The Unsung Hero of the Russian Avant-Garde: The Life and Times of Nikolay PuninThis book is the first biography of Nikolay Punin (1888-1953). One of the most prominent art-critics of the avant-garde, in 1919 Punin was the Commissar of the Hermitage and Russian Museums, he was lecturing at the Academy of Arts and at the State University in Petrograd (and subsequently Leningrad). He was the right hand of Lunacharsky and the head of the Petrograd branch of the Visual Arts Department of Narkompross. From 1913 till 1938, Punin worked at the Russian Museum and organized several major exhibitions of Russian art. Yet his name is not widely known in the West, primarily because his file languished in the KGB archives since he died in 1953, partly because his grave in the Gulag where he died is marked only by a number, and partly because his own reputation became submerged under that of his lover, poet and writer Anna Akhmatova. Through the life and inheritance of Nikolay Punin, this book will examine the very phenomenon of the Russian avant-garde and its fate after the October Revolution, as well as the artistic trends and cultural policies which dominated Soviet art in the 1930-1950s. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Chapter One Origins of the Hero | 7 |
Chapter Two Education | 23 |
The First World War and Emergence of the New Creativity in Russia | 31 |
The October Revolution and the Search for New Art | 65 |
Chapter Five No Future for the Futurists? Attempts to Educate the Masses | 95 |
Chapter Six Gathering Clouds But High Heart | 131 |
Chapter Seven The Slow Strangulation of Free Culture | 167 |
Chapter Nine Time of Terror | 207 |
Chapter Ten The Great Patriotic War | 231 |
Chapter Eleven The Broken PostWar Dreams | 261 |
Chapter Twelve Bitter End | 279 |
Bibliography of Published Writings of N Punin | 297 |
| 307 | |
| 313 | |
Chapter Eight The Victory of Socialist Realism | 193 |
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Common terms and phrases
Abez academy of arts alexander Anna Akhmatova anna arens apartment Apollon arrested august beautiful became Bolsheviks Boris Brik Cézanne Commissar Communist party critic daughter David Shterenberg death Diary note exhibition famous February Figure Fountain house friends future Futurists Galya Gorky Gulag Gumilev Gymnasium hermitage Museum history of art Ibid intelligentsia Irina Punina iskusstvo kommuny Kazimir Malevich later Lebedev lectures Lenin Leningrad Letter from punin lived Lunacharsky Malevich Mandelstam Mayakovsky monument Moscow Narkompros never newspaper Nikolay Nikolaevich Nikolay Punin nikolay’s NKVD November ofthe organised Osip paintings palace pasternak pavlovsk people’s petersburg petrograd poems poet political prisoners proletarian culture proletkult published punin felt punin wrote punin’s family Quoted revolutionary russian art russian artists russian avant-garde russian icons russian Museum September Serov Shterenberg Socialist realism soon Stalin tika tion trotsky tsarskoe Selo visual art Vladimir Tatlin wife workers write Zhizn