Lecture series History of St. Petersburg art: from unofficial culture to current artistic practices

In 1989, a group of young art historians, including Ekaterina Andreeva, Olesya Turkina, and Andrei Khlobystin among others, organized the exhibition From Underground Art to Perestroika. Episodes from the History of the Leningrad Art Scene. 1949–1989. It was one of the first curating projects in the local context to have focused on writing a genealogy of various groups and practices that represented an alternative to the state’s cultural policy. This exhibition showed that as early as the late 1980s—before the end of the USSR—academic researchers wanted to collaborate with underground artists and were actively working with the concept of «unofficial art» and ways of defining it. Many of the curators of this exhibition went on to produce research and exhibition projects that are now considered seminal. However, in order to open up new perspectives in the study of the late Soviet art it is interesting to revisit sources from within the Leningrad underground art scene and see how artists involved in it shaped its image and defined its nature.

Among key sources the curators used to organize the retrospective part of the exhibition were the writings by artist Anatoly Basin published in the book Gazanevshchina: Gazanev Culture Speaks About Itself (Jerusalem, 1989). This samizdat publication can be described as an auto-archive presenting the history of Leningrad underground art from the point of view of people active on the scene. The lecture will focus on this and several other samizdat publications of the 1970s and 1980s that influenced the way the Soviet underground art was later understood, as well as on myths created by the authors of these publications.   

Anastasia Kotyleva (b. 1988, Syktyvkar) is an art historian, curator, and author of articles and lectures on contemporary art. She is a senior registrar at Garage Archive Collection in St. Petersburg. She has a Master’s in Art Criticism from the Department of Liberal Arts and Sciences of St. Petersburg State University. Her curatorial projects include: Vladimir Kozin. Feel Like a Bird (with Alexander Dashevsky), PERMM Museum of Contemporary Art, Perm (2019); Timur and Ivan (with Andrei Shabanov and students of the European University in St. Petersburg), European University in St. Petersburg (2021); Vanishing Points, MYTH Gallery, St. Petersburg (2021), and A Practical Lab on Archives in Curatorial Practice (4th Curators’ Forum, St. Petersburg, 2023). She lives and works in St. Petersburg.

Samizdat was one of the most important phenomena in underground culture of the Soviet period. Using various means and technologies, people produced books, magazines, and even music records themselves to bypass state control. The content of these publications varied greatly—from recipes or albums by emerging rock bands to classical literature and philosophical texts—with the one common trait being that they were all unsanctioned and not published officially.

The audience will learn about the history of samizdat, focusing in particular on the Leningrad scene, find out how samizdat publications were produced and distributed, how samizdat differs from tamizdat, and how contemporary zines continue the tradition of independent publishing.

Anastasia Patsey (b. 1991, St. Petersburg) is a curator and art historian with Master’s in Curatorial Studies and Director of the Museum of Nonconformist Art. She is a member of the curatorial team and the board of Pushkinskaya 10 Art Center, and a teacher on Master’s programs at St. Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design. She has curated numerous group exhibitions, cultural exchanges, art residencies and mobility programs for art professionals, education and research projects, and programs focusing on inclusion and accessibility. She lives and works in St. Petersburg.

The lecture explores apartment exhibitions and officially sanctioned exhibitions of the 1970s and 1980s and the first self-organized artist initiatives, which facilitated the development and self-identification of Leningrad’s independent art scene.

After the Bulldozer Exhibition scandal (Moscow, 1974), the relationship between the underground art scene and the state was legitimized, which allowed underground artists to show their work in houses (or palaces) of culture. The seminal exhibitions that followed in Leningrad, included one of the first apartment exhibitions, Under a Parachute, in the home of poet Konstantin Kuzminsky and two landmark exhibitions at Gaza House of Culture (1974) and Nevsky House of Culture (1975). The exhibition at Nevsky featured over 80 artists, many of whom met each other for the first time, which became a catalyst for self-organization and development of their artistic standpoint. In 1975, the TEV Partnership for Experimental Exhibitions was formed, and in 1981, the TEII Partnership for Experimental Fine Art, which held many exhibitions of a Leningrad underground art scene that perceived itself as an independent phenomenon.

Gleb Ershov (b. 1964, Ulan Bator) is an art historian specializing in twentieth-century art, a curator, and professor at the School of Arts and Cultural Heritage of the European University in St. Petersburg. He is the curator at Navicula Artis Gallery (since 1994) and organizer and curator of the Kharms International Festival (1995–1998, 2005) and over 200 exhibitions in museums and galleries in Moscow, St. Petersburg,

Leningrad Oblast, Poland, and Germany. He is the author of articles on the history of Russian and international art and a winner of the Sergey Kuryokhin Prize (Best Curatorial Project, 2013). He lives and works in St. Petersburg.

Viktor Mazin’s lecture explores the art of 1980s Leningrad, a time of great change. One of the key words of that time was «new”—the New Artists, the New Composers, new criticism, New Theater. The main change in the 1980s involved the end of the confrontation between state-endorsed and underground art and the change in the attitude of the authorities toward independent art. New organizations began to appear, such as the Cooperative for Experimental Fine Art, the association of writers Club-81, and the Leningrad Rock Club. Sergey Kuryokhin’s Pop-Mekhanika appeared on the scene, Yevgeny Yufit founded the independent studio Mzhalalafilm, Viktor Tsoi sang the iconic «Peremen!» [«Change”]

Victor Mazin (b. 1958, Murmansk) has a Candidate of Philosophical Sciences degree and is a researcher in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies and Practices in Art of St. Petersburg State University, Head of the Department of Theoretical Psychoanalysis of the East European Institute of Psychoanalysis (St. Petersburg), Professor Emeritus of the International Institute of Depth Psychology (Kyiv), a member of the Institute of Higher Studies in Psychoanalysis (Paris) and the International Research Institute for Cultural Technology and Media Philosophy (Bauhaus-Universität), a member of the academic board of the Freud Foundation (Vienna), founder of the Freud Museum of Dreams (St. Petersburg), an honorary member of the Board of the Museum of Jurassic Technology (Los Angeles), co-editor of many international psychoanalysis journals, editor of the journal Lacanalia (www.lacan.ru), and author of many books and articles published in various languages. He lives and works in St. Petersburg.