HISTORY OF RUSSIAN ART

The course is scheduled among the core educational activities for art-historical disciplines in the degree course in Economics and Management of Arts and Cultural Activities. It aims to provide students with the basic elements to analyze the transition from the Silver Age to the Avant-Garde. The course, which will chronologically cover the first twenty years of the Twentieth century, aims to focus on the different artistic and cultural trends that characterized the period in Russia.

To bring students closer to a better understanding of the discipline, videos and other scholars' interventions will be shown.
It is possible that the frontal lessons will be integrated with visits to exhibitions.
The materials projected in class will be available on the Moodle e-learning platform of the University together with further insight material.

1. Knowledge
The course will focus on the transition from the silver Age to the Avant-Garde and will allow the student to deepen the life and artistic activity of some of the most relevant artists at an international level such as Larionov, Goncharova, Kandinsky, Chagall, Malevich.

2. Communication skills
Students will learn to formulate in a clear and relevant way the topics covered in class.

3. Critical skills
Students will be able to critically evaluate the evolution of cultural and artistic trends in Russia in the first twenty years of the twentieth century.

4. Results
The learning results will be verified through active and regular participation in the lessons, the proposed seminar activities and through a final exam.

Basic knowledge of the main stages of the development of Russian art is adisable but not compulsory.

Art, life and culture in Russia from the Silver Age to the Avant-Garde (1900 -1920)
The course will deal with a crucial phase of Russian art, the one between XIX and XX century, which sets the decisive precondition for the expressive revolution of the Avant-Garde. It is about the particular declination of trends in vogue in the European West that in the Russian context, have been differently interrelated. After the years of nineteenth-century critical realism we witness the fundamental transition that we could define “from ethics to aesthetics", when art stops being a megaphone of social denunciation and begins to think of itself again. Starting from impressionism and stil' modern we will come to outline the context that allows the advent of the various experiences of abstract art with particular insights on the most important figures such as Larionov, Goncharova, Kandinsky, Chagall, Malevich. The experience of the Organic school of San Petersburg with the figures of Elena Guro and Mikhail Matyushin will be treated as well with an in-depth analysis of the Costakis Collection at the MOMus Museum in Thessaloniki. There will be as well a focus lecture on the Avant-garde in Uzbekistan starting from the exhibition that will take place in the exhibition spaces of Ca' Foscari. A seminar activity will also be proposed, for which students will be required to create an exhibition report linked to an artist or a work using the methodological tools provided in class. On the last day of the course the results of the seminar will be presented.

Notes from the lessons
Images projected in class will be available on the Moodle e-learning platform as well as other useful materials
Mandatory Bibliography
PDF essays on Moodle
John E. Bowlt, Moscow and St.Petersburg in Russia's Silver Age: 1900 – 1920, New York-London, Vendome Pr., 2008.

Reference texts for further readings and in-depth analysis
John E. Bowlt, Nicoletta Misler, Evgenija Petrova (a cura di), L'avanguardia russa, la Siberia e l'Oriente, Milano, Skira, 2013.
John E. Bowlt e Matthew Drutt (a cura di), Amazzoni dell'avanguardia: Alexandra Exter, Natalija Gončarova, Ljubov' Popova, Ol'ga Rozanova, Varvara Stepanova, e Nadežda Udal'cova, New York, Guggenheim Museum, 2000.
John E. Bowlt (ed. and transl.), Russian art of the avant-garde: theory and criticism, 1902-1934.- new edition with 105 illustrations, London, Thames & Hudson, 2017.
The Great Utopia: the Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-1932: Salomon R. Guggenheim Museum, State Tret'iakov gallery, State Russian Museum, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, New York, Guggenheim Museum, 1992.

The learning outcomes will be assessed by a written exam of two hours and a paper on a topic (outcome of the seminar activity or individual work to be agreed with the professor).
The exam consists of four open questions. One incomplete answer will result in a fail grade.
The use of books, notes, and electronic media is not allowed during the test.
Non-attending students may sit the exam based on the bibliographical integrations enlisted in the dedicated section “further reading”.

Lessons open to the discussions and commentaries of the slides and texts presented in class.
The materials presented in class will be available on the Moodle e-learning platform together with additional sources. Talks with selected guests. In-depth lessons will also be organized.
It is possible that the lectures will be integrated with exhibition visits.
A seminar activity is planned.

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Students with disabilities or those with special educational needs are kindly asked to contact the relevant offices by the start of the course.

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This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Human capital, health, education" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development