Text by John Milner, Natalia Murray, Nick Murray, Masha Chlenova, Ian Christie, John E. Bowlt, Nicoletta Misler, Zelfira Tregulova, Faina Balakhovskaya, Evgenia Petrova, Christina Lodder.
One hundred years after the Russian Revolution, this comprehensive survey explores all aspects of its groundbreaking art
One hundred years after the Russian Revolution, Revolution: Russian Art, 1917–1932 explores one of the most momentous periods in modern world history through its groundbreaking art. The October Revolution of 1917 ended centuries of Tsarist rule and left artists such as Malevich, Tatlin, Popova and Rodchenko urgently debating what form a new “people’s art” would take.
Painting and sculpture were redefined by Kandinsky’s boldly innovative compositions, Malevich’s dynamic abstractions and the Constructivists’ attempts to transform art into technical engineering. Photography, architecture, film and graphic design also experienced revolutionary changes. These debates were definitively settled in 1932, when Stalin began to suppress the avant-garde in favor of Socialist Realism—collective in production, public in manifestation and Communist in ideology.
Based around a remarkable exhibition shown in Leningrad’s State Russian Museum in 1932—which was to be the swansong of avant-garde art in Russia—this volume explores that revolutionary 15-year period between 1917 and 1932 when possibilities seemed limitless and Russian art flourished across every medium. Published to accompany a major exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (the first to attempt to survey the entire artistic landscape of post-Revolutionary Russia), Revolution explores the painting, sculpture, photography, film, poster art and product design of the years after the Russian Revolution.
Including contributions from some of the most prominent scholars in the field (John Milner, Natalia Murray, Nick Murray, Masha Chlenova, Ian Christie, John E. Bowlt, Nicoletta Misler, Zelfira Tregulova, Faina Balakhovskaya, Evgenia Petrova and Christina Lodder), Revolution is a timely and authoritative exploration of both the idealistic aspirations and the harsh realities of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath.
The Royal Academy exhibition explores both the cutting-edge abstract art that Stalin repressed and the socialist realism that he championed, presenting the works together, some for the first time in the UK, to showcase what the museum calls “both the idealistic aspirations and the harsh reality of the Revolution and its aftermath.
The Telegraph
Alastair Sooke
Revolution’s three curators do a marvellous job of marshalling their material, presenting the history of the early Soviet era in a lucid and compelling fashion. Stylishly designed, the show proceeds with verve, and has a lovely flow. It also contains several mesmerising works of art.
The Telegraph
Alastair Sooke
We leave the exhibition shuddering at the thought that, once again, we live in unpredictable times, dominated by leaders with autocratic tendencies in both East and West. This is history made resonant and relevant.
The Evening Standard
Ben Luke
The standard Western view of post-revolution Russian art is binary: the bold abstraction of the suprematists and constructivists of the early years (good) versus the leaden figuration of Stalinist socialist realism (bad). But this show explores the nuances and complexities between them, as artists competed aggressively to emblematise the brave new Soviet world.
Euronews
Estelle Lovat
This encapsulates a certain period in Russia that you just don’t get from textbooks. There’s nothing more powerful than the artist painting what’s going on in the world around him and the fact that artists are seen to be as powerful as soldiers, with their paintbrush using a visual type of propaganda, especially when most of the population were illiterate. It’s through the visual arts that a message is passed.
The Guardian
Laura Cumming
But this is no display of communist propaganda. What makes Revolution such a momentous, even historic exhibition is that it brings together all of the art from that period. Not just the Soviet dross – socialist realist utopias, hymns to mechanisation and films of peasants waiting gratefully for the arrival of the first steam train – but the art of the avant garde too. It is the first time we have been able to see the art of the Revolution whole.
The Wall Street Journal
Mary Tompkins Lewis
groundbreaking ...explores the deeply political contexts that shaped Russian art of every aesthetic stripe in the rapidly changing period between the rise of the Bolsheviks at the Russian Revolution’s outset and Joseph Stalin’s brutal crackdown of 1932.
The Wall Street Journal
Mary Tompkins Lewis
Incorporating painting, sculpture, architecture, filmmaking, ceramics and popular ephemera, it offers a highly informative, brilliantly comprehensive, and cautionary case study of how art and politics can interact in an age of increasingly authoritarian rule.
The Independent
Karen Wright
This is a hugely ambitious show with loans obtained from Russia that you will never have seen and many that you will not see again.
Time Out London
Eddy Frankel
So much of the art on display is not just beautiful, but essential….What you’re watching unfold across these walls is more than just art, it’s the death of hope. The revolution started with a belief in the power of change and excitement for the future. That was slowly crushed under the weight of civil war, famine and oppression. This, right here, is art losing its beauty and becoming a tool of the state.
Artfix Daily
The exhibition features Avant-Garde artists such as Chagall, Kandinsky, Malevich and Tatlin alongside the Socialist Realism of Brodsky, Deineka, Mukhina and Samokhvalov, amongst others. It presents this unique period in the history of Russian art, when for fifteen years, barriers were opened and the possibilities for building a new proletarian art for the new Soviet State were extensive.
Studio International
Francesca Wade
a fascinating interrogation of the relationship between art and politics, and a serious indictment of the dangers of disrupting the balance.
Studio International
Francesca Wade
By juxtaposing a huge number of works (from an impressively wide range of media), which express both approaches, the exhibition provides an intriguing and rare insight into the dialogue between art and politics, the individual and the state, freedom of expression and the pull of ideology.
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What a moment for a book about the art, photography, film, poster art and product design produced in Russia between Lenin's October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and Stalin's 1932 decree that all art should express Soviet ideology. Yes, this book includes the films of Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein, the architectural plans and projects of El Lissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko's Constructivist photographs and abstract paintings by Malevich and Kandinsky. But it also contains a figurative painting of a women shot-putter, kitchenware with Suprematist compositions, food coupons, a kerchief commemorating the Second Congress of the Trekhgornaya Textile Workers, and porcelain figurines of women doing heroic commonplace things like embroidering a banner, making a speech and standing guard on a Women's Watch. Featured on this spread is a detail of Isaak Brodsky's 1919 oil painting, "Vladimir Lenin and a Demonstration," from the collection of the State Historical Museum, Moscow. continue to blog
Published to accompany the blockbuster exhibition currently on view at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, this superbly made catalog is a must-have for anyone interested in art, history, revolution, the avant-garde or plain old Russia. "Incorporating painting, sculpture, architecture, filmmaking, ceramics and popular ephemera, it offers a highly informative, brilliantly comprehensive, and cautionary case study of how art and politics can interact in an age of increasingly authoritarian rule," in the words of Wall Street Journal art writer Mary Tompkins Lewis. Featured spread contains a detail of Gregory Petrusov's "Caricature of Alexander Rodchenko" (c. 1933-4), gelatin silver print, Alex Lachmann Collection, London. continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.75 x 11.75 in. / 320 pgs / 350 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $39.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $55 ISBN: 9781910350430 PUBLISHER: Royal Academy Publications AVAILABLE: 4/25/2017 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA ONLY
Published by Royal Academy Publications. Text by John Milner, Natalia Murray, Nick Murray, Masha Chlenova, Ian Christie, John E. Bowlt, Nicoletta Misler, Zelfira Tregulova, Faina Balakhovskaya, Evgenia Petrova, Christina Lodder.
One hundred years after the Russian Revolution, this comprehensive survey explores all aspects of its groundbreaking art
One hundred years after the Russian Revolution, Revolution: Russian Art, 1917–1932 explores one of the most momentous periods in modern world history through its groundbreaking art. The October Revolution of 1917 ended centuries of Tsarist rule and left artists such as Malevich, Tatlin, Popova and Rodchenko urgently debating what form a new “people’s art” would take.
Painting and sculpture were redefined by Kandinsky’s boldly innovative compositions, Malevich’s dynamic abstractions and the Constructivists’ attempts to transform art into technical engineering. Photography, architecture, film and graphic design also experienced revolutionary changes. These debates were definitively settled in 1932, when Stalin began to suppress the avant-garde in favor of Socialist Realism—collective in production, public in manifestation and Communist in ideology.
Based around a remarkable exhibition shown in Leningrad’s State Russian Museum in 1932—which was to be the swansong of avant-garde art in Russia—this volume explores that revolutionary 15-year period between 1917 and 1932 when possibilities seemed limitless and Russian art flourished across every medium. Published to accompany a major exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (the first to attempt to survey the entire artistic landscape of post-Revolutionary Russia), Revolution explores the painting, sculpture, photography, film, poster art and product design of the years after the Russian Revolution.
Including contributions from some of the most prominent scholars in the field (John Milner, Natalia Murray, Nick Murray, Masha Chlenova, Ian Christie, John E. Bowlt, Nicoletta Misler, Zelfira Tregulova, Faina Balakhovskaya, Evgenia Petrova and Christina Lodder), Revolution is a timely and authoritative exploration of both the idealistic aspirations and the harsh realities of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath.
