RSSS 360 - Utopian Visions: East European Visual Culture

Since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution our understanding of East European and Russian art has been defined by utopian ideas of revolutionary transformation. This course will trace the historical development of East European and Russian art from the medieval era to the modern day, focusing primarily on the Imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods to reveal the social and cultural forces behind artistic change, transgression, and transformation. We will investigate artists and art movements in Eastern Europe and Russia, critically assessing artistic influence, production, avant-garde experiments, reception, and cultural interaction in their historical context. We will also discuss how the changing ideologies in the 19th-, 20th-, and 21st centuries led to the re-assessment of artistic production in relation to discourses of nationalism, identity, gender, politics, modernity, propaganda, and mass media. The course analyzes the artistic practices, styles, interpretations, and expressions of recurring themes in East European and Russian art and culture more broadly, such as utopia, spirituality, anarchy, satire, and the collective.