“Portraits of Russian avant-garde artists” - course 2800 rubles. from MSU, training 15 weeks. (4 months), Date: December 4, 2023.
Miscellaneous / / December 06, 2023
The course is built on a “portrait” principle. Each of the ten lectures is dedicated to one of the leaders of the Russian avant-garde - masters whose work changed our ideas about the world, rebuilt both the way of seeing and the way of perception of a person of the twentieth century. Each of the lectures examines in detail the creative evolution of the master, the main emphasis is on presentation The material is based on a thorough analysis of specific works and analysis of theoretical settings artist. The story about one of the figures of the Russian avant-garde is told against the broad background of cultural, scientific and turbulent political realities of the first third of the twentieth century.
Candidate of Art History Position: Associate Professor, Faculty of Arts, Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov
1. Wassily Kandinsky: Flight to Infinity
Kandinsky carefully freed the classical painting from all signs of the visually observable world. At the same time, the Painting still remains a painting with its own color-tone composition and spatial solution. But only those who are ready to do complex intellectual work can get into this space.
2. Mikhail Larionov: Discovering New
Mikhail Larionov is an unbridled rebel and a thoughtful, subtle artist. In the 1910s, he continuously generated a string of more and more new styles and trends, which often existed from one to two years. At the same time, he tirelessly shocked the public with his sly statements, for example, that in the future people will walk around with painted faces. Evolution of the artist. Larionov was the creator of styles and movements - cubo-futurism, neo-primitivism, rayonism and constantly organized new artistic associations.
3. Natalia Goncharova: Return to the past
Amazon of the avant-garde and the first great artist in the history of world art. She traveled into the depths of prehistory, depicted working peasants and rushed into the future. Natalya Goncharova is Larionov’s wife and comrade-in-arms. She did not have a particular inclination to participate in his shocking actions, but she clearly and clearly formulated in manifestos all the twists of the latest trends that she and Mikhail invented together. The peak of her career was the production of Rimsky-Korsakov's opera The Golden Cockerel as part of Sergei Diaghilev's Russian Seasons.
4. Kazimir Malevich: On the margins of the Black Square
Throughout his creative evolution, Kazimir Malevich first
“sorted through” styles – cubism, futurism, primitivism. Then he invented Suprematism; at some point he stopped painting altogether, began to compose abstruse treatises describing the picture of the Suprematist world, and to gather around himself adherents of his teaching. Malevich demanded that the viewer of Suprematist paintings change his consciousness, go with him to “zero forms”, that is, the “Black Square”, in order to “connect with the space of moving monolithic masses of the planetary systems."
5. Vladimir Tatlin: Build a Tower to the sky.
Malevich's comrade in the avant-garde movement and his passionate competitor was a much more down-to-earth person. In his “Corner Counter-Reliefs,” exhibited in 1915 at the same time as Malevich’s “Suprematism,” Tatlin studied “material, volume and construction.” His main project, “Monument to the Third Communist International,” should be placed and tilted as if it were participating in the movement of planet Earth.
6. Alexander Rodchenko: Photography - a new view of the world
In 1921, the futurist Rodchenko abandoned painting and became one of the most productive constructivists. In 1924, he picked up a camera and became a cult figure for photographers all over the world. And his “Workers' Club” (1925) is an exemplary work of modern design.
7. Varvara Stepanova: Draw a New World
Varvara Stepanova is the wife and ally of Alexander Rodchenko. They called themselves inventors of the Future. It turned out to be completely different, but her costumes for Komsomol athletes look unusually fashionable today, and her designs for the Left Front of Arts (LEF) magazine have become the basis of modern printing.
8. Pavel Filonov: Atom, unit of action
Filonov was closely confined to the empirically comprehensible; he was concerned with the fundamental themes of life and death. Filonov - in an abundance of the smallest, carefully worked out details, including in the background, behind the main characters. For him, a painting develops like a living organism - from the particular to the general, as if growing through the division of cells, each of which has its own complex organization.
9. Konstantin Melnikov: Design of the future
Architectural projects, most of which remained unrealized, had a huge impact on the development of world architecture in the 20th century. In his work, he relied on three main criteria; the architect believed that they could easily determine the quality of a building. “Firstly, does the project meet the greatest technological and functional conveniences. Secondly, is it characterized by direct economic achievements of the compositional technique, which can be identified with the accuracy of arithmetic calculations. Finally, the third thing is whether it provides an expressive artistic form for the structure.”
10. Alexander Deineka: Avant-garde and socialist realism
In the 1920s, Deineka studied at the most avant-garde educational institution of that time - VKHUTEMAS and participated in the activities of the most advanced groups of that time, such as OST. At the same time, many of Deineka’s paintings entered the canon of socialist realism. However, in the famous “Defense of Sevastopol,” seemingly strictly realistic, we find reflections of the dynamic compositions of Wassily Kandinsky and the strict constructivism of Alexander Rodchenko.