History Becomes Form
Book (italiano):
<P>In the 1970s and 1980s, a group of "unofficial" artists in Moscow --artists not recognized by the state, not covered by state-controlled media, and cut off from wideraudiences -- created artworks that gave artistic form to a certain historical moment: the experienceof Soviet socialism. The Moscow conceptualists not only reflected and analyzed by artistic means aspectacle of Soviet life but also preserved its memory for a future that turned out to be differentfrom the officially predicted one. They captured both the shabby austerity of everyday Soviet lifeand the utopian energy of Soviet culture. In <I>History Becomes Form</I>, Boris Groysoffers a contemporary's account of what he calls the most interesting Russian artistic phenomenonsince the Russian avant-garde.</P><P>The book collects Groys's essays on Moscowconceptualism, most of them written after his emigration to the West in 1981. The individual artistsof the group -- including Ilya Kabakov, Lev Rubinstein, and Ivan Chuikov -- became known in the Westafter perestroika, but until now the artistic movement as a whole has received little attention.Groys's account sheds light not only on the Moscow Conceptualists and their work but also on thedilemmas of Soviet artists during the cold war. </P>
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