[Daviscalendar-list] REMINDER: Dorontchenkov seminar today

Dear colleagues, I want to remind you about today's seminar (details below) with Ilia Dorontchenkov, who is a visiting professor of Russian art history and culture at Brown University this spring. Dorontchenkov received his PhD in 1990 at the Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture of the Russian Academy of Fine Arts, where he has been an associate professor of art history since 1993. He has also taught at the European University in St. Petersburg and at Brown in 2002-03. Dorontchenkov comes highly recommended as both a scholar and a lecturer (by Pat Herlihy, for one, who first met him at Brown in 2002). His seminar today, on modern Western art and cultural politics in the early Stalin era, will include a comparative slide presentation. If you are able to attend, I urge you to do so. This promises to be extremely interesting and he is looking forward to a lively discussion. Lis Tarlow *Wednesday, April 19, 2006* *Occasional Seminar* /"'Against the French Cult': Modern Western Art and Cultural Politics in the Early Stalin Era" / Ilia Dorontchenkov, Visiting Associate Professor, Department of Slavic Languages, Brown University 1730 Cambridge Street, 1st Floor, Room #S153 12:15 - 2:00 pm * * *"Against the French Cult": Modern Western Art and Cultural Politics in Early Stalin's Era* In 1928 two major exhibitions were featured in Moscow: the first French show in post-revolutionary Russia (with Modigliani, Chagall, Utrillo, Max Ernst, etc.), and an exhibition dedicated to the 10^th anniversary of the Red Army, which presented to the public Socialist Realism long before this ideological concept was shaped. The following year brought Joseph Stalin to full power and changed the life of the whole country. Along with other campaigns, a tough one was launched by young Marxist radicals against modern French art and its influence on Soviet art. The lecture explains the importance of the anti-French crusade in terms of both the post-revolutionary development of Russian culture and the political goals of the early Stalin era. It also puts in one context several phenomena, including Osip Mandelstam's essays, the selling of the masterpieces of Van Gogh and Degas to an American collector, and Malevich's late figurative paintings. - -------------------------------------------------- Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies Harvard University 1730 Cambridge Street, 3rd Floor, Suite 301B Cambridge, MA 02138 Phone: 617.495.4037 Fax: 617.495.8319 http://www.daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu