Russian postmodernism

Last updated

Russian postmodernism refers to the cultural, artistic, and philosophical condition in Russia since the downfall of the Soviet Union and dialectical materialism. With respect to statements about post-Soviet philosophy or sociology, the term is primarily used by non-Russians to describe the state of economic and political uncertainty they observe since the fall of communism and the way this uncertainty affects Russian identity. 'Postmodernism' is, however, a term often used by Russian critics to describe contemporary Russian art and literature. [1] [2] [3] [4]

Contents

Artistic and literary origins

In art, postmodernism entered the Soviet Union in the 1950s after the end of the Stalinist move toward liberalization with the advent of the Russian conceptualist movement. Beginning as an underground political-artistic move against the use of Socialist realism as a method of social control and becoming a full-fledged movement with the Moscow Conceptualists, Russian conceptualism used the symbolism of Socialist realism against the Soviet government. Its representatives were artists Ilya Kabakov, Irina Nakhova, Viktor Pivovarov, Eric Bulatov, Andrei Monastyrski, Komar and Melamid, poets Vsevolod Nekrasov  [ ru ], Dmitri Prigov, Lev Rubinstein, Timur Kibirov, and writer Vladimir Sorokin. [5] [6]

The members of Lianozovo Group formed in 1958 and named after the small village Lianozovo outside Moscow, were its leader, the artist and poet Evgenii Kropivnitsky  [ ru ], the artists Olga Potapova , Oscar Rabin, Lidia Masterkova, Vladimir Nemukhin, Nikolai Vechtomov, and the poets Igor Kholin, Vsevolod Nekrasov, and Genrikh Sapgir. [7]

The Metarealists, namely metaphysical realists, in the 1970s–90s unofficial postmodern Soviet and Russian poetry, who all used complex metaphors which they called meta-metaphors. Their representatives are Konstantin Kedrov, Elena Katsyuba, Elena Shvarts, Ivan Zhdanov, Vladimir Aristov, Aleksandr Yeryomenko, Yuri Arabov, and Alexei Parshchikov. [8] [9]

Members

Literature

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Russian literature</span>

Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia, its émigrés, and to Russian-language literature. Major contributors to Russian literature, as well as English for instance, are authors of different ethnic origins, including bilingual writers, such as Kyrgyz novelist Chinghiz Aitmatov. At the same time, Russian-language literature does not include works by authors from the Russian Federation who write exclusively or primarily in the native languages of the indigenous non-Russian ethnic groups in Russia, thus the famous Dagestani poet Rasul Gamzatov is omitted.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mikhail Epstein</span> Russian-American literary scholar and essayist

Mikhail Naumovich Epstein is a Russian-American literary scholar, essayist, and cultural theorist best known for his contributions to the study of Russian postmodernism. He is the Emeritus S. C. Dobbs Professor of Cultural Theory and Russian Literature at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. His writings encompass Russian literature and intellectual history, the philosophy of religion, the creation of new ideas in the age of electronic media, semiotics, and interdisciplinary approaches in the humanities. His works have been translated into over 26 languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Lipovetsky</span>

Mark Naumovich Lipovetsky is a Russian literary, film, and cultural critic who advocates the position that postmodernism is replacing socialist realism as the dominant art movement in Russia. His major interests include 20th century Russian literature, Russian postmodernism, fairy-tales, Mikhail Bakhtin's carnival, and totalitarian and post-communist cultures.

Soviet nonconformist art was Soviet art produced in the former Soviet Union outside the control of the Soviet state started in the Stalinist era, in particular, outside of the rubric of Socialist Realism. Other terms used to refer to this phenomenon are Soviet counterculture, "underground art" or "unofficial art".

Metarealism is a direction in Russian poetry and art that was born in the 1970s to the 1980s and includes such poets as Konstantin Kedrov, Viktor Krivulin, Elena Katsyuba, Elena Shvarts, Ivan Zhdanov, Aleksandr Yeryomenko, Svetlana Kekova, Yuri Arabov, Alexei Parshchikov, Sergei Nadeem. Nikolai Kononov, among others. The term was first used by Mikhail Epshtein, who coined it in 1981 and made it public in the Soviet magazine "Voprosy Literatury" in 1983

Post-postmodernism is a wide-ranging set of developments in critical theory, philosophy, architecture, art, literature, and culture which are emerging from and reacting to postmodernism.

The Moscow Conceptualist, or Russian Conceptualist, artistic and literary movement began with the Sots art of Komar and Melamid in the early 1970s Soviet Union, and continued as a trend in Soviet nonconformist art into the 1980s. It attempted to subvert socialist ideology using the strategies of western conceptual art and appropriation art. It was an artistic counterpoint to Socialist Realism, and the artists experimented aesthetically in a wide range of media, including painting, sculpture, performance, and literature. As Joseph Bakshtein explained, "The creation of this nonconformist tradition was impelled by the fact that an outsider in the Soviet empire stood alone against a tremendous state machine, a great Leviathan that threatened to engulf him. To preserve one's identity in this situation, one had to create a separate value system, including a system of aesthetic values."

Dmitry Yevgenyevich Galkovsky is a Russian conspirolog writer, journalist, philosopher and blogger. He is best-known as the author of the novel The Infinite Deadlock.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dmitri Prigov</span> Russian writer, artist, and Soviet dissident

Dmitri Aleksandrovich Prigov was a Russian writer and artist. Prigov was part of the unofficial Moscow Conceptualists during the era of the Soviet Union and was briefly sent to a psychiatric hospital in 1986.

Post-theism is the belief that the belief in a god belongs to a previous stage of human development and, thus, a division of theism vs. atheism is obsolete. It is a variant of nontheism. The term appears in liberal Christianity and post-Christianity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexei Khvostenko</span> Russian musician and poet (1940-2004)

Alexei Khvostenko was a Russian avant-garde poet, singer-songwriter, artist and sculptor. Khvostenko is also frequently referred to by the nickname Khvost, meaning "tail".

The Andrei Bely Prize is the oldest independent literary prize awarded in Russia. It was established in 1978 by the staff of Hours, the largest samizdat literary journal in Leningrad, to recognize excellence in three categories: prose, poetry, and theory. Among its founders were Boris Ivanov, Boris Ostanin, Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, and other eminent figures of uncensored literature. The prize was named for Andrei Bely, whose influence spanned Russian poetry, prose, and humanitarianism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mikhail Natarevich</span> Russian painter

Mikhail Davidovich Natarevich was a Soviet, Russian painter who lived and worked in Leningrad; he was a member of the Leningrad Union of Artists, and was regarded as one of the brightest representatives of the Leningrad School of Painting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nadezhda Shteinmiller</span> Russian artist (1915–1991)

Nadezhda Pavlovna Shteinmiller was a Russian Soviet realist painter, graphic artist, art teacher, scenographer, and stage designer who lived and worked in Leningrad. She was a member of the Leningrad Union of Artists, regarded as one of the leading representatives of the Leningrad School of Painting.

Zlata Nikolaevna Bizova was a Russian Soviet realist painter and graphic artist, who lived and worked in Saint Petersburg. She was a member of the Saint Petersburg Union of Artists and is regarded as one of representatives of the Leningrad school of painting.

The year 1962 was marked by many events that left an imprint on the history of Soviet and Russian Fine Arts.

The following lists events that happened during 1938 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

References

  1. Epstein, Mikhail (1995). After the Future: The Paradoxes of Postmodernism and Contemporary Russian Culture . Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN   0870239732.
  2. Epstein, Mikhail; Genis, Alexander; Vladiv-Glover, Slobodanka (2016) [1999]. Russian Postmodernism: New Perspectives on Post-Soviet Culture. Translated by Slobodanka Vladiv-Glover (Rev. ed.). New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books. ISBN   978-1-78238-864-7.
  3. Perloff, Marjorie (January 1993). "Russian Postmodernism: An Oxymoron?". Postmodern Culture . 3 (2). doi:10.1353/pmc.1993.0018. S2CID   144239001.
  4. Kahn, Andrew; Lipovetsky, Mark; Reyfman, Irina; Sandler, Stephanie (2018). A History of Russian Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN   9780199663941. pp. 693–94.
  5. Kahn et al. 2018, pp. 631–35.
  6. Schwartz, Leonard (1998). Post-modern Moscow Poetry. New York: Poetry Project Newsletter.
  7. Tupitsyn, Victor (2009). The Museological Unconscious: Communal (post)modernism in Russia. MIT Press. p. 35. ISBN   978-0-262-20173-5.
  8. Epstein, Genis & Vladiv-Glover 2016, pp. 169–176, Theses on Metarealism and Conceptualism.
  9. Kahn et al. 2018, pp. 639–41.
  10. Watten, Barrett (January 1993). "Post-Soviet subjectivity in Arkadii Dragomoshchenko and Ilya Kabakov". Postmodern Culture . 3 (2). doi:10.1353/pmc.1993.0018. S2CID   144239001.