Art in Revolution
The Russian Avant-garde between Aspirations and Reality
By (author) Monica Cioli
Hardback (Published)
(May 2026)
ISBN: 9791257011987
Price: $37.00
On back order
The book explores the often hidden processes by which key figures of the Russian artistic avant-garde crossed paths with the Soviet revolutionary movement in the early decades of the 20th century. Artists such as Kazimir S. Malevich and Vladimir Y. Tatlin drew on elements of ancient folk and religious traditions, rooted in the materiality of collective life, and found unexpected affinities with the socialist doctrines that were gaining ground. Like other avant-garde figures, they embraced the revolutionary perspective while also attending to the “modernist” renewal taking hold in Western countries. The result was a distinctive combination of artistic and revolutionary avant-gardes, in which the former contributed decisively to shaping the discourse of the Soviet and Leninist Revolution, inserting itself – not without contradictions, but fully – into the novyi byt (new life). The political and artistic outcome was the proposal of a “solidarity realism”, which, however, was undermined by the advent of Stalin, who paved the way for a very different model of socialist realism that imposed itself on politics, the economy, cultural policy, and, inevitably, artistic creation.
- Introduction
- 1. Avant-gardes and the Crisis of Modernity (Modernism vs Socialism)
- 1. The long 19th century
- 2. Politics and art in the West
- 3. Art and culture in Russian populism
- 4. Lenin, Bogdanov, and the proletarian class consciousness
- 5. Spirituality and materiality
- 6. Cubo-futurism and beyond
- 2. Bolshevism and October 1917
- 1. From 1905 onwards
- 2. The Capri school
- 3. Lenin and the Revolution
- 4. The Proletkult movement
- 5. Education and art as a mechanism of the Revolution
- 6. The Vkhutemas laboratory
- 3. Heaven and Earth in the Soviet Avant-garde
- 1. Kazimir S. Malevich’s Black Square
- 2. Materialism and creativity
- 3. Spirit and materials in suprematism
- 4. The visionary Vladimir Y. Tatlin
- 5. The Monument to the Third International
- 6. Objects for everyday life
- 4. Revolution and Social Technology: Towards New Realism
- 1. International attention and the Russian laboratory
- 2. El Lissitzky and the Revolution
- 3. The machine and organisation
- 4. Organism and machines
- 5. The new experimentations: photography, photomontage, cinema
- 6. From “magical and abstract” to “effective” realism
- Conclusions
- Bibliography
- Index of Names
- By (author) Monica Cioli
Other Titles in this Series
Marriages and Alliance
Dissolution, Continuity and Strength of Kinship (ca. 1750-ca. 1900)
Volume 13
Gorbachev, Italian Communism and Human Rights
Rethinking Political Culture at the End of the Cold War
Volume 24
Moving Around in Town
Practices, Pathways and Contexts of Intra-Urban Mobility from 1600 to the Present Day
Volume 15
Mediterranean Crossings
Sexual Transgressions in Islam and Christianity (10th-18th Centuries)
Volume 18
Disciplined Dissent
Strategies of Non-Confrontational Protest in Europe from the Twelfth to the Early Sixteenth Century
Volume 4
Union in Separation
Diasporic Groups and Identities in the Eastern Mediterranean (1100-1800)
Volume 1
Political Objects in the Age of Revolutions
Material Culture, National Identities, Political Practices
Volume 21
A Description of All Spain
De situ, longitudine, forma et divisione totius Hispaniae libellus
Volume 5
Similar Books
A Collaborative Tapestry in Honour of Shirley Ann Brown / Une fresque brodée en l’honneur de Shirley Ann Brown
The Bayeux Tapestry Seen by her Colleagues and Friends / La Tapisserie de Bayeux vue par ses collègues et amis
Balthasar Caymox of Nuremberg
Early Modern German Print Publishers: Popular Prints of the Seventeenth Century
Legal Visuality
Exegesis, Ambiguity, and Dissimulation of the Donation of Constantine in the Early Modern Period
Linguistic and Media Studies Perspectives on Research into Social and Political Polarisation
The Case of Poland
Monastic Manuscripts from the Eastern Mediterranean (Sinai, Jerusalem, Antioch)
Production, Use, and Contexts
Naples as Laboratory / Laboratorium Neapel
Style Options, Artistic Rivalry and Self Fashioning in Neapolitan Baroque Painting / Plurale Stilbildung, Kunstlerkonkurrenz und Self Fashioning in der neapolitanischen Barockmalerei
Nurturing the Elite
Representations of Drinking, Eating, and Religious Vessels in Palmyrene Funerary Iconography
Volume 13
Portraying the Individual in the Roman East
Local–Imperial Entanglements in Sculpture, Mosaics, and Paintings (First–Fourth Centuries AD)
Volume 18
Technical Studies of Asian Art
Proceedings of the Seventh Forbes Symposium at the Freer Gallery of Art
Tricks of the Medieval Trades
The Trinity Encyclopedia, a collection of 14th century English craft recipes
Venice Reimagined
The Resurgence of View Painting in Venice after the Fall of the Serenissima between 1797 and 1866
Women’s Legacies in Natural Studies, Health, and Liberal Arts
Proceedings of the Second Annual International Women in the Arts Conference
Volume 4
Writing in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem
Inscription and Graffiti in a Multilingual and Multigraphic Perspective
Volume 45
