Avant-garde culture

There is no doubt that in the 20th century one of the main features of European and Western art was a pluralism of artistic style. Starting with Impressionism, a powerful stream of centrifugal forces emerged, multiplying and spreading different forms of artistic expression all over the world and reaching giant dimensions with the appearance of the “historical avant-garde” and “Neo-avant-garde” after World War II. This active promotion of new forms would at times slow down, as if taking a break for short reflection, to subsequently give rise to new and more dynamic developments of different artistic styles.

Of all the Picasso shows held in Russia during at least the last 50 years, the 2010 exhibition is the biggest and most representative. Other features, too, lend to this event a certain "Russian touch": the assortment of pictures on display includes several pieces from the Pushkin Museum; the show also has a whole section devoted to Sergei Diaghilev's "Ballets Russes", and presents archival documents relating to the friendship between Picasso and Ilya Ehrenburg. This article provides only highlights of the long history of the relationship between Picasso and Russia.

Throughout the 19th century Paris was the artistic capital of the world, and it was there at the beginning of the 20th century that the art of the new era took shape. Marc Chagall wrote that “... back then, the sun of Art was only shining over Paris”, and young artists from different countries, mostly from Eastern Europe, flocked there. That international community of outstanding artists became known as the “École de Paris” (the Paris School). Among the highlights of the “Paris School” exhibition at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Autumn 2011 was the work of Chaim Soutine (1893-1943).

RUSSIAN ART HAS OFTEN BEEN CONTRADICTORY IN ITS DEPICTION OF NUDES - AND CHANGING TIMES HAVE THEMSELVES CHANGED ETHICAL AND AESTHETIC VALUE SYSTEMS, AND OFFERED (AND/OR ORDERED) NEW PRIORITIES. THE 20TH-CENTURY INDUSTRIAL ERA WITH ITS REVOLUTIONARY TURMOIL TRIGGERED AN OVERTURNING OF TRADITIONAL MORAL STANDARDS IN SOCIETY, ESTABLISHING NEW AESTHETIC NOTIONS AND ALTERING ARTISTIC LANGUAGE ACCORDINGLY. THEMES OF NUDITY WERE NO LONGER CONFINED TO ART CLASSES. NUDE BODIES THAT HAD ONCE MADE THE RUSSIAN AUDIENCE NERVOUSLY BLUSH WITH EMBARRASSMENT APPEARED AS SUBJECTS OF PROPAGANDA IN A SOCIETY WHICH WAS AIMING AT DRASTIC CHANGE. THE YOUNG GENERATION OF BIG-CITY DWELLERS, RADICAL NUDISTS, CONSIDERED STROLLING THE STREETS WITHOUT CLOTHES TO BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT. AS VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY STROVE TO CONVINCE HIS READERS: "THERE'S NO BETTER ATTIRE IN THE WORLD / THAN THE BRONZE OF MUSCLES AND FRESHNESS OF SKIN".

"For Arp, art is Arp" - this proclamation made by Marcel Duchamp in 1949 arouses a curiosity to get to know Arp's understanding of art, presented at the exhibition in the Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck*. There are many reasons to consider the painter, sculptor, and poet Hans (Jean) Arp (1886-1966) to be among the most influential artists of the 20th century. In Zurich in 1916, together with his artist colleagues Hugo Ball, Richard Huelsenbeck, and Tristan Tzara he founded Dada, a protest movement against war and human despotism. With mostly provocative, sometimes playfully-ironic artistic means of expression, the Dadaists tried to surmount existing social and aesthetic norms, and in doing so, revolutionized the art scene in only a short time. "Happenings" and "performances", significant forms of expression even in today's art, are directly rooted in Dadaism, and "concrete poetry" is wholly in the tradition of the poet Arp as well.