Vasily Koroteyev. Moscow Courtyard, 1927-1928
Many students of twentieth century Russian art say that the new era knows little about the culture of this past that is close by but ever receding further and further from us. Modernity confidently and enthusiastically speaks of art in the context of political history, but is unable to very clearly distinguish between different contexts or openly ignores them. It clearly does not experience any discomfort in agreeing with those descriptions of cultural history, with hierarchies and opinions that took shape during the previous century and were preserved as a strain of ideological clichés. In reality, art in Russia was a space of multidirectional cultural intentions, a complex system of inconsistent cultural projects that moved along contradictory headings but were deeply articulate; and it was in no way definitively determined by mere political significance. The predominance of normative, enkratic art means nothing; in culture, and particularly in Russian culture, the work of one person or several people who are moving against the current is incomparably more valuable than the torrent of acquiescent artistic productions. In addition, the new era hasn’t even a notion how great the number of masters is whose legacies, beginning in the 1920s and 30s, are involved with the amazing, eventful history of alternative art in Russia.
What is the history of alternative art? It is the attempt to make sense of culture’s positioning within the governmental bureaucratic system, that is, it is the project of opposing culture and government, which a significant part of the creative intelligentsia tries to formulate. That entity which speaks about culture and art from high podiums and in the broadly distributed press, and the thing under which many, many artists work – this is varied cultural programs, varied languages that avoid dialogue, and seemingly varied types of activity.
Twentieth century Russian artistic culture knows that the attempt to comprehend creative work as life itself, the attempt at independence, is necessarily expressed by evading dialogue with power. Art uncovered the means of emancipation from the conventionality of the political epoch within itself. This experiment required that art disappear from the field of vision of the bureaucratic apparatus, that it be hidden in the shadows and create its own, alternative life form and habitat. Many, many artists disappeared from the sight of their contemporaries; they left the exhibition halls, having told themselves that for the price of obscurity and solitude they could retain the right to say what they think and to not only speak about another’s value, but to create a different history and new cultural worlds, seeing in them a person who has claimed and glorified his or her freedom.
