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Rodchenko's Revolutionary Photographs
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16740 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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9 / 1989 |
1,868 Words |
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Alice Thorson
Alice Thorson is an art critic and educator in Washington, D.C. |
Not since the 1920s has the Soviet Union experienced such a welter of activity on the cultural front. In contrast to just two years ago, foreign dealers and curators now move with relative freedom through many sectors of the Soviet art world, where the border between official and unofficial art is becoming increasingly faint. As a result, a heretofore unheard-of variety of contemporary Soviet art is beginning to reach Western audiences and markets.
'Forbidden Fruit'
A companion phenomenon to the increased freedom surrounding contemporary art is the Soviets' new "openness" toward Russian art history. As Art News proclaimed in its February 1989 issue, "The Soviet Union is reclaiming what was once 'forbidden fruit'"--Modernist paintings are being rescued from storerooms and celebrated in a number of exhibitions.
Coinciding with the art world's major celebration of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of photography, one of the first fruits of this rehabilitation of Russian Modernism is a major U.S. exhibition of the photographs of pioneer Russian experimental photographer Alexander Rodchenko.
In less than twenty years, Rodchenko created one of the most important (and underexplored) bodies of photographic work in twentieth-century art. Since his death in 1956, the bulk of the Rodchenko oeuvre has remained in the Moscow apartment where he lived and worked with his wife, the artist Varvara Stepanova. And, as is the case with so much of the avant-garde work that fell into official disfavor under Stalin, it remains with his family--his
... (1993 of 11639 Characters)
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