The Experimental Group
Ilya Kabakov, Moscow Conceptualism, Soviet Avant-Gardes
The most comprehensive story of unofficial postwar Soviet art yet to appear in any language, The Experimental Group takes as its point of departure a subject of strange fascination: the life and work of renowned professional illustrator and conceptual artist Ilya Kabakov.
Kabakov’s art—iconoclastic installations, paintings, illustrations, and texts—delicately experiments with such issues as history, mortality, and disappearance, and here exemplifies a much larger narrative about the work of the artists who rose to prominence just as the Soviet Union began to disintegrate. By placing Kabakov and his conceptualist peers in line with our own contemporary perspective, Matthew Jesse Jackson suggests that the art that emerged in the wake of Stalin belongs neither entirely to its lost communist past nor to a future free from socialist nostalgia. Instead, these artists and the work they produced are inextricably part of a transnational art world for which the Soviet Union is largely a memory, fading fast.
Though remembrance tends to paint the past in broadly heroic tones, The Experimental Group leaves aside the art-hero in order to bring to life the everyday activities of individuals who circulated in a cultural environment that ultimately unmade the Soviet Union. Encompassing most of the nonconformist art world that burst forth between the late 1950s and mid-1980s, Jackson’s narrative builds outward from the life and art of Kabakov to the multimedia undertakings of the Moscow Conceptual Circle, bringing into focus a forgotten avant garde that flourished in the shadow of the official Soviet art establishment.
Lavishly illustrated in full color, and including many rare and previously unpublished documentary images, The Experimental Group is not only a vital contribution to a neglected chapter in the history of twentieth-century art but also a brilliant illumination of the life and work of one of its most remarkable figures.
Association of American Publishers: PROSE Book Award
Honorable Mention
Dedalus Foundation: Robert Motherwell Book Award
Won
Association for Slavic, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES): Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize
Won
“Matthew Jesse Jackson's The Experimental Group is an engaging, beautifully written, and erudite study of unofficial Soviet art. It makes a strong case for Kabakov's achievements across multiple art forms, and provides brilliant readings of numerous individual drawings, albums, mixed media work, and installations. Moving far beyond his own field of art history, Jackson makes a major statement about Soviet society, culture, and politics as a whole. Without idealizing the late Soviet period in the least, he shows how its norms of cultural conversation, the organization of work and free time, occasional but critical moments of access to Western innovations in the arts, emerging new philosophies of the artistic process, and the important role of viewer (or reader) response all conspired to make possible extraordinary art. Jackson prompts us to recognize the "period of stagnation" as a time of intellectual ferment--with the Soviet citizenry acting as the ultimate "experimental group." This monumental study of creativity in and after the late Soviet period is a remarkable scholarly achievement.”
"[Jackson's] rich narrative . . . reads almost like a novel."
"Matthew Jesse Jackson's writing and quality of mind put him in the forefront of the next wave in modern art studies."—Thomas E. Crow, Institute of Fine Arts
"Matthew Jesse Jackson combines vast art historical and theoretical erudition with a rare ability to understand the specific social milieus and psychological motives that govern individual artistic strategies."—Boris Groys, New York University
"Very few contemporary art history books are of such note that they appear to revise completely their chosen topic, as well as potentially a few others along the way, but Matthew Jesse Jackson's The Experimental Group does precisely that."
“A rich account…a rigorous analysis…the most comprehensive treatment of the most distinguished living post-Soviet artist has arrived.”
“The Experimental Group is the best art historical text I have read on postwar Soviet art . . . for me this book is as close to a page-turner as any art history book is ever likely to be.”
"Jackson demonstrates . . . a deep familiarity with the era's artistic milieu."
"Jackson engagingly combines an analysis of Kabakov's work with perceptive analysis of contemporaries. . . . [His] access to Kabakov and familiarity with Moscow's cultural milieu give readers a sense of direct contact with the intensely nuanced world of Moscow conceptualism. Recommended."
“The most concretely informative book on the Moscow Conceptualist milieu to date. Jackson’s lucid, engaging prose further recommends his study, especially to readers seeking an introduction to Soviet unofficial art.”
"[T]he certainty of Jackson's substantial scholarship make[s] The Experimental Group well worth reading."
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Dead Souls
2 Bureaucratic Expressionism
3 Answers of the Experimental Group
4 The Rituals of Nonlife
5 Kasha and Humanism
6 The Man Who Collected the Opinions of Others
Conclusion
Notes
IndexArt: Art--Biography | European Art
History: European History
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