The Feast in the Time of Plague: The Russian Art World, Easel Painting, and the Experience of War and Revolution, 1914–22
This paper will discuss how institutional and personal instability brought on by war and revolution shaped Russian easel painting from 1914 to 1922. World War I altered the structure of the public sphere to produce more and more kinds of artistic participation, and painters became engaged in unprecedented levels of social and political activism. Some produced war images for the mass media, while a return to a more figurative visual style was one clear response to personal stress or to changes in the market. The participation of the avant-garde in the formation of early Bolshevik culture had its roots in this wartime public mobilization, as did their radical new vision of art: non-objectivity. After 1917, cultural mobilization in Russia focused on the revolution, and the state took on a more important role as a direct shaper of art culture. The expansion of space for mobilized visual culture from exhibitions and news media to the physical space of the city was also new in the revolutionary period. But the underlying conditions of personal and public instability remained the same, and in many respects the war, not the revolution, was the instigator for the most important changes. This presentation will include works by K. S. Petrov-Vodkin, M. V. Grekov, and K. S. Malevich, among others.