Unartists

“Russian Avant-Garde: 1908-1922,” an exhibition seen recently at the Leonard Hutton Gallery, offered New Yorkers a rare chance to explore a little-known aspect of twentieth-century art, that of pre-Communist Russia. It was an especially welcome novelty not only because of its high quality, but because it acted as an antidote to the disastrous debacle called “Art and Revolution,” at the New York Cultural Center. Initially, great expectations had been held for this last, which was organized by the British Arts Council in cooperation with the Soviet Ministry of Culture; it had been hoped that the Russians would finally permit Westerners, if not their own citizens, to study the works of Russian artists who, in their own time, were world-famous as aesthetic innovators, but who for the last forty years have been, in their homeland, relegated to the unperson category.

But before the show was unveiled in London last spring, the Soviet authorities not only reneged on promised loans but, by threatening to withdraw their participation entirely, blackmailed the Arts Council into making changes in the catalog and agreeing that certain parts of the exhibition be closed off. It was this mutilated version which traveled to New York—and not surprisingly, it gave a false and distorted view of the period. The Hutton show, however, like last season’s “Russian Art of the Revolution” at Cornell University, was made up of objects in Western collections. Both demonstrated the pivotal role played by Russian artists as pioneers in the transformation of art during the first decades of the twentieth century. At that time, Moscow and Petrograd must have been as exciting places to be as Berlin, Munich or Paris.

RB

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Ruth Berenson

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“Russian Avant-Garde: 1908-1922,” an exhibition seen recently at the Leonard Hutton Gallery, offered New Yorkers a rare chance to explore a little-known aspect of twentieth-century art, that of pre-Communist Russia. It was an especially welcome novelty not only because of its high quality, but because it acted as an antidote to the disastrous debacle called “Art and Revolution,” at the New York Cultural Center. Initially, great expectations had been held for this last, which was organized by the British Arts Council in cooperation with the Soviet Ministry of Culture; it had been hoped that the Russians would finally permit Westerners, if not their own citizens, to study the works of Russian artists who, in their own time, were world-famous as aesthetic innovators, but who for the last forty years have been, in their homeland, relegated to the unperson category.

But before the show was unveiled in London last spring, the Soviet authorities not only reneged on promised loans but, by threatening to withdraw their participation entirely, blackmailed the Arts Council into making changes in the catalog and agreeing that certain parts of the exhibition be closed off. It was this mutilated version which traveled to New York—and not surprisingly, it gave a false and distorted view of the period. The Hutton show, however, like last season’s “Russian Art of the Revolution” at Cornell University, was made up of objects in Western collections. Both demonstrated the pivotal role played by Russian artists as pioneers in the transformation of art during the first decades of the twentieth century. At that time, Moscow and Petrograd must have been as exciting places to be as Berlin, Munich or Paris.