the music video as a new form of audiovisual art gained cultural value, which allowed it to play a significant role at the modern stage. The music video played and continues to play a key role in the socio-cultural space. The technological evolution from analogue to digital means of production and display has accelerated the development of both the form and the aesthetics of the music video, which emphasises one of the most important roles of art in society – to provoke thought and encourage a rethinking of social, political and cultural conditions and surroundings, using this is the main means of communication, including popular music.

ABSTRACT MANUAL OF ANTI-ART DEFIES CRITICS

This article on ir-relevance of Art criticism and its perpetrators, the maligned re-viewers, explores how close Kurt Schwitter`s points of reference here are aligned to ANTOA, the New Theory of Art. Schwitters (pronounce Sh-wit-ash) as main exponent of Hannover`s circle of avantgarde artists in interregnum between World War I and II (ca 1920 to 1939), was an accomplished yet often misunderstood creator, busy in fields of painting, sculpting, graphic design and literature. Furthermore the link between Schwitter`s influential quote on the value of „Abstract Non-Art“ and 1950ies/60ies phenomena of theatrical performance are investigated. This as much as application of points 3 – old make new, 4 – abstraction, where does it come from and where does it lead to?and 5 – message and symbolism, in relation to ANTOA, come under the spotlight.I begin with an imaginary question from my series ROLE OF ARTIST IN SOCIETY, 24 INTERVIEWS FROM SOUTH AFRICA

Anna-Sophie Jürgens and Mirjam Hildbrand, eds. Circus and the Avant-Gardes: History, Imaginary, Innovation

This book engages with circus and the experimentation of avant-garde artists. Tracing the correlations and interconnections between two distinctive forms that shaped the performance cultures of the twentieth century, Circus and the Avant-Gardes offers a meticulous study of the approaches and aesthetics envisioned by the avant-gardes and their influence on contemporary circus.

Rewriting the Heart Sutra: Buddhism and the (Geo)Politics of Symbols in Qiu Zhijie's Art

This article studies the Chinese artist Qiu Zhijie's (b. 1969) three experimental “rewrites” of the canonical text Heart Sutra and their geopolitical connotations within and beyond China. Examining Qiu's copious writings as well as curatorial and artistic practices over a decade, the article shows how the artist's evolving views of Buddhism have triggered, justified, and added nuances to his shifting positions in art and politics, including assertions of “native” identity and aesthetics, pursuits of non-elitist art and “folk” wisdom, and ambivalent takes on cultural colonialism. To contextualize Qiu's Buddhist-affiliated art, the article also traces how the modernized versions of Buddhism entangled with avant-garde art and politics in the postwar era, and how concepts like authenticity and cultural influence claimed not only aesthetic and thus market value, but also territorial ambitions. The citation of Buddhist doctrines and practices, the article argues, enabled Qiu to present his aesthetic maneuvers as ostensibly apolitical and hence more powerful as embodied ideologies. The artworks create “fragile” yet potent symbols of geopolitical connections that serve the discourse of a Sinocentric world, where China shares roots with “peripheries” such as Taiwan and Tibet and draws its soft power from a collectively created yet mystical and singular identity.

Geniusz rozkładu. Nikołaj Bierdiajew wobec sztuki Pabla Picassa

Picasso occupied a very special place within Nicolai Berdyaev’s philosophical considerations. What motivated him to assess avant-garde art was an exhibition at the art gallery owned by Sergey Shchukin in 1914. The Russian thinker became personally acquainted with the exhibition. In his attitude towards Picasso’s art, Berdyaev shows the universal category of assessment which he had applied earlier to random artistic phenomena. The philosopher gives avant-garde art the status of the verifier of spiritual changes, at the same time pointing to the evolution of people’s attitude towards both the surrounding reality and themselves. By paying so much attention to the works of the Spanish artist, Berdyaev formulates a thesis concerning the spiritual crisis of the culture occurring in statu nascendi. That is to say that he perceives avant-garde art as, on the one hand, the foreshadowing of inevitable socio-political changes and, on the other hand, a graphic equivalent of the spiritual changes which are about to happen. In the role of category which should present the direction of assessing not only Picasso’s works, but also, in a broader sense, the historical and cultural changes, Berdyaev uses the terms of crisis, freedom, beauty, humanism and spirituality. The Russian philosopher considers Picasso a helpless exposer of illusions of materialized and synthesized beauty, whose paintings are the proof of the crisis occurring in art, self-awareness and, in a broader sense, also within humanity.

Delight at the New: A Review of Comics and Modernism: History, Form, and Culture

This article is a review of the comics studies collection Comics and Modernism: History, Form, and Culture (2024), edited by Jonathan Najaran. The collection features a range of articles by comics scholars on the social, cultural and aesthetic relationships between comics and avant-garde art practice- specifically modernist art practice.

Technology as Resistance: Pioneers of Korean Media Art from the 1960s to the 1990s

Abstract This paper calls for a reassessment of early-stage Korean avant-garde and experimental art as the cornerstone of Korean media art. The aim is to discern a new genealogy of media art in Korea by tracing and linking the activities of early avant-garde artists and media art pioneers who have been neglected in the dominant art historiography, which has shown a preference for painting and video art. My detailed analysis of the experimental artists of the 1960s and 1970s, small groups in the mid-1980s, and the Art Tech Group in the early 1990s demonstrates how they revealed and articulated their spirit of resistance against academism and the mainstream using technology, thus following a different trajectory from that of the avant-garde and media art in Europe and North America.

РОМАНТИЗМ И КОНСТРУКТИВИЗМ В ПОЛЬСКОМ ТЕАТРЕ 1920-1930-Х ГОДОВ

In the 1920-1930s, Polish theatre was experiencing a turn to new comprehension of the practice of stage space organization – the art of scenography was developing. It replaced the practice of creating theatrical decorations for garnishing the play and constituting the background for the action. The new scenography declared itself to be an art of the stage space composing. The development of new theatrical practice was influenced by constructivist spatial and rhythmical perception of environment, which Polish artists were improving in close cooperation with avant-garde architects. A similar approach to the stage design is common for the whole European theatre in the first decades of XX century, however the distinction of theatrical avant-garde in Poland came out as a special reference of the culture to its past and in particular to the romanticism heritage. Polish theatrical avant-garde, which came at restoration of independence time, was developing on overlap of the national myth and new unexplored freedom. Artists of the first half of XX century managed to disengage from the romantic myth only in some measure, but instead of resetting the national heroes and their heritage from the ship of modernity they turned to search for the new forms to embody that matter. The article reviews Polish theatre of the 1920-1930-s in the context of Polish romantic tradition on the one hand and constructivism, promoted by new avant-garde artist collectives – on the other. As an example of integration of two movements, a brief description of the unique project of Simultaneous theatre, created by stage designer Andrzej Pronaszko and architect Szymon Syrkus is given.

Avant-Garde Egypt

Abstract This article opens with a discussion of contemporary avant-garde art, which according to many critics distinguishes itself by a turn to history, that is by a (seemingly paradoxical) backward-looking stance. Relativizing the ‘newness’ of this turn to history and the past in early twenty-first-century avant-garde art, the article then unearths the early twentieth-century avant-garde’s often neglected fascination with cultures that historically predate that of Europe. Zooming in on the historical avant-garde’s widespread interest in ancient Egypt in particular, the article highlights the “anarcheological impulse” that may well characterize the treatment of the (long-gone) past in all avant-garde exploits, be they early twentieth or twenty-first-century.

The Peripheral Avant-Garde Artist, Part of and Apart from Europe

Abstract This article deals with the building of an avant-garde identity in a peripheral European country by returning to a mythical past placed in Egypt. It focuses on the main promoter of Futurism in Portugal, Almada Negreiros, and on how his African roots played a part in the splitting of the self, a phenomenon that at the time was discussed widely in Fernando Pessoa’s circle and which Pessoa himself so dramatically put into practice with the creation of heteronymous identities. It demonstrates how Almada’s heritage was at once an instrument to perform Otherness—that is, a means to construct an identity as civilisation’s Other—and a gateway to accessing the creative origin of all selves through the connecting cipher of ancient Egypt.

Picasso without Guernica: Mexico, 1944

The analysis of a temporary exhibition allows us to study how a particular project is inflected by cultural ideas (in this case also aesthetic ideas) and, above all, by cultural policies, i.e. museum practices and the socio-cultural and diplomatic contexts that explain the realization and morphology of a curatorial concept. In order to bring about an individual exhibition of exclusive works by Pablo Picasso in Mexico in 1944 a Society of Modern Art was founded, a private organization that copied the U.S. model of cultural mediation. This foundation was a product of bilateral financing by two powerful institutions, the Galería de Arte Mexicano owned by Inés Amor, and the MoMA, directed by Alfred H. Barr. Because of the political situation during the Second World War, the alliances between Mexico and the U.S. played a significant role. Based on a review of archival documentation and press articles of this period I attempt a reconstruction of the historical process of managing this temporary exhibition, understood as a spatial construction of political power in the collective imagination. This Mexican exhibition of works by an outstanding global artist has not been studied in terms of the messages and intentions conveyed by an ephemeral collection of objects that was deprived of its political anti-fascist dimension due to the exclusion of Guernica, which reduced it to an exhibition of avant-garde art. Guernica was not shown in Mexico for reasons that include U.S. anti-communism, Barr's desire to attract reflection towards the plastic values of Picasso's work and neutralize its potential for political resistance, and external conditions driven by internal struggles among Spanish Republicans.