Harvard University Gazette December 4-10, 2008 - Harvard News ...

18/ Harvard University Gazette December 4-10, 2008
December 4-10, 2008 Harvard University Gazette/ 19
‘The Arts of Subversion:
Nonconformist
Art from the Soviet
Union’ will be on display
on the concourse
level of the Center for
Government and International
Studies, South
Building, from Dec. 4
through Jan. 22. The
opening, which takes
place today (Dec. 4) at
5 p.m., will feature a
conversation between
Norton Dodge and
Anna Wexler Katsnelson.
Both the opening
and the exhibit are free
and open to the public.
Related story,
‘Boym turns chance
errors into chancy art’
www.news.harvard.edu
/gazette/2007/03.01
/15-boym.html
Photos Rose Lincoln/Harvard News Office
With the same sort of elegance and aplomb his subject displays, Joseph Koerner, professor of history of art and
architecture, holds forth on Max Beckmann’s ‘Self-Portrait in Tuxedo’ (1927).
Portraits of dissent
on view at Davis Ctr.
‘The Arts of Subversion: Nonconformist Art from
the Soviet Union’ is subject of premier exhibition
Making connections:
A special evening for
Harvard faculty
By Ruth Walker
Special to the Harvard News Office
By Amy Lavoie
FAS Communications
Norton Dodge is an economist, a Harvard alumnus, and a
savior of smuggled Soviet art. Smuggler is not usually a
moniker that one would choose, but for Norton Dodge it is a
badge of honor.
Concerned with the plight of artists living under Soviet
rule, many of whom found their work prohibited by the
regime, Dodge smuggled almost 20,000 works of art out of the
Soviet Union during the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s.
Dodge ’51, Ph.D. ’60, who first traveled to the Soviet Union
as a graduate student in economics to conduct research, has
donated 56 works of art from his personal collection to the
Kathryn W. and Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Russian and
art
exhibit
Jon Chase/Harvard News Office
Curator Anna Wexler Katsnelson: ‘From the late 1920s, a centralized aesthetic policy was implemented in the Soviet
Union, which mandated that art have prescribed content executed in a realistic, rather than abstract, manner.’
Eurasian Studies. A selection of these pieces,
along with others on loan from Dodge’s personal
collection and from the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli
Art Museum at Rutgers University, will be on display
for the first time as part of a new exhibition called “The Arts
of Subversion: Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union.”
The exhibition, presented by the Davis Center, opens this
week (Dec. 4) in the Center for Government and International
Studies (CGIS), South Building. The artwork will be
made available for use by students, scholars, and faculty
across departments.
“From the late 1920s, a centralized aesthetic policy was
being implemented in the Soviet Union, which mandated
that art have prescribed content executed in a realistic, rather
than abstract, manner,” says Anna Wexler Katsnelson Ph.D.
’07, curator of the exhibition. “Artists who refused to comply
faced dire consequences, ranging from poverty to imprisonment.”
Over the course of the 1960s and ’70s, under the guise of
his continuing economic research, Dodge returned time and
again to the Soviet Union, smuggling out nonconformist
works, and in the process nearly single-handedly preserving
Soviet nonconformist art.
The collection Dodge amassed is a “remarkable artistic
record of the culture of dissent in the former Soviet Union,”
says Timothy Colton, Morris and Anna Feldberg Professor
of Government and Russian Studies and director of the Davis
Center. “We look forward to celebrating Norton Dodge’s
courageous role in acquiring the art as well as the extraordinary
collection itself.”
“Without Dodge’s intervention, some Russian nonconformist
art may have been lost from history,” says Svetlana
Boym, Curt Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic Languages
and Literatures and professor of comparative literature, who
has extensively studied nonconformist art and played a key
role in bringing both the gift and the exhibition to the Davis
Center.
This exhibition consists primarily of works on paper,
along with six oil paintings. Many of the pieces are abstract,
and the exhibition is arranged according to themes that
showcase the diversity of artists represented.
While most nonconformist artists worked within in a gray
zone between permitted and forbidden and did not consider
their art explicitly political, their very existence flew in the
face of authority, says Boym.
“I hope that this exhibit will draw attention to the relationship
between art history and politics,” says Boym. “Building
bridges between departments is a great aspect of centers,
and the Davis Center was really terrific in figuring out very
creative ways of collaborating between different areas of research.
Housing the exhibit was a creative endeavor.”
The exhibition’s earliest works, which date from the 1950s,
(See Art, page 34)
The subversive Soviet treasures
in the new Davis Center
exhibit include (clockwise
from top left) ‘Untitled’
by Mikhail Chemiakin,
undated; Sergei Borisov’s
‘Kalashnikov,’ 1985; and
‘Untitled’ by Vladas Zilius,
1977.
“The arts are something we all care deeply about, whether
we are artists ourselves, whether we are social scientists, or
whether we are scientists,” Senior Vice Provost Judith Singer
told an audience of about 120 Harvard faculty of all stripes
and ranks gathered at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum.
It was one of those rare Harvard events that bring together
faculty from across the University.
“Making Connections: A Special Evening for Harvard Faculty”
was sponsored by Singer’s office Nov. 18 to give junior
faculty an opportunity “to get to know and feel part of this
faculty
community,” as she put it. It was also an opportunity
for selected faculty members from
several different disciplines to talk about individual works
in the Harvard Art collections and what they mean to them.
In addition, the evening was an occasion for the curators
of the Harvard Art Museum to remind their guests that although
a major renovation is under way, the museum is not
closed but still very much available as a resource for the entire
University community.
“We very much want to build bridges across the University,”
said Singer, whose full title is senior vice provost for faculty
development and diversity and James Bryant Conant
Professor of Education. “We decided in the provost’s office
that there were too few opportunities for faculty across the
University to get together for activity that they would find
intellectually stimulating and also just engaging at a personal
level. … I’m pleased to say we have representation from
every faculty at Harvard University.”
As Lori Gross, associate provost for arts and culture, explained,
the provost’s office asked half a dozen faculty members
“to pick out one piece of art that they feel particularly engaged
with, and start a conversation about it.”
The first presentation was by Hans Tutschku, professor of
music. When asked to be one of the evening’s presenters, he
knew exactly which work he would talk about: László Moholy-Nagy’s
“Light Prop for an Electric Stage (Light-Space
Modulator).” Moholy-Nagy was one of the leading figures of
the Bauhaus movement, which was based in Tutschku’s
hometown of Weimar, Germany. Created in 1930, “Light
Prop” was one of the earliest kinetic sculptures. Tutschku
first encountered the work in photographs as a 21-year-old,
and was so captivated by it that he wrote a piece of electroacoustic
music about it. “It’s the quintessence of his ideas
about space, light … and the industrialization of art.”
Faculty and friends enjoy a bite at the ‘Connections’
event, which gave six faculty members a chance to expatiate
on a particular artwork.
Tutschku composed his musical piece “out of the imagination,”
he said, without ever having seen the sculpture in
motion. But in honor of the occasion, the kinetic sculpture
was turned on as Tutschku’s piece was played in the gallery.
Carefully placed spotlights on the floor helped the sculpture
project ever-changing patterns of light and shadow onto an
expanse of white gallery wall between canvases by Charles
Sheeler and Georgia O’Keeffe. (At a couple of points, however,
the sculpture, which doesn’t often get to “perform,” required
some judicious coaxing from Peter Nisbet, Daimler-
Benz Curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum, to keep it
moving smoothly. He worked on it discreetly with some highly
specialized tools he pulled out of his pockets, one of which
appeared to be a Roosevelt dime.)
The five presentations after Tutschko’s ran more or less
simultaneously. Joseph Koerner, professor of history of art
and architecture, held forth on Max Beckmann’s “Self-Portrait
in Tuxedo” (1927), just adjacent in the gallery to the Mo-
(See Connections, next page)