Dieses obskure Objekt der Kunst That Obscure Object of Art

fused with a paradoxically ironic optimism.
Conceptualist architect Yuri Avvakumov’s
Temporary Monuments (for the most part
produced between 1986 and 1991) beautifully
illustrate this brief stage in the evolution of
the Soviet theme. Here, the shift of emphasis
from ideological to cultural signs becomes
evident.
We can trace the theme of “cultural nostalgia”
through the entire post-Soviet period right
up to the present day. Along with the revival
of Marxist values in the left art-activist scene of
the nineties, it constitutes one of the new
semantic complexes of Russian art, which has
manifested itself in the nostalgia for utopia as
it has in the search for a national identity.
What it entails is not only the confluence of
Sovietness and Russianness, but also Russian
self-identification on the international scene.
Underscoring the multidirectional character of
this process, curator Victor Misiano defined
it, for an exhibition of art from the post-Soviet
countries, as a “progressive nostalgia”. 11 This
term, however, is just as much an oxymoron
as is Sots Art or “romantic conceptualism.”
And its coinage only proves that the object of
contemporary Russian art has become no less
obscure.
1 “The Manifesto of Sots Art”; viewed at
http://www.aerofeev.ru/content/view/25/111/
(in Russian).
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Neil Baldwin, Man Ray: American Artist
(New York: Da Capo Press, 2001), p. 73.
5 “The Other Art”: Moscow 1956–1988 (Moscow:
Galart/National Centre for Contemporary Arts,
2005), p. 182 (in Russian).
6 Ibid.
7 Op. cit., p. 279.
8 Op. cit., p. 280.
9 Boris Groys, “Moscow Romantic Conceptualism,”
A-Ya: Unofficial Russian Art Review 1 (1979), p. 3.
10 Op. cit., p. 11.
11 Progressive Nostalgia: Contemporary Art from
the Former USSR (WAM 33-34, Moscow, 2008),
exhibition catalogue.
Vladimir Levashov
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