Abstract
This chapter explores artistic trends and styles in works by Russian women artists from the Bulldozer Exhibition in 1974 to today through the work of Irina Nakhova (b. 1955), Tatiana Antoshina (b. 1956), and Olga Tobreluts (b. 1970). Feminism in Russia has a complex history. In the 1970s and 1980s, there were equally unfavourable conditions for Non-conformist male and female artists: isolation from Western art movements (and even Russian avant-garde works) and lack of access to art materials and the chance to exhibit publicly. Further, the Soviet system emphasized the equality of women with men, despite the fact that women still carried the bulk of household responsibilities. Sympathy with Western feminism grew as a capitalist economic system gradually began to emerge during the period of glasnost, affecting the role of women in society and the family. At the end of the 1980s, the question of feminism and gender differences became essential in the process of forming the discourse of contemporary art and its ideological contexts. In the early 1990s, several significant feminist exhibitions took place, indicating a new attitude towards women’s identity/self-identification and their role in Russian society and the messages they chose to deliver. In some cases, feminism was related to corporal radicalism, especially in performance art. The three artists whose careers are explored in this chapter each engage with feminism in different ways, but all have created bodies of work that challenge gender norms and limitations.
I thank Irina Nakhova, John Tormey, Olga Tobreluts, Tatiana Antoshina, Alexey Tobashov, Nataliya Kamenetskaya, Olesya Turkina, and Tatiana Kolodzei for their assistance and discussion.
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Notes
- 1.
The First Autumn Open-Air Exhibition took place on September 15, 1974 in Moscow. Soviet authorities broke it up with bulldozers; many of the artworks were damaged or destroyed. The show received international coverage. See “A Case Study: Repression. The Bulldozer and Izmailovsky Park Exhibitions, Moscow 1974: Chronology of Events, Letters, and Interviews,” in. Primary Documents: A Sourcebook for Eastern and Central European Art since the 1950s, Laura Hoptman and Toméš Pospiszyl, eds. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2002), 63–77.
- 2.
For further reading on Non-conformist art, see Alla Rosenfeld and Norton Dodge, eds., From Gulag to Glasnost: Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union (London: Thames and Hudson, 1995).
- 3.
For further discussion, see exhibition catalogue: Natalia Kolodzei, From Non-Conformism to Feminisms: Russian Women Artists from the Kolodzei Art Foundation (Highland Park: Kolodzei Art Foundation, 2018); and Renee and Matthew Baigell, Peeling Potatoes, Painting Pictures: Women Artists in Post-Soviet Russia, Estonia, and Latvia: The First Decade (New Brunswick, N.J.: Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum and Rutgers University Press, 2001).
- 4.
For further reading, see California Institute of the Arts, Judy Chicago, and Miriam Schapiro, Womanhouse (Valencia, CA: California Institute of the Arts, 2017).
- 5.
See Nataliya Kamenetskaya and Oksana Sarkisyan, eds., Zen d’Art: History of Gender and Art in Post Soviet Space (Moscow: Moscow Museum of Modern Art, 2010) and Yelena Selina, “Women Worker” in IdiomA. Heresies / IdiomA 7, No. 2 Issue 26 (1992): 80–83.
- 6.
Nataliya Kamentskaya and Lidya Iovleva, eds., Femme Art: Women Painting in Russia: XV-XX Centuries (Moscow: State Tretyakov Gallery, 2002).
- 7.
Antoshina was part of Caution: Religion! though her work was not displayed as she originally intended. The show was curated by Artur Zulumyan with artists invited by Anna Alchuk. For the latter, see Anna Alchuk, ed., Woman and Visual Signs (Moscow: Idea-Press, 2000).
- 8.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Russia! Exh. cat. (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2005).
- 9.
N’Goné Fall, Linda Nochlin, and Maura Reilly, Global Feminisms: New Directions in Contemporary Art (London: Merrell, 2007).
- 10.
Hoptman and Pospiszyl, 63–77.
- 11.
For further reading, see Irina Nakhova and Barbara Wally, Irina Nakhova: Komnaty (Moscow: Maier, 2011).
- 12.
“Kandinsky Prize for contemporary art awarded,” https://www.calvertjournal.com/articles/show/1841/kandinsky-prize-for-contemporary-art-awarded.
- 13.
“Political and cultural endgames collide in the Russian pavilion. Irina Nakhova transforms the space into a series of wildly different environments,” https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2015/05/08/political-and-cultural-endgames-collide-in-the-russian-pavilion.
- 14.
Natalia Kolodzei, interview with Irina Nakhova, February 23, October 10, 11, 2021.
- 15.
Viktor Pivovarov (b. 1937) is a prominent Non-conformist artist and writer associated with Moscow Conceptualism. Professionally, Pivovarov worked as a children’s book illustrator for twenty years. His experience influenced his conceptual albums and paintings. In his art, Pivovarov combined written text and imagery composed around fictional characters.
- 16.
Ilya Kabakov (b. 1933), Erik Bulatov (b. 1933), Eduard Shteinberg (1937–2012), and Vladimir Yankilevsky (1938–2018) are leading artists in Non-conformist art circles. Ilya Kabakov is a prominent conceptual artist, leader of Moscow Conceptualism.
- 17.
For further discussion, see Olesya Ovramenko, Gender Studies in Soviet Unofficial Art (Moscow: NLO, 2021) (in Russian).
- 18.
For further reading, see Nakhova and Wally.
- 19.
Guest publication of Heresies / IdiomA—A Feminist Publication On Art and Politics, Vol. 7, No. 2, Issue 26 (1992), published in Russian and English.
- 20.
For further reading, see Jane A. Sharp, Julia Tulovsky, Thomas W. Sokolowski, and Irina Nakhova, Irina Nakhova: Museum on the Edge (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2019).
- 21.
For further reading, see Margarita Tupitsyn, Stella Art Foundation, & Biennale di Venezia, Irina Nakhova, The Green Pavilion: Russian Pavilion, 56th International Art Exhibition—Venice Biennale 2015 (Moscow: Stella Art Foundation, 2015).
- 22.
Nikita Alekseev and Iosif BakshteÄn, Iskunstvo: Moskva-Berlin/Berlin-Moskau, 1988 (Berlin: Karl Hofer Gesellschaft, 1988).
- 23.
Phyllis Kind was instrumental in introducing a number of Muscovite artists, including Irina Nakhova, Erik Bulatov, Oleg Vassiliev, and Semyon Faibisovich, to the New York public.
- 24.
For further reading, see Experiments in Art and Technology (Organization), Sabine Breitwieser, and Kathy Battista, E.A.T.: Experiments in Arts and Technology (Köln: Walther König, 2015).
- 25.
Natalia Kolodzei, interview with Tatiana Antoshina, February 25, October 11, 12, 2021.
- 26.
Museum of a Woman, Guelman Gallery, Moscow, December 13, 1997–January 12, 1998.
- 27.
After the exhibition in Moscow, Museum of a Women was shown at Florence Lynch Gallery, New York, February 20–March 6, 2001; White Space Gallery, London, March 18–April 7, 2004; Podgorica Museums & Galleries, Podgorica, Montenegro, October 21–December 12, 2015; The Voyeurism of Alice Guy, Guelman Gallery, Moscow, April 25–May 20, 2002.
- 28.
Reggae Feminism or 88 March, Dukley Art Center, Kotor, Montenegro, April 16–May 27, 2017.
- 29.
Natalia Kolodzei, interview with Olga Tobreluts, February 25, October 9, 2021.
- 30.
For further reading, see Timur Novikov, New Russian Classicism (St. Petersburg: State Russian Museum, 1998).
- 31.
For further reading, see The Underground of the 1990s: Artists on the Dance Floor (Saint Petersburg: New Academy, 2020).
- 32.
Edward Lucie-Smith’s speech at Neo-Academism Congress, Brussels, Belgium, 1998.
- 33.
Camille Paglia, Sexual Persona: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). Later, the book was translated into Russian and published by Ural University Press in 2006.
- 34.
Group exhibition Heaven, Düsseldorf Kunsthalle, July 30–October 17, 1998; Tate Gallery, London, October 9, 1999–February 27, 2000, resulted in magazine covers with Tobreluts’ works (Attitude and The Observer Magazine, November 27, 1999).
- 35.
For further reading see A History of the Development of Media Art in Leningrad—Saint Petersburg 1985–2000 (Saint Petersburg: New Academy, 2020).
- 36.
Discussion Tolerance Test: Does Russia Need a Museum of Women in the Arts? Garage Education Center, Moscow. Participants: Nataliya Kamenetskaya, Alla Mitrofanova, moderated by Garage Archive Curator Sasha Obukhova, July 6, 2021.
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Kolodzei, N. (2023). From Non-conformism to Feminisms: Russian Women Artists from the 1970s to Today. In: Hannum, G., Pyun, K. (eds) Expanding the Parameters of Feminist Artivism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09378-4_5
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