UTOPIAN SEX: THE METAMORPHOSIS OF ANDROGYNOUS IMAGERY IN RUSSIAN ART OF THE PRE AND POSTREVOLUTIONARY PERIOD (original) (raw)
Visions, Wars, and Utopias of the Russian Avant-Garde
Experiment =, 2017
While the aspiration to harmony, utopian in its essence, became a distinctive feature in the particular vein of modernist aesthetics, interested in constructive principles, which came to the fore after the October Revolution in the early 1920s, another line, which will interest me the most in this essay, had been predominant during 1912-17, and developed in quite a different direction, striving for dystopia, dissonance, and the absurd. The metaphor of war in the pre-revolutionary avant-garde was paradigmatic to the concept of innovation and directly linked to the rather symbolic "destruction" of previous achievements. A deeper understanding of avant-garde ideology-on social, political, and aesthetic levels-appears when contextualized in relation to World War I. Natalia Goncharova's series of lithographs Misticheskie obrazy voiny [Mystical Images of War] (1914), Pavel Filonov's artist book Propeven o prorosli mirovoi [Canticle of World Flowering] (1915), Olga Rozanova's linocut portfolio Voina [War] (1916), and Aleksei Kruchenykh's album of collages Vselenskaia voina [Universal War] (1916) were among the most profound artistic responses to the war. These unique works represent three different artistic explorations of the theme, as reflected in neoprimitivist, futurist, and suprematist aesthetics.
Picturing Russia's Men: Masculinity and Modernity in 19th-Century Painting
Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020
There was a discontent among Russian men in the nineteenth century that sometimes did not stem from poverty, loss, or the threat of war, but instead arose from trying to negotiate the paradoxical prescriptions for masculinity which characterized the era. This book takes a vital new approach to this topic within masculinity and art historical studies by investigating the dissatisfaction that developed from the breakdown in prevailing conceptions of manhood outside of the usual Western European and American contexts. Drawing on a wide variety of source material, including previously untranslated letters, journals, and contemporary criticism, the book explores the deep structures of masculinity to reveal the conflicting desires and aspirations of men in the period.
The Concept of Life in Soviet Art History and Paintings of the 1920s 1
Zbornika radova Akademije umetnosti Srbije, 2023
The article explores the concept of life in Soviet art history of the 1920s, as well as in the Soviet expressionism in painting. The notion of life was examined both by the art historians of the State Academy of Art Science (GAkHN) who adhered the classical art tradition, and the formalists (literary and art theorists of the left front) focused on the reduction of aesthetic values in line with their utopian social program. The two groups understood life differently: as a motion par excellence, in the first case, and as a simplified form (primitivism), in the second. However, elements of both perspectives were implicitly present in modern artistic practice, which manifested in the phenomena of Soviet expressionism. The painters combined fluid pictorial substance, motion in compositions, and dramatic conflicts in the plot, on the one hand, and simplified ("primitive") forms on the other. Although paintings of Drevin, Gluskin, Golopolosov and other artists associated with this movement did not receive support from either the traditionalist art critics or the formalist group, all of them were immersed in the semiosphere of the time, equally nourished by its creativity. While they rejected modern expressionism, the art theorists paradoxically professed its principles.
The New Soviet Man With a Female Body: Mother, Teacher, Tractor Driver…
Acta Paedagogica Vilnensia
The “New Man” is a utopian concept that involves creating an ideal man and replacing the imperfect human being. The beginning of the ideas of creating the new man can be found in ancient Greece and Rome, in the works of utopians and educators, as well as in theological texts. Although this ideologeme as one of the constructs of modernity was fully formed by the end of the 19th century, the efforts to practically implement it are connected with the establishment of (para)totalitarianism. One of the best-known examples of such an attempt was the ambition to create the New Soviet Man. After giving up aspirations to create a perfect biological individual, in the long-term perfective, the main focus was laid on forming an ideologically correct New Man, a builder of communism. Education was seen as one of the key means of achieving this objective. Seeking to identify how the image of the New Man was reflected in the curriculum (primary in particular), 36 textbooks published between 1925–1...
Electronic Melbourne Art Journal
Suprematism's attempt to move beyond representation in painting coincided with an attempt to move beyond Russian Futurist poetry and literature. It was an attempt to go 'beyond zero'. In making that move, however, Kasimir Malevich, creator of suprematism, needed to develop from Russian Futurism-particularly that of Velimir Khlebnikov-working within the Russian avant-garde. Through his painterly reliance on the square, Malevich not only worked in concert with Futurists such as Khlebnikov but ultimately elaborated on a literary theory bound by the constraints of language. In essence, Malevich's Suprematism could not get 'beyond zero' until Khlebnikov's Futurism got him there. Inception At birth, there is nothing: a mind devoid of representational imagery. But children grow. Imagery mounts. Kasimir Malevich's project throughout the majority of his artistic life was to re-find that original purity. 'I have transformed myself in the zero of form', wrote the artist in 1915, 'and through zero have reached creation, that is, suprematism, the new painterly realism-nonobjective creation'. 1 Malevich's transformation-his ideological development-depended on contact with the Russian avant-garde and, specifically, the Russian Futurist poets of the early twentieth century. That dependence demonstrated the benefit of interdisciplinary collusion. 'I think that first of all art is that not everyone can understand a thing in depths', wrote Malevich in 1913, 'this is left only to the black sheep of time'. 2 Through his consistent painterly reliance on the square, Malevich not only worked in concert with the Futurist poets, but ultimately elaborated on a literary theory bound by the constraints of language. The Russian avant-garde community congealed into a recognizable entity between 1907 and 1908, and the distinct presence of Futurism emerged approximately two years later, including the poets Velimir Khlebnikov and Alexei Kruchenykh, as well as Vladimir Mayakovsky, Olga Rozanova, and the brothers David, Nikolai, and Vladimir Burliuk, among others. 3 Rozanova, a painter, enunciated a common theme
Maria Siniakova's Sensual Futurism
International Yaerbook of Futurism Studies, vol. 9 (2019). Ed. By Günter Berghaus, Oleh Illnitzkyj, Gabriella Imposti, Christina Lodder (=Special Issue on Russian Futurism), 119-153., 2019
This essay explores the work of the Ukrainian-Russian painter Maria Siniakova (in Ukrainian: Mariia Mykhailіvna Syniakova-Urechyna, Krasna Poliana 1890 or 98 – Moscow 1984) in the context of the Futurist movement in Ukraine and Russia. During the First World War until the early 1920s, the dacha of the Siniakov family, Krasnaia Poliana, became a refuge for left-wing artists and poets from Russia and nearby Kharkiv, a kind of artists’ colony with a uniquely creative atmosphere. These guests included Viktor (Velimir) Khlebnikov, Boris Pasternak, Nikolai Aseev, Grigori Petnikov, Mikhail Matiushin, Borys Kosarev, Vasyl’ Iermylov (Vasily Ermilov) and others. In the first part of this essay, the topos ‘Krasnaia Poliana’ is investigated in the poetry of Khlebnikov, Aseev and Pasternak. The second part focusses on Maria Siniakova's pastoral watercolours of the 1910s and early 1920s. They are interpreted as ‘sensual Futurism’, and particular attention is paid to the artist’s avant-garde attitude towards life, and in particular to free-body culture (nudism). I examine Siniakova’s contacts with the artist scene in Russia before the First World War and her involvement with the artistic milieu in Kharkiv in 1918-1921, before her move to Moscow. It is argued that a special discourse on Futurism was created in Kharkiv. Artist here sought to create a universal art of the future, with components such as Neo-Primitivism, folk art, Oriental art, as well as stylistic devices derived from Western art movements. The essay contributes to the appreciation of the rôle of women in Russian and Ukrainian Futurism, illustrated here by the example of Siniakova’s watercolours and her design of avant-garde books.
Gods Like Men: Soviet Science Fiction and the Utopian Self
2016
This essay deals with the representation of the New Man in Soviet sf. The New Man is the ideal subject whose creation was one of the central goals of Soviet civilization. Soviet sf reflects the ideological paradox underlying his aborted birth: the New Man was supposed to come into being as the culmination of the historical process and, at the same time, to negate the contingency and violence of history. The article focuses on the articulation of this paradox in the canonical works of Ivan Efremov and the Strugatsky brothers and analyzes such aspects of the New Man as anthropomorphism, gender, violence, and relation to the Other. This content downloaded from 131.111.184.22 on Wed, 22 Oct 2014 05:25:39 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Penetrating Men's Territory: Russian Avant-garde Women, Futurism and the First World War.
International Yearbook of Futurism Studies, ed. by G. Berghaus
This essay aims to shed light on a specific moment in the history of Futurism in Russia – the art produced by Russian avant-garde women artists who were engaged with Futurism during the First World War. Since the early 1910s, Russian Futurists, women no less than men, widely adopted the rhetoric of violence in their anti-establishment public actions and readily represented motifs of destruction and struggle in their visual work. However, the androcentric nature of a real war seriously challenged the spirit of gender egalitarianism that previously distinguished the Russian avant-garde. While the First World War became the first military conflict in modern Russian history to involve a considerable number of women in various war-related activities, the condition of total war did not facilitate in any serious degree the admission of women artists into the production of war art, which was traditionally a male domain. Yet, this situation of virtual exclusion did not prevent avant-garde women artists from engaging with subjects inspired by the events of the Great War. Moreover, as women were not expected, or invited, to take part in wartime propaganda, their art became less constrained by the ideological clichés and restrictions imposed by established wartime culture. As a result, works by women artists such as Natalia Goncharova, Olga Rozanova and Maria Siniakova, mark an important development in the history of Russian art. In their capacity of active creators, women produced unique artistic responses, displaying a subversion of both the mainstream war propaganda and the notorious Futurist fascination with the idea of " war – the sole cleanser of the world " .