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Non-Official Art: Soviet Artists of the 1960s
The 1960s in Soviet Russia can be compared to the peak period of the radical Russian avant-garde of the 1920s. It was not the literati or philosophers but the community of artists who became the epicentre of the developing culture, reorienting creative goals away from pure aesthetics towards political pragmatism. Social programmes were conceived within the context of art and even poetry became enmeshed within the sphere of politics. New values crystallised, a spirit of global awareness began to permeate Soviet culture and 'non-official' art flowered as part of the spirit of the times.
120 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 1995
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July 31, 2019
This book consists mostly of reproductions of art works (paintings, sculptures, assemblages) produced in the former USSR in the 1960s - at the time of the youth quake in the West - but several decades into the "take-over" of the art world by various styles of modern art (Surrealism, Dadaism, Cubism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Conceptual Art - to name a few). That is, the sort of art that was usually decried by Soviet authorities starting in the era of Stalin as decadent: Non-objective art, or any of the other styles that diverged from the realist "canon" or as interpreted in Russia by the Soviet leadership, Socialist Realism. Although there had been an initial sublime upsurge of creativity, avant garde art & design, in post revolutionary Russia, it was suppressed in the decade of the 1920s after Stalin took over. Unlike Lenin, Stalin did not have a particularly cultured background, and perhaps the imposition of his conservative ideas of realist artistic standards - Socialist Realism - was predictable. It was art in the service of the state - akin to propaganda, rather than art as free expression which might include art criticizing or ironically skewering the state.
Modern art was condemned by the Soviet authorities starting from the 1920s as decadent and bourgeois. Stalin wanted art that could be understood by the masses, that carried a positive social message and that extolled the achievements of Russian socialism, rather than art that to him seemed cryptic or self-absorbed. Anything that questioned the status quo, such as ironic art, was rejected - perhaps it would have been viewed as "dangerous."
Today we tend to mock Socialist Realist art as kitsch or ridiculous, but some Russian realist art was high quality, and represented a continuation of the academic tradition (which of course modern art overturned).
Unfortunately, the Soviet leadership's dictates crushed artistic creativity and experimentation in Russia for about several decades, effectively putting the country into an artistic prison because they viewed the alternative as a threat.
This book therefore, records the first glimmers of "rebellious" or "Westernized" artists in Russia - the resurrection of the avant garde after its destruction under Stalinism - trying to get a foothold in the art scene, although at first they were denied gallery space etc. and one early outdoor exhibit was even bulldozed by the authorities.
The art works that are pictured in the book were apparently mostly produced in crowded living spaces that doubled as studios, living spaces that were often shared with others. And so they were created under conditions that were intimately linked to apartment life. Others are imaginative non-objective works of art.
The straight-jacket with respect to art reflected the leadership's wish to not allow the citizens to be "infected" with nonconformist Western ideas. Gorbachev wanted to reform the USSR - but it was already too late: Support for the system, which had rigidly suppressed free expression for decades, wasn't there, and the USSR disintegrated.
Here are some quotes from Erofeev's book-length essay which accompanies the reproductions of the works of art in the book:
"Toward the end of this historical period, in the mid-1970s, quite a different picture can be seen: society, contaminated by nihilism and criticism, viewed the values on which it was built and according to which it existed with sarcasm (a turn which left the leftist intellectuals in the West flabbergasted). Everything proclaimed by the authorities was rejected out-of-hand, while whatever they renounced was passionately endorsed, as if in a childish spirit of contradiction. The ever-growing worship of the fairyland of the West resulted it the rejection of everything Soviet --be it ideas, objects or behavioral patterns. It took a further 20 years for this type of mentality to burst out of the boundaries of the intellectual and capital-city circles and permeate all walks of life in the empire, finally depriving the regime of any serious support and chance of survival."
"Both in the 1920s and in the 1960s...it was artists who were the first to grasp the spirit of the times. They were the first to reorient creative activities in the 1920s from purely aesthetic goals to political pragmatism."
"...the luxury of Independence was first of all granted to the elite, who enjoyed the right of access to broader information (Western periodical press and books supplied through specialized book-distributing agencies), to an expanded range of entertainment and to individual whims, queer fancies and caprices. Thus Kemenov, Vice-President of the USSR Academy of Fine Arts, used to demonstrate his love of Impressionism and Symbolism before his friends at home, and even hung the works of Marquet and Benois in his study, while, in public he never tired of deriding them, often making short shrift of their young fans in his department."
"...the social conscience is finely illustrated by the famous 'carnival' concept developed by Mikhail Bakhtin, a concept that was acclaimed far and wide at the turn of the 1970s. Bakhtin held that during a carnival, people are not just indifferent spectators of a performance; they take part in this performance, where life is turned inside out. 'The laws, bans and restrictions, which defined the structure and order of ordinary - that is non-carnival - life are lifted for the term of the carnival; eliminated to begin with are the hierarchical system and all forms of fear, awe, piety, etiquette, and the like, which are connected with it.' In ordinary, everyday life, in the rooms of communal flats, the 'world turned inside out', the carnival principle of 'life turned the wrong side out' was acknowledged, and looked like blasphemous, paranoid behavior. Any kind of monistic conscience, whether true to orthodox Communist or, vice versa, to religious dogmas in any area of existence, seems to be infantile and uncultured."
"There was no market for works of art in the country, and practically no collectors of artistic works, so pictures, piled up in overcrowded rooms, were sold for a song or given as a gift to friends."
"The generation of spiritually crushed avant-gardists of the Stalinist era and of cultured artists in general, who were in contact with the historical movement of modernism, had long since dispersed all around the world, and there were no longer any links with them. The artists succumbed to the sensation of a complete and hopeless loneliness, which still reigned in their souls even when they became free, first in the West and, later, here in Russia as well."
"Typical of the avant-gardists' mentality and behavior were opposition to official art, dissociation from aesthetic cliches imposed by the authorities, provocation and rebelliousness, as well as Bohemianism. The same features were inherent in the Russian artists who belonged to the 1960s Underground. This is why their fans and critics, and not infrequently the artists themselves, began to present non-official art as a variety of avant-gardism, as a hard, torturous activity aimed at resurrecting the Modernist artistic school that had been devastated during the Stalinist era."
"Any work that had an unquestionably individualized form was counter-posed to the collective, anonymous principle in art; it could even be a traditional one, as long as it epitomized personal freedom and a departure from submission and obedience."
"Religion, mysticism, philosophy, cultural pursuit, sociology, branches of knowledge which were all under a ban during the reign of despotism, were now being resurrected in the context of individual creative concepts of the artists working within this trend."
"The late 1950s works of Vladimir Slepyan, Boris Turetski and Yuri Zlotnikov....are in fact a type of color-and-rhythm composition, which act as signals upon the human organism centers..."
"It was no accident that their interest in 'museum' art coincided with the emergence of American Pop Art and its European counterparts onto the world scene. The Moscow Underground interpreted this as a betrayal of culture for the sake of playing up to the vulgar vernacular of everyday life, as bowing to the worst traditions of commonplace conservatism typical of Central Europe. The rift between the human stand and the artistic principles of the 'non-conformists' became ever wider."
"...to provide a non-official image of reality, to cast a glance at it through the eyes of ordinary people; but we also see that the artists, like foreigners, kept a safe distance from this by means of delicate stylistics, and shut themselves off from the miasma of everyday life by painting, using it as a form of protective mask."
"It was only after the oppressive impact of a beggarly existence and hopeless dilettantism, flaws that were so painful for the Underground, were removed by means of satirical reflection and proclaimed to be cultural values that the basis appeared for the inception of genuine avant-gardism, adequate both to the artist's personality and the epoch of modern creativity in the Soviet Union."
Modern art was condemned by the Soviet authorities starting from the 1920s as decadent and bourgeois. Stalin wanted art that could be understood by the masses, that carried a positive social message and that extolled the achievements of Russian socialism, rather than art that to him seemed cryptic or self-absorbed. Anything that questioned the status quo, such as ironic art, was rejected - perhaps it would have been viewed as "dangerous."
Today we tend to mock Socialist Realist art as kitsch or ridiculous, but some Russian realist art was high quality, and represented a continuation of the academic tradition (which of course modern art overturned).
Unfortunately, the Soviet leadership's dictates crushed artistic creativity and experimentation in Russia for about several decades, effectively putting the country into an artistic prison because they viewed the alternative as a threat.
This book therefore, records the first glimmers of "rebellious" or "Westernized" artists in Russia - the resurrection of the avant garde after its destruction under Stalinism - trying to get a foothold in the art scene, although at first they were denied gallery space etc. and one early outdoor exhibit was even bulldozed by the authorities.
The art works that are pictured in the book were apparently mostly produced in crowded living spaces that doubled as studios, living spaces that were often shared with others. And so they were created under conditions that were intimately linked to apartment life. Others are imaginative non-objective works of art.
The straight-jacket with respect to art reflected the leadership's wish to not allow the citizens to be "infected" with nonconformist Western ideas. Gorbachev wanted to reform the USSR - but it was already too late: Support for the system, which had rigidly suppressed free expression for decades, wasn't there, and the USSR disintegrated.
Here are some quotes from Erofeev's book-length essay which accompanies the reproductions of the works of art in the book:
"Toward the end of this historical period, in the mid-1970s, quite a different picture can be seen: society, contaminated by nihilism and criticism, viewed the values on which it was built and according to which it existed with sarcasm (a turn which left the leftist intellectuals in the West flabbergasted). Everything proclaimed by the authorities was rejected out-of-hand, while whatever they renounced was passionately endorsed, as if in a childish spirit of contradiction. The ever-growing worship of the fairyland of the West resulted it the rejection of everything Soviet --be it ideas, objects or behavioral patterns. It took a further 20 years for this type of mentality to burst out of the boundaries of the intellectual and capital-city circles and permeate all walks of life in the empire, finally depriving the regime of any serious support and chance of survival."
"Both in the 1920s and in the 1960s...it was artists who were the first to grasp the spirit of the times. They were the first to reorient creative activities in the 1920s from purely aesthetic goals to political pragmatism."
"...the luxury of Independence was first of all granted to the elite, who enjoyed the right of access to broader information (Western periodical press and books supplied through specialized book-distributing agencies), to an expanded range of entertainment and to individual whims, queer fancies and caprices. Thus Kemenov, Vice-President of the USSR Academy of Fine Arts, used to demonstrate his love of Impressionism and Symbolism before his friends at home, and even hung the works of Marquet and Benois in his study, while, in public he never tired of deriding them, often making short shrift of their young fans in his department."
"...the social conscience is finely illustrated by the famous 'carnival' concept developed by Mikhail Bakhtin, a concept that was acclaimed far and wide at the turn of the 1970s. Bakhtin held that during a carnival, people are not just indifferent spectators of a performance; they take part in this performance, where life is turned inside out. 'The laws, bans and restrictions, which defined the structure and order of ordinary - that is non-carnival - life are lifted for the term of the carnival; eliminated to begin with are the hierarchical system and all forms of fear, awe, piety, etiquette, and the like, which are connected with it.' In ordinary, everyday life, in the rooms of communal flats, the 'world turned inside out', the carnival principle of 'life turned the wrong side out' was acknowledged, and looked like blasphemous, paranoid behavior. Any kind of monistic conscience, whether true to orthodox Communist or, vice versa, to religious dogmas in any area of existence, seems to be infantile and uncultured."
"There was no market for works of art in the country, and practically no collectors of artistic works, so pictures, piled up in overcrowded rooms, were sold for a song or given as a gift to friends."
"The generation of spiritually crushed avant-gardists of the Stalinist era and of cultured artists in general, who were in contact with the historical movement of modernism, had long since dispersed all around the world, and there were no longer any links with them. The artists succumbed to the sensation of a complete and hopeless loneliness, which still reigned in their souls even when they became free, first in the West and, later, here in Russia as well."
"Typical of the avant-gardists' mentality and behavior were opposition to official art, dissociation from aesthetic cliches imposed by the authorities, provocation and rebelliousness, as well as Bohemianism. The same features were inherent in the Russian artists who belonged to the 1960s Underground. This is why their fans and critics, and not infrequently the artists themselves, began to present non-official art as a variety of avant-gardism, as a hard, torturous activity aimed at resurrecting the Modernist artistic school that had been devastated during the Stalinist era."
"Any work that had an unquestionably individualized form was counter-posed to the collective, anonymous principle in art; it could even be a traditional one, as long as it epitomized personal freedom and a departure from submission and obedience."
"Religion, mysticism, philosophy, cultural pursuit, sociology, branches of knowledge which were all under a ban during the reign of despotism, were now being resurrected in the context of individual creative concepts of the artists working within this trend."
"The late 1950s works of Vladimir Slepyan, Boris Turetski and Yuri Zlotnikov....are in fact a type of color-and-rhythm composition, which act as signals upon the human organism centers..."
"It was no accident that their interest in 'museum' art coincided with the emergence of American Pop Art and its European counterparts onto the world scene. The Moscow Underground interpreted this as a betrayal of culture for the sake of playing up to the vulgar vernacular of everyday life, as bowing to the worst traditions of commonplace conservatism typical of Central Europe. The rift between the human stand and the artistic principles of the 'non-conformists' became ever wider."
"...to provide a non-official image of reality, to cast a glance at it through the eyes of ordinary people; but we also see that the artists, like foreigners, kept a safe distance from this by means of delicate stylistics, and shut themselves off from the miasma of everyday life by painting, using it as a form of protective mask."
"It was only after the oppressive impact of a beggarly existence and hopeless dilettantism, flaws that were so painful for the Underground, were removed by means of satirical reflection and proclaimed to be cultural values that the basis appeared for the inception of genuine avant-gardism, adequate both to the artist's personality and the epoch of modern creativity in the Soviet Union."
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