Transcultural Studies, 9 (2013), 169-175.

ANGELINA SAULE

NATALIA GONCHOROVA’S “BETWEEN EAST AND WEST,” , , 16 OCTOBER 2013 — 16 FEBRUARY 2014

Recent developments to bring the avant-garde to the world stage has seen exhibitions at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, 27 September 2013-19 January 2014, The Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam, 19 October 2013 to 2 February 2014 (ironically celebrating Dutch-Russian relations at a time when they are politically souring), and the in St. Petersburg 5 December 2013 - 2 February 2014, while an auction at Christie’s in late 2013 during the Russian Art Week in London, Russian avant-garde from the early 20th century (Mashkov’s “The Bathers” and Lentulov’s “Church in Alupka”) sold for a total of $10 million, five times more than the estimated value. The avant-garde was also appropriated as a brand by the G20 Summit in St. Petersburg in 2013, the official logo of the event salvaged from the stockpiles of history, thereby claiming allegiance to the traditions that had roused and allowed the avant-garde to prosper in St. Petersburg at the turn of the previous century.

Following its raving travesties and vilifying slanders of society (Mayakovsky’s Futurist manifesto “A Slap in the face of public taste” comes to mind), its tragic consequences of revolution and exile, the Russian avant- garde has descended into becoming just a marketable product. The latest exhibition of ’s works at the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow shows a commitment to bringing the avant-garde to the fore of world culture. Over 400 paintings, dating from 1907 to 1959, were exhibited .The conception of the exhibition at Tretyakovka (as locals refer to the Museum) could be reduced to the potential market value associated with this particular period of Russian Modernism. Many galleries in the region (Pichuk Art Centre in Kiev or Garage in Moscow) are trying to profit from the sacred heritage linked with the avant-garde, in order to reframe showings of contemporary art and bolster their market value by reminding us of their avant- grade lineage. On the other hand, the highly-attentive curating and sacred use of space delineated for the exhibition attests to the revival of a national sentiment that can be observed in various cultural institutions which endeavor to reignite interest in a cultural icon who, except for within a small elite of specialists, dealers and artists, has been overlooked by national history. Although Goncharova may not fit into the current post- scene completely, her contribution to the avant-garde and her biography in general (censorship, white emigrée, Russian artistic diasporas), lends itself to a currently popular post-Soviet view of history: Soviet rule exiled its artists in 170 Transcultural Studies

one way or another, thus generating various movements abroad and leading to a vacuum in . Likewsie, the contribution to and recognition of in this movement has only just begun to reach diverse audiences. This latest exhibition could be understood as part of a central mission to revive and circulate the works of the “Amazons” of the avant-garde - a collective of six Russian women who, in the first quarter of the twentieth century, made significant contributions to the development of modern art: Natalia Goncharova, Alexandra Exter, Liubov Popova, , Varvara Stepanova and Nadezhda Udaltsova. Unlike the Italian school of the avant- garde or the Russian Futurists with their chauvinistic attitudes towards women, the “Amazons” redefined traditional aesthetic attitudes, while retracing the divisions between various genres, radicalizing art forms in their newly adopted countries with originality and working with design in the fine and applied arts, fashion, theatre, film and graphic arts. The art of the Amazons is punctuated by reckless exclamation marks of primitive and folk art, fused with the developments and discoveries of Dadaism, and Surrealism. The work of the avant-garde was against intuitions thus advocating a non- ownership of art. Goncharova herself was captivated by the work in itself, not the artist behind the work. This iconoclastic attitude was the ground for many of the experiments that the Amazons would come to embody. The title “Between East and West” is an attempt to make Goncharova’s work more accessible and engaging, yet at the same time, this is a daunting title. What is exactly Western about her ‘Spanish Cycle’, which seems to hark back to Ancient Egyptian pharaoh-like postures? Is the peasantry of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century Eastern? The Futurist preoccupations with the emergence of urban squalor (“western:” equatint to pipes, buildings, urban landscaping) versus the pristine village life (“eastern” equating to flowers fruits, lethargy) is also a misplaced dichotomy imposed on her work, given the French landscapes reminiscent of an Arcadian otherworld and the cityscapes reminiscent of geometric patterns that could be attributed to pre-Modernist notions of design (in the Eastern architecture of Persia, for example). In 1913 Goncharova held her first solo exhibition in Moscow, the 33-year- old artist showing more than 750 works created from 1900 to 1913. This period is her “Russian” period, as the poet Marina Tsvetaeva named it: an empire drawing into the boundless and timeless orbit beyond the steppes. Wild landscapes and still life paintingsdominate the work of the burgeoning artist, while she also painted her "peasant cycle" and various religious compositions, in which she expressed the national aesthetics. The culmination of this period is represented by two landmark scenes based on the story of the Apocalypse - "Vintage" and "Harvest" (1911).The wide bold colours and possibility of freedom onto which images of gypsies and peasants are superimposed , foretell the destruction of ‘Russian-ness’ and its ‘Eastern-ness’ after the Revolution. The ‘Luchism’ (‘Rayism’) series, a movement which Goncharova created with her partner, artist , is a treasure of experimentation. Inspired by how to depict light, her ‘Luchism’work, like her ‘Objective Compositions’, expressed an idea of "everythingness,” a multi-plane approach