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24Architecture/Landscape/Political EconomyScapegoat Issue 03 Realism


Objectless in Vitebsk:Reflections on Kazimir Malevich,

Architecture, and Representation

A Conversation withElitza Dulguerova

Scapegoatposed the following questions to ElitzaDulguerova, Assistant Professor in Art History atthe University of Paris I, PanthonSorbonne, who

works on the social history of the Russian avant-garde. We are interested in Kazimir Malevichs claimthat Suprematism is the new realism. Additional-ly, we want to clarify the relationship between thisclaim and what happened to Suprematism when itconfronted the built environment, namely duringMalevichs tenure (19191922) in the then Soviettown of Vitebsk.

Scapegoat Says

What led Malevich toproclaim that Suprematism is thenew realism? What, for Malevich, isthereal in realism, and why does thisnecessitate an attack on representation?

Elitza DulguerovaTo my knowledge, Malevichfirst used the concept of realism in 1915 withinhis performative declaration on the birth of Supre-matism. His announcement of the new art wasstaged both visually, through an ensemble of 39mostly unseen paintings, and as a discursive event,through several writings and declarations. Thepaintings were exhibited at the group show The

Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings 0,10 (Zero-Ten) (Petrograd, December 19, 1915 to January19, 1916). According to the well-known andinfinitely reproduced photograph of Malevichsworks at 0,10, the display in itself acted as a visualmanifesto for the advent of a new art of non-representationalalmost geometricalformsfloating in space. But Suprematism also came

into being through a series of written and spokentexts. In addition to the short, hand-written state-ment hung on the wall of the Suprematist room,Malevich published a longer essay, From Cubismto Suprematism: The New Painterly Realism,which was on sale during the 0,10group show. Itssecond edition, based on a public talk from Janu-ary 1916, expanded the lineage of Suprematism toItalian Futurism without altering the emphasis onrealism: From Cubism and Futurism to Supre-matism: The New Realism in Painting.1

ivopisnyi, the adjective translated into Eng-lish as in painting, or sometimes as painterly,was not a mere epithet for Malevich but an import-ant part of how he conceived of realism at thismoment. It could even be argued that realismwas but the predicate of painterly: if Suprema-tism was realistic, it was by being true to painting.Malevich was not the first artist who paired a termstrongly associated since Courbet with commit-ment to everyday reality, with a non-mimetic

painterly technique (in his case, bespredmetnoeiskusstvo, or objectless art).2By 1915, this shiftin the notion of realism away from mimesiswas already a major stance in the writings of theFrench Cubists, which were quickly translated toRussian, thoroughly discussed at the futurist publicdebates in Moscow and Petrograd and sometimesdirectly imported by the Russian artists wholived and worked in Paris.3The 1912 treatiseDu

Cubismeby Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger

had already emphasized the distinction betweena superficial and a deep realism, the first beingsolely concerned with meaning and granting littleconsideration to the means of reaching it (Courbet),while newer art such as Cubism was filed under thelabel of deep or true realism. One of the closingsentences of their text sums up quite clearly Gle-izes and Metzingers understanding that realismwas not a reflection of reality but rather a means oftransforming it. In doing so, the subjective vision ofthe Cubist painter had to become an objective truthfor every viewer: A realist, he [the new painter]will shape the real in the image of his mind, forthere is only one truth, our own, when we imposeit on everyone.4Fernand Lger was anotheractive proponent of ralisme de conception over

ralisme visuel, arguing that, The realist valueof a work is perfectly independent of any imitativequality. [...] Pictorial realism is the simultaneousarrangement of the three great plastic quantities:lines, forms, and colors.5Redefining realism stoodfor more than a new technique: Lger believed that

it had an emancipatory value for the artist as wellas for the beholder, freeing them from the submis-sion to the normative realm of bourgeois appear-ances. Malevichs emphasis on realism in 19151916 can thus be seen as a symptom of his urge tomaintain a tie with Cubism and European modernart, while defending the novelty and ultimate differ-ence of Suprematism. In his interpretation, realismin painting was a means to make living art, to gobeyond representation and into creation:

In the art of Suprematism forms willlive, like all living forms of nature. []The new realism in painting [ivopisnyi,painterly]is very much realism in painting[painterly], for it contains no realism ofmountains, sky, water. [] Until now therewas realism of objects, but not of paintedunits of colour, which are constructed sothat they depend neither on form, nor oncolour, nor on their position relative to

each other. Each form is free and indi-vidual. Each form is a world.6

It seems to me that this understanding of real-ism does not outlive the 1917 Bolshevik Revolu-tion. Instead, Malevichs writings from the early1920s dwell on the concept of objectlessness(bespredmetnost) both as the ultimate goal of artand as the condition of the world that Malevichlongs for. I would not ascribe this semantic shift

to political conjuncture alone, insofar as thepolitical appropriation (and approval) of realisticpainting and sculpture as the only appropriateart for a communist state was not yet dominant,at least not until the end of the Civil War in 1921.The Vitebsk years in the life of Malevichfromlate 1919 to mid-1922were years during whichthe political uncertainty and precariousness ofeveryday life left room for intense experiments

with future modes and possible forms of art.7Thiswas the case not only in Vitebsk, at the Free StateArtist Studios under the direction of Malevich, butalso at the Moscow Institute of Artistic Culture(INKhUK), first under the direction of Kandinsky,and then, from 1920 on, within the frameworkof the Constructivist circle. I would rather guessthat the move from realism to objectlessnessallowed for a more accurate definition of the real-ity that Malevich was trying to conceivebothphilosophically, as a way to overcome not onlyimitation but also any dependence on establishedobjects or rules, and politically, as a state of rest

and peace beyond conflicts, struggles and divisions.A recently published transcript of Note on

the Limits of Reality, a lecture that Malevich de-livered to his fellow UNOVIS members in Vitebskin 1921, can be used to introduce his conceptualframework.8Malevich argues that the need torepresent phenomena or things belonged to aforegone conception of art, where art was seen asa means to grasp and understand the real world.This could no longer be the case, he adds, as wenow know that such an understanding cannotbe objective: we perceive not one but multiple

realities smoothly sliding into each other. Argu-ing that reality has to be thought of as somethingthat happensasa representation, Malevich givesthe example of a child who would alternatelydefine his father as a big person when in thecompany of other adults, and as a small person

when they play together. Malevich concludes thatwhen we experience the world we do not singleout things or elements: no dishes, no palaces, no

chairs.

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The existence of the latter divides theworld into parts and thus betrays both our experi-ence and the demonstrations of contemporaryscience. This search for an experience that is bothrelative (free, not obeying predefined rules) andunified (not divided) motivates the anti-utilitarianstance of Malevichs writings in the 1920s.

In the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution,Malevich reconsidered the other major premise ofSuprematism by stating that painting was done for

long ago and bequeathed the task of developingarchitectural Suprematism to the young architectsin somewhat vague terms, as the era of the newsystem of architecture.10Such a stance was notsurprising in 1920, when the Moscow INKhUK wasdebating the definition and rules of constructionas an alternative to easel painting.11El Lissitzkycertainly also played a part in this shift towardsarchitecture. Lissitzky had been a member of the

Vitebsk branch of Narkompros [Peoples Commis-sariat for Education] since May 1919, and a teacherat the Peoples Art School of Vitebsk under thedirection of the Peoples Commissar Marc Chagall.It was under these circumstances that Lissitzkyconvinced Malevich in late 1919 to leave his teach-ing position at the Free State Artists Studios inMoscow and join the Vitebsk team.12As is wellknown, Lissitzky was trained as an architect, andhis Suprematist-inspired Prouns [Projects forthe Affirmation of the New]13were attempts tocorrelate the exploration of the pictorial space inSuprematism to the space of the viewer, thus going

beyond painting and into the three-dimensionalrealm. However, even though Malevich startedconsidering architecture as a potential field forSuprematism and even qualifying itin a stillunspecific phraseologyas the ultimate art, hewould not achieve the shift from painting to archi-tecture, or even from two-dimensional to three-dimensional forms, during his stay in Vitebsk.

SS Why and when was Malevich inVitebsk? Can you briefly explainthe situation there?

EDMalevich moved from Moscow to Vitebskin November 1919. The UNOVIS (Exponents orChampions of the New Art)14group was officiallycreated in February 1920 and became dominantat the Vitebsk Free State Artist Studios after thedeparture of Chagall in May of the same year.In the following two years, UNOVIS organizedexhibitions, conferences, and theatrical represen-

tations, published a series of books, includingseveral treatises by Malevich, and took part in thelife of the city of Vitebsk. Through its ramifica-tions, the UNOVIS ideas spread out to the citiesof Smolensk, Orenburg, and Perm; its works

were shown in exhibitions in Moscow and dis-played at the 1922 First Russian Art Exhibition inBerlin. For a number of reasons, including severefinancial cuts, administrative reorganization andincreasing intolerance towards formalist art

Malevichs panels decorated several buildings in Vitebsk, including the White Barracks (above),where the Committee for the Struggle against Unemployment had its workshops (December 1919).

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tion stemmed from the invitation of the VitebskCommittee for the Struggle against Unemploy-ment to celebrate its second anniversary. InDecember 1919, Malevich decorated the exteriorof the White Barracks building that housed the

workshops of the Committee, and with El Lis-sitzky re-designed the interior of the Vitebsktheatre for the festivities. While there is little

visual evidence of most UNOVIS projectsexceptfor some studies and sketchesthis collabora-tion with the Committee for the Struggle againstUnemployment was rather well documented. Thephotograph of the workshop building is particu-

larly revealing. The Suprematist panels by Mal-evich are spread over the faade both horizontallyand vertically. Most of the horizontal elementsare painted compositions, while some of thecentral figures seem to be shaped panels. On thefirst row, at the level of the street, large, human-sized panels containing simple compositionsof triangles, squares and circles alternate withthe windows and doors of the building. The twoentrancesto the building and to the adjacentenclosureseem to be framed by single-shapecompositions: two full-sized squares for the for-mer, two decentred circles for the latter. An up-per level comprises a series of smaller and morecomplex compositions, each of which stands onthe cornice of one of the street-level panels. Theirdisplay is symmetrical on both sides of the mainentrance. Above the squares and the front doorrises the central part of the decoration. It con-sists of two monumental vertical compositionsof dynamically distributed, mostly rectangularforms of various sizes. Between these two elon-

gated panes stand two shaped panels: a big darkcircle in the middle, similar in size to the squareson the first level and, immediately below it, asmaller dark diamond. The upper half of the

window behind the circle remains uncovered.It bears a strong resemblance to another basicSuprematist form: the black square. The balancebetween symmetric and dynamic positioning ofshapes testifies to Malevichs desire to restruc-ture the rigid solidity of the original building

while creating a feeling of harmonious lightness.

SS What was the reception of the workin the town?

EDDocuments on the reception of UNOVIS pro-jects in Vitebsk are quite scarce. One of the mostoften quoted depictions is Sergey Eisensteinsaccount of the transformation of this sooty andcheerless provincial city, typically built of redbrick: But this city is especially strange. Here the

red brick streets are covered with white paint, andgreen circles are scattered around this white back-ground. There are orange squares. Blue rectangles.This is Vitebsk in 1920. Its brick walls have met thebrush of Kazimir Malevich. And from these walls

you can hear: The streets are our palette!20It isunclear whether this depiction of the filmmakersvisit to Vitebsk in June 1920, probably written in1940, refers to the Suprematist-decorated trains orto buildings such as the one discussed above.

It seems to me that the urban projects of theUNOVIS group can be read in at least two differentways. On the one hand, as a non-representationalresponse to the post-Revolutionary brief to

decorate the urban environment and translaterevolutionary ideas into visual form. This wouldexplain why both Chagalls and Malevichs workscould peacefully coexist in the city of Vitebskduring the 1st of May celebrations in 1920, de-spite their theoretical differences.21On the otherhand, these projects were also attempts towardsa weightless, objectless, restful architecture astheorized in Malevichs writings.

SS What is the relationship betweenMalevichs realism (largely expressedthrough painting) and the urban

projects in Vitebsk? What is at stakein the transition from painting toarchitecture?

EDMalevichs own experiments in architecturehisarchitectonmodels andplanit drawingsdatefrom the period between 1923 and 1927, after hismove to Petrograd and before his retrospectiveshows in Warsaw and Berlin in 1927. During thisperiod Malevich discussed architecture in a seriesof texts and sometimes considered it as the ultim-ate end of creation which reaches beyond the threerealms of religion, civic life, and art.22Architec-ture cannot be dissociated from Malevichs moreglobal quest of a reality beyond image towardswhich the bullet and the aeroplane fly, the trainrushes by, man runs, the bird flies, the planets andthe sun move, for only there, in the idealess state,does the world end, as an image, as will, as im-agining, and the world dawns as objectlessness.23

In his fascinating 192425 text on the ideo-logy of architecture Malevich does not reject

technology, science, or utilitarianism per se. Heconcedes that inventions like aeroplanes, ships,trains, radios, and electricity were partly drivenby the desire to sweep away obstacles suchas water, space, hills, and time on mans wayto peace.24However, utilitarian technologykeeps architecture subdued to objects and toolsas divided parts of the whole, and to ideas andimages (such as expediency) that were meantto introduce order into what used to be chaos.Malevich disagrees with this dependence, as forhim lifewishes to be expedient, whereasarthasparted with the image of an aim [] it has nobeginning or end, it has no whither or whence[] consequently it is without idea because it isalready reality beyond image.25In contrast tothe propensity of Constructivism to shape life byintroducing new functional forms, Malevich con-siders that art should not give form. As he woulddemonstrate later in a 1928 text, our belief that

art is something that gives form to the functional

side of life is inaccurate, since it is impossibleto form any function of life: forming it we donot really form it but merely place it in an orderestablished by some form of art.26Architecturedoesnt have to create a new form of order buta state of restfulness, unity, and spaciousness.To do so, it has to be freed from the object-likecharacteristics of matter and of the divided things,namely weight (ves), so as to achieve balanceand equilibrium (ravnovesie), as weight is bornin utilitarianism, outside utilitarianism I do notknow whether weight exists.27Malevich coinsthe neologism ut-grazhdanin [ut-citizen] forthe citizen submitted to the utilitarian needs of

daily life who has been granted palaces, gardens,and monuments created for a specific, tempor-ary, and utilitarian need.28In contrast, the artof architecture is eternally beautiful in its equi-librium and bears an architectuality thatresists social or ideological contingencies: Pagantemples also serve as temples for Christians be-cause they are architectually [sic] beautiful.29

The 1/48 essay contains a preciousandraredepiction of objectless architecture whichbrings to mind Malevichsarchitectons, on whichhe was working at that time. If architecture shouldgive rise to the feelings of spaciousness, emptiness,

and restfulness (in eternal beauty there are nohorizons30), it had to be freed from all obstaclesand limits, both material and conceptual. Walls,floors and ceilings are designed to delimitate space,to create horizons, to host tools. Malevich startsby suggesting to move apart the six sides of thebasic structure of a cube (a room) to create moreempty space but quickly objects that a full libera-tion from any limit is not possible, as no matterhow I shift the walls, I am always surroundedby walls, my sight meets an obstacle but sensesspace.31He then considers a path opposite to thisinfinite openness: confinement within a cube as asafe and concealed place to rest, as a refuge fromlifes adversities. This double bind seems to depicthis own architectural experiments, as thearchi-tectonsallow for a variety of points of view andperceptions of space instead of a predeterminednotion of horizon, and yet offer the possibility toalternate between openness and inner retreat.

Christina Lodder has argued that Malevichwas interested in architecture as a problem rath-

er than a solution, which might explain why, evenin hisarchitectons:

The precise function of the elements ineach structural ensemble is not identified[...] There are none of the usual featuresyou might expect in an architecturalmodel; there are no indications of windows,doors, entrances, or exits. The models werenot conceived in response to the needs ofparticular architectural briefs, or intendedto answer the highly specialized, practicalrequirements of specific building types,such as hospitals, communal housing, orschools. They were also not related to anyparticular structural system of building.Indeed, how they were to be built and func-tion was left pretty vague. Even their scaleis not really indicated. None of them has anidentifiable faade, but exist in the round,fully in space. If architecture is the way

space is enclosed for a given purpose, thenMalevichs structures are not architectural.They exist in space, but do not define space,or contain space within them.32

Going back to Malevichs Vitebsk projects suchas the 1919 faade for the Committee for theStruggle against Unemployment, one noticesthat while it has departed from objects andutilitarian expediency, while it creates a dynamic

yet harmonious feeling of space, it persists increating an image instead of being a reality be-

yond imagean objectless image but an imagenonetheless.

practices, in the summer of 1922 Malevich andmost of his students left Vitebsk for Petrograd,where the UNOVIS project was carried on at theState Institute of Artistic Culture (GINKhUK).15

SS Did the school have a presence in thetown? Can you describe Malevich andUNOVIS projects there?

EDThe activities of the UNOVIS group withinthe city of Vitebsk did not involve the buildingof new architectural forms nor did they redesignits urban plan. In most cases, they expanded andtranslated Suprematisms compositional andformal characteristics to larger, two-dimensionalsurfaces. As Alexandra Shatskikh has summed itup in her study:

Suprematisms vast decorative potentialwas unleashed in a variety of ways: in thesignboards created for the stores and shopsof the EPO (United Consumer Association);

in the propaganda panels that decoratedthe sides of streetcars; in the drawings formurals on buildings and interiors; and inthe decorations on the ration cards usedduring the period of War Communism.16

And while for a year the streetcars in Vitebskwere covered with Suprematist designs, the onlythree-dimensional projects were the monumentsto Karl Marx and Karl Liebknecht by one ofMalevichs colleagues, the sculptor and teacherDavid Yakerson.17Unveiled in Vitebsk in 1920,the monuments combined Suprematist-inspiredfoundations of differently sized rectangularblocks, asymmetrically balanced together, withgeometrically simplified yet representationalbusts. For Shatskikh, the lack of architecturalexperiments in Vitebsk was due to materialconstraints, material shortages and poverty.18The term super-grafics [super-grafika], usedby some Russian scholars to depict the urban

projects of UNOVIS in Vitebsk avoids classify-ing them in pre-established categories suchas decorative. However, in underscoring thegraphic aspects of Suprematism, it dismisses theambition of spatial exploration and projectioninto the three-dimensional realm.19

Most projects were commissioned for celebra-tory occasions (1st of May, the anniversary of the

Vitebsk school of art, Karl Liebknechts and RosaLuxemburgs deaths). An interesting collabora-

Notes

1. Malevich, K. S., From Cubismand Futurism to Suprematism: TheNew Realism in Painting in Es-says on Art1915-1928, vol. 1,ed. Troels Andersen, trans. XeniaGlowacki-Prus and Arnold McMillin(Copenhagen: Borgen, 1968), 19-

41. Both the 1915 and 1916 essayshave been reprinted in Russian inKazimir Malevich, Sobranie sochi-nenii[Collected Works], vol. 1,ed. Aleksandra Shatskikh (Moscow,Gileia, 1995), 27-34, 35-55.

2. Following scholars like Chris-tina Lodder and Charlotte Doug-las, I prefer objectless tonon-objective (the term usedin the English edition of Male-vichs writings). The problemwith non-objective lies in itsphilosophical undertones hintingat oppositions such as objective/subjective. This is not the frame-work Malevich is working with.Furthermore, the Russian termsfor these philosophical categoriesare obektivnyi, subektivnyi,that is, Latin-based words, whileMalevich uses bespredmetnyi, aneologism based on the Russianword for object, predmet. Object-less, on the other hand, shouldnot convey connotations of point-less or purposeless. As usedin recent scholarship on Malevich,it is first and foremost a lite-ral translation of bespredmetnyi,without an object, without thequalities of a material object,

mainly its materiality, its refer-ence to the everyday, its weight.However, on a more theoreticallevel Malevich does suggest thatobjectlessness has to do witha certain degree of aimlessnessas well. His writings in the1920s look forward to a state ofrest (or laziness, as he wouldphrase it in another text from theVitebsk period). Rest is a statedevoid of purpose or aim, it isthe state of unity that Malevichis looking for. To follow any aim

or purpose would mean dissolvingthis unity.

3. Two of Fernand Lgers seminalessays, Les origines de la pein-ture et sa valeur reprsentative(1913) and Les ralisations pic-turales actuelles (1914), wereinitially delivered as lecturesat the Acadmie Vassilieff in

Paris, whose owner, the Russianartist Marie Vassilieff, was alsoone of the fourteen participantsin the 0,10exhibition.

4. Albert Gleizes and Jean Metz-inger, Du Cubisme[27 December]1912] in A Cubism Reader. Docu-ments and Criticism 1906-1914,eds. Mark Antliff and PatriciaLeighten (Chicago and London:The University of Chicago Press,2008), 435.

5. Fernand Lger, Les origines dela peinture et sa valeur repre-sentative, Montjoie!(May 1913),english translation in Antliff &Leighten, Cubism Reader, 535-6.

6. Malevich, From Cubism and Futur-ism to Suprematism, 38.

7. On the relation between modernityand contingency, see T.J. Clark,God Is Not Cast Down, in Fare-well to an Idea: Episodes from aHistory of Modernism(New Haven/London: Yale University Press,1999), 225-297.

8. Zapiska o granitzah realnosti[Note on the Limits of Reality]in Sobranie sochinenii[CollectedWorks], vol. 5 (Moscow: Gileia,2004), 191-194.

9. Malevich, Zapiska, 193.

10. Malevich, Suprematizm. 34risunka [1920], in Sobranie so-chinenii, vol. 1, 189; Suprema-tism. 34 drawings, in Essays onArt, vol. 1, 127-128 (translationmodified).

11. See Maria Gough, The Artist asProducer: Russian Constructivismin Revolution(Berkeley: Univer-sity of California Press, 2005).

12. Unless otherwise noted, all thefactual and archival informa-tion related to the city of Vi-tebsk, its art school, teachers

and projects is strongly indebtedto Aleksandra Shatskikhs extra-ordinarily well-documented book,Vitebsk: The Life of Art, trans.Katherine Foshko Tsan (New Haven/London: Yale University Press,2007).

13. See Nancy Perloff and Brian Reed(eds.), Situating El Lissitzky:

Vitebsk, Berlin, Moscow(Los Angeles, Getty ResearchInstitute, 2003).

14. Exponents is the translationadopted in the English versionof Shatskikhs book, while themore affirmative Champions issuggested by Christina Lodder inher inspiring article, Living inSpace: Kazimir Malevichs Supre-matist Architecture and the Phil-osophy of Nikolai Fedorov, inRethinking Malevich. Proceedingsof a Conference in Celebration ofthe 125th Anniversary of KazimirMalevichs Birth, eds. CharlotteDouglas and Christina Lodder(London: The Pindar Press, 2007),172-202.

15. Shatskikh, Vitebsk, 220-224.16. Ibid., 117. The projects men-

tioned by Shatskikh were realizedby different students and teach-ers from the UNOVIS circle.

17. Ibid., 169-183.18. Ibid., 117.19. Selim O. Khan-Magomedov, Suprema-

tizm i arhitektura: problemy for-moobrazovaniia(Moscow: Arkhitek-tura-S, 2007).

20. Sergey Eisenstein, Strannyiprovintsialnyi gorod [A Strange

provincial city] (1940), quotedand translated in Shatskikh,Vitebsk, 118.

21. Ibid.22. Cf. the ending of his 1924

essay Arhitektura kak stepennaibolshego osvobozhdeniiacheloveka ot vesa [Architectureas a degree of the greatest lib-eration of man from weight], inSobranie sochinenii [CollectedWorks], vol. 4 (Moscow: Gileia,2003), 285.

23. Malevich, 1/48. Mir kak bespred-

metnost (ideologiia arhitek-tury) in Sobranie sochinenii,vol. 4, 216, translated as 1/48.The World as Non-Objectivity, inEssays on Art, vol. 3, ed. TroelsAndersen (Copenhagen: Bergen,1976), 290 (translation modi-fied).

24. All quotes from 1/48 in

Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 4, 205;in Essays on Art, vol. 3, 276-7.

25. 1/48 in Sobranie sochinenii,vol. 4, 216; in Essays on Art,vol. 3, 290 (my emphasis).

26. Zhivopis v probleme arhitek-tury, in Sobranie sochinenii,vol. 2, ed. Aleksandra Shatskikh(Moscow: Gileia, 1998), 135-136;translated as Painting and theProblem of Architecture inEssays on Art, vol. 2, ed. TroelsAndersen (Copenhagen: Bergen,1968), 14.

27. 1/48, in Sobranie sochinenii,vol. 4, 205; in Essays on Art,vol. 3, 277.





32. Lodder, Living in Space, 192.

Elitza Dulguerova is AssistantProfessor at the Universit de ParisIPanthon-Sorbonne. Her researchinterests include the social historyof art in Russia/USSR and the study ofexhibitions in/as twentieth-centuryart practices. In 2010, she guest-edited the special issue Exposer/Displaying for the scholarly journalIntermedialitsand is now finishinga book drawn from her thesis, Usageset utopies: lexposition dans lavant-garde russe prrvolutionnaire(Dijon:Les Presses du Rel).

Photograph from Aleksandra Shatskikh, Vitebsk:The Life of Art(New Haven: Yale UniversityPress, 2007), 82.