BEFORE RUSHING into print to demand of Tony Banks an explanation as to why he voted for KinLondon Transport Trom THE ROYAL ACADEMY in London is notorious for being most reactionary artistic institution. Nevertheless, the Academy will host (until 13 November) a major exhibition of revolutionary art. Entitled 'Art of une Avant-Garde in Russia', the exhibition is a collection of paintings, drawings illustrated books from the October 1917 Revolution and its aftermath.
The 'Russian garde was never a single unified movement, more a variety 'isms':
Suprematism, to name only a few. What linked these groups KWaN the spirit of revolution. In part. the avant carde was an artistic rebellion.
Epitomising this is one of the exhibition's major pieces, Olga Rozanova's extraordinary slashing green stripe on a white background - a dramatic swipe at the pictorial conventions of the day. as the exhibition shows, the bulk of avall. garde's work was in this abstract, non-representational vein, concerned to decomplicate or simplify through a focus on questions of form and colour.
But the avant-garde was more than a rebellion against the artistic convenavant-garde artists embraced the proletarian revolution and placed their art at its service. Revolulike state. Avant-garde artists reecred me nouon or tne artist as an independent, dool ouserver producing art for the rich elite who could afford it.
Instead, the revolutionary artists. of the avant-garde saw themselves as workers engaged in the production of art for the an art which also had 'use value'. This synthesis of art and function represented in the exhibition with, among dune things, the futurist geometric clothes theatre designs of Exter and Popova, and architecKlucis.
There is also an interesting illustrated books by such major artists as Mayakovsky.
sky's the This art was the But the rise restoration of ruling Where capitalism such control money artists of the museums.
In of the in-art of avant-garde, dogma Socialist Realism. This consisted of little more than an endless array of portraits of bureaucrats Stak farms. confirming glorifying Stalin's tyran.
By 1930, the brilliant flowering of Rusavant-garde art was dead.
man, George Costakis, owns all the 300 tion (and this is only fragment of his total collection). Although Costakis has played an important part in rescuing Russian avant-garde thi obscurity which it was condemned by Stalin, it is a scanda that art originally producfor Soviet should now belong to one 'Monument for the Third International' man, and hang on the the Royal Academy for the gratificanon of tae culture vulture: of the bourgeoisie.
However, the exhibition still remains remarkable tribute to the boundless creativity unleashed by the world's first socialist revolution Interestingly, , the Russian avant-garde is the only art movement known where women played an equal role. For anyone interested Russian Revolution, this exhibition essential viewing. * Art of the Avant-Garde ir Russia at the Royal Academy Piccadilly. London WI Daily 10am-6pm.
Finishes November 13.