Yesterday and today. 1956-2005. The show featured recreations of Moscow apartments where dissidents held art exhibitions, called "Kvartirniki"-- in opposition to the approved art of cultural officials displayed in museums and galleries.
Сurators Julia Lebedeva and Oksana Sarkisyan have done a good job of recreating not only the hanging of pictures on the walls, but also the spririt of defiance of authority that lay behind the projects. In addition to the show at Russian State Humanitarian University, they have arranged some of the art around town in private apartments, just like the old days. So, if you happen to be in Moscow this month, you can book a private viewing through the exhibition website.
It is nice to see modern art defying cultural officialdom, and a visit to the recreated apartments does give one some inspiration that individuals can eventually prevail over bureaucracy, in keeping with the title of this year's Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, "Dialectics of Hope."
From the catalog description:
Apartment exhibitions ("kvartirniki") emerged in Soviet times as an answer to the necessity of presenting informal art. They embodied hopes of their participants for freedom of creativity and were part of dissident opposition to officiality.
Apartment exhibitions brought together artists who shared the same views. Owners of the «living premises» formed a certain movement. Svjatoslav Rikhter demonstrated the works of Dmitry Krasnopevtsev, «lianozovtsi» gathered in Oscar Rabin's barrack and young conceptualists were shown in the workshop of Mikhail Odnoralov and Leonid Sokov.
As part of private life the non-official art came hand in hand with conversations on art and the artistically active way of living through the Soviet reality. The experience of apartment exhibitions was diverse - from private club personal exhibitions to group actions and total installations. Quite often they turned into performances and visits to such exhibitions merged on a radical demarche.
Today this art has acquired a museum status and is shown in the world famous museums. Russian State University for the Humanities displays one of the best collections of non-conformist art of 1950-1980 (Leonid Talochkin's «Other art» collection).
The purpose of the exhibition is to reveal the dialectics of informal art development by using apartment exhibitions as an example. It presents the museum works in their original authentic environment drawing a parallel with similar phenomena on the contemporary art stage.