Review
Soviet Dissident Artists: Interviews After Perestroika
Women artists news, v 21(4), p13
31 Mar 1996
Abstract
For the last 15 years I have been perplexed by the "difference" do many of these artists signify. Not having lived under the harness of communism does not give me, or anyone else, the luxury to hypothesize on why or how Soviet socialism went wrong. Indeed, [Chagall], Lissitzky, Ryback, Altman, Gabo, and Anna Kagin, all Jews, supported the Revolution only to be denounced, jailed, or killed by [Stalin] as he amassed and centralized power. The Soviets practically destroyed Russian culture. Thereafter, "formalism," "naturalism," "primitivism," "stylization" were seen as "crimes against the people." Anti-Soviets were characterized as "Westernizers," "hooligans," and "parasites." After the so-called "Khrushchev Thaw," in the 1960s, unofficial artists - those not in the artists' union - could paint what they chose to and exhibit as long as it was in their own apartments. They could buy art supplies with barters, brides, or through friends. They faced down and argued with their KGB "case workers." And through it all the seemed most of all preoccupied with selling their work. It is no wonder that they described themselves as "barbarians and crazies," and characterized other artists as "a bunch of impotents" whose art is "nonsense" and whose forms are "hopeless and powerless." One artists told me, "it's a dog-eat-dog society - either eat or get eaten."
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Details
- Title
- Soviet Dissident Artists: Interviews After Perestroika
- Creators
- Elliott Barowitz
- Publication Details
- Women artists news, v 21(4), p13
- Publisher
- Midmarch Arts Press; New York
- Resource Type
- Review
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Nesbitt College of Design Arts (1985-2001); Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design
- Other Identifier
- 991022020139704721