Russian Media and Society: The Russian 20th century visual culture: the freedom of expression - propaganda - nationalism, 5 cr

Understanding modern Russia, with its turbulent history, is hardly possible without understanding its art and its visual environment. The course focuses on a search of a national identity and the freedom of expression in the Russian 20th Century art against a wider historical, political and cultural background.

Lecture 1 (2 hours)

The World of Art movement: re-inventing the Russianness: Mikhail Nesterov, Kuz'ma Petrov-Vodkin, Boris Kustodiev.

Lecture 2 (2 hours)

The Russian Futurism. A breakthrough to a new language. Kazimir Malevich and his "Suprematism". The revolution in arts and the social revolution.

Lecture 3 (2 hours)

Art and propaganda. The story of one poster (Dmitri Moor). Art under Stalin. ‘The new Soviet citizen’ and the drama of Alexander Rodchenko.

Lecture 4 (2 hours)

Unofficial and nonconformist art in the USSR: The Bulldozer exhibition (1974). The phenomenon of Ilya Glazunov and Konstantin Vasilyev and the new Russian nationalism. In search of the new national identity.

Lecture 5 (2 hours)

Photography in the USSR. Analytical photography of the Post-Soviet period. Yevgenii Khaldei, Dmitrii Baltermatnz, Antanas Sutkus, Lialia Kuznetsova, Valery Shchekodldin, Sergei Maksimishin, Dmitri Markov.

Lecture 6 (2 hours)

Freedom of art-expression in the USSR. "Desert of forbidden art" (2011). A film about one collection of the Russian art and its keeper (Igor Savitskii). A final discussion.