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  • EXH: A Revolutionary Impulse: The Rise of the Russian Avant-Garde

    EXH: A Revolutionary Impulse: The Rise of the Russian Avant-Garde

    A Revolutionary Impulse: The Rise of the Russian Avant-Garde; curated by Roxana Marcoci and Sarah Suzuki with Hillary Reder; Museum of Modern Art, NYC, through March 12

    Review by Roann Barris, Radford University

    One might be excused for thinking that the entry sign to the exhibition is one of the art works in the show. The assertive, sans serif lettering, which increases in scale, and the angled parallelogram with a circle at its end, speak to the dynamic sense of velocity created by the art of the Russian avant-garde. This economy of design is also seen in El Lissitzky’s cover of Wendingen: barely four forms, two lines, and the title angled between the lines and oriented in the same direction as the grey rectilinear slab. The thin lines continue from the front cover to the back. Indeed, one of the most exciting features of this exhibition is the ample inclusion of such print works, which also includes an array of LEF magazine covers, books designed by Lissitzky, and illustrations by Olga Rozanova. Of course, one cannot overlook the wall of marvelous movie posters by the Stenberg brothers or the room of movies where the films of Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, and others, are continuously projected.

    Upon entering the exhibition, two things are especially striking: first, the extent of MoMA’s holdings in Russian art is a veritable history of the avant-garde. Simply stunning in its depth and quality, much of it is never on view. We know that Alfred Barr began collecting Russian art on his trip to Russia in the late 1920s, but less widely known is the degree to which this collection continued to grow throughout the twentieth century. A second and equally strong impression is one of synergy. Regardless of medium and artist, there is a recognizable direction of development. There is nothing random or haphazard about the evolution of Constructivism and Suprematism. Yet, isn’t this how we tend to think of it: as an avant-garde that is not held together by style because the artists affirmed that they were against style? Perhaps this show teaches us that style in this case refers to an attitude about velocity, angularity, a sense of dynamism, and most important, about the communication of ideas through composition.

    The New York Times art critic, Roberta Smith, welcomed this show for another, but equally important, reason. In her December 9 assessment of the exhibition, she noted the role of this exhibition as marking a revolutionary change in how the Museum of Modern Art chooses to display its art. Thus, she concludes that a second revolutionary impulse can be observed–-one which, in this case, suggests an approach to exhibitions that is broad, pulls on the entire collection of the Museum, and enables visitors to see just how the synergy I described previously characterized this moment in Russian art.

    The graphic design media may be the most impressive works of all. Although they are not likely to look very different in real life, rarely do we have the opportunity to see so many copies of the radical LEF journal laid out in one place at the same time. Another high point is seeing so many works by one artist together on a single wall or filling a room – the Lissitzky Proun room, for example, and the wall of prints by Lyubov Popova. The individual works may not be newly surprising (although in Popova’s case, they are), but it increases their resonance when so many are seen together. Surely, the artists themselves were aware of this effect as they worked in series.

    A viewer unfamiliar with Russian art is in for an exciting surprise. The visitor who has devoted years to studying this period will also be surprised in a different way – namely by that feature of resonance and the almost dizzying profusion of seeing so many works of Russian art in one place.

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    A Revolutionary Impulse: The Rise of the Russian Avant-Garde is on view at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, December 3, 2016-March 12, 2017.

    Roann Barris, a professor of art history and Art Department chair, has long been interested in Russian theater and graphic design. Not long ago, she returned to Moscow where she reexamined the materials she had used in her doctoral research on Russian constructivism, and revised much of what she had originally believed.

  • Exhibition: A Revolutionary Impulse: The Rise of the Russian Avant-Garde at MoMA

    Exhibition: A Revolutionary Impulse: The Rise of the Russian Avant-Garde at MoMA

    Exhibition: A Revolutionary Impulse: The Rise of the Russian Avant-Garde at MoMA

    On December 3, 2016, the exhibition “A Revolutionary Impulse: The Rise of the Russian Avant-Garde” opened at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; it will be on view until 12 March 2017. The exhibition traces the arc of the pioneering Russian avant-garde from its earliest flowering in 1912 to the moment of the Stalinist decree in 1934. Bringing together almost 300 breakthrough objects across mediums from MoMA’s extraordinary collection, the exhibition, planned in anticipation of the centennial of the Russian Revolution, probes the myriad ways that an object can be revolutionary.

    The exhibition will be complemented by a public program “The Russian Avant-Garde: Scholars Respond” on February 8, 2017 from 6-8pm. Admission is free but a reservation is required.

  • Resource: post: An Online Resource for Art and the History of Modernism in a Global Context, from MoMA

    Resource: post, an online resource devoted to art and the history of modernism in a global context from The Museum of Modern Art.

    With a primary focus on modern and contemporary art outside North America and Western Europe, this website features contributions by individuals and institutions from around the world and makes behind-the-scenes research at MoMA available to a broader public. Essays, interviews, travel research reports, artists’ commissions, archival materials, translated sources, and bibliographies reflect perspectives emerging from leading scholars and curators around the world. post is the public face of Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives (C-MAP), the cross-departmental, internal research program at MoMA that fosters the multiyear study of art histories outside North America and Western Europe. There are currently three C-MAP research groups, focusing on Asia, Latin America, and Central and Eastern Europe.

    Recent content on Central and Eastern European art includes but is not limited to:

    The OHO Group, “Information,” and Global Conceptualism avant la lettre by Ksenya Gurshtein

    Cold War Modern: Mid-century designer Raymond Loewy’s work in the US and the USSR by Juliet Kinchin and Alexandra Sankova

    Species of Spaces in Eastern European and Latin American Experimental Art by Klara Kemp-Welch

    Please have a look into the resources available on post, as they make excellent supplements to modern and contemporary art courses with a global focus.