"With an abridged translation of the Dictionary of Moscow Conceptualism."

The dissolution of the Soviet Union brought a massive change in every domain of life, particularly in the cultural sector, where artists were suddenly "free" from party-mandated modes of representation and now could promote and sell their work globally. But in Russia, the encounter with Western art markets was fraught. The Russian field of art still remains on the periphery of the international art world, struggling for legitimacy in the eyes of foreign experts and collectors. This book examines the challenges Russian art world actors faced in building a field of art in a society undergoing rapid and significant economic, political, and social transformation and traces those challenges into the twenty-first century. Drawing on historical and ethnographic research, Art of Transition traces the ways the field of art has developed, evolved, and been sustained in Russia after socialism. It shows how Russia’s art world has grappled with its Soviet past and negotiated its standing in an unequal, globalized present. By attending to the historical legacy of Russian art throughout the twentieth century, this book constructs a genealogy of the contemporary field of postsocialist art that illuminates how Russians have come to understand themselves and their place in the world.

This volume presents a view of recent developments in Russian art and architecture in the context of the critical debates of postmodernism and national cultures.

How has the field of art developed, evolved, and been sustained in Russia after socialism? This dissertation examines the challenges Russian art-world actors face in building a field of art in a society undergoing rapid and significant economic, political, and social transformation. As a result of this upheaval, Russian art since the end of the Soviet Union has had to develop and negotiate an identity with the simultaneous yet contradictory forces of a socialist history and a neoliberal present. Further, actors in the Russian art world are judged against a teleological notion of artistic progress that stems from a Western-dominated cultural hierarchy. Russia’s art world grapples with both its Soviet past and its post-Soviet present in a world of fully developed fields of art. These conditions differ greatly from Bourdieu’s account of the genesis of an autonomous field of art in nineteenth-century France, in which he takes for granted the conditions that made the development of an autonomous tradition of art possible, namely a cultural and political legacy particular to France. Russian art, therefore, offers a unique contemporary example of how a field of cultural production must struggle to create itself as autonomous while outside the bounds of Bourdieu’s ideal field that bore Euro-American modernism in the West. I demonstrate the impact these differences have had on the development of a Russian field of art, by showing (1) how Russia’s tumultuous transition from socialism to capitalism has differently shaped two generations of post-Soviet artists; (2) the difficulty of establishing a strong market and the resultant limited community of collectors; (3) the impact of a powerfully constraining state on the lives and work of artists; and (4) the significance of entering into a world in which there already exists powerful field(s) of arts centered in the West. While the development of the Russian art world has made significant and arguably rapid changes over the past two decades—such as the increase of arts education and institutions—it still faces numerous challenges, from the escalating censorship by the state to the falling number of collectors. Further, when situated within a global context of inequality, it becomes apparent that the Russian field of art remains on the periphery of the international art world, struggling for legitimacy in the eyes of foreign experts and collectors. By attending to the historical trajectory of Russian art throughout the twentieth century—taking seriously the contributions of Soviet culture and the impact of globalization on cultural production and practices on its own terms as opposed to just as “other”—I construct a genealogy of the contemporary field of postsocialist art that illuminates how Russians have come to understand the categories of “art” and “artist.” Ultimately, this dissertation argues that the combination of the cultural and economic isolation experienced during the Soviet period, the current government’s controlling presence, and Western capitalist economic and cultural hegemony has had detrimental effects on its understanding of itself and thus, the creation of its field of art.

By placing emerging artists in their political and social contexts, this collection attempts to confront the new activist scene that has arisen in the Russian art world during the past few years. The recent explosion of protests in Russia - often with their very purpose being to decry the lack of artistic freedom - is a symptom of a fundamental change in culture heralded by Vladimir Putin's first election. This shift was precipitated by the change to a highly commercial, isolated world, financed and informed by oligarchs. In response, the Russian contemporary art scene has faced shrinking freedom yet an even more urgent need for expression. While much of what is emerging from the Moscow art scene is too new to be completely understood, the editors of this volume seek to bring to light the important work of Russian artists today and to explicate the political environment that has given rise to such work.

In What Does It Mean to Be Post-Soviet? Madina Tlostanova traces how contemporary post-Soviet art mediates this human condition. Observing how the concept of the happy future—which was at the core of the project of Soviet modernity—has lapsed from the post-Soviet imagination, Tlostanova shows how the possible way out of such a sense of futurelessness lies in the engagement with activist art. She interviews artists, art collectives, and writers such as Estonian artist Liina Siib, Uzbek artist Vyacheslav Akhunov, and Azerbaijani writer Afanassy Mamedov who frame the post-Soviet condition through the experience and expression of community, space, temporality, gender, and negotiating the demands of the state and the market. In foregrounding the unfolding aesthesis and activism in the post-Soviet space, Tlostanova emphasizes the important role that decolonial art plays in providing the foundation upon which to build new modes of thought and a decolonial future.