Reframing Russian Art and CultureThe Soviet Photograph, 1924-1937 by Margarita Tupitsyn; Common Places: Mythologies ofEveryday Life in Russia by Svetlana BoymReview by: Marek BartelikArt Journal, Vol. 56, No. 4, Performance Art: (Some) Theory and (Selected) Practice at theEnd of This Century (Winter, 1997), pp. 90-93Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/777733 .

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America: California Modernist Art, 1900-1950 rescues from obscurity many lesser-known artists and art forms (mural painting, "visual music," and experimental film; architecture and photog- raphy are also discussed). Unlike the first book, these ten essays "concentrate on 'progressive' developments" in order to narrow the book's

scope (Paul J. Karlstrom, 4), although Bram Dijk- stra's essay covers some of the same women

artists, including Bothwell, Shore, Pelton, and Helen Forbes, as Independent Spirits.

ather than regionalism, On the Edge of America grapples with the concept of

modernism. Throughout there is a subtle antag- onism toward the East Coast and the assumption that modernism happened only in New York. Editor Paul J. Karlstrom, the highly respected West Coast Regional Director of the Archives of American Art, lays the blame on the expansion of art history studies at American universities in the 1960s, which focused on developments in

90 New York. Because of this bias, the authors of the essays endeavor to redefine modernism in

inclusive, thought-provoking ways that resonate

beyond regional studies. For author Richard Candida Smith, modernism is not simply "elite

experimentalism," but a multileveled, broad- based phenomenon, a cultural shift in thinking based on scientific method (Candida Smith, 21-22). This revision allows for the accommoda- tion of Sabato Rodia and his Watts Towers as models of modernism. On the other hand, Susan Landauer defines modernism as cataclysmic and

chaotic-essentially a response to war-which

justifies her focus on the effects of World War II on California painters. Her attempt to enlist the ascetic abstractions of John McLaughlin is the least successful, although the tortured, expres- sionistic canvases of Hans Burkhardt and Frank Lobdell are definitely served by her interpreta- tion. Dismissing Richard Diebenkorn's "pastel confections," Landauer recalls Lobdell's war- induced nightmares: "The horror and nausea of such experiences are powerfully conveyed in an untitled work circa 1948 that suggests torn limbs

dripping with blood" (Landauer, 58), the gorier the better.

In the next essay, Gray Brechin defines modern art as antiacademic in order to explain its association by conservatives with commu-

nism, since it "did not support the social order and the state" (Brechin, 69). Brechin's analysis reminds us of what modernism meant in the

1950s, before it was appropriated by Clement

Greenberg, whose formulation has since been

accepted as definitive. In Brechin's account of the government hearings on Anton Refrigier's San Francisco post office murals, a federal art

project, there is an unremarked-upon analogy to the Tilted Arc affair, although Brechin recognizes

America: California Modernist Art, 1900-1950 rescues from obscurity many lesser-known artists and art forms (mural painting, "visual music," and experimental film; architecture and photog- raphy are also discussed). Unlike the first book, these ten essays "concentrate on 'progressive' developments" in order to narrow the book's

scope (Paul J. Karlstrom, 4), although Bram Dijk- stra's essay covers some of the same women

artists, including Bothwell, Shore, Pelton, and Helen Forbes, as Independent Spirits.

ather than regionalism, On the Edge of America grapples with the concept of

modernism. Throughout there is a subtle antag- onism toward the East Coast and the assumption that modernism happened only in New York. Editor Paul J. Karlstrom, the highly respected West Coast Regional Director of the Archives of American Art, lays the blame on the expansion of art history studies at American universities in the 1960s, which focused on developments in

90 New York. Because of this bias, the authors of the essays endeavor to redefine modernism in

inclusive, thought-provoking ways that resonate

beyond regional studies. For author Richard Candida Smith, modernism is not simply "elite

experimentalism," but a multileveled, broad- based phenomenon, a cultural shift in thinking based on scientific method (Candida Smith, 21-22). This revision allows for the accommoda- tion of Sabato Rodia and his Watts Towers as models of modernism. On the other hand, Susan Landauer defines modernism as cataclysmic and

chaotic-essentially a response to war-which

justifies her focus on the effects of World War II on California painters. Her attempt to enlist the ascetic abstractions of John McLaughlin is the least successful, although the tortured, expres- sionistic canvases of Hans Burkhardt and Frank Lobdell are definitely served by her interpreta- tion. Dismissing Richard Diebenkorn's "pastel confections," Landauer recalls Lobdell's war- induced nightmares: "The horror and nausea of such experiences are powerfully conveyed in an untitled work circa 1948 that suggests torn limbs

dripping with blood" (Landauer, 58), the gorier the better.

In the next essay, Gray Brechin defines modern art as antiacademic in order to explain its association by conservatives with commu-

nism, since it "did not support the social order and the state" (Brechin, 69). Brechin's analysis reminds us of what modernism meant in the

1950s, before it was appropriated by Clement

Greenberg, whose formulation has since been

accepted as definitive. In Brechin's account of the government hearings on Anton Refrigier's San Francisco post office murals, a federal art

project, there is an unremarked-upon analogy to the Tilted Arc affair, although Brechin recognizes that the controversy lay in Refrigier's content rather than in his forms or style. Dijkstra also that the controversy lay in Refrigier's content rather than in his forms or style. Dijkstra also

emphasizes the nonformal components of pre- Greenbergian modernism in contrast to "the technical conventions of academic realism and its insistence on 'pedagogic content'-on the facile description of 'philosophic' subject matter

expressive of middle-class values" (Dijkstra, 164-65). In this contentious but thoughtful essay, Dijkstra claims that southern California

painters Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Lorser Feitelson are more well known than artists such as San Diego landscape painter Charles Reiffel because of postwar critical biases. To her credit, however, Susan M. Anderson does a respectable job of covering those better-known figures, along with the best brief analysis of the Dynaton group I have encountered, elsewhere in the book. According to Dijkstra, California attracted loners and individualists intentionally isolating themselves from the cliques and trends of New

York, an issue still relevant today and pertinent not only to artists who live on the West Coast. Thomas Hart Benton's anecdote about Macdon-

ald-Wright's move to California in 1919, "Tired of 'chasing art up the back alleys of New York,' he 'departed for the nut state"' (Dijkstra, 159),

humorously conveys the thrust of Dijkstra's cogent argument.

he book emphasizes the variety of influ- ences shaping the art of California. Peter

Selz discusses the significances of Galka Schey- er's patronage of German art and Diego Rivera's

presence in the Bay Area. Along with Brechin and Margarita Nieto, Selz acknowledges Rivera's influence on the development of the Public Works of Art Project, which was so active and beneficial in Depression-era California. Nieto's

subject is the influence of Mexican art and artists on Angelenos in the 1920s and 1930s, a fruitful

period of exchange now often ignored. Throughout the book, film is tantalizingly

mentioned as the only unique form of modern art that became closely identified with California in the public's imagination, yet it is not until the next-to-last essay that we encounter an analysis of it, and then it is experimental film rather than

Hollywood cinema that is the subject. The enthusiasm of author William Moritz, as he

breathlessly rushes from artist to artist and invention to invention, is contagious. There is a

lengthy discussion of Oskar Fischinger's abstract films and the problem of the relationship of visu- al imagery to music. Like Fischinger, James and John Whitney were sponsored by Baroness Hilla

Rebay, who purchased and screened their films at the Museum of Non-Objective Painting. Rebay's support was also extended to Charles Dockum and his MobilColor Projector, or color

organ, with which he performed in southern Cal- ifornia and New York. Moritz argues for a con- nection between experimental film and Abstract

emphasizes the nonformal components of pre- Greenbergian modernism in contrast to "the technical conventions of academic realism and its insistence on 'pedagogic content'-on the facile description of 'philosophic' subject matter

expressive of middle-class values" (Dijkstra, 164-65). In this contentious but thoughtful essay, Dijkstra claims that southern California

painters Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Lorser Feitelson are more well known than artists such as San Diego landscape painter Charles Reiffel because of postwar critical biases. To her credit, however, Susan M. Anderson does a respectable job of covering those better-known figures, along with the best brief analysis of the Dynaton group I have encountered, elsewhere in the book. According to Dijkstra, California attracted loners and individualists intentionally isolating themselves from the cliques and trends of New

York, an issue still relevant today and pertinent not only to artists who live on the West Coast. Thomas Hart Benton's anecdote about Macdon-

ald-Wright's move to California in 1919, "Tired of 'chasing art up the back alleys of New York,' he 'departed for the nut state"' (Dijkstra, 159),

humorously conveys the thrust of Dijkstra's cogent argument.

he book emphasizes the variety of influ- ences shaping the art of California. Peter

Selz discusses the significances of Galka Schey- er's patronage of German art and Diego Rivera's

presence in the Bay Area. Along with Brechin and Margarita Nieto, Selz acknowledges Rivera's influence on the development of the Public Works of Art Project, which was so active and beneficial in Depression-era California. Nieto's

subject is the influence of Mexican art and artists on Angelenos in the 1920s and 1930s, a fruitful

period of exchange now often ignored. Throughout the book, film is tantalizingly

mentioned as the only unique form of modern art that became closely identified with California in the public's imagination, yet it is not until the next-to-last essay that we encounter an analysis of it, and then it is experimental film rather than

Hollywood cinema that is the subject. The enthusiasm of author William Moritz, as he

breathlessly rushes from artist to artist and invention to invention, is contagious. There is a

lengthy discussion of Oskar Fischinger's abstract films and the problem of the relationship of visu- al imagery to music. Like Fischinger, James and John Whitney were sponsored by Baroness Hilla

Rebay, who purchased and screened their films at the Museum of Non-Objective Painting. Rebay's support was also extended to Charles Dockum and his MobilColor Projector, or color

organ, with which he performed in southern Cal- ifornia and New York. Moritz argues for a con- nection between experimental film and Abstract

Expressionist painting through Jackson Pollock's

presence at the screenings, a relationship that is Expressionist painting through Jackson Pollock's

presence at the screenings, a relationship that is

more interesting for its possible effects on Pollock's work than it is as a legitimization of art films and visual music.

On the Edge of America evolved from

symposia on southern and northern California art

sponsored by the Archives of American Art. The book is a hefty volume, with heavy covers, good paper, and an unfortunately dense design. Text, block quotes, captions, and footers are barely dis-

tinguished, so that the reader may turn a page and be momentarily confused. Students and scholars will most likely consult individual essays, for research purposes rather than leisure reading. Where Peter Plagens's irreplaceable Sunshine Muse: Contemporary Art on the West Coast (New York: Praeger, 1974) provides one man's

story of California's sometimes kooky, sometimes

angst-ridden developments, and Independent Spirits is destined for the coffee table, On the

Edge of America is a treasure trove of scholarly information and multiple narratives.

more interesting for its possible effects on Pollock's work than it is as a legitimization of art films and visual music.

On the Edge of America evolved from

symposia on southern and northern California art

sponsored by the Archives of American Art. The book is a hefty volume, with heavy covers, good paper, and an unfortunately dense design. Text, block quotes, captions, and footers are barely dis-

tinguished, so that the reader may turn a page and be momentarily confused. Students and scholars will most likely consult individual essays, for research purposes rather than leisure reading. Where Peter Plagens's irreplaceable Sunshine Muse: Contemporary Art on the West Coast (New York: Praeger, 1974) provides one man's

story of California's sometimes kooky, sometimes

angst-ridden developments, and Independent Spirits is destined for the coffee table, On the

Edge of America is a treasure trove of scholarly information and multiple narratives.

FRANCES COLPITT is associate professor of art history and criticism at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She

emigrated from California in 1990.

Reframing Russian Art and Culture

MAREK BARTELIK

Margarita Tupitsyn. The Soviet Photograph, 1924-1937. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. 198 pp.; 25 color ills., 140 b/w.

$40.00

Svetlana Boym. Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994. 356 pp.; 23 b/w ills. $22.95 paper

he collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s opened the doors to archives for Russian and Western scholars alike. Thus,

primary sources formerly accessible only to a few

privileged art historians are now part of the public domain. The vast artistic production of the Soviet

avant-garde, for years dormant in the storerooms of Soviet museums, has finally been made avail- able for exhibitions and for public scrutiny.

As if anticipating further political changes in the former Soviet Union, studies of twentieth-

century Russian and Soviet art and culture have

grown quantitatively and qualitatively with

impressive speed since the 1980s. Extending beyond an initial focus on the avant-garde, cur- rent scholarship reaches into the later decades of the century, including Socialist Realist production

FRANCES COLPITT is associate professor of art history and criticism at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She

emigrated from California in 1990.

Reframing Russian Art and Culture

MAREK BARTELIK

Margarita Tupitsyn. The Soviet Photograph, 1924-1937. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. 198 pp.; 25 color ills., 140 b/w.

$40.00

Svetlana Boym. Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994. 356 pp.; 23 b/w ills. $22.95 paper

he collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s opened the doors to archives for Russian and Western scholars alike. Thus,

primary sources formerly accessible only to a few

privileged art historians are now part of the public domain. The vast artistic production of the Soviet

avant-garde, for years dormant in the storerooms of Soviet museums, has finally been made avail- able for exhibitions and for public scrutiny.

As if anticipating further political changes in the former Soviet Union, studies of twentieth-

century Russian and Soviet art and culture have

grown quantitatively and qualitatively with

impressive speed since the 1980s. Extending beyond an initial focus on the avant-garde, cur- rent scholarship reaches into the later decades of the century, including Socialist Realist production

WINTER 1997 WINTER 1997

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previously labeled by such formalist critics as Clement Greenberg as ideologically charged kitsch.1 More recently, a growing number of scholars have begun to examine Soviet Concep- tualism of the 1970s and 1980s, including works

by artists such as llya Kabakov, Komar and

Melamid, and Eric Bulatov, interpreting this movement as a stylistic formation that brought back to Soviet art the originality of the early twentieth-century avant-garde.

Today, studies of Russian and Soviet artistic production are a collective effort of Russ- ian and Western scholars liberated from the bureaucratic constraints imposed by the Soviet

system.2 However, while the gap between

methodological approaches favored (or

imposed) in Russia and the West-a one-party- line-formalism versus adversarial pluralism- seems to narrow, the "ideological" departure point for the critical evaluation of Soviet avant-

garde practice, in particular, in large part remains

diametrically opposed to the one embraced in the West. The Russian writer and philosopher Boris Groys illuminates this dichotomy: "It deserves to be noted that Soviet attitudes toward the avant-garde continue even today to reflect its dual isolation from both the state and the opposition. In the context of the Western

museum, the Russian avant-garde may be highly regarded as one original artistic phenomenon among others, but in the Soviet Union its claims to exclusiveness and its almost realized ambi- tions to destroy traditional cultural values have not been forgotten." In other words, Groys sug- gests that for Russians, in contrast to Western-

ers, the early twentieth-century avant-garde has been generally viewed as closely allied with Communism-turned-Stalinism. He concludes: "Aside from a few enthusiasts gravitating towards the West and Western scholarly notions, therefore, even today the resurrection of the avant-garde is universally regarded as

unnecessary and undesirable."3

Margarita Tupitsyn and Svetlana Boym belong to the small, but growing, number of Russian "enthusiasts" who endorse the major significance of their native art and culture, while

approaching it from a multicultural perspective. As Russian-born, Western-trained scholars

(Tupitsyn teaches at Rutgers, Boym at Harvard), their cross-cultural work combines extensive

familiarity with current Western critical discourse and firsthand knowledge of the connections between art and life in both the former Soviet Union and present-day Russia. Their writings serve as self-reflective mirrors of historical data, critically evaluated in the extended context of direct Soviet and Russian experience.

s a major study of Soviet photography in the 1920s and 1930s, the importance of Tupit-

syn's The Soviet Photograph, 1924-1937 cannot be overestimated. The book, the end product of

the author's doctoral investigations, provides a close analysis of a variety of works of art and an

intriguing discussion of criticism from the period. Beautifully structured, it avoids the linearity of traditional surveys and is rich in high-quality photographs, some published for the first time. As in her previous writings, Tupitsyn's story of the development of Soviet photography leans on the critical writings of Western scholars, though much more selectively than in the past. Howev-

er, her critical stance relies perhaps too heavily on a celebratory meta-narrative of the heroic

development of Soviet art in the 1920s and 1930s-a judgment embraced by many Western academics that Tupitsyn's earlier writings and exhibitions have helped to foster.

Tupitsyn has been reluctant to join Groys in refusing to draw a firm line between early avant-garde production and work made after Stalin had inherited Lenin's political power. That line can be drawn by the end of 1927-and

especially after the official imposition of guide- lines for Socialist Realism in the early 1930s. The

guidelines were followed by the Great Purges, whose casualties included artists labeled "the

enemies of Soviet photography." Tupitsyn extends her investigation to 1937, the year that the second Five-Year Plan was completed and that Socialist Realism was strictly imposed. She

argues that "the function of the photographic image between 1924 and 1937 exemplifies the last 'great experiment' in the search for an effec- tive connection between art, radical politics, and the masses" (8).

The emphasis on the importance of the Soviet avant-garde in the eyes of both artists and

politicians serves Tupitsyn as a rhetorical spring- board for making connections between art and

politics but also alludes indirectly to the ethos of the Soviet artist as demurrer, giving him or her license for serious historical consideration. This

approach to the vast amount of material pre- sented in her book is delineated in the opening sentences of the introduction, in which Tupitsyn describes Lenin's unannounced visit to VKhUTEMAS in the winter of 1921, during which "[The artist] Sen'kin and Lenin became involved in a heated conversation about art and

politics" and "Sen'kin argued that 'old artists cheat themselves and others when they claim

ART JOURNAL

91

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92

Mark Shteinbok, Bird's Eye View of Arbat Street, 1991.

that they have mastered representation; nobody has, but we are all trying to master it, for our

goal is to link art with politics and we will

inevitably do that"' (2). The five chapters that comprise Tupit-

syn's book include: "Lenin's Death and the Birth of Political Photomontage," "The Photographer in the Service of the Collective," "Photo-Still versus Photo-Picture: The Politics of (De)Fram-

ing," "Debating the Photographic Image," and "The Restructuring of a Photographer." The first

chapter is in large part devoted to Gustav Klutsis and Sergei Sen'kin's photomontages, tracing their connections with Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein's techniques of film montage, as well as with the critical writings of, among others, Boris Eikhenbaum, Viktor Shklovskii, and Osip Brik. Tupitsyn opposes Klutsis's and Sen'kin's

ways of linking "effective political art with for- malist inventiveness" (which she calls "the for-

malist-sociological method") to Aleksandr Rodchenko's formalist attitude "to keep the ren-

dering of strictly political imagery separate from the rest of the iconographic arsenal" (34).

In chapter two, the author discusses works by Rodchenko, Klutsis, and El Lissitzky, using Brik's criticism as particularly attuned to artistic experiments during the early years of the first Five-Year Plan. Further advancing her argu- ment that Klutsis and Sen'kin pioneered the

transformation of Soviet photography from the model of the single-frame still, she suggests that "finished works of art produced to exist by themselves" were reconceived as "disposable objects composed during the process of making agitational posters and magazines" (63). In the next chapter, its title derived from Brik's essay "The Photo-Still versus the Picture," Tupitsyn compares Klutsis's photomontages and Elizar

Langman's photo-reportages with what she calls Rodchenko and Boris Ignatovich's "factomon-

tages." She places them in the context of the method of "deframing" (decadrage), a term introduced by Gilles Deleuze to designate an abnormal point of view that "[transgresses] purely formal aspects" (70). To distinguish between "photo-stills" and "photo-pictures," which she respectively terms "nonorganic" and

"organic" photographic representation, Tupit- syn compares images by Rodchenko and Igna- tovich for various periodicals with ones by Arkadii Shaikhet and Max Al'pert for the pho- toessay A Day in the Life of a Moscow Working- Class Family (1931). She concludes: "Shaikhet and Al'pert placed the proletariat in a specific sociopolitical framework and designated as a hero that individual who best represented what Lukacs called 'the typical.' Rodchenko, Igna- tovich and Langman, on the other hand, deindi- vidualized and deframed photo production,

transgressed historic specificity, and turned the

proletariat into an undivided force subsumed under the desire for utopia" (97-98).

In "Debating the Photographic Image," Tupitsyn shows how in the early 1930s docu-

mentary "photo-stills" came under attack for aestheticized qualities, which the straight photo- journalism gaining official endorsement as an efficient tool for Stalinist propaganda rejected. Finally, in her last chapter Tupitsyn concludes her discussion of Soviet photography by tracing the transformations of photographic images into Socialist Realist "photo-pictures" that were

"overtly conventional and excessively romantic"

(156) and that-she argues-could prevail because they pleased the masses.

nspired, in part, by Walter Benjamin's account of his trip to the Soviet Union in 1927, Svet-

lana Boym's book is composed in a more pas- sionate voice than Tupitsyn's, as it is a sort of

travelogue written by an emigre writer visiting her homeland. It is modestly published and illus- trated with documentary photographs of rather

poor quality taken mostly by Boym herself and Mark Shteinbok. The dense text, however, which focuses on Russian and Soviet cultural

myths, national dreams, and various aspects of

daily life, is a work of a sensitive scholar who knows how to interpret even the most "insignif-

WINTER 1997

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icant" observations without burdening them with theoretical signification. Boym examines Russian and Soviet everyday culture through a number of examples ranging from paintings and films to jokes, television programs, popular songs, and advertising from both before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Although she interprets these cultural artifacts from "the double perspective of a cultural critic and a for- mer Leningrader, a resident of a communal

apartment who often forgot to turn off the lights in the communal closet, earning severe scoldings from the watchful neighbors" (2), she takes into consideration a Western viewpoint.

Her discourse focuses on those aspects of Russian life and culture, which "in Russian intellec- tual tradition as well as in Soviet official ideology ... [were] considered unpatriotic, subversive, un-

Russian, or even anti-Soviet" (2). (As far as the

continuity of Russian and Soviet intellectual tradi- tions is concerned, she acknowledges its existence, but calls it "paradoxical.") This complex perspec- tive allows Boym to remain an academic researcher and intellectual, trained in Russian and Western lit- erature and linguistics, who is able to map out the vast territory of the relationship between art and Russian and Soviet everyday experience.

Boym states her intentions as follows: "to

put at the center what is marginal to certain heroic or apocalyptic self-definitions of Russian culture: the attitudes toward ordinary life, home, material objects and art, as well as expressions of emotion and ways of communication" (2). Com- mon Places does achieve this objective remark-

ably well, presenting the Russian cultural tradition in four chapters-" Mythologies of

Everyday Life," "Living in Common Places: The Communal Apartment," "Writing Common Places: Graphomania," and "Postcommunism, Postmodernism." This tradition is presented as not only "diverse and hybrid," as Boym herself

explicitly wishes it to be viewed, but also as familiar and friendly, for it touches upon com- mon experiences beyond ideological and cultural boundaries. While embracing the notion of the

"utopian" aspect of Russian existence, the author argues that "Perhaps it is this mythical idea of home that the Easterners locate in the West and Westerners locate in the East, the

utopia that neither side wishes to radically undermine, that prevents a critical dialogue from

happening.... Both sides were frequently disap- pointed by the mythical 'homecoming,' East and West alike, and frightened by their own uncanny mirror images" (24). While admiring the author for her perceptiveness, one might argue that the

"mythical reading"-which she sees as a handi-

cap-has in fact allowed the critical discourse of Russian and Soviet culture and art first to devel-

op and then to grow rapidly in the West. This discourse is predicated in large part on the

icant" observations without burdening them with theoretical signification. Boym examines Russian and Soviet everyday culture through a number of examples ranging from paintings and films to jokes, television programs, popular songs, and advertising from both before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Although she interprets these cultural artifacts from "the double perspective of a cultural critic and a for- mer Leningrader, a resident of a communal

apartment who often forgot to turn off the lights in the communal closet, earning severe scoldings from the watchful neighbors" (2), she takes into consideration a Western viewpoint.

Her discourse focuses on those aspects of Russian life and culture, which "in Russian intellec- tual tradition as well as in Soviet official ideology ... [were] considered unpatriotic, subversive, un-

Russian, or even anti-Soviet" (2). (As far as the

continuity of Russian and Soviet intellectual tradi- tions is concerned, she acknowledges its existence, but calls it "paradoxical.") This complex perspec- tive allows Boym to remain an academic researcher and intellectual, trained in Russian and Western lit- erature and linguistics, who is able to map out the vast territory of the relationship between art and Russian and Soviet everyday experience.

Boym states her intentions as follows: "to

put at the center what is marginal to certain heroic or apocalyptic self-definitions of Russian culture: the attitudes toward ordinary life, home, material objects and art, as well as expressions of emotion and ways of communication" (2). Com- mon Places does achieve this objective remark-

ably well, presenting the Russian cultural tradition in four chapters-" Mythologies of

Everyday Life," "Living in Common Places: The Communal Apartment," "Writing Common Places: Graphomania," and "Postcommunism, Postmodernism." This tradition is presented as not only "diverse and hybrid," as Boym herself

explicitly wishes it to be viewed, but also as familiar and friendly, for it touches upon com- mon experiences beyond ideological and cultural boundaries. While embracing the notion of the

"utopian" aspect of Russian existence, the author argues that "Perhaps it is this mythical idea of home that the Easterners locate in the West and Westerners locate in the East, the

utopia that neither side wishes to radically undermine, that prevents a critical dialogue from

happening.... Both sides were frequently disap- pointed by the mythical 'homecoming,' East and West alike, and frightened by their own uncanny mirror images" (24). While admiring the author for her perceptiveness, one might argue that the

"mythical reading"-which she sees as a handi-

cap-has in fact allowed the critical discourse of Russian and Soviet culture and art first to devel-

op and then to grow rapidly in the West. This discourse is predicated in large part on the attractiveness of Russian and Soviet culture and life as exotic and delightfully uncanny.

attractiveness of Russian and Soviet culture and life as exotic and delightfully uncanny.

By placing Russian and Soviet art and cul- ture in the broader context of Western scholarly discourse, Boym and Tupitsyn not only expand our knowledge of it, but they also prevent it from being "frightening" (Boym's expression)- a quality that nevertheless continues to facilitate the discourse in the field of Russian studies. Their books make us realize how crucial this expansion is to preventing the study of the "Russian and Soviet experience" from collapsing into a single teleology.

Notes 1. In her book, Boym makes an interesting observation

on Greenberg's "Avant-Garde and Kitsch": "Greenberg's example of kitsch is Ilia Repin's battle scenes, which, he claims, merely imitate the effect of artistic battles and battles of consciousness and turn into didactic objects of official Stal- inist art. Much as one might agree with his assessment of Soviet reframing of Repin's art, however, the fact is that

Repin never painted any battle scenes. Possibly Greenberg is

confusing Repin with another painter or rehearsing someone else's cliches and effects of criticism. Clearly, particular exam-

ples of kitsch change from country to country, from one his- torical context to another, and an uncritical choice of kitsch artifacts can turn the critique itself into kitsch" (16).

2. For a good example of such collaboration, see David Elliott, ed., Photography in Russia, 1840-1940 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992).

3. Boris Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond, trans. Charles Rougle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 30-31.

By placing Russian and Soviet art and cul- ture in the broader context of Western scholarly discourse, Boym and Tupitsyn not only expand our knowledge of it, but they also prevent it from being "frightening" (Boym's expression)- a quality that nevertheless continues to facilitate the discourse in the field of Russian studies. Their books make us realize how crucial this expansion is to preventing the study of the "Russian and Soviet experience" from collapsing into a single teleology.

Notes 1. In her book, Boym makes an interesting observation

on Greenberg's "Avant-Garde and Kitsch": "Greenberg's example of kitsch is Ilia Repin's battle scenes, which, he claims, merely imitate the effect of artistic battles and battles of consciousness and turn into didactic objects of official Stal- inist art. Much as one might agree with his assessment of Soviet reframing of Repin's art, however, the fact is that

Repin never painted any battle scenes. Possibly Greenberg is

confusing Repin with another painter or rehearsing someone else's cliches and effects of criticism. Clearly, particular exam-

ples of kitsch change from country to country, from one his- torical context to another, and an uncritical choice of kitsch artifacts can turn the critique itself into kitsch" (16).

2. For a good example of such collaboration, see David Elliott, ed., Photography in Russia, 1840-1940 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992).

3. Boris Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond, trans. Charles Rougle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 30-31.

MAREK BARTELIK teaches Russian art and architecture at Cooper Union. He is completing his Ph.D. dissertation, entitled "Extending the Great Utopia: Polish Constructivism, 1923-36," at CUNY Graduate School.

The Past, the Ironic Present, or Passion?

N. F. KARLINS

Jo Farb Hernandez, John Beardsley, and Roger Cardinal. A. G. Rizzoli: Architect of Magnificent Visions., exh. cat. New York: Abrams with San

Diego Museum of Art, 1997. 136 pp.; 36 color ills., 58 b/w. $35.00

Exhibition schedule: San Diego Museum of Art, March 22-May 18, 1997; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, September 6-November 29, 1997; Museum of American Folk Art, January 10-March 8, 1998, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, March 28-June 23, 1998.

Phyllis Kornfeld. Cellblock Visions: Prison Art in America. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 86 pp.; 42 color ills., 50 b/w. $35.00

John M. MacGregor. Henry J. Darger: Dans les

Royaumes de I'lrreal, exh. cat. Lausanne, Switzerland: Collection de I'Art Brut, 1996. 112

pp.; 33 color ills., 26 b/w. $60.00

MAREK BARTELIK teaches Russian art and architecture at Cooper Union. He is completing his Ph.D. dissertation, entitled "Extending the Great Utopia: Polish Constructivism, 1923-36," at CUNY Graduate School.

The Past, the Ironic Present, or Passion?

N. F. KARLINS

Jo Farb Hernandez, John Beardsley, and Roger Cardinal. A. G. Rizzoli: Architect of Magnificent Visions., exh. cat. New York: Abrams with San

Diego Museum of Art, 1997. 136 pp.; 36 color ills., 58 b/w. $35.00

Exhibition schedule: San Diego Museum of Art, March 22-May 18, 1997; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, September 6-November 29, 1997; Museum of American Folk Art, January 10-March 8, 1998, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, March 28-June 23, 1998.

Phyllis Kornfeld. Cellblock Visions: Prison Art in America. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 86 pp.; 42 color ills., 50 b/w. $35.00

John M. MacGregor. Henry J. Darger: Dans les

Royaumes de I'lrreal, exh. cat. Lausanne, Switzerland: Collection de I'Art Brut, 1996. 112

pp.; 33 color ills., 26 b/w. $60.00

Exhibition schedule: Henry Darger: Les Aventures des Vivian Girls, Collection de I'Art

Brut, Lausanne, Switzerland, May 27-

September 7, 1997.

John Maizels. Raw Creation: Outsider Art and

Beyond. London: Phaidon, 1996. 240 pp.; many color and b/w ills. $69.95

Steven Prokopoff. The Art of Henry Darger: The Unreality of Being, exh. cat. Iowa City: University of Iowa Museum of Art, 1996. 18

pp.; 9 color ills. $14.95

Exhibition schedule: University of Iowa Museum of Art, January 13-March 10, 1996; Museum of American Folk Art, New York,

January 18-April 27, 1997.

assionate and obsessive, strange and

formally inventive-that's Outsider art-art that taps into the primal energy

of viewers as great art always has. For years, the art market, art schools, and the art press have been too often content with the regurgitation of

past styles and the appropriation and recontex- tualization of old images. Lately, collectors and the public have focused on something new and visceral instead, and museums, auction houses, and publishers are beginning to pay attention to Outsider art as well.

It is no coincidence that just as the exhi- bition The Art of Henry Darger: The Unreality of

Being was setting attendance records at the Museum of American Folk Art, the Museum announced that a new contemporary center devoted to both American and European Out- sider art will be constructed within their new

building on 53rd Street in New York. The first

retrospective of outsider A. G. Rizzoli debuted in San Diego in March and is eagerly anticipated by the Museum as well as by a number of other

major venues. The annual Outsider Art Fair in New York at the Puck Building is already a five-

year-old success. Sotheby's, Christie's, and scat- tered smaller auction houses now deal in Outsider art, and new galleries and art fairs devoted to Outsider art are springing up all over the country. The National Museum of American Art, already the home of the Herbert Waide

Hemphill, Jr., Collection (once the most impor- tant private folk art and Outsider art collection in the country), has added a substantial number of

pieces from the Rosenak Collection to comple- ment its ever-growing permanent collection of

self-taught art. In 1995 the American Visionary Art Museum, which regularly includes Outsider art in its long-running exhibitions, opened at Bal- timore's Inner Harbor.

What is fueling this interest? For many people outside the critical establishment, much "insider" art has become more of an intellectual

Exhibition schedule: Henry Darger: Les Aventures des Vivian Girls, Collection de I'Art

Brut, Lausanne, Switzerland, May 27-

September 7, 1997.

John Maizels. Raw Creation: Outsider Art and

Beyond. London: Phaidon, 1996. 240 pp.; many color and b/w ills. $69.95

Steven Prokopoff. The Art of Henry Darger: The Unreality of Being, exh. cat. Iowa City: University of Iowa Museum of Art, 1996. 18

pp.; 9 color ills. $14.95

Exhibition schedule: University of Iowa Museum of Art, January 13-March 10, 1996; Museum of American Folk Art, New York,

January 18-April 27, 1997.

assionate and obsessive, strange and

formally inventive-that's Outsider art-art that taps into the primal energy

of viewers as great art always has. For years, the art market, art schools, and the art press have been too often content with the regurgitation of

past styles and the appropriation and recontex- tualization of old images. Lately, collectors and the public have focused on something new and visceral instead, and museums, auction houses, and publishers are beginning to pay attention to Outsider art as well.

It is no coincidence that just as the exhi- bition The Art of Henry Darger: The Unreality of

Being was setting attendance records at the Museum of American Folk Art, the Museum announced that a new contemporary center devoted to both American and European Out- sider art will be constructed within their new

building on 53rd Street in New York. The first

retrospective of outsider A. G. Rizzoli debuted in San Diego in March and is eagerly anticipated by the Museum as well as by a number of other

major venues. The annual Outsider Art Fair in New York at the Puck Building is already a five-

year-old success. Sotheby's, Christie's, and scat- tered smaller auction houses now deal in Outsider art, and new galleries and art fairs devoted to Outsider art are springing up all over the country. The National Museum of American Art, already the home of the Herbert Waide

Hemphill, Jr., Collection (once the most impor- tant private folk art and Outsider art collection in the country), has added a substantial number of

pieces from the Rosenak Collection to comple- ment its ever-growing permanent collection of

self-taught art. In 1995 the American Visionary Art Museum, which regularly includes Outsider art in its long-running exhibitions, opened at Bal- timore's Inner Harbor.

What is fueling this interest? For many people outside the critical establishment, much "insider" art has become more of an intellectual

game, rather than a daring yet structured explo- ration of the unknown. People are increasingly game, rather than a daring yet structured explo- ration of the unknown. People are increasingly

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