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Have you ever imagined a painting coming to life? From 14 April, art fans in Russia were able to do just that, when Peter Greenaway and Saskia Boddeke’s ‘The Golden Age of the Russian Avant-Garde’ opened at the Moscow Manege exhibition venue, supported by British Council Russia. The exhibition animates art from Russia’s influential avant-garde movement, as the British Council’s Keira Ives-Keeler explains.

What was the Russian avant-garde?

The Russian avant-garde movement was a modern art phenomenon that swept through the former Russian empire and the Soviet Union mainly between 1890 and 1930. It encompassed a number of separate art movements including primitivism, constructivism, suprematism, and futurism. Looking neither forwards nor backwards, artists such as Kazimir Malevich and his contemporaries sought to break away from the academic traditions and aesthetics of the 19th century. At the same time, they rejected continuity with the new “’modern’ art style of the time, marking the movement as innovative in its clear desire to create something totally new in art, as well as in other spheres of life.

The movement was initially born out of the flow of European art from Paris to Moscow via art collectors such as the Russian businessman Sergei Shchukin, and supported by the Russian artistic community in the French capital (including Marc Chagall), where the avant-garde movement was gathering force. Although the works of some of the movement’s pioneers, for example, Valentin Serov (1865-1911) and Konstantin Korovin

(1861-1939) seemed rather traditional by western standards, they were considered innovative in a Russian context, where previously fine arts had been confined to academic norms. However, in the aftermath of the revolution, the Russian avantgarde undoubtedly led the way, as they began to consider art as a form of technology in service to the revolution.

Russian art has had a lasting influence on western design

Somewhat ironically, the very same bold, block lettering and geometrical shapes used for Soviet propaganda posters were to be embraced by graphic artists across the world, and especially in the US, where the USSR’s ‘visual vocabulary’ was

to be successfully adapted to revamp companies’ images and sell products. This ensured that the Russian avant-garde had a lasting impact on graphic design and modern aesthetics far beyond the borders of the USSR.

Although relatively short-lived, the Russian avant-garde movement was extremely influential, and developed through experimentation across mediums. Indeed, the creative exchange between individuals was so strong that it became as likely for a poet to paint as for a visual artist to write.

How the exhibition will bring avantgarde art to life

‘The Golden Age of the Russian Avant-Garde’ exhibition seeks to draw a parallel with this very flexibility, or ‘plasticity’ as Peter Greenaway calls it. This large-scale exhibition will bring some of the greatest Russian avant-garde pieces to life using the art of animation, including perhaps the most famous work of all; Kazimir Malevich’s

Black Square.

The original pieces will be brought to life through a giant multimedia installation covering 5,000 square metres. Three towers will stand inside a huge, dimly lit black box. Each side of the three towers will have a screen. The 12 screens will broadcast a 15-minute presentation, with scenes blending real-life actors with images from more than 400 avant-garde works, photographs and film reels. In the short films, avant-garde characters who may never have met in reality will meet, talk and argue in dramatisations devised by Greenaway and his wife, the Dutch director Saskia Boddeke.

Greenaway trained as a painter, but his love of music and text led him to film studies. He has spent his professional career working as a film director, consistently pushing boundaries and often courting controversy with how he handles a range of themes, from the absurdity of bureaucracies to violent satires of life in the 17th century. Recently, he turned his attention towards using technology to bring to life a number of Renaissance paintings including Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, and Paolo Veronese’s The Wedding at Cana.

Why the British Council is involved

This linking of the past with the present by connecting and meshing art forms through multimedia and digital technology is what attracted the British Council to the project. Although not particularly popular in the UK, the Russian avantgarde is growing in popularity globally, with recent exhibitions in Amsterdam, Pisa and Seattle. In Russia, of course, there is huge interest in the movement and Greenaway is also very popular as a film director in his own right. We hope that this landmark exhibition and Greenaway’s unique re-interpretation of such an important modern art phenomenon captures the imagination of many of the thousands of people expected to visit it.

By Keira Ives-Keeler,

Assistant Director, British Council Russia