As the last generation of underground artists in the Soviet Union and the first on the post-Soviet scene, Moscow conceptualists provide a unique point of view on the breakup of the USSR, the changing role of unofficial art in a repressive state, and the beginning of a new world order in both art and politics. Offering a counter-narrative to the tradition of Socialist Realism that dominates Soviet art history, this book provides insight into the production and activism of the experimental artists that worked in Moscow during this watershed moment in Russian history. Based on extensive original research and in-depth interviews with the original artists, Nicholas demonstrates how the work of these radical, unconventional artists challenged the Soviet authorities, official doctrine, and even other colleagues in the nonconformist art world. They rebelled against political and artistic restraints alike, turning everyday texts and engaged performances into powerful statements of creative independence and unrestrained imagination. Unlike many of their fellow dissenters, these artists rejected elitist notions about art for art's sake in favor of a more open, democratic, and on-going dialogue about everyday concerns. Their embrace of humor, their focus on the real meaning of words, and their insistence on the importance of broad participation in the creation of art make these artists important models for the challenges of our own time. A crucial link between the revolutionary avant-garde and contemporary protest art, Moscow conceptualism offers lessons for activists under pressure from authoritarian regimes around the world. By highlighting the importance of laughter, imaginative outreach, and direct engagement with everyday citizens, this book presents fascinating evidence of the importance of individual protest and demonstrates that socially-engaged art can be a powerful weapon for change in building a better world.

As the last generation of underground artists in the Soviet Union and the first on the post-Soviet scene, Moscow conceptualists provide a unique point of view on the breakup of the USSR, the changing role of unofficial art in a repressive state, and the beginning of a new world order in both art and politics. Offering a counter-narrative to the tradition of Socialist Realism that dominates Soviet art history, this book provides insight into the production and activism of the experimental artists that worked in Moscow during this watershed moment in Russian history. Based on extensive original research and in-depth interviews with the original artists, Nicholas demonstrates how the work of these radical, unconventional artists challenged the Soviet authorities, official doctrine, and even other colleagues in the nonconformist art world. They rebelled against political and artistic restraints alike, turning everyday texts and engaged performances into powerful statements of creative independence and unrestrained imagination. Unlike many of their fellow dissenters, these artists rejected elitist notions about art for art's sake in favor of a more open, democratic, and on-going dialogue about everyday concerns. Their embrace of humor, their focus on the real meaning of words, and their insistence on the importance of broad participation in the creation of art make these artists important models for the challenges of our own time. A crucial link between the revolutionary avant-garde and contemporary protest art, Moscow conceptualism offers lessons for activists under pressure from authoritarian regimes around the world. By highlighting the importance of laughter, imaginative outreach, and direct engagement with everyday citizens, this book presents fascinating evidence of the importance of individual protest and demonstrates that socially-engaged art can be a powerful weapon for change in building a better world.

An insider's account of the art and artists of the most interesting Russian artistic phenomenon since the Russian Avant-Garde. In the 1970s and 1980s, a group of “unofficial” artists in Moscow—artists not recognized by the state, not covered by state-controlled media, and cut off from wider audiences—created artworks that gave artistic form to a certain historical moment: the experience of Soviet socialism. The Moscow conceptualists not only reflected and analyzed by artistic means a spectacle of Soviet life but also preserved its memory for a future that turned out to be different from the officially predicted one. They captured both the shabby austerity of everyday Soviet life and the utopian energy of Soviet culture. In History Becomes Form, Boris Groys offers a contemporary's account of what he calls the most interesting Russian artistic phenomenon since the Russian avant-garde. The book collects Groys's essays on Moscow conceptualism, most of them written after his emigration to the West in 1981. The individual artists of the group—including Ilya Kabakov, Lev Rubinstein, and Ivan Chuikov—became known in the West after perestroika, but until now the artistic movement as a whole has received little attention. Groys's account sheds light not only on the Moscow Conceptualists and their work but also on the dilemmas of Soviet artists during the cold war.

From Stalin's demise to Gorbachev's glasnost, this is a definitive survey of underground Soviet art in the post-war era. Comprising more than 25,000 works by over 900 artists, the book documents the activities of underground artists from Moscow and Liningrad.

Late Soviet underground art evolved without access to public exhibition spaces, public audience or independent criticism. Those roles were played by the artists themselves, while the spaces were commonly provided by their private apartments. It was often there that art was produced, displayed, discussed and stored. This dissertation examines the stakes of such commingling of art and domestic space. In particular, it focuses on the role of materiality (in this case, domestic materiality) in Moscow Conceptualism by examining its many forms and aspects, such as the materials of artworks, the material context in which they operated, and the bodily aspect of art interaction. By doing so, this dissertation attempts to introduce Moscow Conceptualism to the scholarly debates about the role of materiality in Conceptual art. The study argues that Moscow Conceptualism reveals an original model of dealing with material objects grounded in socialist materiality, and therefore provides us with new lenses for looking at the presumably "dematerialized" world of conceptualism. The dissertation focuses on the case study of Andrei Monastyrski, one of the leaders of Moscow Conceptualism, whose art, as this study claims, demonstrates a particular interest in the material aspect of late Soviet everyday life. The discussion presents three art projects produced by Monastyrski in 1975-1985, that is a series of artist's books, a series of interactive art objects, and a series of actions conducted in his private apartment. Rather than assuming an artist's apartment as a necessary escape place which confers on it a problematic nature of an independent island of freedom, this study approaches the late Soviet private apartment and its domestic materiality as both a part of the ideological discourse and an integral component of unofficial art making. By employing an interdisciplinary approach, the study analyzes Monastyrski's art series in relation to the normative practices of late Soviet everyday life, such as reading at home, writing a diary, engaging in routine domestic activities, gathering with friends and talking. Such contextualization allows to bring forward Monastyrski's strategies of dismantling the official narratives about the ideal Soviet person. By focusing on the interactivity of Monastyrski's art projects, the dissertation brings forward the viewers' emotional, sensory and cognitive responses to artworks which tested the affective power of socialist things and spaces, developed already in the early Soviet discourse on art and material culture.