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Books you need to read right now!

<section class="text__review mceNonEditable"><header class="text__review__header mceEditable">
<p class="text__small"><strong>The selection was compiled by Ilmira Bolotyan, Valery Ledenev, Mariana Karysheva, Maria Shmatko, and Yuri Yurkin. </strong></p>
</header>
<article class="text__review__content mceEditable">
<p class="text__lead" data-tpl-selection=""><a href="/en/exhibition/bone-music"><em>Bone Music</em></a>, an exhibition currently on show at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, examines the phenomenon of Soviet music bootlegging, a period in which music lovers used x-ray films to record and distribute music, unavailable in the country at the time. Garage Education Centre have prepared a selection of literature on the subject and its socio-cultural context.</p>
</article>
</section>
<section class="text__review mceNonEditable"><header class="text__review__header mceEditable"><img src="//cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_Slavkin%20(1).jpg" alt="" width="2887" height="4617" /></header>
<article class="text__review__content mceEditable">
<h2 class="text__nomargin">Viktor Slavkin. The Monument to the Uknown Stilyaga</h2>
<p class="text__small text__muted">&lsquo;Artist. Rezhisser. Teatr&rsquo;, 1996</p>
<p>Viktor Slavkin was first and foremost known as the author of legendary plays of the &lsquo;new wave&rsquo;. He was also a screenwriter and one of the presenters of the TV programme <em>Staraya Kvartira</em>. For many years he served as an editor at the Satire and Humour department of <em>Yunost</em> magazine, while also writing his own humorous short stories. He was one of the few specialists in <em>stilyagas</em>,&mdash;a Soviet youth subculture of the 1950s&mdash;expert (as much as it was possible in the USSR) in Western culture, and jazz lover.</p>
<p><em>The Monument to the Uknown Stilyaga</em> comprises memoirs, documentary materials, and fragments of the author&rsquo;s own plays. Key parts of the book are devoted to Slavkin&rsquo;s memories of staging his plays <em>A Young Man's Grown-Up Daughter</em> and <em>Serso</em>, his work with Anatoly Vasiliev, public reaction to emergence of scenic &lsquo;non-heroes&rsquo; and facts on Soviet censorship. In the finale of the book readers will find shocking details of the author&rsquo;s life, which we won&rsquo;t elaborate on here.</p>
<p>There is a scene in <em>Grown-Up Daughter</em>, in which characters are looking at an x-ray-film record, with the song &lsquo;Chucha&rsquo; on it, popular in <em>stilyagas</em> circles. "Guys, this record needs to go to a museum,&mdash;says one of the characters.&mdash;Young people don&rsquo;t even know that our first jazz records were made with x-ray films. Bone jazz! Rib music! My grandmother&rsquo;s skeleton!". The book also remarks on the historically important role <em>Krokodil</em> magazine played in the subculture. By publishing caricatures and satirical remarks, this publication unintentionally dispersed information and provided ideas on how to look and talk &lsquo;stylishly&rsquo; to those aspiring <em>stilyagas</em>. Although <em>styliagas</em> were always portrayed in a grotesque way, articles in <em>Krokodil</em> and satirical comedies of the time assisted the actors from the V.V. Stanislavsky and V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theatre in preparing for the stage production of <em>A Young Man's Grown-Up Daughter</em> (1978).</p>
<p>Slavkin also wrote on the strong condemnation of those standing out from the crowd with their looks in the 1950s and later. He pointed out that the protest expressed by <em>styliagas</em> was more of a biological one in nature&mdash;&lsquo;a protest of a young organism against an old mundane environment&rsquo;&mdash;however those in power still perceived them as political enemies. Volunteers, police, and Komsomol organizations were gathering force to deprive <em>styliagas</em> of their future: they were expelled from universities and Komsomol for their weird style of dancing, skinny trousers, and their love of jazz. Historical parallels to the phenomenon of styliagas may be found in other generations, and that is exactly why the book by Slavkin doesn&rsquo;t cease to be relevant with time, and is important for understanding the mechanisms of repression in culture. <em>I.B.</em></p>
</article>
</section>
<section class="text__review mceNonEditable"><header class="text__review__header mceEditable"><img src="//cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_Troitski2%20(1).jpg" alt="" width="3274" height="4963" /></header>
<article class="text__review__content mceEditable">
<h2 class="text__nomargin">Rock Music in the USSR: An Attempt of a Popular Encyclopedia</h2>
<p class="text__small text__muted">&lsquo;Kniga&rsquo;, 1990</p>
<p>Notwithstanding censorship and prohibition, by the time the encyclopedia <em>Rock Music in the USSR</em> was published, the rock music tradition in the USSR had already been present for decades. A 300-page volume compiled by the &lsquo;leading voice in rock&rsquo; Artemy Troitsky with a foreword by poet Andrey Voznesensky gives a detailed account of a whole variety of existent sub-genres of rock music from all around the USSR.</p>
<p>The articles in the encyclopedia provide information on dozens of Soviet rock bands and attempt to analyze their oeuvre. The book also includes reviews of local rock scenes in particular cities, regions, and republics, and lists the biggest rock festivals of the time. The following chapters are of particular interest: &lsquo;Vocabulary of Rock-Communication&rsquo;, that documents rock-vocabulary of the day, and &lsquo;Rock-Practice&rsquo;, that talks about administrative and material components of the rock bands routine. The latter gives insights not merely into specifics of Soviet musicians&rsquo; lives, but also into the technical side of their occupation, including recording methods and further distribution of concert records and music albums. Such strategies inherited the traditions of &lsquo;bone music&rsquo;, the history of which is currently illustrated by the show at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. <em>M.K.</em></p>
</article>
</section>
<section class="text__review mceNonEditable"><header class="text__review__header mceEditable"><img src="//cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_Yurchak%20(1).jpg" alt="" width="3430" height="5136" /></header>
<article class="text__review__content mceEditable">
<h2 class="text__nomargin">Alexei Yurchak. Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation</h2>
<p class="text__small text__muted">Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2014</p>
<p>We have previously written about this book by Alexei Yurchak, anthropologist, professor at University of California, Berkley, in our <a href="http://garagemca.org/ru/library/new-acquisitions-staff-picks">previous review</a>. Yet the depths of this theoretical work, that was met with great acclaim by professional community, justifies us addressing it on numerous occasions.</p>
<p>In his study Yurchak develops the idea of &lsquo;deterritorialization&rsquo;: that special <em>modus operandi</em> of Soviet people, shaped in the period of the late USSR. He posits that Soviet citizens existed simultaneously &lsquo;inside and outside&rsquo; of the system in place, &lsquo;inside its institutional and social forms, but <em>outside</em> of any literal meanings&rsquo;. &lsquo;A state of a subject outside of a system&hellip; implies moving out of a system&rsquo;s sight or, more precisely, its &ldquo;regime of visibility&rdquo; &lt;&hellip;&gt; Such subject, while continuing to exist inside a system, can still follow its symbolical, legal, linguistic and other codes&rsquo;.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Bone bootlegging&rsquo;, a theme of the exhibition at Garage, is conceptualized by Yurchak as one of the spaces and also a technique of &lsquo;deterritorialization&rsquo;. &lsquo;A person was listening to and looking at what was omnipresent [records on x-ray films], yet remained <em>out</em> of the system&rsquo;s sight and hearing, which was something simultaneously non-existent and real&hellip; strictly intimate, as an x-ray film, yet public, belonging to the members of a private circle&rsquo;. In a small chapter devoted to &lsquo;bone music&rsquo;, the described phenomenon receives theoretical grounding, supplied with examples, interviews with the events' contemporaries, and thoroughly-annotated quotes. <em>V.L.</em></p>
</article>
</section>
<section class="text__review mceNonEditable"><header class="text__review__header mceEditable"><img src="//cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_Troitski1%20(1).jpg" alt="" width="4021" height="5796" /></header>
<article class="text__review__content mceEditable">
<h2 class="text__nomargin">Artemy Troitsky. Rock in the Union: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s&hellip;</h2>
<p class="text__small text__muted">Iskusstvo, 1991</p>
<p>This book by Artmey Troitsky, as the author himself points out, &lsquo;is not a reference or a theory book, but rather an attempt of individual experiencing&rsquo;. Mainly thanks to the narrative structure, that resembles a personal diary, it differs from the encyclopedia <em>Rock Music in the USSR</em>, mentioned above. The phenomenon of Soviet rock is not presented in an insubstantial way and its tone brings a quality of chamber music instead. The reader joins the author at a concert rehearsal, the fitting of beatnik shoes, and a journey on a cold Moscow-Leningrad train. Troitsky doesn&rsquo;t only reconstruct the timeline of events, but the spirit of the time, that he witnessed himself.</p>
<p>The chapter &lsquo;Boogie on the Bones&rsquo; tells of <em>stilyagas</em>, who pioneered the practice of bootlegging on used x-ray films. In the chapters &lsquo;The Beatles Have Arrived&rsquo; Troitsky writes on the Baltic &lsquo;rock-machine that works on the rhythm-and-blues fuel&rsquo; and American &lsquo;clamorous rock-n-roll&rsquo;. The rock movement was in its heyday (beat) in the 1970s. In the eponymous chapter, the parallel is driven between the still-underground rock lyricism and academic poetry, that attracted wide audience. Later, the two merged in the songs of Andrey Makarevich and oeuvre of intellectual bards. In the 1970s, Artemy Troitsky organized the first rock festival in Chernogolovka, and the same period was marked by birth of the scampish &lsquo;new wave&rsquo;, that differed from progressive rock. The eighties (in the chapter &lsquo;One Step Forward, Two Steps Back&rsquo;) were marked, on the one hand, by opening of the first recording studios, and, on the other, by the lists of &lsquo;ideologically harmful&rsquo; musicians. &lsquo;A stream of steady realism, even naturalism emerged in our rock&rsquo;&mdash;recalls Boris Grebenshchikov on the first USSR record by Mike Naumenko.</p>
<p>Perestroika resolved questions raised by <em>glasnost</em>: newspapers became more interesting to read and music also progressed (&lsquo;Nautilus Pompilius&rsquo;, &lsquo;Alisa&rsquo;, &lsquo;Kino&rsquo;, Alexander Bashlachev). In the closing chapter &lsquo;Sure Game&rsquo; Troitsky derives a formula of success in rock: music needs to be made by people, who are, in the first place, free, and not by people desperately trying to justify their freedom. <em>M.S.</em></p>
</article>
</section>
<section class="text__review mceNonEditable"><header class="text__review__header mceEditable"><img src="//cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_Caotes%20(1).jpg" alt="" width="5491" height="5287" /></header>
<article class="text__review__content mceEditable">
<h2 class="text__nomargin">X-ray Audio: the Strange Story of Soviet Music on the Bone (ed. by Stephen Coates)</h2>
<p class="text__small text__muted">Strange Attractor Press, 2015</p>
<p>The current publication was compiled by Stephen Coates, composer, music producer, and curator of the <em>Bone Music</em> exhibition, who devoted many years to studying this phenomenon of Soviet unofficial culture.</p>
<p><em>X-Ray Audio</em> tells the story of Soviet bone music technology. It comprises a complex essay by Stephen Coates himself, interviews with music critic Artemy Troitsky, founder of The Beatles museum in Russia Kolya Vasin, composer Alexander Kolkovsky, collector Rudi Fuchs, and memories of other contemporaries. These materials, illustrated by images of the actual records, draw a concise picture of ideological, technological, and historical aspects of <em>samizdat</em> music culture. <em>Y.Y.</em></p>
</article>
</section>
<p>&nbsp;</p>

Overview of publications for the exhibition Bone Music

<section class="text__review mceNonEditable"><header class="text__review__header mceEditable">
<p class="text__small"><strong>Overview by Ilmira Bolotyan, Maryana Karysheva, Maria Litovchenko, and Maria Shmatko</strong></p>
</header>
<article class="text__review__content mceEditable">
<p class="text__lead" data-tpl-selection="">While Garage is showing Takashi Murakami&rsquo;s <a href="/en/exhibition/takashi-murakami"><em>Under the Radiation Falls</em></a>, the Museum&rsquo;s research team have prepared an overview of books about Murakami and Japanese contemporary art.</p>
</article>
</section>
<section class="text__review mceNonEditable"><header class="text__review__header mceEditable"><img src="//cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_Image20171130191311-001web.jpg" alt="" width="1600" height="2197" /></header>
<article class="text__review__content mceEditable">
<h2 class="text__nomargin">Double Vision. Contemporary Art from Japan</h2>
<p class="text__small text__muted">Moscow Museum of Modern Art, 2012</p>
<p>The exhibition <em>Double Vision. Contemporary Art from Japan</em> was shown at Moscow Museum of Modern Art in 2012 and featured works by thirty-one artists of different generations. According to the exhibition&rsquo;s curators Kenjiro Hosaka and Elena Yaichnikova the idea behind the show was to explore Japanese culture beyond stereotypes. The title pointed to a possible duality in our understanding of the world, condensed into a dichotomy of the <em>real, or the everyday</em> on the one hand, and <em>the imaginary or fantasy</em> on the other. The catalogue comes in two corresponding parts.</p>
<p><em>The Imaginary</em> section contains a selection of works that develop themes and imagery traditional for Japanese culture. These include <em>manga</em> by Makoto Aida; Takahiro Iwasaki&rsquo;s shrine models built of everyday objects and Akira Yamaguchi&rsquo;s <em>yamato-e</em> paintings. The section also features critical works, such as Takashi Murakami&rsquo;s<em> Polyrhythm</em> (currently on show at Garage)&mdash;a sheet of unpainted fibre-reinforced plastic covered with American toy soldiers.</p>
<p>According to Kenjiro Hosaka, after the tragic events that Japan experienced in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, "people, and especially young people, have been looking for a stable reality (since their habitual reality seemed unstable)", often finding it in computer games and other media. However, Japanese art that deals with politics and the everyday reality is just as interesting.</p>
<p>Yoshinori Niwa&rsquo;s absurd interventions, featured in <em>The Real World</em> section, break the habitual patterns in our understanding of the world. His <em>Pointless Group Photo of 76 People</em> (2009) is a group portrait of random passers-by in Toronto. In <em>Transforming Puddle A to Puddle B</em> (2004), the artist moves water between two puddles on either side of the former Berlin wall in his mouth.</p>
<p>The works of Chim&uarr;Pom collective focus on the social and political issues relevant specifically for the Japanese society. In 2009, they wrote the word <em>Bang!</em> in the sky over Hiroshima and in 2011 shot a series of videos near the Fukushima I nuclear power plant.</p>
<p>The catalogue also contains a selection of articles from several issues of Japanese art journal <em>Bijutsu techō</em>, published since 1948. <em>I. B.</em></p>
</article>
</section>
<section class="text__review mceNonEditable"><header class="text__review__header mceEditable"><img src="//cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_Image20171130191059-001web.jpg" alt="" width="1600" height="1816" /></header>
<article class="text__review__content mceEditable">
<h2 class="text__nomargin">Takashi Murakami. The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg</h2>
<p class="text__small text__muted">Skira Rizzoli Publications, Inc. 2017</p>
<p>The octopus eating its own leg is one of the characters of the Murakami universe created for the artist&rsquo;s exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. According to the show&rsquo;s curator Michael Darling, the self-consuming octopus is a metaphor for modern Japan that goes out of its way and compromises itself in order to adjust to contemporary Western culture. On the other hand, for Murakami, the choice of such character to represent his work is an ironic act of self-deprecation: widely criticised in his homeland, Murakami uses irony to distance himself from his work.</p>
<p>"In biological terms, an octopus will commit this self-cannibalization during times of stress, often if a virus or bacteria is present, but the leg will regenerate and life will go on," Darling explains. "&hellip;In typical Murakami fashion, we went back to ancient Japanese folklore," he continues "to find a way to address the urbanity and contemporaneity of [&hellip;] artist&rsquo;s three decades of painting."</p>
<p>Drawing many aesthetic parallels, Darling compares Murakami&rsquo;s works to the art of Anselm Kiefer, Yves Klein, and the artists of The Pictures Generation, including <a href="https://garagemca.org/en/library/selection-of-texts-for-robert-longo-exhibition">Robert Longo</a>. Other articles in the catalogue analyze his work in the broader context of Japanese popular culture, its traditional and contemporary art. Akira Mizuta Lippit looks at Murakami&rsquo;s own writings and his concept of "superflat," according to which all "distinctions between high and low, new and old, original and derivative are flattened into a superficial gloss that covers contemporary society." <em>V. L.</em></p>
<p><a class="button button--black" href="/en/catalogue/L23522">LEARN MORE</a></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
</article>
</section>
<section class="text__review mceNonEditable"><header class="text__review__header mceEditable"><img src="//cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_Image20171130191130-001web.jpg" alt="" width="1600" height="2176" /></header>
<article class="text__review__content mceEditable">
<h2 class="text__nomargin">Takashi Murakami: Ensō</h2>
<p class="text__small text__muted">Perrotin, 2015</p>
<p>In Zen tradition, <em>ensō</em> is a calligraphic circle that symbolizes enlightenment, the universe or the void. Often turning to <em>ensō</em> in his recent works, in 2015 Murakami presented his interpretation of the symbol at an exhibition in Tokyo. The minimalism of his <em>ensō</em> series will come as a surprise&mdash;or perhaps a disappointment&mdash;to those who are used to Murakami&rsquo;s complex and elaborate works with many characters.</p>
<p>As Murakami explains in the preface to the publication, "my brush would move with a life of its own, where I would have no greed or desire." This state of inner peace, the artist believes, has allowed him to create the entire body of work.</p>
<p>Murakami&rsquo;s interest in Zen goes beyond <em>ensō</em>. In a series of his works devoted to one of the founders of the movement, Daruma (Bodhidharma), Murakami depicts the cut-off arm of the monk Eka, which the student brought to Daruma as a symbol of his commitment to studying Zen.</p>
<p>The article by Mari Hashimoto offers a detailed introduction to the history of <em>ensō</em> and Zen in China and in Japan&mdash;from the myth about the lotus flower to the influence of Zen on the beat generation and contemporary culture. <em>M.L.</em></p>
<p><a class="button button--black" href="/en/catalogue/L23523">LEARN MORE</a></p>
</article>
</section>
<section class="text__review mceNonEditable"><header class="text__review__header mceEditable"><img src="//cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_Image20171130191153-001web.jpg" alt="" width="1600" height="2054" /></header>
<article class="text__review__content mceEditable">
<h2 class="text__nomargin">Murakami Versailles</h2>
<p class="text__small text__muted">Editions Zavier Barral, 2010</p>
<p><br />The Palace of Versailles regularly hosts exhibitions by contemporary artists, and Takashi Murakami exhibited in 2010, after Jeff Koons in 2008, and Xavier Veilhan in 2009. Murakami Versailles contains detailed information on the project, from preparatory sketches for certain works to exhibition views.</p>
<p>The book opens with a panoramic view of the park of Versailles with a golden Buddha shining at its center and dwarfing the park&rsquo;s geometric alleys. In his interview with Philippe Dagen, Murakami speaks of his long investigation into pop art and his influences, ranging from something as broad as Japanese post-war culture to the art of Jackson Pollock. However, the main feature of this publication are the photographs: Murakami&rsquo;s sculptures in Versailles interiors become a starting point for fascinating intellectual adventure.</p>
<p>C&eacute;dric Delsaux&rsquo;s photographs, showing the sculptures from angles inaccessible to the palace&rsquo;s visitors, have great artistic merit of their own: Murakami&rsquo;s smiling flowers are reflected in gilded baroque plasterwork, Kaikai and Kiki join the row of bronze Roman portraits, while a naked <em>manga</em> king with a microphone in his hand becomes part of the painted battle scene. <em>M. Sh.</em></p>
<p><a class="button button--black" href="/en/catalogue/L23553">LEARN MORE</a></p>
</article>
</section>
<section class="text__review mceNonEditable"><header class="text__review__header mceEditable"><img src="//cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_Image20171205150048-001web.jpg" alt="" width="1600" height="2088" /></header>
<article class="text__review__content mceEditable">
<h2 class="text__nomargin">Takashi in Superflat Wonderland</h2>
<p class="text__small text__muted">PLATEAU, 2013</p>
<p>The catalogue for Takashi Murakami&rsquo;s 2013 exhibition in Seoul contains photographic documentation of the show and three texts. In the first, the exhibition&rsquo;s curator Soyeon Ahn offers a critique of the Western patronizing view of art from the rest of the world and analyses Murakami&rsquo;s, and other artists&rsquo; attempts to change the status quo. Considering Murakami&rsquo;s mythology, its origins and development, Soyeon Ahn points out its intersections with Western culture, and in particular with Lewis Carroll&rsquo;s <em>Alice in Wonderland</em> (which is reflected in the title of the exhibition), which matches Murakami&rsquo;s "superflat" universe in its madness. These questions are also discussed in the curator&rsquo;s interview with the artist.</p>
<p>In the third text, art critic Chungwoo Lee focuses on two characters from Murakami&rsquo;s universe&mdash;Mr DOB and Miss Ko2&mdash;discussing Murakami&rsquo;s connections with the Japanese <em>otaku</em> culture, Western postmodernism, and the Great East Japan Earthquake, which led to thousands of deaths and had a great impact on Murakami&rsquo;s work. <em>M. K.</em></p>
<p><a class="button button--black" href="/en/catalogue/L23586">LEARN MORE</a></p>
</article>
</section>

Books on Takashi Murakami

<section class="text__review mceNonEditable"><header class="text__review__header mceEditable">
<p class="text__small"><strong>The selection was prepared by Ilmira Bolotyan, Maryana Karysheva, Valerij Ledenev, Maria Litovchenko, and Maria Shmatko.</strong></p>
</header>
<article class="text__review__content mceEditable">
<p class="text__lead" data-tpl-selection="">An exhibition <a href="/en/exhibition/bidding-for-glasnost-sotheby-s-1988-auction-in-moscow">Bidding for Glasnost: Sotheby&rsquo;s 1988 Auction in Moscow</a> is currently on show at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. Garage Education Center have prepared a selection of literature on the auction sale and cultural background of the late-Soviet period.</p>
</article>
</section>
<section class="text__review mceNonEditable"><header class="text__review__header mceEditable"><img src="//cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_Sothebys2.jpg" alt="" width="1222" height="1600" /></header>
<article class="text__review__content mceEditable">
<h2 class="text__nomargin">Sotheby&rsquo;s. Russian Avant-Garde and Soviet Contemporary Art. Moscow, Thursday, 7th July 1988</h2>
<p class="text__small text__muted">Sotheby&rsquo;s S. A., 1988</p>
<p>Sotheby&rsquo;s auction sale, that took place in Moscow on July 7, 1988, didn&rsquo;t only go down in history as the first and the only international art auction in the USSR, but also a turning point in the history of Soviet art&mdash;its scene, previously quite isolated from the rest of the world, encountered Western art market for the first time. Existing hierarchies and segregation between the domains of official and unofficial art ceased to function. The widely accepted&mdash;in other words Soviet&mdash;value system met its Western counterpart. It turned out that the tastes of visiting collectors were strikingly resonating with the artistic preferences of the Soviet officials.</p>
<p>Garage Library stocks a catalogue from the famous auction sale. It seems that its contribution to history was already evident to its initiators at the time. Lord Gowrie, the-then Chairman of Sotheby&rsquo;s writes in the foreword to the catalogue: "Scholars and collectors both inside and outside the Soviet Union, have recognized the stirrings of a remarkable new period in Soviet art. Too diffuse to constitute a movement, the painters represented here have some qualities in common. They are mostly young. They are sophisticated, in that they are well aware of what is going on in painting in the West. They are Soviet, in the sense that they reject both imitation and the asocial content of the most contemporary Western art. &lt;&hellip;&gt; They are, as painters should be, eye-openers. They say a great deal about this exciting period of Soviet history". The catalogue presents an eloquent historical document, that shows which works, that went under the hammer on that day, stirred so much admiration and controversy. <em>V. L.</em></p>
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<section class="text__review mceNonEditable"><header class="text__review__header mceEditable"><img src="//cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_exhibit_russia.jpg" alt="" width="1190" height="1600" /></header>
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<h2 class="text__nomargin">Exhibit Russia: The New International Decade 1986&ndash;1996</h2>
<p class="text__small text__muted">Art Guide, 2016</p>
<p><em>Exhibit Russia: The New International Decade 1986&ndash;1996 </em>, a book released as part of Garage's publishing program, tells the story of the creation of the Russian art scene as we know it today, through the days of perestroika and the first years after the collapse of the USSR. Sotheby&rsquo;s auction in Moscow was one of the stages of this evolution, marked by a aspiration to integrate with the Western art world. One of the book&rsquo;s chapters is entirely devoted to this event.</p>
<p>Simon de Pury&mdash;head of Sotheby&rsquo;s European department in 1988&mdash;recalls the political background to the auction and agreements that were made, almost in passing, during his conversation with an unnamed Soviet official on his way to the hotel. While organizing the auction de Pury, in his own words, wanted to show the Western world what was hiding behind the Iron Curtain. For that reason, a special tour to the USSR for collectors from the USA and Europe was organized. It also included studio visits (of course only seeing artists approved by the USSR Ministry of Culture).</p>
<p>Extracts from the article by Suzanne Muchnic, published in the <em>Los Angeles Times</em>, inform readers about the context of the sale. She cites her conversations with artist Vadim Zakharov, whose works were included in the auction, and collectors, also mentioning the conflict, stirred by the auction, between the Union of Artists and The Ministry of Culture.</p>
<p>The closing part of the publication features extracts from the book <em>The Irony Tower</em> written by journalist Andrew Solomon, who sought to grasp the value &lsquo;Russian Sotheby&rsquo;s&rsquo; had to its participants. He describes the boat cruise organized for artists, journalists, and art theorists the day after the sale. "The presence of journalists made the already tense atmosphere even more tense"&mdash;wrote Solomon. Viktor Misiano (who at the time worked at The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts) was one of the initiators of the cruise and his efforts to "introduce people to the artists, who took part in the auction" completely failed. All eyes were on the sale superstars and even a "press conference" spontaneously organized by critic and curator Joseph Backstein left many questions unanswered. Yet there was something that united everyone on board that day&mdash;the feeling that "the auction itself happened to be a work of art in itself". <em>M. S.</em></p>
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<section class="text__review mceNonEditable"><header class="text__review__header mceEditable"><img src="//cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_solomon3.jpg" alt="" width="1148" height="1600" /></header>
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<h2 class="text__nomargin">Andrew Solomon. The Irony Tower: Soviet Artists in a Time of Glasnost</h2>
<p class="text__small text__muted">Ad Marginem, 2013</p>
<p>In July 1988 many Western collectors, philanthropists, journalists, and art lovers came to Moscow on the invitation of Sotheby&rsquo;s auction house. Among them was American journalist Andrew Solomon, for whom that journey turned out to be the first of the many recurring visits to the USSR and later to Russia. It was then that he got his first introduction to the artists of the Soviet underground, many of whom later became his friends.</p>
<p>Accounts by a foreigner, getting his first insight into the Soviet context with its official and also unofficial art scenes, are incredibly important. These accounts give an idea of innumerable complications and frequent misunderstandings that sparked when the cultures of the two rivalling countries collided.</p>
<p>The book mentions almost every single important name of the Moscow and Leningrad unofficial art scenes and gives details of their everyday lives, including many historical documents. However, witnesses to the events described by Solomon note that the author wasn&rsquo;t always accurate in his recollections. Artist Konstantin Zvezdochetov made a friendly commentary for the current publication, clarifying on memory errors and misunderstandings provoked by language and culture barriers. The book gives a detailed description of the Sotheby&rsquo;s auction, that became a turning point in the lives of many artists. <em>M.K.</em></p>
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<section class="text__review mceNonEditable"><header class="text__review__header mceEditable"><img src="//cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_Bruskin1.jpg" alt="" width="1010" height="1600" /></header>
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<h2 class="text__nomargin">Grisha Bruskin. Past Imperfect</h2>
<p class="text__small text__muted">Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2007</p>
<p>Grisha Bruskin's book contains short stories from the life of the artist and his close circle. This is the second edition of the book, the first one published in 2001 opened a series of Bruskin&rsquo;s memoirs and diaries (his other writings may also be found at Garage Library).</p>
<p>Many of Bruskin&rsquo;s stories are illustrated by photographs from his private archive, turning this book from a simple memoir into a real "family" album. With a precision of documentarist, the author reveals the mentality of those years and the regime that he grew up in. Phone conversations were monitored, some citizens were being followed, certain literature was being banned and a word &lsquo;Jew&rsquo; had an obscene connotation. The book includes many reflections of a philosophical and religious nature, yet its main subject is the life of unofficial artists and Sotheby&rsquo;s auction as one of its most important events.</p>
<p>The auction featured six works by Grisha Bruskin, one of which titled <em>Fundamental Lexicon</em> was sold for the incredible sum of $416 000 (Grisha Bruskin gives a price in dollars, while the auction currency was the British Pound. (According to Sotheby&rsquo;s documentation the work was sold for &pound;242 000.&mdash;M. L.). Six months before the auction, in 1987, the first part of <em>Fundamental Lexicon</em> was acquired by internationally acclaimed film director Milos Forman for 2000 rubles&mdash;a price assigned by the art council of The USSR Ministry of Culture.</p>
<p>The book is full of stories about artist&rsquo;s friends and the close circle: Swiss television producer Erik Peshler, who later became a collector of Bruskin&rsquo;s work; poets Dmitry Aleksandrovich Prigov and Lev Rubinstein, artists Erik Bulatov, Vladimir Yankilevsky, and Ilya Kabakov. Bruskin also mentions Mikhail Schwartzman and refers to him as a genius. <em>M. L.</em></p>
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<section class="text__review mceNonEditable"><header class="text__review__header mceEditable"><img src="//cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_Iskusstvo2.jpg" alt="" width="1196" height="1600" /></header>
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<h2 class="text__nomargin">&lsquo;Molodezhny&rsquo; Issue of &lsquo;Iskusstvo&rsquo; Magazine</h2>
<p class="text__small text__muted">1988, # 10</p>
<p>Sotheby&rsquo;s auction in Moscow changed the ways of Russian contemporary art history by showing that a new generation of artists existed in the USSR and wasn&rsquo;t linked to established artistic institutions. The tenth issue of <em>Iskusstvo</em> magazine completed entirely by young art theorists attempted to draw a portrait of this generation.</p>
<p>In the issue&rsquo;s preface the magazine&rsquo;s editorial team points out that the young generation&rsquo;s alienation from the public life of the years of stagnation, manifested in a slogan on the absence of a &lsquo;fathers and sons&rsquo; problem, influenced independent youth culture. Acknowledging the link between the USSR and the world of international contemporary art was re-established thanks to this very culture. The magazine&rsquo;s editorial team are literally justifying their decision to release this issue (by referring to the CPSU congress that claimed each generation must leave their trace in history). Their main thesis is even typeset in capital letters: &lsquo;&hellip; THIS IS THE RIGHT OF THE YOUTH TO VOICE WHATEVER THEY FEEL IS NECESSARY, THOSE ARE THEIR IDEAS, THEIR LIFE EXPERIENCE, THAT IS DIFFERENT FROM OURS, THIS IS THE ART THAT THEY CREATE, THIS IS TO THEM, TO WHOM THE NOT TOO DISTANT FUTURE BELONGS&rsquo;.</p>
<p>Young art theorists, among them Ekaterina Degot, Andrei Kovalev, Vladimir Levashov, Georgy Nikich, and Natalia Tamruchi commissioned a graphic artist and made an issue on "another art" and new criticism, paying special attention to analysis of Soviet art of the preceding decades and Sots Art. The cover featured a photograph of artists Timur Novikov and Inal Savchenkov, posing in front of the painting by the latter, also the practice of the "new artists" was examined in the article by Mikhail Trofimenkov.</p>
<p>Artist Sven Gundlakh wrote an article on the "Furmanny artists" (he was also part of this group), who lived and worked in squatted studios in Moscow&rsquo;s Furmanny pereulok. "Our produce&mdash;wrote Gundlakh, giving a strikingly precise account of postmodernist tendencies&mdash;are driven from the mind of a man of the pluralist and relativist era that sees the Universe exceptionally expanded".</p>
<p>Avdotya Smirnova wrote an article on dilettantism, linking this notion to criticism of unofficial artists, who were accused of unprofessionalism. "The frequent disturbance caused in the audience by an experimenting artist is the same type of disturbance an idle tourist feels towards his guide who also appeared to be a tourist". Valery Koziev came up with an accurate definition of "the new art" by describing it as "reflexive".</p>
<p>A section on Sots Art includes a broad overview by Dmitry Aleksandrovich Prigov, an article by Vladimir Levashov studying the relationships between Sots Art, social realism, conceptualism, and pop art, reflections by Georgy Puzenkov on what it means to be "an artist, on the path of Sots Art" in conditions of restricted freedom.</p>
<p>Mikhail Allenov and Ekaterina Andreeva devoted their articles to analysis of "socialist realism", its structure, imagery, themes, and traditions, while Ekaterina Degot talked to Andrey Erofeev, Konstantin Zvezdochetov, Natalia Tamruchi, Aleksei Grigoriev, and others on unofficial and Soviet art "over a cup of tea".</p>
<p>The issue is completed with "Chronicle of Artistic Life", featuring many curious remarks. A section "USSR&mdash;USA: What They Think on Perestroika in Our Art" includes a review of opinions that Western art theorists expressed towards the current state of Soviet art. American critic Sylvia Hochfield was struggling to resolve a phenomenon of the artist Glazunov (whether he delivers kitsch or expresses the true Russian soul), and the Italian press were pleasantly surprised there now was "less red" in Soviet paintings.</p>
<p>This remarkable magazine issue doesn&rsquo;t only help to restore the context in which artists and critics worked at the time, but to see that many of the issues exist in contemporary Russian art nowadays and still haven&rsquo;t been resolved. In particular, in one of his notes Sven Gundlakh described a state that, as we can see today, hasn&rsquo;t changed since 1988: "How large is our country and how little it contains&hellip; There are more genres, types and streams in contemporary art than there are actual people involved. That&rsquo;s why anyone can choose themselves some type of &lsquo;art&rsquo; to make and be a genius in it, in the sense of being the only one&hellip; Instead of contemporary art we have &lsquo;The Red Book&rsquo; and &lsquo;Blind Spots&rsquo;&rsquo;. <em>I.B.</em></p>
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<section class="text__review mceNonEditable"><header class="text__review__header mceEditable"><img src="//cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_73c8c478-807d-41de-bd45-13b41a7028e9-1200px.jpg" alt="" width="653" height="1000" /></header>
<article class="text__review__content mceEditable">
<h2 class="text__nomargin">Nikita Alekseev. Memory Rows</h2>
<p class="text__small text__muted">Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2008</p>
<p>Although Nikita Alekseev left the USSR in 1987 and didn&rsquo;t take part in the Sotheby&rsquo;s auction, his autobiographical book <em>Memory Rows</em> presents a curious document. It allows readers to understand and, through the prism of subjective vision of its author, get into the context that consequently saw crucial events in the life of unofficial Soviet art.</p>
<p>"What was happening to art in those years?"&mdash;he asks in a chapter on the eighties period.&mdash;"I think, a lot, and not necessarily all was positive &lt;...&gt;. Artists of my circle... turned out to shape something of a generation. &lt;...&gt; We found ourselves amongst postmodernists, realizing neither the responsibility that this position entails nor even the meaning of postmodernism&rdquo;. These words perfectly illustrate the great variety of individual artistic types represented at the Sovincenter in Moscow on the July 7, 1988.</p>
<p>In a chapter on the Detsky Sad (Kindergarten) art-squat (active in 1985&ndash;1986, founded by German Vinogradov, Andrei Roiter, and Nikolai Filatov), Alekseev writes on some of the artists whose works were featured in the sale. One of them is Nikolai Filatov, "a blond handsome man with a cold meaningless gaze who came from Lviv... he arrived with a strong belief that we all need to work with photorealism of a Polish type. Yet luckily, he soon switched to semi-figurative painting that came out as impressive, not any worse than Rainer Fetting and other German &lsquo;Junge Wilde&rsquo; artists". Two of Filatov&rsquo;s neo-expressionist works went under the hummer on the auction day for a price considerably exceeding their estimate.</p>
<p>"Thanks to Detsky Sad Sergey Volkov realized his artistic potential, he was one of the most remarkable in Moscow",&mdash;writes Alekseev.&mdash;"Earlier he used to be a great photographer, his first trials in painting happened almost accidentally after he visited friends at Detsky Sad&hellip; I take a personal credit for noticing something important in his early primitivist works". Auction guests admired Volkov's conceptual minimalism: all his works featured in the sale were also sold above the estimate.</p>
<p>The events described in Alekseev's books include apartment and street exhibitions of unofficial art in the 1980s, meetings with collectors (that even if indirectly, still influenced promotion of Soviet art in the West) ... Yet his attitude seems to be generally disillusioned. That period appears as full of hopelessness, time being spent "waiting on suitcases", waiting for immigration that didn't mean a possibility to ever return back into the country. Sotheby's auction that Alekseev didn't see, on the contrary, appears as the event that put everything in its place, breaking the wall of hopelessness and cutting a window to the era of glasnost, the bids for which were high and serious. <em>V. L.</em></p>
</article>
</section>

Overview of Publications for the Exhibition Bidding for Glasnost: Sotheby’s 1988 Auction in Moscow 

<section class="text__review mceNonEditable"><header class="text__review__header mceEditable">
<p class="text__small"><strong>The selection was prepared by Ilmira Bolotyan, Valery Ledenev, Maryana Karysheva, and Maria Shmatko.</strong></p>
</header>
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<p class="text__lead" data-tpl-selection=""><a href="/en/exhibition/i-the-other-trans-atlantic-kinetic-and-op-art-in-eastern-europe-and-latin-america-1950s-1970s-i"><em>The Other Trans-Atlantic. Kinetic and Op Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America 1950s &ndash; 1970s</em></a> is an exhibition currently on show at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. Garage Library team have prepared a selection of literature on the history of kinetic art from both sides of the Atlantic.</p>
</article>
</section>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<section class="text__review mceNonEditable"><header class="text__review__header mceEditable"><img src="//cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_Image_00001-(289).jpg" alt="" width="280" height="409" /></header>
<article class="text__review__content mceEditable">
<h2 class="text__nomargin">The Other Transatlantic: Kinetic and Op Art In Central And Eastern Europe And Latin America</h2>
<p class="text__small text__muted">Warsaw: Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2017. - 356 pp.</p>
<p>The publication was prepared by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw for <em>The Other Transatlantic</em> exhibition that opened in the Polish capital before it travelled to Moscow. It is not a catalogue for a project, but rather an illustrated reader on history of kinetic and op art on both sides of the Atlantic between the early 1940s and the first half of the 1970s.</p>
<p>Kinetic and op art according to Dieter Roelstraete and Abigail Winograd, who together with Marta Dziewańska and Pavel Nowozick&yacute; co-curated the exhibition&rsquo;s Polish edition, was unfairly overlooked and marginalized within "big" art history in favor of "high" modernism. Critics up until 1960s did not pay much attention to these movements, finding works by its key representatives nothing more than "novelties", while a renowned publication <em>Art Since 1990: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism</em> mentions mainly Western-European representatives of the movement.</p>
<p>However, as the authors expand on it in the publication&rsquo;s introductory article, kinetic and op art turned into one of the few truly international movements in post-war art history, uniting artists living in different countries and working in different socio-cultural contexts. Those artists rethought relationships between viewer and artwork, and "reassembled" the language of contemporary art by means of avant-garde and contemporary science, in an attempt to make this language more accessible, driving from universal laws of physics, mathematics, and human perception.</p>
<p>Certain articles included in the publication talk about the history of kinetic and op art in Latin America (with a particular focus on Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela), Eastern Europe (Poland and Czechoslovakia), and the New Tendencies international art movement. An article by Sasha Obukhova, Garage Archive and Library curator, explores the history of the <em>Dvizhenie</em> (Movement) art group and kinetic art in the USSR. Abigail Winograd and Dusan Barok have compiled a detailed account of events related to the history of the movement between 1941 and 1973. The publication&rsquo;s appendix features key articles and manifestoes by artists and researchers in the field of kinetic and op art. <em>V.L.</em></p>
</article>
</section>
<section class="text__review mceNonEditable"><header class="text__review__header mceEditable"><img src="//cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_visionary-structures-from-johansons-to-johansons-a21-78).jpg" alt="" width="280" height="397" /></header>
<article class="text__review__content mceEditable">
<h2 class="text__nomargin">Visionary Structures. From Johansons to Johansons</h2>
<p class="text__small text__muted">Riga: The Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, 2015. &ndash; 262 pp.</p>
<p data-tpl-selection="">The publication is a catalogue of an eponymous exhibition held in 2005 at the BOZAR Centre For Fine Arts, Brussels co-organized with the Latvian National Museum of Art and the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art. The exhibition traced one of the trajectories in the history of Latvian art, going from constructivism to kinetic art and further&mdash;to art based on new technologies. The show brought together works by artists from three different generations, who, according to the exhibition curators, remained faithful to similar ideas and movements in art history. <br />In the 1920s Karl Ioganson and Gustav Klutsis, artists of Latvian origin who belonged to a Moscow group of constructivists, came up with a new means for visualizing dynamics of contemporary life. Their heritage was referenced throughout the 1970s: a number of artists, including Latvians Valdis Celms, Janis Krievs, and Arturs Rinkis, were engaged in scientific aesthetics and possibilities for finding new forms delivered by such. They did not only work as artists but also as urban and landscape designers, interior architects, and space technology designers (Janis Krievs developed electronic dynamical systems for domestic lighting).</p>
<p data-tpl-selection="">Contemporary science was the main focus for the youngest generation of artists present at the exhibition. The language of computer technologies, unlike that of kinetic aesthetics, doesn&rsquo;t make a claim for universalism, yet allows the building of alternative micro-realities, a &lsquo;post-human&rsquo; world. The latter, as demonstrated in the works of Gints Gabrans and Voldemars Johansons, is comprised of particles, biological matter, genetic chains, and technological algorithms.</p>
<p data-tpl-selection="">In the constructions of Karl Ioganson and Gustav Klutsis from the 1920s we see utopia as a fruit of political and revolutionary fantasies, where an artist&rsquo;s place is taken by engineers and designers, yet visual thinking of the 1970s still refers to "chilled"&mdash;in the words of the exhibition curator Ieva Astahovska&mdash;socialist ideals. The kinetic objects of Valdis Celms, Janis Krievs, and Arturs Rinkis, writes Astahovska, ooze cybernetic optimism and poetic cosmic escapism. These artists found ways to use a state-imposed imperative of "technological aesthetics" for their individual artistic search, filling it with a certain freedom of form and content.</p>
<p data-tpl-selection="">Astkhovksa cites Andrey Kharitonov, a researcher who found a precise way to describe the essence of Latvian kinetic art: "Their objects are gifts to the Soviet people from the future galactic society, made according to a principle of sci-tech rationality". Some of these "gifts" by Valdis Celms, Janis Krievs, and Arturs Rinkis can be found at <em>The Other Trans-Atlantic</em> exhibition at Garage this spring. <em>I.B.</em></p>
<p data-tpl-selection=""><a class="button button--black" href="/en/catalogue/L23754">LEARN MORE</a></p>
</article>
</section>
<section class="text__review mceNonEditable"><header class="text__review__header mceEditable"><img src="//cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_9780262515818.jpg" alt="" width="280" height="352" /></header>
<article class="text__review__content mceEditable">
<h2 class="text__nomargin">A Little-Known Story about a Movement, a Magazine and the Computer&rsquo;s Arrival in Art. New Tendencies and Bit International, 1961&ndash;1973</h2>
<p class="text__small text__muted">Karlsruhe: ZKM | Center for Arts and Media Karlsruhe, 2011. &ndash; 576 pp.</p>
<p>A weighty tome on New Tendencies&mdash; the international art movement that emerged in socialist Yugoslavia and developed on ideas introduced by kinetic and op art, alongside rapidly growing computer art&mdash;was released for an exhibition on history of the movement. The project was organized in 2007&ndash;2009 in Austria and Germany. Its Austrian edition opened in 2007 in Linz and was curated by Darko Fritz. In 2008, he was joined by Peter Weibel, Maria Gattin, and Margit Rosen, who also acted as the publication&rsquo;s editor.</p>
<p>The prolific study comprises information on the history of the New Tendencies, that began with Almir Mavignier, a Brazilian artist who lived in Germany, and Croatian art critic Matko Mestrovic meeting in Zagreb in 1961. They joined forces to organize an exhibition of new computer art in the Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art, headed by Bozo Bek who was supportive of their ideas. After Zagreb, exhibitions were organized in Italy, Germany, and France, so by 1968 the movement grew to be international. The book presents a detailed timeline of exhibitions, symposiums, and publications by New Tendencies and the history of <em>Bit International</em> magazine, that was published by members of the movement.</p>
<p>Many representatives of New Tendencies classified their work as research, not only on the methodological level, but also in terms of reorganization of artistic practice, preferring collective making to individual. Movement members were promoting industrial production and multiplication of works, the new art containing to them an ideal of modern democratic society. Their discussions that happened in the years between 1968 and 1973 are documented in this book, showing a variety of themes and positions, that are still relevant to digital art to the present day. <em>M.K.</em></p>
<p><a class="button button--black" href="/en/catalogue/L7980">LEARN MORE</a></p>
</article>
</section>
<section class="text__review mceNonEditable"><header class="text__review__header mceEditable"><img src="//cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_documenta4(1).jpg" alt="" width="280" height="347" /></header>
<article class="text__review__content mceEditable">
<h2 class="text__nomargin">documenta III. Malerei, Skulptur</h2>
<p class="text__small text__muted">Koln: Verlag M. DuMont Shauberg, 1964. - 416 pp.</p>
<h2 class="text__nomargin">4. documenta. Katalog 1</h2>
<p class="text__small text__muted">Kassel: Verlag Druck + Verlag GmbH Kassel, 1968. - 326 pp.</p>
<p>In 1964 visitors to <a href="/en/catalogue/L5602">documenta 3</a> in Kassel had a chance to see kinetic art at the "Light and Movement" (Licht und Bewegung) section of the exhibition. Works that went into it were personally selected by documenta founder Arnold Bode (other sections of the exhibition were prepared by a committee of fourteen people, apart from Bode himself). His choice was made in favor of predominantly Western-European artists, including Heinz Mack, Otto Piene, Guenther Uecker, Nicolas Sch&ouml;ffer and members of French artist group GRAV (Groupe de recherche d&rsquo;art vusel)&mdash;Fran&ccedil;ois Morellet and Julio Le Parc &mdash; Jes&uacute;s Rafael Soto (his works are shown at Garage), and others. However, a catalogue introduction article written by Werner Haftmann, member of selection committee and adviser on theoretical matters at documenta 3, does not mention kinetic art and its representatives. In his definition of a "curatorial statement" for the project, according to which "art is what is made by great artists", Haftmann centers his arguments around representatives of pre- and post-war modernism (from Matisse and Kandinsky to Sam Francis and Antoni T&agrave;pies).</p>
<p>The tradition was supported by <a href="/en/catalogue/L5739">documenta 4</a> in 1968, described as "the youngest documenta in history". Kinetic and op art alongside performance and happening, pop art, and minimalism were relatively well represented. The show included works by Victor Vasarely, Bridget Riley, Gyula Kosice, Zdeněk S&yacute;kora (works by the last two are shown at Garage), also by Dvizhenie (Movement) group, although those were rather unfairly attributed to Lev Nussberg only, who in fact wasn&rsquo;t the author of works reproduced in the catalogue. The publication doesn&rsquo;t explain how those objects traveled abroad from the USSR (a rather complicated question for 1960s), but only mentions that works by Soviet artists "cannot be loaned to other exhibitions".</p>
<p>A large text on history of kinetic and op art was written for the catalogue by Werner Spies, who described works of the movements&rsquo; representatives from the point of view of then-innovative findings in psychology of perception. "By the term op art, we refer to works appealing to vision in its self-sufficiency. [&hellip;] Mechanisms lying at the basis of kinetic art are only partially surpassed by mechanisms of op art, yet the two shall not be immediately separated. They are both defining the artistic [&hellip;] in which the system of looking / interpretation [&hellip;] is replaced by a system that destroys equilibrium between perception and apperception [immediate perception and comprehension of the seen.&mdash;V.L.]". Both catalogues were published in German language. <em>V.L.</em></p>
</article>
</section>
<section class="text__review mceNonEditable"><header class="text__review__header mceEditable"><img src="//cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_Italian_zero1.jpg" alt="" width="280" height="390" /></header>
<article class="text__review__content mceEditable">
<h2 class="text__nomargin">Italian ZERO &amp; Avantgarde &lsquo;60s</h2>
<p class="text__small text__muted">Milano: Silvana Editoriale, 2011. &ndash; 288 pp.</p>
<p>The publication was prepared for an exhibition <em><a href="/en/catalogue/L32229">Zero Group. Contemporary Italian Art of the Second Half of XX century</a></em>, held in 2011 at the Multimedia Art Museum (Moscow), by its structure resembles more of an almanac. The book, as it says in its introductory article, was intended not to "be opened with a serious theoretical text", so that a reader (and equally a visitor to the exhibition) could "independently sense and identify links between certain artists and their work". It doesn&rsquo;t imply there were no texts published in the book. History and meaning of works by ZERO group members is revealed through publications by artists themselves: fragments of their letters, articles, and comments on their own work are reproduced inside the book in a great volume.</p>
<p>ZERO was an international art movement, also active in Germany, France, and the Netherlands. Lucio Fontana was one of its most prominent representatives from Italy, his views are declared in manifestoes published in the book. His ideas are developed in the article by Enrico Castellani and Piero Manzoni that appeared in <em>Azimuth</em> magazine in 1960. In "Critical Remarks on Theoretical Input in the Framework of the New Tendency" Manfredo Massironi has coined theoretical principles for social relationships in culture, metaphorically reflected in his work <em>Unstable Perception</em>. The book also features a text on Lucio Fontana by Nanda Vigo, which is written more in a form of a memoir rather than a critical account of the artist&rsquo;s work.</p>
<p>Op art of Alberto Biasi, geometrism of Agostino Bonalumi, constructions of Davide Boriani, reminiscent of works by the <em>Dvizhenie</em> group, machines of Bruno Munari, white surfaces of Paolo Scheggi, reflective objects of Nanda Vigo&mdash;page by page we are able to trace the way form and illusion, that it induces, turned into a prominent language in art throughout a certain period of its history.</p>
<p>An article by Werner Mayer introduces a German branch of the famous movement (Heinz Mack, Otto Piene, and others). It is published in a catalogue for the exhibition <em><a href="/en/catalogue/L32235">The Paths of German Art from 1949 to the Present</a>&nbsp;</em>held in 2014 at Moscow Museum of Modern Art. <em>M.S.</em></p>
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Overview of Publications for the Exhibition The Other Trans-Atlantic

Overview of Publications for the Exhibition If Our Soup Can Could Speak 

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<p class="text__small"><strong>The selection was prepared by Ilmira Bolotyan, Valery Ledenev, Maryana Karysheva, and Maria Litovchenko.</strong></p>
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<p class="text__lead" data-tpl-selection="">The <a href="/ru/library/overview-of-publications-for-the-exhibition-the-other-trans-atlantic">first part</a> of the overview for the exhibition The Other Trans-Atlantic was devoted to books on kinetic art outside of the Soviet Union. In the second part, Garage Research team look at publications on kinetic movement in the USSR and Russia.</p>
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<p>&nbsp;</p>
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<h2 class="text__nomargin">Viacheslav Koleichuk. Kinetizm [Kineticism]</h2>
<p class="text__small text__muted">Galart, 1994</p>
<p>&lsquo;Kineticism is art based on the idea of moving form. This does not only refer to the movement of an object in space, but also incudes any change, transformation&mdash;any kind of &lsquo;life&rsquo; that develops in the work as it is observed by the viewer.&rsquo; With this clear and elegant definition artist, researcher and member of Mir group Viacheslav Koleichuk (1941&ndash;2018) opens his book on kinetic art.</p>
<p>Published in 1994, <em>Kineticism</em> might still be the only work written in Russian language to offer an exhaustive overview of kinetic art in the USSR and outside of it. Starting with Russian constructivism and the seminal exhibition of OBMOKhU (Society of Young Artists) in 1921 (he reconstructed its display for the Tratyakov Gallery in 2006), Koleichuk moves on to Alexander Calder&rsquo;s mobiles and discusses experiments by Jean Tinguely, Bridget Riley, Jes&uacute;s Rafael Soto and Julio Le Parc, paying special attention to the formal aspects of their compositions: the use of mirrors; creating a illusion of movement through the use of graphic linear patterns; making the viewer part of the work. His account is not strictly chronological but in-depth and draws on a wide range of sources, including literature that inspired artists whose work is analyzed in the book.</p>
<p>The closing chapters are devoted to Dvizheniye, Argo and Mir groups, light music experiments by Kazan-based Prometheus collective and Latvian artists (the &lsquo;Riga group&rsquo; including Arturs Riņķis), whose works were included in the exhibition at Garage.</p>
<p>Viacheslav Koleichuk passed away only a few weeks before the opening of the reconstruction of his Atom&mdash;one of the landmark projects of Soviet kinetic art, originally created in 1968. Visitors can see the reconstructed Atom in Garage Square from May 6 to August 28. <em>V. L.</em></p>
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<h2 class="text__nomargin">Dinamicheskaya I kineticheskaya forma v dizayne. Metodicheskiye materialy [Dynamic and Kinetic Form in Design. Resource Materials]</h2>
<p class="text__small text__muted">VNIITE (All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Industrial Design), 1989</p>
<p>Compiled by Viacheslav Koleichuk, Alexander Lavrentyev, Selim Khan-Magomedov and Irina Racheyeva, this book is devoted to the actual practice of making mobile objects. As Viacheslav Koleichuk points out in the introduction, dynamic form captured the attention of Soviet artists from the Avant-Garde (Vladimir Tatlin, Aleksei Gan, Naum Gabo, Gustav Klutsis and Alexander Rodchenko were among those who experimented with it) until the very end of the USSR. Elements of kinetic art seeped into design, applied arts, light architecture, exhibition spaces and the everyday. The aesthetic potential of kinetic form often got neglected, which resulted in aesthetic flops, such as <em>Gamma</em> radiogram: created without professional designers, it reduced light music to &lsquo;three light bulbs of different colour that blinked in the rhythm of the music.&rsquo;<br /> <br />Authors of the book distinguish two waves of interest towards kinetic form. The first (in the 1920s and 30s) had to do with the development of new styles and art forms by futurist, cubist and constructivist artists, while the second (1950s and 60s) saw new artists implement the discoveries of the previous generations in light architecture, applied arts and exhibition design.</p>
<p>Discussing over 200 projects, with models and drawings, the book reveals the key principles of the making of dynamic and kinetic objects. The chapter <em>Movement as Image</em> begins with an analysis of representation of movement in European culture and the stereotypes it has created (movement as an arrow, boomerang or a running horse) and finishes with a discussion of experimental model making (Calder&rsquo;s mobiles, Theremin&rsquo;s self-titled musical instrument, Sch&ouml;ffer&rsquo;s luminodynamic tower, works by Koleichuk and other Soviet engineers and artists). The closing section of the book, <em>Artists and Their Concepts of Dynamic and Kinetic Form</em> is essentially an overview of works and exhibitions by Dvizheniye collective. Along with well-known artists you will come across several names that have been forgotten. For example, Boris Stuchebryukov made objects of many layers using the resilience of materials. His <em>Transformer Blade Fabric</em> (1985) could transform into a cylinder, a dome or a cone.</p>
<p>Although it seems to have been written for professionals (designers, architects, sculptors and art historians), this collection of texts will also be of interest to the general reader. You will find out why the shape of the <em>Parker</em> pen became iconic; why one of the first models of amateur photo cameras featured horizontal metal lines; how American designers crushed stereotypes in European chinaware and what the pockets of the Soviet &lsquo;universal coat&rsquo; could be transformed into. <em>I. B.</em></p>
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<h2 class="text__nomargin">Prometey. Demoversiya. Eksperiment obeshchayet stat iskusstvom [Prometheus. A Demo. Experiment That Promises To Become Art</h2>
<p class="text__small text__muted">Centre of Interdisciplinary Research in Contemporary Art, Kazan: SKB Prometey, 2017</p>
<p>Student engineering studio Prometheus was formed in Kazan in 1962 to stage Alexander Scriabin&rsquo;s <em>Prometheus: The Poem of Fire</em>. Later, the student initiative grew into a proper research institute, whose staff included scientists, engineers, artists, philosophers and musicians. Prometheus turned Kazan into the main Soviet hub of interdisciplinary projects at the intersection of art, science and technology. It produced a number of light music machines, as well as theater shows, films, conferences and video art experiments initiated by the studio&rsquo;s leader Bulat Galeyev.</p>
<p>An exhibition devoted to Prometheus took place in Moscow in 2017. The catalogue includes a text on the history of the institute illustrated with archive photographs and exhibition views, as well as articles by Bulat Galeyev, Viacheslav Koleichuk, curators Boris Klyushnikov and Olga Shishko an and expert in Russian video art Antonio Geuza among other authors. <em>M. K.</em></p>
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<h2 class="text__nomargin">Vremya dvizheniya [Time of Movement]</h2>
<p class="text__small text__muted">Artstory Gallery, 2014</p>
<p>The 2014 exhibition at the Moscow Artstory Gallery brought together works by 12 artists of Dvizheniye collective, including Francisco Infante-Arana, Lev Nussberg, Rimma Sapgir-Zanevskaya, Vladimir Akulinin (all featured in <em>The Other Trans-Atlantic</em> at Garage) and Natalia Prokuratova.</p>
<p>In his article for the catalogue critic and scholar Sergey Khachaturov argues that our understanding of Dvizheniye &lsquo;has become problematic, as many ideas by artists like Zanevskaya, Grigoriev, Infante, Koleichuk and Nussberg have been appropriated by the culture of street design and celebrations, the culture of entertainment.&rsquo; However, he continues, &lsquo;contemporary high-tech design that brings to mind the illusionistic experiments of half-a-century ago is essentially different from the work of the great artists of the Soviet underground&hellip; as Dvizheniye experiments were never made for fun or entertainment purposes only, but were the practical part of the collective&rsquo;s philosophy of art, their understanding of its essence and its relation to nature, technology and humanity.&rsquo;</p>
<p>The publication abounds in illustrations, which include photographs from Dvizhenie archive of the 1960s and 70s and the 1966 Manifesto of Russian Kinetic Artists&mdash;the key text for the collective. <em>V. L.</em></p>
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<h2 class="text__nomargin">Francisco Infante, Nonna Goryunova. Katalog-albom artefaktov retrospektivnoy vystavki v Moskovskom muzeye sovremennogo iskusstva [Catalogue Album of Artefacts from the Retrospective Exhibition at Moscow Museum of Modern Art]</h2>
<p class="text__small text__muted">NCCA, 2006</p>
<p>This large format book of 500 pages is the catalogue for the 2006 retrospective exhibition of Francisco Infante-Arana and Nonna Goryunova at Moscow Museum of Modern Art. The concept of the &lsquo;artefact,&rsquo; as understood and used by Infante, is partially explained in the article by poet and art theorist Vsevolod Nekrasov, who focuses on the mirror artefact in nature as &lsquo;the signature, essential form in Infante&rsquo;s work, his emblem that marries human-made objects with nature, structure with intuition, emotions with technology.&rsquo; Infante&rsquo;s own text <em>On the Concept of Artefact</em> is also featured in the catalogue.</p>
<p>The publication contains Nekrasov&rsquo;s poetry dedicated to Francisco Infante, an article by Nicoletta Misler and John Bowlt and Evgenia Kikodze&rsquo;s 2002 interview with the artist. Works featured in the catalogue include the famous <em>Spirals</em> (<em>Spiral of Infinity</em>, 1963; <em>Dynamic Spirals</em>, 1964), painted china and &lsquo;artefacts&rsquo; of different years. <em>M. L.</em></p>
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<section class="text__review mceNonEditable"><header class="text__review__header mceEditable"><img src="//cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_Nussberg1_2.jpg" alt="" width="280" height="314" /></header>
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<h2 class="text__nomargin">Nussberg 1961&ndash;1979</h2>
<p class="text__small text__muted">Galerie Karin Fesel, 1979</p>
<p>The catalogue of the exhibition of one of Dvizhenie leaders Lev Nussberg, which took place in Wiesbaden in 1979, comes from the Leonid Talochkin Collection in Garage Archive. According to the inscription, Nussberg himself sent the publication to Talochkin and art historian Tatyana Vendelshteyn. The catalogue features works made from 1961 to 1979 with an introduction by Friedrich W. Heckmanns, who compares works by Russian kinetic artists to the masterpieces of the Russian Avant-Garde. This copy of the catalogue also features handwritten comments by Nussberg.</p>
<p>By the black-and-white photograph of his work <em>In the Memory of Malevich</em> (1961) Nussberg explain that &lsquo;the square [in the painting] was of course bright red. I made it very much &agrave; la Malevich!&rsquo; By the painting <em>Platinum Wave In an Abstract Landscape</em> (1961), he wrote &lsquo;I like this work (although it is an early one and far too red in this catalogue).&rsquo; &lsquo;This is how I &ldquo;illustrated&rdquo; music,&rsquo; says the inscription by the drawing <em>Invention</em> (1962). <em>V. L.</em></p>
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</section>

Overview of Publications on Soviet and Russian Kinetic Art