Trendswatch
Nicola Sullivan looks at how museums are portraying the 1917 October Russian revolution in its centenary year
One hundred years on from the Russian revolution, museums and galleries are reinterpreting this tumultuous period and the diversity of art and design it inspired. The most high-profile exhibitions commemorating the events of 1917 are taking place in Europe and the US, with a more low-key approach in Russia. Most major Russian cultural institutions, aside from a few exceptions such as the Gulag History State Museum, are not marking the centenary.
“It is a period of history that opens up a lot of wounds,” says Eszter Steierhoffer, a curator at London’s Design Museum, which is showing the exhibition Imagine Moscow: Architecture, Propaganda, Revolution until 4 June. “The centenary is barely being marked in Russia.”
Curators working on London-based shows had to take account of sensitivities when liaising with Russian institutions – the Imagine Moscow show contains no items from Moscow museums. Many of the works were loaned from continental Europe or recreated using information gleaned on trips to Russian venues, such as the Shchusev State Museum of Architecture in Moscow.
The show Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932 (which ended on 17 April) at London’s Royal Academy of Arts (RA) was years in the making, allowing its co-curator, Ann Dumas, to forge relationships with Russian museums. These included the State Russian Museum, which was supportive of the RA’s idea to recreate elements of its landmark 1932 exhibition, Artists of the Russian Federation over Fifteen Years 1917-32.
That exhibition contained almost 2,000 works of post-revolutionary art. The RA borrowed several of those original works to recreate the room in the 1932 show dedicated to Kazimir Malevich, the artist who invented suprematism, a style based on geometric form.
When Joseph Stalin rose to power in the 1920s, he repressed abstract artists in favour of socialist realism, which favoured idealised depictions of soviet life. The RA recreated the Malevich room to scale, with the same paintings, apart from one that was too fragile.
“It was in that year Stalin really began his clampdown on avant-garde art whether it was painting, literature, music or theatre,” says Dumas.
As the Russian economy crumbled and Stalin’s authoritarian regime took hold, many of the idealistic visions of the Soviet state were never realised. This year, many museums and galleries are recreating some of those ideals.
The Design Museum is interpreting six architectural landmarks designed for Moscow – then Stalingrad – between the 1920s and 1930s that were never built. Among them is the Palace of the Soviets, which would have been the world’s largest building, and Cloud Iron, a network of skyscrapers. The London museum has worked with architects and graphic designers to bring these buildings to life using plans and reproductions.
“We refer to these designs as phantoms since they were not built, but they provide inspiration for contemporary architects,” says Steierhoffer. The designs have allowed for playful interpretation. For example, the museum has reconstructed Lenin’s index finger – four metres long – as part of the 100m statue of him on the Palace of the Soviets.
Red Star Over Russia, which will run at Tate Modern from 8 November 2017 until 18 February 2018, will explore artistic practices that emerged as Russia morphed into the Soviet Union. The show will cover five decades, from the country’s first revolution of 1905 to the death of Stalin in 1953.
Meanwhile, London’s British Library (BL) will restage the storming of the Winter Palace in an evening event on 23 June inspired by agit-prop Bolshevik events staged from 1918 to 1920 in Petrograd (now St Petersburg) glorifying the 1917 October Revolution. The BL’s event is part of their Russian Revolution: Hope, Tragedy, Myths exhibition (until 29 August) programme.
Museums responding to the centenary face the challenge of telling two narratives – the enthusiasm for a brave new world and the creativity it inspired, versus the repressive regimes that claimed millions of lives. Dumas points to the gap between propaganda and reality: “Terrible working conditions in factories meant that people were literally worked to death.”
“It is a period of history that opens up a lot of wounds,” says Eszter Steierhoffer, a curator at London’s Design Museum, which is showing the exhibition Imagine Moscow: Architecture, Propaganda, Revolution until 4 June. “The centenary is barely being marked in Russia.”
Curators working on London-based shows had to take account of sensitivities when liaising with Russian institutions – the Imagine Moscow show contains no items from Moscow museums. Many of the works were loaned from continental Europe or recreated using information gleaned on trips to Russian venues, such as the Shchusev State Museum of Architecture in Moscow.
The show Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932 (which ended on 17 April) at London’s Royal Academy of Arts (RA) was years in the making, allowing its co-curator, Ann Dumas, to forge relationships with Russian museums. These included the State Russian Museum, which was supportive of the RA’s idea to recreate elements of its landmark 1932 exhibition, Artists of the Russian Federation over Fifteen Years 1917-32.
That exhibition contained almost 2,000 works of post-revolutionary art. The RA borrowed several of those original works to recreate the room in the 1932 show dedicated to Kazimir Malevich, the artist who invented suprematism, a style based on geometric form.
When Joseph Stalin rose to power in the 1920s, he repressed abstract artists in favour of socialist realism, which favoured idealised depictions of soviet life. The RA recreated the Malevich room to scale, with the same paintings, apart from one that was too fragile.
“It was in that year Stalin really began his clampdown on avant-garde art whether it was painting, literature, music or theatre,” says Dumas.
As the Russian economy crumbled and Stalin’s authoritarian regime took hold, many of the idealistic visions of the Soviet state were never realised. This year, many museums and galleries are recreating some of those ideals.
The Design Museum is interpreting six architectural landmarks designed for Moscow – then Stalingrad – between the 1920s and 1930s that were never built. Among them is the Palace of the Soviets, which would have been the world’s largest building, and Cloud Iron, a network of skyscrapers. The London museum has worked with architects and graphic designers to bring these buildings to life using plans and reproductions.
“We refer to these designs as phantoms since they were not built, but they provide inspiration for contemporary architects,” says Steierhoffer. The designs have allowed for playful interpretation. For example, the museum has reconstructed Lenin’s index finger – four metres long – as part of the 100m statue of him on the Palace of the Soviets.
Red Star Over Russia, which will run at Tate Modern from 8 November 2017 until 18 February 2018, will explore artistic practices that emerged as Russia morphed into the Soviet Union. The show will cover five decades, from the country’s first revolution of 1905 to the death of Stalin in 1953.
Meanwhile, London’s British Library (BL) will restage the storming of the Winter Palace in an evening event on 23 June inspired by agit-prop Bolshevik events staged from 1918 to 1920 in Petrograd (now St Petersburg) glorifying the 1917 October Revolution. The BL’s event is part of their Russian Revolution: Hope, Tragedy, Myths exhibition (until 29 August) programme.
Museums responding to the centenary face the challenge of telling two narratives – the enthusiasm for a brave new world and the creativity it inspired, versus the repressive regimes that claimed millions of lives. Dumas points to the gap between propaganda and reality: “Terrible working conditions in factories meant that people were literally worked to death.”