Dialectics Of The Soviet Avant-Garde In The First Exhibition Of Ukrainian Nonconformist Art
Author | : Stephanie R. Dvareckas |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 85 |
Release | : 2019 |
ISBN-10 | : OCLC:1102602987 |
ISBN-13 | : |
Rating | : 4/5 (87 Downloads) |
Book excerpt: This thesis examines the First Exhibition of Ukrainian Nonconformist Art, considering the connotations of radicality in the avant-garde and when those meaning might pivot. The First Exhibition of Ukrainian Nonconformist Art was held in a Moscow apartment in 1975. Utilizing ancient motifs from the Byzantium and Kieven Rus’ periods, the artists in the exhibition asserted the preeminence of Ukrainian cultural heritage in a nationalist gesture. Considering how conservative nationalism functioned in the First Exhibition of Ukrainian Nonconformist Art, this thesis contemplates the imperialist imposition on Ukraine beginning with the 1654 Treaty of Pereiaslav. It continues to review the expansionist tendencies of Russia in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries ultimately recognizing the Soviet Union as extending early Russification policies. In reviving cultural traditions, this thesis asserts that the artists in the First Exhibition of Ukrainian Nonconformist Art sought authentic Ukrainianess. Appealing to collective memory and shared Ukrainian tradition, the artists attempted to resist absorption into Russian culture. Manifesting a shared community, the artists transmitted cultural history through visual storytelling, conjuring cultural preservation against oppression. In this thesis, I argue that in subverting their current structural orders, the artists destabilized fixed conceptions of the revolutionary and the nationalist inherent in the historical understanding of the avant-garde.