Wyoming Arts Council

From the purges of the Stalinist era to the time before Glasnost, artists creating art that was outside the realm of a social-realist ideology could face drastic consequences that ranged from unemployment to imprisonment. The sweeping cultural reforms that have subsequently taken place in Russia have enabled a more detailed appraisal of this ‘non-conformist’ art. Forbidden Art: The Postwar Russian Avant-Garde provides a unique framework to explore and understand this period of Russian art history.

Forbidden Art traces the influences and ways that dissident artists articulated their reactions to Social Realism. It highlights five movements associated with this period: The Reform School, characterized by an expanded interpretation of the socialist principle and drawing inspiration from Russia’s cultural traditions and classical art; The Radical School which united artists that defied the social-realist communal values; Sots-art, which reflected on social-realist control of national identity and iconography by characterizing the Soviet mythology and its political system; Moscow Conceptualism, a reactionary response to Sots-art; and the Modernist Movement in Leningrad which moved toward spirituality and drew inspiration from Suprematism and Dada’s surrealism.

An opening reception for the exhibitions takes place Friday between 6-8 p.m. Gerald Janecek, Professor of Russian, University of Kentucky, will present an art talk about the works on display on Saturday at 11 a.m. followed by a brown bag lunch with the scholar at 12:30 p.m. and an open forum at 2 p.m. Janecek is the editor-in-chief of Slavic & East European Journal and is the author of The Look of Russian Literature: Avant-Garde Visual Experiments, 1900-1930, ZAUM: The Transrational Poetry of Russian Futurism, and Sight & Sound Entwined: Studies of the New Russian Poetry.

In 2004, Janecek received a one year National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowship to complete a book on Moscow Conceptualism, an art and literature movement that occurred during the later years of the Soviet Union.

Exhibition discussions continue on Monday at 11 a.m. with a Gallery Walk with Stephen Norris, Assistant Professor of History and Director of Film Studies from Miami University. Norris’s work studies popular images and propaganda in Russia during the 19th and 20th centuries. His book, A War of Images: Russian Popular Prints, Wartime Culture, and National Identity, 1812-1945, is under contract. He is presently working on a book about Post-Soviet film. Norris will give an Art Talk at 7 p.m. Monday.

Forbidden Art: The Postwar Russian Avant-Garde was organized for a national tour by International Arts & Artists, New York. It has been funded in part by Murdock and Associates Law Firm, Rocky Mountain Power, the National Advisory Board of the UW Art Museum, and Wyoming Public Radio. The exhibition will run through November 17, 2007.

Bringing the world of art to Wyoming, the Art Museum is located in the Centennial Complex at 22nd & Willett Drive in Laramie. The Museum and Museum Store are open Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m with extended hours until 9 p.m. on Mondays from September through November. Admission is free.