Feature: Exhibition - Glasnost: Soviet non-conformist art from the 1980s at Haunch of Venison W1

Published: 29 April 2010
by JOHN EVANS

SOMETHING for everyone here, whether lovers of the personality cult or the success or otherwise of the next five-year plan.

We are not, of course, talking of the run-up to May 6, but of the first comprehensive show of Soviet non-conformist art from the 1980s to be shown in London. 

More than 120 works by 60 individuals highlight the artistic revolution coincidental with the glasnost (loosely translated as public openness) and perestroika (restructuring) of Mikhail Gorbachev’s leadership.

There’s an underlying spirit of resistance and opposition, mainly to totalitarian authority but with a specific edge honed by the society opening up, if only little by little.

Berlin art dealer Volker Diehl, who has brought the show together with Haunch of Venison, believes the works mark a unique moment.

It’s not the kind of art you will see in a museum, he says, there’s a real feel of the underground and room for it to become increasingly saleable. 

“A lot of western people are not so familiar with these. The historical value that you can definitely see in the paintings becomes a kind of aesthetic value different from a lot of western art,” he says.

Some have become known worldwide, notably Dmitry Vrubel’s God! Help Me To Survive Among This Deathly Love (pictured), which revisits the kiss between Leonid Brezhnev and Eric Honecker, an image reproduced on the Berlin Wall itself after its fall in 1989; his Brezhnev portrait; and his less well-known but powerful Dispensing Party Membership Cards of 1986. Erik Bulatov’s Perestroika of 1989 , too, is a direct attack on the propaganda of sloganising and manipulation of graphics.

The show examines Sots (socialist/pop) Art and that of various strands, from the dissident art of a younger generation of “Moscow conceptualists” who showed works in unofficial apartment block exhibitions to the “New Artists of Leningrad”, among these Sergey Bugaev (aka Afrika), who grafted naked images onto old Leninist flags.

There are recurring themes, from the irony used to counter state-sponsored nostalgia for a non-existent past, through to sheer irreverance and parody.

Language and lettering are an integral part of many messages. And amid a vast range of media, look out for enamel, wood, bronze, chipboard, cardboard, even bedboard!

In fact, keep both eyes open for all the bedding and sleep imagery…

l Glasnost: Soviet non-conformist art from the 1980s is at Haunch of Venison, 6 Burlington Gardens, W1, until June 26. Free. 020 7495 5050. www.haunchofvenison.com