The genealogy of Natasha Arendt’s works can be traced back to the Russian neo-primitivist tradition which is one of the most exciting art movements in Russian history. This tradition is present in today’s post-conceptual art scene as an attempt to research the different elements of the superficies, or the external aspects, of “folk art”. It examines and systemizes the methods used by the Soviet and post-Soviet Russian culture in the second half of the twentieth century, when it tries to aestheticize it’s everyday life, to be attractive and to comprehend what is beauty.

One can’t help feeling ironic about this search for beauty, but at the same time it certainly calls for sympathy. It seems that it is bound to reproduce the cliches that the naive decorative artist either totally ignores or, on the contrary, deliberately replicates viewing it as some aesthetic standard, as beauty itself.

Many posterior art movements will work with visual and ideological cliches, but all of them will end up becoming cliches themselves, turning into cultural standards and easily identifiable elements of style. Analytical methods metamorphose into gimmicks and that’s what happenned to futurism, suprematism, constructivism and other clearly stated form-building concepts.

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