Escape Artists – The Non-Conformists Online
Escape Artists – The Non-Conformists Online
Property from the Bar-Gera Collection
Vagrich Bakhchanyan
Tolstoy No.1
Lot Closed
September 21, 02:41 PM GMT
Estimate
1,000 - 1,500 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Property from the Bar-Gera Collection
Vagrich Bakhchanyan
1938-2009
Tolstoy No.1
signed and titled in Cyrillic and dated 1972 on the reverse; further bearing various exhibition labels on the backing board and frame
collage on paper
Sheet: 52.5 by 43cm, 20½ by 17in.
Framed: 80 by 64.5cm, 31½ by 25¼in.
Exhibition catalogue Avantgarde im Untergrund: Russische Nonkonformisten aus der Sammlung Bar-Gera, Wabern/Bern: Benteli, 2005, p.163, no.6 listed
The present work is based on the portrait of Leo Tolstoy by Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy from 1873 (State Tretyakov Gallery). By deconstructing an iconic image of Tolstoy created by one of the founding members of the Peredvizhniki group, Bakhchanyan, in a manner typical for the non-conformists, playfully subverts two important tropes in official Soviet culture. One is the promotion of the socially-conscious Peredvizhniki as the most important pre-revolutionary art historical movement, with Socialist Realism seen as its ideological successor. The other is the appropriation of works by pre-revolutionary Russian writers, as well as of their biographies, as part of the wider apparatus of Soviet indoctrination.