INTRODUCTION
THE CULTURE OF THE STALIN ERA IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
1. René Descartes, Discours de la méthode (Paris, 1966), pp. 43–46.
2. On the history of sots art, see Sots-Art, Exhibiton Catalogue, The New Museum of Contemporary Art (New York, 1986).
CHAPTER ONE
THE RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE
1. Kazimir Malevich, “On the New Systems in Art,” in his Essays on Art, ed. Troels Andersen, trans. Xenia Glowacki-Prus and Arnold McMillan (Copenhagen, 1968), vol. 1, p. 85.
2. Kazimir Malevich, “Introduction to the Theory of the Additional Element in Painting,” in his The Non-Objective World, trans. from German by Howard Dearstyne (Chicago, 1959), pp. 18–20.
3. Quoted in Karsten Harries, “Das befreite Nichts,” in Durchblicke. Martin Heidegger zum 80. Geburtstag (Frankfurt am Main, 1970), p. 46. On the significance of white in Malevich, see p. 44.
4. Kazimir Malevich, “The Question of Imitative Art,” in Essays on Art, vol. 1, p. 174.
5. Malevich, “God Is Not Cast Down,” in Essays on Art, vol. 1, p. 188.
6. Ibid., p. 194.
7. Kazimir Malevich, Bespredmetnyi mir (original text), p. 7.
8. Ibid., p. 12.
9. Velimir Khlebnikov, “Zakon pokolenii,” in his Tvoreniia (Moscow, 1986), pp. 642–52.
10. Velemir Khlebnikov, “Nasha osnova,” in Tvoreniia, pp. 627–28.
11. See “Detstvo i iunost’ Kazimira Malevicha. Glavy iz avtobiografii khudozhnika,” in Jan Benedikt, ed., K istorii russkogo avan-garda (Stockholm, 1976), pp. 85–129.
12. Vladimir Solov’ev, “Obshchii smysl iskusstva,” in his Sobranie sochinenii (reprint, Brussels, 1966), vol. 6, p. 85.
13. B. Arvatov, “Language Creation (On ‘Transrational’ Poetry,” in Anna Lawton and Herbert Eagle, eds. and trans., Russian Futurism through Its Manifestoes, 1912–1928 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1988), pp. 217–32.
14. On the history of Russian constructivism, see Christina Lodder, Russian Constructivism (New Haven and London, 1983).
15. For the texts of these polemics, see Hubertus Gassner and Eckhart Gillen, Zwischen Revolutionskunst und sozialistischem Realismus (Cologne, 1979), pp. 52–56.
16. Quoted in Lodder, Russian Constructivism, pp. 98–99.
17. B. Arvatov, Iskusstvo i proizvodstvo (Moscow, 1926).
18. Ibid., p. 42.
19. Ibid., p. 9.
20. N. F. Chuzhak, “Pod znakom zhiznestroeniia,” LEF, no. 1 (1923): 12–39. On the history of the notion of “life-building,” see Hans Gunther, “Zhiznestroenie,” Russian Literature 20 (1986): 41–48.
21. Chuzhak, “Pod znakom zhiznestroeniia,” p. 36.
22. Solov’ev, “Obshchii smysl iskusstva,” p. 84. See also Viacheslav Ivanov, “Dve stikhii v sovremennom simvolizme,” in his Sobranie sochinenii (Brussels, 1979), Vol. 2, pp. 536–61.
23. Gassner and Gillen, Zwischen Revolutionskunst und sozialistischem Realismus, p. 286.
24. Chuzhak, “Pod znakom zhiznestroeniia,” p. 39.
25. Malevich, “God Is Not Cast Down,” p. 205.
CHAPTER TWO
THE STALINIST ART OF LIVING
1. V. I. Lenin, “Party Organization and Party Literature,” in his V.I. Lenin on Literature and Art (Moscow, 1978), p. 25.
2. On the history of the notion of “socialist realism,” see Hans Gunther, Die Verstaatlichung der Literatur (Stuttgart, 1984), pp. 1–10, and H. J. Schmitt and G. Schramm, eds., Sozialistische Realismuskonzeptionen. Dokument zum I. Allunionskongress der Sowjetschriftsteller (Frankfurt am Main, 1974).
3. S. Tretyakov, “From Where to Where,” in Lawton and Eagle, eds., Russian Futurism through Its Manifestoes, 1912–1928, pp. 206–207.
4. V. I. Lenin, “On ‘Proletkult’ and Proletarian Literature,” in V. I. Lenin on Literature and Art, pp. 167–69.
5. Aleksandr Bogdanov, “The Proletarian and Art,” in John E. Bowlt, ed. and trans., Russian Art of the Avant-Garde. Theory and Criticism, 1902–1934 (New York, 1976), pp. 176–77.
6. See Gunther, Die Verstaatlichung der Literatur, pp. 144–69.
7. Members of the group included M. Larionov, N. Goncharova, and I. Zdanevich. See B. Livshits, The One-and-a-Half-Eyed Archer (Newtonville, Mass., 1977).
8. Andrei A. Zhdanov, Essays on Literature, Philosophy, and Music (New York, 1950), pp. 88–89, 96.
9. G. Vinokur, “Revolutsionnaia frazeologiia,” LEF, no. 2 (1923): 109.
10. Ibid., p. 110.
11. G. Vinokur, “Futuristy—stroiteli iazyka,” LEF, no. 1 (1923): 204–13.
12. V. I. Lenin, “Critical Remarks on the National Question,” in V. I. Lenin on Literature and Art, pp. 88–102.
13. W. Kemenow, “Stellung und Bedeutung der Kunst und Literatur im gesellschaftlichen Leben,” Kunst und Literatur, no. 1 (1953): 28.
14. Ibid., p. 28.
15. W. Ketlinskaja, “Beim Studium des Materials des XIX. Parteitages,” Kunst und Literatur, no. 1 (1953): 39.
16. Kemenow, “Stellung und Bedeutung der Kunst und Literatur,” p. 31.
17. Ibid., p. 29
18. N. Dmitrieva, “Das Problem des Typischen in der bildenden Kunst,” Kunst und Literatur, no. 1 (1953): 100.
19. B. Ioganson, “O merakh uluchsheniia uchebno-metodicheskoi raboty v uchebnykh zavedeniiakh Akademii khudozhestv SSSR,” Sessii Akademii khudozhestv SSSR. Pervaia i vtoraia sessiia (Moscow, 1949), pp. 101–103.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Dimitrieva, “Das Problem des Typischen.”
23. A. M. Gerasimov, “Zakliuchitel’noe slovo [?]” Sessi Akademii khudozhestv SSSR, p. 270.
24. Ia. Tugendkhol’d, Iskusstvo oktiabor’skoi epokhi (Leningrad, 1930), p. 24.
25. Ibid., p. 24.
26. On will and passion in Stalinist aesthetics, see Igor Smirnov, “Scriptum sub specie sovietica,” Russian Language Journal 41, nos. 138, 139 (Winter–Spring 1987): 115–38, and V. Papernyi, Kultura 2 (Ann Arbor, 1985), pp. 119–70.
27. The heroes of Nikolai Ostrovskii’s How the Steel Was Tempered and Boris Polevoi’s A Story about a Real Man, respectively.
28. Tretyakov, “From Where to Where?” p. 206.
29. Quoted in Livshits, The One-and-a-Half-Eyed Archer.
30. Katerina Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (Chicago, 1981).
31. On the sacred dimension of Khlebnikov’s poetry, see Aage Hansen-Love, “Velimir Chlebnikovs Onomapoetik. Name und Anagramm” (manuscript).
32. Tugendkhol’d, Iskusstvo oktiabr’skoi epokhi, p. 31.
33. The texts on Lenin’s style are in LEF, no. 1 (5)(1924): 53–104.
34. See Clark, The Soviet Novel, pp. 141–45, and A. Siniavskii, “Stalin—geroi i khudozhnik stalinskoi epokhi,” Sintaksis, no. 19 (1987): 106–25.
35. L. Reingardt, “Po tu storonu zdravogo smysla. Formalizm na sluzhbe reaktsii,” Iskusstvo, no. 5 (1949): 77–78.
36. Cf. Martha Rosler, “Lookers, Buyers, Dealers, and Makers: Thoughts on Audience,” in Brian Wallis, ed., Art after Modernism: Rethinking Representation (New York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984), pp. 311–40.
37. N. Dmitrieva, “Esteticheskaia kategoriia prekrasnogo,” Iskusstvo, no. 1 (1952): 78.
CHAPTER THREE
POSTUTOPIAN ART
1. Cf. B. Groys, “Der Paradigmawechsel in der Sowjetischen inoffiziellen Kultur,” in D. Beyrau and W. Eichwede, eds., Auf der Suche nach Autonomie (Bremen, 1987), pp. 53–64.
2. Livshits, The One-and-a-Half-Eyed Archer. See also Rodchenko’s vehemently “anti-Western” letters from Paris in “Rodchenko v Parizhe,” Novyi LEF, no. 2 (1927): 9–21.
3. For reproductions of Bulatov’s works, see Katalog Erik Bulatow (Kunsthalle Zurich, 1988). See Boris Groys’s interview with Bulatov in A-Ia, no. 1 (1979): 26–33.
4. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (Aphorism 125), in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York, 1980), p. 95.
5. Kazimir Malevich, “From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Painterly Realism,” in John E. Bowlt, ed., Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism, 1902–1934 (London, 1988), p. 118.
6. Erik Bulatov, “Ob otnoshenii Malevicha k prostranstvu,” A-Ia, no. 5 (1983): 26–31.
7. B. Grois, “Kartina kak tekst: ‘Ideologicheskoe iskusstvo’ Bulatova i Kabakova,” Wiener Slawistischer Almanakh 17: 329–36.
8. B. Grois, “Albomy Il’i Kabakova,” A-Ia, no. 2 (1980): 17–22. For reproductions and a general description, see Katalog Ilya Kabakov “Am Rande” (Kunsthalle Bern, 1985).
9. Il’ia Kabakov, “Semidesiatie gody” (manuscript).
10. Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago, 1982), p. 18.
11. Cf. the title of Kabakov’s Bern exhibition, “Am Rande.”
12. Jacques Derrida, The Truth in Painting, trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chicago and London, 1987), pp. 60–61.
13. On the function of white in Kabakov, see A-Ia, no. 6 (1984).
14. For reproductions and a general introduction, see Melvyn B. Nathanson, ed., Komar & Melamid: Two Soviet Dissident Artists (Carbondale, Ill., 1979), and Komar and Melamid, Museum of Modern Art Catalogue (Oxford, 1985).
15. V. Komar and A. Melamid, “A. Ziablov (Etiud dlia monografii,” in Russica-81. Literaturnyi sbornik (New York, 1982), p. 408.
16. Ibid., p. 404.
17. Ibid., p. 407.
18. Cf. Komar and Melamid’s Yalta 1945—Winter in Moscow 1977, in Documenta 8 (Kassel, 1987), vol. 2, pp. 132–33.
19. Interview with Noemi Smolik, Wolkenkratzer, no. 6 (1987): 48–53.
20. D. Prigov, Literaturnoe A-Ya (Paris, 1985), pp. 84–94.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. See, for example, Jouri Mamleiev, Chatouny (Paris, 1986), and two of his stories in Akzente, no. 3 (1988): 244–59.
25. V. Sorokin, “Otkrytie sezona,” in Literaturnoe A-Ya (Paris, (1985), pp. 60–62.
26. V. Sorokin, “Proezdom,” in Literaturnoe A-Ya (Paris), pp. 65–67.
27. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington, Ind., 1984), pp. 162–64.
28. V. Sorokin, “Norma” (manuscript).
29. Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevskii’s Poetics, ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis, 1984), pp. 140–42.
30. Sasha Sokolov, Palisandriia (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1985). For discussions of the novel, see Olga Matich, “Palisandriia: Dissidentskii mif i ego razvenchanie,” Sintaksis, no. 15 (1986): 86–102; I. S. “Nepoznavaemyi sub”ekt,” Beseda, no. 6 (1987): 127–43; A. Zholkovskii, “Vliublennye nartsissy o vremeni i o sebe,” Beseda, no. 6 (1987): 144–77.
31. The hero’s name evokes a wide range of associations: the author’s name Aleksandr; Alexandria and its eclecticism (an allusion that is further reinforced through the form Polysandria); and the Russian word for rosewood (palisandr), a symbol of the aristocratic tradition.
32. Cf. B. Groys, “Im Banne der Supermachte: Die Künstler in Moskau und New York,” Durch, no. 2 (Graz, 1987), pp. 55–63.
33. Jacques Derrida, D’un ton apocalyptique adoptie naguere en philosophie (Paris, 1983), pp. 84–85.
34. “Eric Bulatov and Ilya Kabakov in Conversation with Claudia Jolles and Victor Misiano,” Flash Art, no. 137 (November-December 1987): 82–83.
CHAPTER FOUR
DESIGNERS OF THE UNCONSCIOUS AND THEIR AUDIENCE
1. Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (New York, 1987), p. 142.
2. Ibid., p. 146.
3. Ibid., p. 147.
4. Ibid., pp. 147–48.
5. Frederic Jameson, The Political Unconscious (Ithaca, N.Y., 1981), p. 285.
6. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, The “Anti-Oedipus” (New York, 1977), p. 109.