liubov
popova,
Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin,
14,,
2000—
January
10,
2001
by
the
Peggy Guggenheim Collection
Advisory Board, the
Moscow.
moDernwomen
Turn-OF-THe-cenTurY represenTaTions
of women
in russia
Olga Matich
Art Museum, Samara
pioneering
Mikhail Larionov,
Over the years we have
mounted
many
on the
investigation of the subject to date.
It is within this context that we are pleased to organize another
historic exhibi-
cura-
torial acumen. It brings together distinguished masterpieces of the period,
including many
not shown in the West since they were created. This is the first trav-
eling exhibition organized
for the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin. Following Berlin
and the Royal Academy, the presentation of the exhibition at the Peggy
Guggenheim
Collection
of these
artists against
by
Curators
John
this project,
hard work.
contributions
to
of Deutsche Bank, for his
ongoing
Deutsche Bank's enthusiasm
for the project
Pereiaslavl-Zalesskii
Private Collection
Regional Art
Museum, Ulianovsk
Slobodskoi Museum
Ufa
Smolensk
State Museum of Visual Arts, Nizhnii Tagil
State Picture Gallery,
State Tretiakov
Haven
avant-garde
are
comprehensively
far received
scant attention
this
move-
ment.
tradition.
our
the
Cultural
involvement in this
the
1932
West of the art of the
Russian avant-garde;
the Russian
many of the more advanced paintings
were
It is extraordinarily
that Deutsche
it enjoyed in Berlin and London—for art provides not
only pleasure,
work
with
a
have contributed invaluably to
thank Nicolas V. Iljine,
European Representative of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, for his stead-
fast support and advice
for
critical
member
of
our
team.
 We would also like to express our deepest gratitude to Pavel Khoroshilov, Deputy
Minister
who
a
help
with
Twentieth-Century
Lukanova, Liudmila Bobrovskaia
ment ofTwentieth-Century
St.
Arts,
Moscow:
ums: Oleg Shandybin,
issues: Ekaterina
Drevina for
Alexander Lavrentiev
Hellenic
Co.
Ltd.
(the
colleagues at the Royal Academy ofArts,
London. In
Simonetta
Fraquelli,
Friedhelm
Sara
Bernshausen,
Museum
be
Gyalui, curatorial intern, provided
oversaw
the
transport
of
Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin,
Director
and
Collection Management and Design; Sean Mooney, Exhibition Design Manager and
Alexis
Katz,
Architectural
Scovell. General
Pallante. Assistant
of
EstherYun, Assistant Production
Donatelli,
step
Stephen Robert Frankel, Jennifer Knox-White, and
Tim
Mennel.
We
Manager
We
Resource;
J.
photography
Nikita D. Lobanov- Rostovsky,
Rabinovich. Finally,
deepest thanks to
 
Boguslavskaia.
the
Tramway
 
departure from previous
an
encyclopedic
exemplified
by
six
artists
Liubov
selected paintings and drawings from international public and private collec-
tions. Many of the works
have
of
to
fall under
close examination.
The present publication is more than a catalogue-, it is a collec-
tion of interpretive
sub-
ject
of
i3
been assigned to several key
works. Some of these adjustments represent
a
subtle
with
essays
on
a
range
of
histori-
cal
background and insight into topics inspired by this enterprise that make the
book an extension of the
exhibition rather
prominent during
throughout
Through
an
investigation
of
art criticism, artistic practice, and the art market in early twenti-
eth-century Russia,
in which
this question is posed. His essay,  Women of Genius, reflects on the
ambivalence and enthusiasm alternately directed toward female artists in Russia
from the
by
the
1910s,
the
women were quite firmly a part of the Russian art world, and that
without them, future avant-garde trajectories would have been
impossible.
Women
artists
regularly
participated
foundations for pioneering con-
In
her
essay,
camaraderie and inde-
pendence that operated between them, their position in the European avant-
garde, and their involvement within Russian
artistic circles. Douglas reminds the
reader that painting was
(which
also
included
stage
and
the complex
amalgam of indigenous traditions and foreign influences that informed the art and
writings of the six
when
considered
essay
 Between
Old
that
H
investigates the
ways in
the
works in this
exhibition. The notion
Dressing
that
contemporaries. Dyogot demon-
Gurianova (Rozanova), Alexander
contributions
specific works and shed further
light on
to
activities have also been made: thus, the information here may
in
some
cases
changes have been made
not meant to suggest
definitely preceded or
according
to
stylistic
considerations.
The final part of the book contains a selection of
original writings
critical thinking
and aesthetic
also reveal
these
elsewhere, most
letters.
relationship between
are as fascinating, revelatory,
i. The Great Utopia: The Russian and
Soviet
Avant-Garde.
7975
 
Library of
either been omitted
or indicated with
familiar
name
and writers spent
States and
variant has been long
Alexandre
Benois
instead
January
1918
twelve
1900
and
1918,
it
is
thirteen
days
behind.
1914;
common
name of St. Petersburg from
1914—24.
HkM. M«M tk M. M<«M ik M. MM
Mm. mm. mtM. ma
without
the
participation
of the six women in this exhibition, each ofwhom contributed directly to its
devel-
to describe
ideas
represented
by
1913
(plate
3)
to
Varvara
an
analogous
comprehensive
deny
Tauber-Arp,
or their numerous colleagues, but their total contribution still pales
before the
his
women artists
assemblingtheir works into an exhibition is not new: in i883
Andrei Somov, Curator of
Somov, published
a
special
women artists in its editorial offices: and in the late
1910s
recently
Russian
women
artists,
live,
work,
1976—77
Linda Nochlin
and Ann
Dorothea Tanning. The
organized
by
194,0,
organized
by
LeaVergine
1980,
and
Plastique
Contemporain,
Paris,
in
1983
the
(WomenArtists
of
Russia's
NewAge-.
1914
Amazons
of
the applied
also
but
not
the
whole
most
itinerary
in as many
countries) also dictates its scope and prompts an emphasis on the
dra-
sur-
work of each respective
the strong commitment of
return to order—
 Neo-Classicism or Soviet Socialist
ing an
say, six early and six late paintings
paled
six women rarely formulated
opinions about traditional perceptions ofwomen and the need for them
to raise
and their
status
quo,
to
be
outmoded
 Open Letter their
vis-a-vis
male col-
leagues—Alexander
cannot regarded
Revolution.
a
the rich and powerful
women of Genius
still expected to
avert their gaze from  male shame in statues that were considered
too
thing is that the artist is
a
woman,
9
Futurist paintings
the
critical language that would accommodate this implied dis-
placement of criteria.
militant Amazon.
This inevitably
Amazons of the
Organization who had believed in violence, even assassination, as a
real
political
instrument.
11
Amazonian
aviator,
(Journal
for
Housewives).
13
Other
and
the
female nature.
Moscow
about Woman, presented by
17,
1914,
and
its
to
the
 most
contradictory
inferences
and
opinions,
cancel
 low
inten-
Burliuk and Vladimir
fumed,
boudoir
creative
16
The
artists in both studio painting and design in his Die
Frau
als
Kunstlerinn
(1928),
'7
Goncharova,
Art
of art. It is they who made the lace, embroidered
the mate-
This plea for public and professional recognition of the anonymous
artistic labor carried out by
countless women
to the
by Ukrainian peasant
tradition,
or
a
had different
social aspirations
and aesthetic convictions. Here are six personalities, often in conflict, that
do
not
constitute a homogeneous unit (even if Kruchenykh identified all modern
Russian
women
as
the
women
ready, willing, and
attempts
to
to expose the underlying
particular
enjoyed
Rut
and the United
States fail when
spokesmen
21
the
creative
be accepted as
missionaries.
or Rodchenko,
zhurnal (Blue
promptly
seconded
his
motion.
23
Judging
female factions
Larionov, Popova and AlexanderVesnin, Rozanova and Kruchenykh, Udaltsova and
Drevin).
They
same books, spoke at the same
conferences, and
to
or
encour-
aged
Goncharova to paint and experiment with Cubism and Rayism. but he also
played
a
in
1913
and
1914,
4,
of
1914
some would
does
but to
onus
of
26
Futurists advocated, with their
back
to
your
if Popova did dedicate her Italian
Still-Life,
1914
(plate
39)
Ilia Zdanevich
there. According
to this
lived
meet the
Armenia,
Divisionism, and
rural
cultures.
30
Rozanova,
and
Udaltsova
his unpublished journal
he composed
in
1916
(see
fig.
97).
social tolerance
of the
Amazons be
tive freedom that Russian women artists had been
enjoying toward the
end of the
Petersburg
of
contributed directly to
the
1880s,
which
Bashkirtseva also
she
spent
most
of
her
32
The
kind
ment
its
emphasis
on
were largely responsible
to
spectacular
success
of
Russian
stage,
patroness
late
1890s
her
art
the
crafts, established workshops, designed and constructed a church, and financed
her own intimate theater. A talented enameler and historian of the discipline,
33
inte-
of
Western
section at
the Paris
Bureau,
between
1911
and
1919.
3
4
Situated
on
Dobychina herself was a no-nonsense
manager who  dealt
 
and
Somov,
she did not hesitate to indulge in more provocative ventures. For example, the Art
Bureau sponsored the Goncharova retrospective in
1914
declamations. True, Dobychina was
but,
Modernist
era
painting,
up
for
were removed from the
as
only in
to functional
designs such
Goncharova
that the
Russia's
she left
 
importance
Goncharova,
as a woman artist, had become by then. On the one hand. Viktor
Zarubin saw
and red
spoke of her  magnifi-
and tenacity to bring things to their logical
comple-
easy
victory
to
the
next, *
and
of con-
for before she
to
and
impulsively,
assimilating
2
in
1914,
her interpretation of
between French Cubism and
of preju-
canvas
with
name. *
3
While
intended
rial
ter,
for
example,
material construction, of space as a component of the composition,
that attracted
1924
film
Aelita
(fig.
84).
attempted
to
cinema, with its
—
Kiev student Alexander Tyshler
 
she did
the Italian
be a
expressed
this
 
+?
woman
avoided
to
evoca-
as Man on
ments,
led Rozanova
had no
sympathy with
art
up
year
out, until they are fifty, to mutter about what they had
first started
3o
Not
teachers,
and constructiveness . . . light
.
assumptions,
reassemble it, and
collage
and
Fauconnier
 
—
the  artists of today
(color-painting).
 54
Indeed,
cause
and
the
producer-, while
ativity,
55
her major Cubist
oils, such asKitchen,
made an abrupt turn
1930s,
cism, Udaltsova suddenly discovered the density and consistency of paint.
Pursuing a restrained
similar
manner.
1916
been Yuon who suggested the denotation to her, for
he maintained that Modern art
had returned
two
texture, weight, color
that both intercon-
nect organically and seem to anticipate Popova's wider application of their forms
to textile
1930s.
prompted
but her
to
and
attitudes
toward
the
of
 high
and
 low,
fine
as
3
2
inventions. But it
tion rather
Rodchenko's respective
use
same friends
Alexander
(which
propaganda albums
share his enthusi-
altogether). Rather,
hands the
factory collective.
dancing.
phonic and
semiotic systems
1917—19.
transrational order of neologisms, as in
RtnyKhomle, Stepanova was paying homage to the
Cubo-
Futuristzaum
poetry
practiced
by
illustra-
(in)comprehensible in the same way
that
gaguch chirguza, and so on
—
a
paint-
to word in the form of her
stage
After the October Revolution, the world of monumental propaganda and
agit-
design attracted many women artists. Sofia Dymshits-Tolstaia, wife of the writer
Alexei Tolstoy and a
the first anniversary of the Bolshevik coup. Pestel, Udaltsova, and
Elizaveta Yakunina
squares. Beatrisa Sandomirskaia, then
Monumental Propaganda,
but it
Blue
Blouse
theaters
costumes, like Tatiana
Realism, in the late
works, among
the Paris World's
rule,
Socialist Realists followed rather than
led, illustrated rather
Popova,
Rozanova,
Stepanova,
in a
—
Obviously,
with
the abrupt return to order and the new classicism of Soviet
art,
book
pisatelei
v
Leningrad,
1933),
p.
143;
Benedikt
Gallery, Erevan.
1903),
vol.
2,
pp.
Goncharova.
that
pillars
of the
Mikhail Khodasevich defended
had themselves
photographed next
and the local authorities to remove
the statue.
three of
Liberation Movement
in Russia
1930),
unpaginated.
ai.
Artists
the Avant-Garde, Theatre
photograph captioned  Paskha
1913)
p.
55.
25.
Manuscript Section
that the exhibition after that, No. 6,
would
be
devoted
to
Rayism.
26.
(1912),
1914;
State
Russian
Museum,
St.
f.
177,
ed.
khr.
15,
11.
1.
19,22,
26).
lecture
on
the
occasion
of
in
see
as
at
Vasily
(call, no.: f.
Apart from an anonymous
35.
Petersburg), March
Moscow,
(St. Petersburg).
1917,
Russian
State
Archive
of
f.
2554,
1976),
1,
City
Museum,
1992),
p.
36.
49.
Olga
1919),
p.
III.
52.
Konstantin
Yuon,Avtobiografua
(Moscow:
GAKhN,
1926),
p.
46.
53.
p.
27.
54.
Maler (Hamburg: Material -Verlag.
description of Udaltsova's painting;
painter stands
before a
nothing,
directly
and
behind her. We
close to her head
is countered by the
it. a
Goncharova
of the
ing in their view
of themselves. As the
ideal
group
substantial enough
such
Their
little consciousness
terms
Perhaps the
best reason
colleagues
unusual in the
—
the artists
artificial
to
single
them
out,
within the male exhibition-and-sales
merit
As
we
in
to the demands and interests of
their times with
who felt they could and should change the look of
the world at large,
tiles, and
clothing. Therefore,
Nadezhda Udaltsova beyond their engagement with the tradition of studio
art.
An important question is how the women interacted. Did they know and iden-
tify
with
social class. Of the
and socially secure. In their
artistic
activities
assuredness of the urban middle class; their male counterparts, by
contrast, were
less well off and from the provinces. The friends and
connections
of
exhibitions, in publicizing their work, and
in the recruiting of potential patrons.
Goncharova
was the oldest. A year older than Exter, four years older than Sonia
Delaunay,
as a
role model
a
delightfully
thought
guardians of
her art
the
the
Golden
David, and Vladimir
the following
Stephanos joined
from
one of the first to unite
key participants
by
The
Tenisheva's school in
avant-garde. Over the
remarkable:
of
a total of
twenty-six artists, eleven were women. The group from St. Petersburg, led
by
nized for their Art Nouveau embroidery, and Natalia Gippius, a
sculptor and one
well-known Symbolist poet
(recently married to the artist Ivan Bilibin) and Evgenia
Pribylskaia, like Exter a
graduate of the Kiev
2
organized
a
avant-garde
Both Exter and Goncharova pursued an active exhibition schedule with
avant-
cities. Unlike
gradu-
subsequent
marriage
to
both
at
different
in
very
Russian,
Exter was
part of The Salon, an exhibition of Russian and Western artists that
opened in
the
which
included
the
from
1911,
especially.
6
(a
by
Cubism
tion
for this wing of the avant-garde. Both Exter and Goncharova were
also
repre-
that year.
1914,
at a time. Her
streets
St.
Petersburg.
It
was
of the most recent Paris shows, or about the latest
dis-
Carlo Delvall,
Western
exhibitions.
adopted
by
and was
then brought
group, and instead
other
Miinter
Blaue Reiter
arranged evenings
matic
at
ignorant.
9
disquisition
on
the
She
great anticipation.
The exhibi-
tion, a
combined show
the only woman in
four works.
The alliance of The Donkey's Tail and the Union ofYouth brought Goncharova
and Rozanova
exhibitions.
to the
section of the Union ofYouth's
December
peasant
known
as
Rayonism),
their
in
March
1913.
44
enough
to
Diaghilev wrote,  has all St. Petersburg and all Moscow at
her feet.
of exhibitions
Russians
living
artist Boris Anrep. For
active life divided between Russia and Western Europe,
contributing
to
at
least
sixteen
exhibitions
des
her
Munich, the second Blaue
Berlin
Post-ImpressionistExhibition.
Grafton Galleries.'
in Budapest, and both artists, as well as Delaunay and
Miinter. took part in the first Herbstsalon,
which
opened
1914
Rozanova, along with Kulbin
Such frequent exposure
as members
of the
Western art
certainly, their reception
in the
upheavals prevented
Goncharova
and
studio
schools.
Private
studios
of the
another, and
1905
and
1908,
Udaltsova
and Mukhina attended the
1908
by
Liudmila
Prudkovskaia,
Popova,
and
Mukhina.)
'5
At
the
Hungarian artist Karoly Kiss
ferred
energetic group. Yuon
great admirer
of the Post-Impressionists, and his students were au courant. They attended
Moscow and St. Petersburg exhibitions,
read
the
that
the
influencing one
another. Mukhina, for example, credits Popova with deepening her basic aesthetic
understanding:
It was Popova, who first began to reveal to me the essence of art. Until
then I conveyed only
conveys only what
tionship of colors in the
Russian icon, for example. Everythingnew
touched her.
'
careers these artists were far from untraveled
provincial young women;
Mukhina had traveled
Germany
in
1907;
1910.
So
it
is
not
surprising
to
find
1913
for
the
Pestel,
stayed
at
a
pension
married.
20
means, and marriage afforded
tain independence: not only did their reputations no longer require
very
close
supervision,
her
For the sake of
the
unmarried Popova brought along on the trip her former governess. Adelaida Dege.
Popova. Karetnikova. and Udaltsova enrolled at
La
lectures and
weekly criticism. There the artists acquired the basis of the Cubist
construction
that would mark their mature work. Strangely enough, however, they
had
not
made
work with Matisse, but his
school was already closed,
background and we fled.
Le Fauconnier. We went there and
immediately
decided
the Louvre, and
they made the obligatory
studied sculpture
at
Bourdelle's
to
Palette:
 Popova
talked a lot about the Cubists, praised them, and grew quite
excited. Behind
by
the
question,
whence
and
why?
brief trip to Palus,
1913.
and
she
1914
however, was
France
everywhere sketching,
painting, and
to attend the
ofLeCoqcTOr at the Opera. It
was her first time in the city, and the spectacular sets
and costumes she
They
retrospective.Within a month after the opening oiLeCoq d Or, an
exhibition of
with a smaller num-
PaulGuillaume.-
6
marvelous decorative free-
trea-
sure
of
forms
and
colors.
English
premiere
28
At the outbreak of the war, she and Larionov were taking
a
was
ture
for
home.
The wartime isolation of Russian artists had an enormous effect on avant-
garde art there; now denied any possibility
of
travel
and intensify.
women showed
in the TramwayFexhibition, which
The following
in
and
Udaltsova
habitual gallery-goer,
the burden through the
sional artists also increased. In November of
1915,
when
the
Exhibition
of
Contemporary
Decorative
Art
embroidery
by
Ksenia
Boguslavskaia;
embroidered
handbags
and
eleven
by
was
Pribylskaia.
work of
Nouveau
and
pillows,
lamp-
by
Pribylskaia,
plans to
was a difficult year, and the means for producing cloth
became
increasingly
Hundreds of
handwork designs
appeared in
through
falling
victim
to
the
here
In winter
central Moscow
stringent
rationing of bread. The artists from the earlier Verbovka show were
now joined
and
designs
vocabulary
developed
by
the
Contemporary
year with an entire
in
Moscow
in
1919
several other applied-art
a
Tairov
1915
and
1916
work of Exter, Goncharova,
5°
theater offered
an opportunity
to create
environments out
major
scope
to
the
a
longer saw painting alone
theater afforded a way
 democratic
audience
on topics
of immediate social relevance. At the same time, it offered artists a
wide
scope
for
invention.
Between
1917
and
1934,
all the
projects were
a
beginning who would
be the chosen
artist. Both Exter
Juliet
while
Stepanova
designed
The
Death
ofTarelkin
for
Meierkhold's
studio,
Exter
designed
and
directors,
her station
Nekrasov
proved
a
Theater, Exter
less
complicated
days
women
5
1
women
terms,
as
psychological drama. Indeed,
though very different from
aware
developed
were
produced.
no detailed reference to any specific period or place, the
artist hoped
colors for Romeo and
colorful
and
exuberant, Popova's
are precise
and restrained. Exter's figures are the result of her work on rhythm and motion
with Bronislava
1933.
Stepanova too would work in the theater. The youngest of the six women, she
was also
most of them in that she came from a working-class
background-,
Dmitrii
Fedorov,
a
at
the very
reputable Kazan
art school. Here began to write poetry, work as an artist, and
exhibit. In
the spring
typist,
and
bookkeeper
in
a
hardware
store. At the same time, she continued to study art. at
the
Yuon/Dudin
In
1916,
with Alexander Rodchenko,
fallen in love
remain a
couple for
Even
after moving to Moscow, Stepanova drew and wrote in an Art
Nouveau
style
influenced
She
was
1917
and
1918
might
be considered a last bright spark of Russian Cubo- Futurism. She
also
began
to
write
The
and offices in which
and
1930
and
1935
faculty
at
the
Academy
with students.
When Inkhuk
academic
discussions
meant that five artists
—
show, but the
shows were to
were meant to be
to
a
however: she
strongly disagreed with the
Constructivists' resolution to abandon easel painting in favor of more practical art
forms.
the next
years painting in a productive new style, in search of a way out of the
formal
and
theoretical
dead
mination
techniques
borrowed
from
the
from
the
work both did for
proxim-
set for The Magnanimous Cuckold, with its slides and ladders,
revolv-
ing
doors
at
on April
25, 1922.
from
November
28
did
not
was
still alive, and while she could eke out a living;
she
Soviet regime, her art, and her origins put her in
jeopardy.
women ultimately foundered. Karetnikova,
threw themselves into
Russian
by
war,
the collapse of the
country's infrastructure. Udaltsova survived, but her father did not; he w s shot by
revolutionary functionaries in September
weeks later,
the result
ascendancy, first
and their own ready
and early
same
random
and
harsh
1930s
and
still
other women
Pavilion
of
very. They participated in the
same historic exhibitions, sought the same kinds
of
success.
Collectively,
clear
home, duringWorld War I and the Russian Civil War. While
friendly
with
no different
to
initially held true in regard
to
the
superb artists.
1. The
omissions and
of such exclusions. After
omit the artists' expressions
reticent
rassing to
section
see
Charlotte
Mariia Chembers.
women
included
in the United States. She
died
in
1948.
7.
92.
8.
David Burliuk spoke on  Cubism and Other New Directions in Painting, and Nikolai Kulbin on
 Free
Stravinsky,
him. Igor Stravinsky
Los
1980),
p.
99.
Art
12.
Chamot,  The Early Work of Goncharova and Larionov,
Burlington Magazine (London),
the  Second Post -Impressionist Exhibition :
The
Evangelists,
A
14.
by
the
Artists and active in the Society of Free Aesthetics. He
and
Ivan
Dudin
1900.
15.
The
24,
Mare, Romania)
school for
an
near
Arad,
See
Jeno
this
infor-
mation.
17.
collector of an extraordinary number of works by
Gauguin, Matisse, and Picasso,
holdings of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and the Pushkin
Museum of
opened his mansion to local artists students for study
on Sundays.
18. Mukhina,
1994),
p.
10.
Sofia Rozental,
56
no. 10
of Simon Hollosy.
See L. Aleshina
Sovetskii
khudozhmk,
1977),
p.
58.
25.
friend of Mukhina
at Bourdelle's. They
June
17
VTO.
1970),
pp.
287-88.
son
of
Russia-
age
in
turn-
How surprising,
ideas
traditionalism and
to
appropriate
to
enhance
the realm. Yet Russians
window
emperor
intended her to
rule in her
she
Great (r.
1763—1796),
who rose
ofArts after
to
parade
family
political direction,
1860s
Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna
intellectuals,
as
well
exceptional handful even within the country's tiny educated elite, which comprised
less than
were restricted in their public
roles by convention, limited education, and
exclu-
sion
from civil service.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the vast majority of Russians still
lived
Households
and daughters, husbands and sons had greater
mobility
and
wider
improvement. Among the peasantry,
percent of women. Ry
female factory workers were literate.
4
It
is
not
surprising,
and outmoded about
tion of the
(1828—1889),
and domination
in the polity at large. Rejecting patriarchal mores and bourgeois
moralism alike, they advocated
expres-
of social transformation.
the name
clothing, and spent
their time reading
ofwomen's rights
became a
These attitudes
1870s, as educated
talk
6
popular
following,
the
vil-
forces created new
opportunities for peasant women but also eroded their moral stature. While
some
alike.' By the
this context, nostalgic agrarianism
as a
The campaign
cause
of radicals and young people,
however. Calls
came from
as
nurses.
In
the
1870s,
the
to stir
revolt but
peasant
that made divorce
of divorce
litany of complaints,
domestic life as an emblem of public virtue
reached its
Nicholas and Alexandra
final decline.?
example,
to
sponsor
the
toleration, the
of
cinema.
The six artists in this exhibition are products of this contradictory time.
They represent
single generation and belong to roughly the same social milieu.
Five (save Varvara Stepanova)
none
having
careers
in
Natalia
possible
consequences
of
the
Bolshevik
victory.
Exter
—
Stepanova
must
investigate
as
behalf of their sex? What were they, simply,
doing? What models of self-fashioning did they encounter? If the  new
people
radical bluestocking of
mid-century, what was
the prototype for the so-called New Woman of the 1910s, a figure as noticeable
on
or London?
States
women
by
social,
can
be
divided
Women
sanction,
women
by
1917
social
rank.
Founders
of
high
station
used
but
and handicraft workshops.
Their leaders were
itual ideals,
entrepreneurs, skilled in the
state did not
against Napoleon,
1825-1855),
suspicious
of
in Grand Duchess
imperial family), devoted herself to religious
life
and sponsored the training of midwives. The Church had always
promoted
participate in charitable
projects and institutions.
the universities,
but the Ministry of Education kept them out. Women seeking specialized
medical
188a
to
1897,
women
to attend
university on an equal basis with men, they were able to
study in special advanced
1870s, on the
ranks,
women
made
considerable
Countess Praskovia
pharmacists. By
Pokrovskaia
(1852—
hospitable
to
not
authorized
to
plead
in
court.'
5
The
eral
for political and civic
the
protest
some
prostitution, public
massive
congress
(1908),
which
included
many
1913.
were
by
the measure of women's
emancipation. The archreactionary Duma
moral chaos.
a
good
glitter
of
the
in
the
1890s
1905.
Throughout
the
topics
of
bation,
a
scholarly
bent
Tarnovskaia
(1848-1910),
adapting
to
the
Society's
1910
congress
were
65
to the
behind philanthropy
tension between self- realization and self-
sacrifice,
so
central
to
found classic
(1838—1910).
question
novella The Kreutzer
fied
by
the
marital
readers
were
led
to
novel^lnna Karenina
with
letters
(which
intimacy and procreation
in scorning the
charms of old-style patriarchal
20
female
selfhood,
the
NewWoman's
who
portrayed
who
them also
silent
culture
dreams of stardom
did not come
with
commercial
savvy
by
author
of
the
dilem-
and
the
boulevard heroines as portraits ofthe actual  new
women who populated the workplaces, lecture halls, and shops of the prewar
cities:
to
indepen-
readers
might
have
honed
published
by
of identification with both characters and
author.-
3
as
much
of
1889
especially amongwomen.
but
their
a
academies and private patronage offered
an alternative
pursue distinctive
not
shapers
of
socially
oriented
whom
they
worked,
example,
Their proverbial
picture
from the
physicians and art
interests
artists and
Zinaida
Gippius
their
own,
both
as
entrepreneurs
and artists. As a symbol, in historian Wendy R. Salmond's
words,
of vernacular Russian forms
with Modernism,
an outcome,
as Salmond notes, ofthis long tradition of women's work in the
kustar
[handicraft]
arts.
2
this
68
gies devised
tradition, pre
demanding market. The
Elizaveta
peasant crafts and to
shops (often mn by
themes sounded here.
archaeologist,
her
her brother
(1877—78),
a
ceramics.
thread
innovation,
women of the commercial classes behaved in much the spirit of
their
the
preservation
of
cultural
at the same
work-
shop,
Princess Mariia Tenisheva
1898.
urban
consumer.
A
similar
painting
by
convinced her
Malevich
Whereas old-regime traditionalism had left room for cultural innovation, the ide-
ology of progress
a
Images
Bronze
Horseman.
2.
See
Russian Monarchy (Princeton:
Princeton University Press,
of
Gender in the Upbringing of Paul I and Alexander I, in Imperial Russia
1700—1977,
ed. Ezra
Press,
1988),
pp.
58-75-
3.
See
Alexander
Politics in the
Press.
198a).
pp.
Salon Hostesses mthe First Half of the Nineteenth
Century. in .Russia. Women, Culture,
ed.
1998),
pp.
35,
68;
Rossiia
igi3god-.
Statistiko-
Rossiiskaia akademiia nauk,
Instirut Rossiiskoi istorii,
Nihilism,
and
Bolshevism,
i86o-iq3o
(Princeton:
Rosenthal
(New
York:
Knopf,
1975):
1861-1914
(Cambridge:
1988):
Laurie
(Berkeley:
Happiness-.
SexandtheSearchforModernityinFin-de-SiecleRussia
University
Press,
1994):
Mare: Women's Rights and Civil Rights in Late Imperial Russia,
in
and Linda Edmondson (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1989),
pp.
65-84.
9.
Political Center
Since
University
Press,
2000).
Divorce
in
Imperial
pp.
History:-.
ed.
Opening,
Russia,
Women's
Women
and
Union,
ed.
Linda
Edmondson
of
1994).
i voprosy
seksa, in
The
Prose
of
1965), p.
123 (and in general for the
mood of the period); Catherine A. Schuler, Women m Russian Tlieater: Tlie Actress in the
Silver
Age
Fin-de-Siecle
Russia,
pp.
n3—
25.
23. See Susan Larsen,  Girl Talk: Lidiia Charskaia and Her Readers,
inSelfand
Age:
,
Hedda Gabler, preface by
Women, Culture,
Merchant
Elite,
Portrait
of
S.
KhokhJova
27.
Wendy
Imperial
Society, State, and
men
 phallic
them, resulting in an
part on women's
energy
exposed
fin-de-siecle sexual anarchy.
with gender at
their
art,
but
in
a
totalizing way. This essay focuses on the visual and poetic
representations
of
 sexual
their
strategies reflected the
by
male difference.
relationship between artist and female
model may have been
the
of women emerged.
avant-garde artists featured in this exhibition also treated the human
figure interms that blurred
almost exclusively
of gender
sentation of
sorts.
the avant-garde androgyne was frequently modeled on the African mask,
which
had
also
inspired
the
representation
European
avant-
stylized, not pathologized
A common
variety of connotations: it represented an aesthetic ideal,
but it also served as a euphemistic substitute for lesbianism and homosexuality.
The
figure of the androgyne reflected castration anxiety, a key trope ofWestern
European Decadence. This figure of
indeterminate gender
of the race.
defined
by
hybrid
body.
a
of castration anxiety,
antiprocreationism,
resulting
—
natural
leads to death. The Platonic Utopian
androgyne
the
which
Symbolists and the
an
3
naturally
has
many
remains nearly
grammatically masculine when
grammar
her gender, Gippius
woman;
the arena of
that
of
Gippius
by
contemporaries
describe
her
her
mouth, which is
of
a
 seductress
(thepen
of
train
of
her
close-fitting
whether
white
white
style
by
(How different
was this
Another facet of
Gippius's public image
was that of
A forehead pendant
Petersburg's
acolytes, reclining
Olga
seductive woman
reposing on
ancient queen. The visual representa-
tion ofwomen
emblematic of
Ellis wrote
Akhmatova, who
soon to become the reigning queen of the Russian Silver
Age, was
habit
was
also
downplayed
Some years
—
—
a
tight-
she holds a
behind her. She is
According
to
philosopher
contrast
to
forward
reclining
in
tight
knee-length
79
figure 16. miTTICH
pockets,
gestures
marked
are disdainfully averted from the viewer's curious gaze; a sensuous
mouth displays
—
system of gender. According to Charles
Baudelaire, the dandy
appro-
by
self-presentation.
1
rep-
power relation between
Gippius's
fluid-
80
inhabiting
her
body,
see
destabilize social convention
and transform life,
personal
anxiety:
I
do
my spirit
—
Yet
'
all
likelihood
Merezhkovsky stayed in Taormina at the villa of Franz von
Gloeden,
She wrote in her diary
about
one
of
possibility
'?
love ofher life was Dmitrii Filosofov,
Diaghilev's cousin and lover
Miriskusstva
(World
of
Art).
Gippius and Merezhkovsky
ment was
union.
and real-life
Gippius's
phallic
rumors that
source of Gippius's
her audi-
empoweredwomen
identity
departed
—
women's sexuality and of the
uncertainties of gender difference. Salome was the
symbol of
publication
eponymous play
was
reprinted
to
stage
in that and the
Russian theatrical talent of
as
biggest hits of the
(see
fig.
17).
2
Orientalist depiction of Cleopatra unwinding her veils. Using Art Nouveau images,
he
the
unveiling
European
Decadence:
From
within
second
was
in onepiece
where she
spoke
French
with
Theater of Vera Kommissarzhevskaia, who was herself a famous actress.
Rubinstein
—
experimental, figure ofthe
Russian theater (and
a of Exter,
but
he
also
failed
to
avoid
provocative scene, which fetishizes the phallus,
in which Salome addresses the
head of the Raptist in an erotic monologue; instead,
she
spoke
bottom
of
which
27,
event,
the
veiled
woman.
22
before
creating
a
be
naked,
but
during the
took place on a
reviewer in Birzhevye vedomosti
shape of female
female genitals would have invoked, at least in some members
of the audience, the image of the vagina dentata,
a
fantasy
well as desire in the fin-de-siecle male imagination, especially in
Europe.
1917,
experimentation
that had fascinated
Rubinstein and Evreinov. Times had changed; politics and social revolution were
the dominant
and performed
of the ill-fated earlier productions. This was especially true of
the set and
costume for Salome;
but also
Of
Russian-Jewish
origin,
Diaghilev's
company,
she
formed
her
thin,
exotically
beautiful,
eccentric,
Describing
her
as
Cleopatra
in
1909,
2
figure
19.
aLexei
raDaKOv
Caricature
of
Ida
Rubinstein,
1912
In
Rubinstein cultivated a
were bisexual. Her affairs
Nijinsky, and Cocteau.
according
to
Alexandre
Rallets
Russes, Rubinstein
would sometimes strip naked in public to create a special artistic effect.
28
there exist several paintings and photographs of Rubinstein in the
nude. Valentin
the
cradle
1910
(fig.
chral figure, the blue draping, the green veil that
covers
toes correspond to the vision of Cleopatra as an unveiled
mummy in Diaghilev's ballet.
Serov's portrait was parodied
but the
Serov's
portrait
even
her
Viewed
in
reference
intended
human forms in
tion of Rubinstein.
portraits
of the Decadent dead
woman, a figure whose power was fetishized during the fin
de
women are sometimes  deformed in Cubist representations, the female corpse
as
an emblem of power was not the subtext of these works.
Rubinstein's charisma was based not
only on sepulchral image and
androgynous
roles.
3
and
of the French theater and fashion magazine Comoedia Rlustre wearing
a beau-
which
she
 walked
a
leopard
century perceived women's
fascination with wild
cats as an
designers, the impetus
worked,
androgynous persona.
her own
.
women
sonas, hers was
rather, it was
a
Anna Petrovna Ostroumova-Lebedeva
World of
Art group
artist,
32
painted
Kruglikova
in
1925,
showing
holding a
was less slippery than Gippius's or Rubinstein's; furthermore, unlike Gippius, she
did not
hide her
lesbian orientation,
exhi-
bitionist.
Kruglikova's
masculine
her
to
considered to be
rather shocking in
H 1 fr£Bk ^^
contemporaries
(includ-
She shared a studio
masterful
monotype
work. Like
mass culture at the newspaper Novoe vremia (New Time), which
was widely read at
1906,
by
work-
ers
during
the
serve as a prototype for the
Soviet
costumes that transformed the
Stepanova.
192?,
represents
a
women (and
Kruglikova
example, around
88
oixa mancH
Kruglikova's image of Dobychina shows her scrutinizing a painting on an
easel,
hands
in
by
means
grounds. Her self-portraits
of the
representations as a dandy
to the figure of
self- representation that
was appropriated widely
tools.
The form of the silhouette revived at the turn of the century differs from
its
instead of the conventional
—
Greek, and
1898,
Egyptomania and
for
pro-
on the conception of individual
character that predominates
interest in the
For example,
psychological portraiture
view and later
in full face.
womenwere characteristic
of the
is not the
century in stylized,
women more possibilities of
continued the fashion for
Lady
total break with the past. Several of them, including Rozanova,
began
as
Symbolists,
and sports clothes, and Goncharova designed gowns
for Nadezhda Lamanova.
sets
in the fashionable artistic mode
of the turn of the century. Yet while the figurative paintings of these six artists can
certainly
be
of
the
three women discussed in this essay. Furthermore, the work of Exter, Goncharova,
Popova, Rozanova. Stepanova, and Udaltsova
does
at the
1968).
The
in
1895.
3.
see
of
Leonardo
da
Vinci
(1901),
were
very
the
Russian
Modernism.
1990),
p.
194.
7.
I.
Briusova
 Dnevniki
1S91—
1910
(Moscow:
Sytnikov,
1927).
p.
109.
8.
especially as embodied by
1992). pp.
herewith
a
in
which,
lies serpent
Rubinger, ed.,Kiinsterlerinnen derrussischen
(St. Louis:
Anxiety
Johnston posed
herself in a 'male' manner. [Sitting in profile,] elbow out, mannish cap her
head, tankard in one hand
and cigarette in the other, she leans
forward with the calf
of one leg
resting on the thigh of the other (Frances Borzello, Seeing Ourselves: Women's
Self-
Portraits
of
and
member
of the prewar sisterhood of Europe's gender-benders. (See William Howard Adams, AProust
Souvenir: Period
Symbolist journal
garde,
was
women's portraits
1910.
i3.
John
de
(or dandy) style;
artifice, Bakst was infatuated with Gippius and her heady theology
of
Press,
1975),
p.
77.
17.
Ibid.,
p.
74.
marriage with
until death.
Bloomsbury group.
York:
Vintage
Books,
1981),
p.
224.
20.
Diaghilev's
1908.
It
believe
Nights
and
was
based
on
Pushkin's
9'
Russian culture, in both
to exchange anight of love for
a
young
man's life. Both texts
were revived at the turn of the century-, they fascinated not
only ballet
and
its
William Morrow,
Art
of
1913,
by
Cocteau.
22.
 Na
28,
1906,
p.
3
( Okolo
Pictures of
Nicolai Kalmakov,
1976),
p.
3o6.
1936,
p.
97).
representations ofwomen in
Egyptian art-, the Queen's head appears in profile, while her body is
portrayed
frontally.
The
queen of spades as the female symbol of demonic evil power in Russian
cultural mythology dates to Pushkin's eponymous novella of i833.
28.
Natalia
30. Quoted in Michael de Cossart, Ida Rubinstein (1885-10.60): A
Theatrical
Life
3i. There were
also more conventional models of femininity at the turn of the century. For example,
Olga
Glebova-Sudeikina,
a
biguously feminine/female roles
where she is
Sergei Sudeikin, who
affair
was
with
poet
Mikhail
a
dandy
Kniazev. It
amorous relationship with Akhmatova. This kind of overlapping bisexual triangulation
was
characteristic
of erotic life in the Petersburg hothouse at the turn of the century. On Glebova-
Sudeikina,
and
their
was the most important female member of the World of
Art
rumored that at one time
Kruglikova was in love
with the androgynous Voloshin.
Khudozhnik
RSFSR,
1969),
Posters under Lenin and Stalin (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1997).
pp.
1884
at
profile
designed
by
may
be
occupations or the
74).
while
Work Box,
+
from
the
Lavrentiev,
Varvara
Rodchenko. The same
—
items,
have
been
handbags has
Udaltsova
1914—15
a medicine bottle, rather
as
Rozanova did in the interior of Work Box. Although Liubov Popova
does
not
seem
to
have
fallen
weakness for female bric-a-brac; this is manifest in the colored
feathers and gloves
2
3
Malevich
said:
lace
but
are
rized
about
the
significance
even
such
a
fashion
World
of
Art
42
x
to say about the
movement
 style
of
the
U.S.S.R.
arrangement
of horizontal and vertical lines, like the architecture of the
Parthenon, and
thus the
result of
10
Strangely
enough,
avant-garde. Certainly,
identity,
as
we
bag
female
body
at
least
body,
them (excluding the tall, thin Goncharova and
the petite Rozanova) could
movement
almost banished
female body, in
jug in her
dance that, through its
painters in
our exhibition,
to dance and
arts? Good Amazons
plasticity
from
their
dis-
and if they
movement, it
plastic dancing, which achieved its
widest popularity just after the Revolution, and
they were painted just before the
cult of nudity
Boris Erdman reduced the
3
But
the
Amazonian
The Faun's nudity
altogether:  After all,
warship.
pose
Goleizovsky's set)?
Pornography?
are among the titles of such
articles. Indeed, the
body
dancer and mime Alexander Rumnev, in all its provocative homosexual
beauty.
'5
Rumnev's
elongated
celebrated
photographers
forced his model into statuary poses
excruciating contortions.'
Soviet
press
criticisms
nudes, such
tic dancers with their
of the darkest, most
'?
costume
an erotic
 On the dancer's neck is a
collar. . . . Two intertwined
terrifying than ladies'
polecats
9
Goncharova had
ideological
 pornographic paintings.
deprived
of
seduction.
in fin-de-siecle
reappropriate
1931
shoes (resulting in the
their female forms.
of
to the classical
1933
advocated
the
magazine Atelie (Atelier),
he
seeking
'-+
1921
within
the
Ivan
Ermakov's
Psychoanalytic
Institute, founded
the followingyear. Indeed, the birth of psychoanalysis in Russia is closely linked
with
the
new
was
psyche.
just
the
time
of
great
creativity
hitherto
unseen,
destined
fields of interest, the
interdisciplinary
1921.
He
approached
the
inner
studied both dance and the graphic work
of German Expressionism, an art movement with which he wished to
associate
the
work
—
art.
Precisely
the
body
in
and
of
itself.
28
ideas
dance,
29
because
cle, which
ought
makeup.
30
absent from the work of the six women artists in
this
exhibition,
and after the Revolution, even if they did have some-
thing
the
a
1935
costumes of
this type.
unrealized Ballet Satanique
its costume, whether for dance,
theater, or
movement:  Materials
garments for movements (i.e., for
dance)
and
to
production of S.
female,
vanished
in
the
 Cubo-
cos-
tumes
for
her
Exter, Popova, and Stepanova, in particular, all favored
a
mechanical criteria. For Constructivist theoretician Alexei Gan, husband of film-
maker Esfir
total technological tool.
was the actress
body
theme
—
104
article  Kino-tekhnikum in
Posing;
Exter, along
was a
Mouthpiece of the Moscow Atelier of Fashions, it contained discussions
of
everyone.
(The
Atelier even indulged in private commissions, a far cry from the
egalitarian
spirit
dardized female
often designed
her textiles
optical
36
precisely the
extreme desire to rationalize the figure ofthe new Soviet woman that led
to a
Handbag
1982),
p.
3?.
Others
by
Rozanova
a Suprematist
Few More) Russian Women of
the
Avant-Garde.
4.
eds.. N.
I. Khardzhiev.
in
Du Mont,
Zrelishcha
8
(1922).
p.
10.
10. On the subject of the body, sexuality, and Russian women, see
Jane
Costlow,
N.C.: Duke
University Press,
Sovetskoe
1964).
17.
See
The
Great
4
(1997).
pp.
-the- Century
this
publication.
19.
Pavel
Culture.
Art Salon,
Ministry,
1911).
23.
(1928),
pp.
7-8.
24.
Istoniapsikhoanaliza
1993);
and
1988).
p.
169.
106
6
Zasedaniia.
literaturyi iskusstva]
(inv. no.
7
o
tantse
v
Dress,
p.
171.
Rodchenko
(in
Moscow,
1924-
question
artists signed
Yet the situation
and accomplices, perhaps also at times as
rivals,
but
always
as
equals;
women
artists
34],
an
accomplishment
unattained
by
the
men of their circle.) The avant-garde in Russia was in dire need
of bolstering its
the
partner, and portrait object have been elevated to the status
of artistic
because they
saw themselves
also
saw
them-
3
At
the
same
time,
Russian
solidarity with one
as
Stepanova.
The first women to take their place in the history of
Russian art were con-
nected to male artists
his
male
artists.
Matiushin, Stepanova and Alexander
remarks that Rozanova was
to
have
been
professional
husband
equal.*
The
educated circles in Russia in the 1860s, and this peculiarity
should
be
considered
artistic,
The Modernist drama of binarity, in which the Other is
encoded automatically as
a
defense
against,
sexual
harassment
in
one of
that
the
repressed
as
consequently,
extent
can
we
women
become
criti-
art as an idea),
and
 wise
aspiration
decades
caused
women
to
be
saw
or
the
poisoned
saw,
intervention in nature,
then there, employing
who with axe,
trod,
have perceived
country
whose
intellectuals often engaged in discussion about its tragic (or perhaps fortu-
nate) dissimilarity
to rational
with objects
artists
uneasy,
was likely
comfortable position, since Russian philosophy favored the Other. To early
twentieth-
century
Russian
with
her
1900
as
faltered.
toward painting (when they met she was still studying sculp-
ture)
 feminine
strength lay in subtle coloring and not in powerful form.
But while Larionov
 Madame Larionova.
gres
in
—
Goncharova
as
were well defined.
theoretician
(with
inventor
of
radical ideas
(including Rayism, Rayist theater, and face painting). The imperative of theory
compelled Larionov
discoverer
of
objectively exist-
ing tendencies who saw his insights confirmed in the work of naive artists such as
Georgian painter Niko Pirosmanashvili. Goncharova's fiery
individualism
placed
her
in
Larionov rather
For Goncharova's
entitled  Natalia Goncharova
appropriation,
but in the principle of positive and uncritical acknowledgment, as opposed to the
criticism ofWestern Modernism. Marina Tsvetaeva
associates
same circle,
on the notion of
opposi-
tion
 feminine and the  masculine.
did not
a strategy
but also promoted as the
 grand narrative out of which European Modernism had grown. The East,
in this
synthesized both ideas, asserting that
the  Scythian stone maidens, the Russian painted wooden dolls . . . are made
in
Goncharova referred
Russian
steppes
a
 masculine
world.
an earthly destiny awaiting
Matiushin (her husband), many
as a source of creative power.
Matiushin's
on April
(from
plaster).
subject
herself
not
as
 feminine
or
away
23
is
to
alternative. For that reason, she approached abstraction not through analysis but
through an absence of
she would
Malevich despised, not
narration of the move from Symbolism to abstraction that appears
in her prose, in
main
work, the poem  Bednyi rytsar (Poor knight), the youth appears before the hero-
ine, who recognizes him
independence
and
the
biological
Marinetti's
novel
Mafarka-
Futurist
(1910),
by
a
human
being. Whereas Guro, whose work carries a moral and aesthetic prohi-
bition
on
who
These
nisms of repression
in
avoid
should work
feminine
gender,
which
has
proved
be
done
so
in
case,
number,
tense
noun.
38
point is the subtitle Tsvetnaia klei (Colored Glue) for Kruchenykh's
Vselenskaia voina
(Universal War)
s
Black
Square
was
shown.)
between
the
form, while  glue is
semantic
unity,
but
identity
Cubo-Fururist
became mascu-
line, and
felt had been  raped through
overuse,
30
and
the drastic and repressive
submission of the artist's
and Italian
Futurism were
reduction (which is sometimes
word  paint,
and surpassing the violence of the latter in the
notion
Platonic,
Romantic,
the end.
ground, eventually removing them
who proved able to
to
her
'there,'
these binaries could be challenged and then effaced, not in
the
silence
of
of
such area was
tures. The book, with its simultaneity
of image and word, served
as
the
place
for
the
been written about the
Rozanova, for
whom the
served as a replacement for
the
picture,
in
the
object
119
24.8
x
17
cm
The
subject a
Neither Rozanova and
sonal relationship
and why I keep silent about it,
Rozanova
usu-
your
books.
38
own
and that
3
9
after
1913,
the
manifesto Bukva kak takovaia (The Letter as
Such,
1913),
and is emphatic
be
they do not indicate who handwrote
the
musical performance by the
tive child -like
shortcoming
space
(of a
As Nina
often finished Rozanova's
verses, and sometimes
made more changes, and he occasionally
used
such
works
in
to
authorship?
does
it
point
always
professional
success.
many roles that
sphere
—
especially
 I refers sometimes
recalls
Stepanova's
paintings
from
1919—
21,
with
*s
such
as
of making things
but less rewarding task.
as if to
photograph. Street
drawings. Although the
photograph was made
passive
and
dependent
seems
to
submit
to
woman
laborer
its
The demand for
work
(Stepanova's letters and diaries demonstrate her boundless
devotion to her hus-
by the
Constructivism
concerned the object, which supplanted the obsolete conception of the
painting.
a
ture
shamelessly to the sexuality ofthe
viewer and thirsted to
Having
to cease
to be
Visiting Paris in
of the
from the East
bears a new
hands should also
4
6
strength of
love for
aesthetic
resolutions
the production of
certain functional readiness
are
so
the legs
something
erotic,
of course, in this demonstration of independence and sexual openness, but
Constructivism did not
much deny this quality as fail to recognize since this
eroticism was virtually
to
abolish
the thing- commodity,
of total
art.
4?
There
was a problem that the Lef group did not fully understand, however:
the
the aesthetic product and the role played in the  new
way
preserve the inventive
still
not
clear.
is characteristic
pursued this
ele-
in forms of the  new way of life (often
recalling the Surrealist
substance
of
1918
to
1921.
During
the
1920s,
like
seances
fell into hys-
in studying
Alexander Bogdanov,
-
for
of life
enormous
work
on
advertisements
in
the
picture Alienation
bizarre,
are
deco
appears
tightly fitting sweater, Rodchenko
most striking photographs
objects reproduced
Novyi
Lef,
in
1928.
Woman
with
a
 Leica
Camera,
1984.5-
they were staying
together in the
impression of
—
its
image
the same
made in
Been
No
and the
Surrealist Movement
&
1994)-
3.
See
Hubert,
Magnifying
Mirrors
1903,
Exter
who did not
and St. Petersburg, or her friendship with
members of the avant-garde; in sum,
he
 did
not
in Georgii
1908,
wrote
ten
 did
not
124
RA,
1994].
p.
49.)
Stepanova
married
difficult in
after many
to
be
facts
approach
Manifestoes,
19
12-1
928
(Ithaca:
tvorchestvo), in Georgii Kovalenko,
Istoricheskii ohzorvtrekh tomakh. Tom uBoevoe
desi-
atiletie
(St.
to them
ed., Natalia
, see
Krusanov,
Kovalenko, ed., Natalia Goncharova,
eds., N.
J. Khardzhiev,
p. 152.
significant
1990).
p.
266.
27.
Guro
, Nebesnye
'verbliuzhata.
p.
3i.
28.
Alexei
Kruchenykh,
eds.
art, since it was
that a man
of creating such a work. On the authorship, see Gerald
Janacek,
The
Look
of
Russian
Literature:
Avant-garde
VisualExperiments
Toward a New Pictorial and Literary Realism, Slavic and East
European
Journal
29
30. Alexei Kruchenykh,  Declaration of the Word as Such, in
Eagle and
Constructivist
Art
of
the
Shatskikh,
ed.,
Kazimir
p.
io3.
37.
1992),
Art:
Abstract
Painting.
/8i?o-iip8j
Museum ofArt:
and Bowlt,
niakh
1968).
75
(winter
1996).
pp.
3-35.
an^
 Boris
Arvatov's
(see
Lavrentiev
her,
but Lemberg died in a train accident in the summer of
1934.
«Msa.nfK J&fS
there, and
Exter
Paris,
she left
toward
the
Ukrainian
city
directly
onto
Ukrainian
to
her
Cubism. For example, Exter helped organize two avant-garde exhibitions in
Kiev,
international Salon, which traveled from
Odessa
saw,
for the first time, examples of the latest trends in French, German. Russian, and
Ukrainian art
1918—19,
first response
Kubin, Marie Laurencin, Henri Le
Fauconnier,
Henri
Matisse,
Jean
Metzinger,
well-
known
and
accomplished
men and women of the time, including artists; Exter was
especially
intellectual common ground
patrons and cognoscenti such
culture,
iconographic references into her own studio
work.
Between
1918
and
1930,
a
Kiev and
than
a
Konstantin Mardzhanov,
Exter first went to Paris in the
fall
of
1907,
her Russian colleagues
its
inventors,
for
by
Picasso, Braque, and poet
clear, lucid principles of the Cubism of Braque and
Picasso,
Exter
volume
what
were
of the
almost
right. Decorative surfaces approach
the objects, surrounding and
while
retaining a definite order. The result is the construction of a Cubist style that
touches every
remarkable
vitality of color, deriving more from the rich traditions of the
Ukrainian decorative arts than
term
be
6
At
any
combine
to
even
Simultanist
manner
color
compo-
,
constructions. The
the conditional, from
individual elements, is intensified
brings
to
However,
Exter
ideas
during
the
1910s,
that is, the special rhythm of every object, its
inclination, its movement, or. shall we say, its inner force. . . . Our bodies enter the
couches we sit on,
and the couches enter
toward
the
Although Exter acknowledged the
value of Italian Futurism,
she did not follow
blindly and was not especially interested in the vehicle hurtling through
space
that
colleagues. Of
course, movement
the Italians, she
the potential for movement
resides; and for Exter
rhythm were also similar to those of radical Moscow critic
Nikolai Tarabukhin, who
8
of her in
unsettling
human content,
these
suspensions
space
of
the
of
abide
movement.
 9
inform
of Exter's
Exter's
to
 explode
independent
zones
reflections
of,
or
commen-
taries
on,
painting.
the
basic
elements
of
the
as Composition: Movement
impression of being cool, calculated arrangements of forms and colors,
deter-
mined
sobriety
of
mere
tions usingterms from physics
such as speed and
change
and evolution. Yet for all their sophistication, Exter's abstract paintings seem also
to derive
bring
to
Ukrainian ornament.
Exter's Cubo-Futurist
Theater:
to bring Cubism
no longer
subordinated the
purely
production was also  festive,
although it was the
and the
extension of
that space
designs for
a constant
curtains, which
fell from
and moved apart diagonally, parallel to the footlights, dividing or
reducing or expandingthe space of the stage . The
curtains were also
We
to
elsewhere,
need for the costumes to
interact organically with the
equivalent
plastic
stage.
in
her
career.
pher Bronislava Nijinska in Berlin and Paris; the focus of
her exhibitions in Berlin,
1920s was on her
art school
1980
Decors
de
in
Krasnaia
niva
(Moscow),
no.
21
(May
27,
1923),
p.
3i
designs
and proposals for the circus, operettas and revues, and drama (with an
introduction by Tairov) . Well
the-
for
1980s
her
paintings and drawings becoming ballerinas and acrobats. Even her ceramic
designs
and
the
the 1980s
Exter was an important
pated in the major Russian exhibitions such
as
Tramway
Store
(1916);
was a colleague of Natalia Goncharova, Liubov Popova, Olga Rozanova, and
Nadezha Udaltsova; and constantly traveled in the
1910s,
serving
as
and Italy.
Remembered also as a teacher, Exter molded an entire school of younger
Ukrainian and Russian artists, some ofwhom became well known in Europe and
the United States, such
design (as in the
1930s),
Agricultural Exhibition
in Moscowin
design (forthe
1934).
An
inspiration
cathedrals of France, yet fascinated
by a single flower on Ukrainian
costume, championing the complex schemes of
Cubism and yet
i38
two
was
Painting
Andre B.
Bogomazov, Zhivopis
(Kiev:
Popova,
1996).
5.
at the
Kiev
in
1906.
moderne
(Paris),
no.
5
(1980),
p.
459.
7.
proletkult,
1923),
VTO,
1934),
p.
xxiv.
11.
Ibid.,
pp.
xxxii-xxxiii.
139
1901—03 Attends the Kiev Art Institute.
1904
lawyer.
1908
Takes
Apollinaire. Braque. Picasso. Soffici. and many other members of the
international avant-garde.
of
1916—17
who
Tchelitchew
r
Odessa as a teacher and stage
designer.
1920
the
Theater
Berlin,
which
Izvestiia Pavilion at
Biennale. Works for
Zack and Pavel Tchelitchew.
Regional
 52
(partial gift).
ative
distilled
into
a
narrative
of
historical
the agency that
life
(bp.
to argue that
her experiences
the point
at which
other first
as
Larionov.
an architect (graduate of
the Moscow Institute of
Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture),
Afanasii,
were
raised
ated
in
1898.
After
career
sis
retreats
to
the
family estate show her playing peasant,
dressed
shoes.
of three early self-portraits reveal her interest in elite masquerades
as
Self-Portrait
with
see
the
contained within the actual
environs, particularly
textile) factory that occupied the same grounds as the pala-
tial
dwelling.*
estate suggest a blurring of boundaries
of
may
be
in late
Dmitrii Dmitrievich
to
a
to
participate
witnessed
at
Instead,
what
impressed
her
most
 5
6
with the
Project for
of
theater )
peasant
connected ponds, artificially
the
Goncharova's
reflects
female
training
04),
that
sketches of the
exercises that would have
the
moved into the Goncharov house,
where
together
they
her
most
important instructor, at times repainting or correcting her work. Memoirs of col-
leagues and friends underscore the reciprocity of their relationship and the central
place
her
January
1910
mass
expulsion
of
students
from
Konchalovsky, Alexander Kuprin, Mashkov (expelled
the
year
earlier),
named
the
Jack
with boule
her Primitivist and Cubist paintings
in that group's first show,
which took place in
a subsequent
by
March—
April
191?,
with more than fifty-five of her paintings in the first hall
of the
retrospectives in
into practice
others.
traditions served
her pre—
her
state-
orientation toward both Western European Modernism and the visual traditions
of the East.
interview
inspired by the
 sculptural clarity of Le Fauconnier, Picasso, and Braque, but her first  Cubist
works
Gathering Grapes,
Tail and The
to Goncharova the decision
and
was perhaps more significant
actual
practice's
of
Russian
national
identity.
sheet, and the Western
European Modernists Cezanne and
justifications for antedating Neo-Primitivism as a
movement
and
a
style
to
Zdanevich, the
in Moscow on November
'?
Both of Zdanevich's lectures focused on her deliberate multiplicity as an
artist
art criticism. He argues that
it is futile for
aspire
to
tive
in
Russia
tures) is a letter she drafted in
1914
Futurist
movement,
as the
new academy.
As emigres,
—
Society)
1912,
and
again
at
acclaim. In
Mikhailova)
she was also,
of Russian Modernism was there a more striking
collusion of the disruptive pro-
motion of  new
publish her own
broadsheets. She thus initiated an interchange between fine and popular arts that
became the focus of post
-Revolutionary avant-garde projects. When Larionov and
Goncharova left Moscow for Paris to mount their set
designs
for
of her
wrote about
the posi-
for the
Russian art what each still hoped to achieve.
—
Goncharova
form that
as Liturgie
heritage. These
sets and
which forever
marked Goncharova
transnational
avant-garde
much
other times they
as
just
as
engagement
is
not
clear
trations for the
and Leon Rlum), suggest that
Goncharova
was
Europe.
2
cycles (as she did
the
1910s
and
of space motifs: images
by
the
neoclas-
is clear,
pre -Revolutionary works or
this has further compromised
that will require years of comparative, collaborative work among scholars.
On
June
2,
1955,
after
decades
of
with rheumatoid arthritis,
17, 1962.
VoliaRossu (Prague), nos. V—VI,
VII, VIII—IX
by Dmitrri
3.
The
artist and the poet were raised in Moscow in the Tverskaia
district, in houses Nos.
school that
 Natalia Goncharova (zhizn i
Sculpture, and
The estate is not far
from Lev Tolstoi's Yasnaia Poliana estate, and it is less than
an hour from the
During the
Soviet era, much of the interior contents were deposited in the city
museum,
and
the estate itselfwith its parks and ponds was transformed into a sanatorium.
Damaged severely duringWorid War II, it
is
now
have
pro-
vided
much
particularly
Igor
He
of the artist's rural
for
Ilia
Zdanevich)
Natalia
Goncharova.
de Nathalie
Gontcharova de
Painting,
Sculpture,
and
Architecture,
the
1909
she
was not
perspective.
1903—04
(letter from
35,
see
Jane
Pornography
in
1910,
in
Jane
Lanonov,
p.
14.
(1988),
Moscow,
164
Russian
Jane
Ashton
Art
exist in draft form in the State Russian Museum, Manuscript
Division, inv. no. f.
17-35,
with
handwritten
notations
by
Le Dantiu, Larionov explains:  Natalia Sergeevna
and I
held up a bit on account of the costumes. State
Russian
Museum.
Manuscript
Division,
inv.
 Le populaire, in Nathalie
companion.
1901
Enrolls
at
organized by Nikolai Riabushinsky, editor
of
the
journal
Zolotoe
runo
Jack
of
is held March
was tried
and acquitted on charges of pornography for exhibiting nude life
studies.
1913
1913—14
She participates in rival exhibitions
organized by Larionov: The
166
designs Alexander Tairov's
Moscow.
1917
Spain and Italy. Settles in Paris
with
Larionov.
1920s
in Geneva
of
to
exhibitions,
Larionov
and
the
efforts
of
Mary
museum collections, including
the Tate Gallery in London, the National Gallery of Modern Art in
Edinburgh, and the
Buckle's
Goncharova's
1911
174
'75
97.2
cm
soon
So
here would not
young
Popova.
Before
a status that distinguished
Palette in
a
wealthy
background,
regarded
us
considered
the
Bevolution,
she
perceived art
and life
with incredible
in
etc. She had a
general,
Alexander
Vesnin;
Alexei Grishchenko and Vera Pestel also studied there at one time.
For Popova the
pulled in different
Popova
not
interested in the artistic ideas of the Symbolists, but also
attempted to assimilate
No doubt,
her younger
was
a
profes-
and the tense spirituality of  Gothic forms was a difficult
task.
For
Popova,
her out of her
Jean
Metzinger
Dunoyer
de
the letters of Boris Ternovets, and the
memoirs
of
Mukhina.
A
her figures are
already
we
Probably through Mukhina.
Bozental,
she became interested in the fifteenth- and sixteenth -century masters,
but
by
1914,
ture, she acquainted herself
Life,
1914
(plate
29),
extrapolated formal structures
passionately. ... At that
time she was
studying the interrelation of colors in an attempt to determine the power of color
and
became the foundation of Popova's
work as a teacher at Vkhutemas, on which she
elaborated
in
Italy
Naples, Capri, Livorno, Pisa, Bologna, and
Padua
sional
her
with conventions.
of the
Portrait
of
a
Philosopher
Exter, Kliun, and
Rozanova; poet Alexei
Jakobson)
closer
visitor
meetingplace
of
the
1918.
during the summer of
1919.
Popova,
von Eding, their son, and her governess and friend, Adelaida Dege, moved
to
Rostov-
on-
Popova herself became seriously ill with typhoid, which caused a
serious
heart
and
to
withstand
the
to the State Purchasing Commission and. at the end of
1930
a
to share with her
began
the
become a
to
design.
a student at
ever cordial, festively
.
.
the surrounding
material world. . .
extent, feminine . .
relationship.
Natalia
Vesnina,
the
wife
beautiful
his life, even
their youth, they had been tied
by
the
and in the
activity.
her last years
of social
the ideology of
the social
is how her colleagues at
Inkhuk.
those
associated
work
(fig.
61).
S.
Popova:
Posmertnaia
higher,
cosmic truth. Correspondingly, he displaced and distorted outward forms in order to express
the intensity
5
(1925),
P-5-
(Moscow:
RA,
1994).
pp.
19-21.
7.
Quoted
(Moscow), no.
embracing the inventions of the
Russian avant-garde. But
for it reflects
the
in Paris,
Jean
Metzingerat
La
Palette
in
1913
and
1918),
Italian
her
1914
two pillars of the
Italian
avant-garde
rejected
explicitly.
Popova,
study
interpretations
Italian
itin-
erary
(by
which
time
she
was
an
avant-gardist),
she
art.
Nadezhda Udaltsova, her traveling companion
in the
1910s, also
a
tural underpinnings
ings from
a
strong
awareness
of
foreground
the
composition
sciously
and
of the
of
the
but because the creative
to
Suzdal and studied the
own
inner
logic
as
traditions of both the Renaissance and Old Russia. A similar
effect can
be seen
in the
to create an
conventional linear
certain principles, though
on an abstract
she connected
Board,
works
Popova also found inspiration in nature and
in
to
lar affinity
Paris.
— and which was first on the list of works that
she
prototypical Cubo-Futurist
of energy clash, restraining and at
the same time encouraging
merging together. Popova
rhythms and
works such
tive
demonstrate an equivalence
space,
of Artists,
1916—17
and
Picasso
of
a
chair,
with
a
the
French
Malevich's
Knife
-Grinder must have been an ideal model for Popova; her two
versions of the Traveling
the
surrounding environment almost los-
the painting itself verges
between
the
French
and
tal
rules
nearly
a
layered
Around
1914,
using geometric
formed around him (which included Kliun, Alexander Rodchenko, Rozanova,
and Nadezhda Udaltsova). Supremus anticipated the goals of the Parisian
groups
Cercle
et
(1939)
the
next
phase.
Constructivism,
1910s,
Popova
Popova
subjected
194
as
prised
The
now
space of the universe.
Spatial-Force Constructions.
to
the
interactive
energy
movement
new. unearthly dimension
Constructivism in favor of Suprematism. Nevertheless, the same interactions of
centrifugal
and
rather like
characteristic of Cubo
a
laboratory
of
Constructivism
and
Production art that she investigated with such alacrity after the October
Revolution.
ideologically
works of
tion of The Magnanimous Cuckold
in
1922
(fig.
61)
1908—09
Konstantin Yuon
is
especially
impressed
That
summer,
travels
to
1911
Russian cities.
and Kirill
with Nadezhda Udaltsova to Paris, where they study under Henri
Le Fauconnier,
Ternovets, returns to Russia
and again works closely
by
(including Grishchenko,
1914—16
makes textile
designs for
196
to a son in