Realism and the Avant-Garde in Russian Art

Catalog description

The concept of the avant-garde is considered by some to be synonymous with Modernism; the radical move away from classical forms of representation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is typical of how one understands the avant-garde. In Russia, the experiments in art from the mid 1890s through 1922 are seen as extreme departures from art practices of the earlier 19th century. Although this art is very often described, like other western art of the period, in terms of form rather than with regard to its ideological content, students will examine the avant-garde’s social and, therefore, political underpinnings in addition to its formal qualities. In order to get to the roots of an earlier understanding of the avant-garde, we find in its beginnings the writings of Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, and Olinde Rodrigues. In Russia the artists who painted images that represented the social world, and therefore put themselves in opposition to the status quo, were known as the Peredvizhniki. Students will connect this group of artists to the Russian formal and political avant-garde of the early 20th century and to the latter non-conformist artists of the second half of the 20th century that coincides with Perestroika and the eventual demise of the Soviet Union.