Struggling for the Banner is the first major presentation of the period of “new leftist” art in the USSR, and especially that from the period of the “cultural revolution” (1928-1932), when the struggle against the passive, contemplative, purely aesthetic, and formal side of art reached its apogee. However, this art is not only anti-bourgeois in terms of theme. Instead, its aesthetic often comes surprisingly close to that of the political art of our own age. Many of the works in the exhibition have never been shown to the public before: monumental paintings, photomontages, photographs, graphic reproductions, posters, mass action sculpture projects, and films make for around 250 works by more than 100 authors. On exhibition June 18 through July 4, 2009 at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art.
Yelena Melnikova – Excursion at the “Sharikopodshipnik” Factory, 1937 Oil on Canvas
The show features well-known artists such as Alexander Deineka, Isaac Brodsky, El Lissitsky, Alexander Rodchenko, Boris Ignatovich, and others. At the same time, one of the specific features of the cultural revolution was that it produced millions of professional and non-professional artists, many of whom have not yet appeared on the scopes of today’s art industry. Such new discoveries include the painters Boris Golopolosov, Georgy Rublev, and Boris Tsvetkov.
“Fight for the end of art within art, with art’s own means,” wrote the essayist and playwright Sergey Tretyakov in 1924, coining a phrase that would become a program of sorts for the second stage of the Russian avant-garde, when artists abandoned abstraction and opted for a critique of art through (and not in opposition to) the mimetic image. They turned to photography, photomontage, new figurative “muralism,” reproducible graphic art, social projects, sculptures for mass actions, and factographic documentation in the spirit of New Objectivity. Their goal was to “see and hear life, to mark its twists and ruptures, to hear the crunch of the old everyday’s bones under the weight of revolution, to follow the young Soviet organism in its growth” (Dziga Vertov).
The exhibition also includes a special reconstruction of a photo frieze by El Lissitsky and Sergei Sen’kin for the Internationale Presse-Ausstellung in Cologne, 1929. Parts of the show also use the exhibition practices developed in that radical period, when there was no real difference between original and reproduction, painting and photography, images and slogans.
The works in the exhibition are on loan from the State Tretyakov Gallery and museums in other Russian cities, as well as private collections.
We are also pleased to announce the parallel publication of a catalogue (app. 350 pages). 115 biographies of artists and authors reveal their political positions. A chronology is the first Russian-language parallel view of the history of the Left Opposition in the early Stalinist USSR, and its relation to the history of avant-gardist and post-avant-gardist cultural phenomena between 1926 and 1936. The catalogue also contains articles on the history of painting, photography, architecture, poster art, and cinematography of the time, as well as on the intricacies of Bolshevik cultural policy.
“Struggling for the Banner’” is conceived and curated by Ekaterina Degot, the well-known Russian art historian, curator, and art critic. She is also editor of the exhibition catalogue. A special film program has been prepared by the Gosfilmofond (State Film Archive) of the Russian Federation.
Moscow Museum of Modern Art is the first state museum in Russia that concentrates its activities exclusively on the art of the 20th and 21st centuries. Since its inauguration, the Museum has expanded its strategies and achieved a high level of public acknowledgement. Today the Museum is an energetic institution that plays an important part on the Moscow art scene.
Moscow Museum of Modern Art was unveiled on December 15, 1999, with the generous support of the Moscow City Government, Moscow City Department of Culture and Yuri Luzhkov, the Mayor of Moscow. Its founding director was Zurab Tsereteli, President of the Russian Academy of Arts. His private collection of more than 2.000 works by important 20th century masters was the core of the Museum’s permanent display. Later on, the Museum’s keepings were enriched considerably, and now this is one of the largest and most impressive collections of modern and contemporary Russian art, which continues to grow through acquisitions and donations.
Today the Museum has three venues in the historic centre of Moscow. The main building, which houses the permanent collection and holds temporary exhibitions, is situated on Petrovka street, in the eighteenth-century mansion originally belonging to merchant Gubin, desiged by the renowned neoclassical architect Matvey Kazakov. Apart from that, the Museum owns two splendid exhibition venues: a vast five-storey building in Ermolaevsky lane, and a spacious gallery in Tverskoy boulevard, both fully refurbished for hosting large-scale projects.
http://www.mmoma.ru/en/
