Patterns of historiography: Russian avant-garde art in curatorial practice, 1979-1992

This paper examines four exhibitions which had an immense impact on the historiography of the Russian avant-garde and fostered its canonisation: Paris-Moscou (Paris, 1979); The Avant-Garde in Russia, 1910-1930. New Perspectives (Los Angeles, 1980); Art of the Avant-Garde in Russia: Selections from the George Costakis Collection (New York, 1981) and The Great Utopia (New York, 1992-1993). By noting recurring curatorial patterns in the organisation of these retrospective displays, this essay demonstrates how the circulation of Russian avant-garde art in the postmodernist context was informed by the emphasis, widespread in Western institutions in those years, on the evolution of expressive means and the formal qualities of artworks, favouring non-figurative artistic outputs and amplifying individual narratives of defiance and martyrdom. Moreover, the study contextualises this circulation within broader cultural processes.