Russian and Soviet Art: 1757-Present

Catalog description

This course will introduce the history of Russian and Soviet art, from the foundation of the Academy of Arts in 1757 to the present. Topics will include: the Russian empire and academic painting; the intelligentsia, serfs, and the professionalization of art; nineteenth-century critical realism and progressive politics; the impact of Slavic folk art and Orthodox iconography on modernism; the avant-garde: from rayonnism and cubofuturism to constructivism and suprematism; art and ideology in Soviet society; socialist realism and the return of figuration; sots-art, Moscow conceptualism, and late Soviet kitsch; capitalism and artistic practice in the age of Putin and the oligarchs; art activism and creative responses to the war in Ukraine. Threaded through the course will be analyses of the art and visual culture of the Caucasus (Georgia and Armenia) and Central Asia (Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan).