The Museological Unconscious VICTOR TUPITSYN introduction by Susan Buck-Morss and Victor Tupitsyn
The Museological Unconscious VICTOR TUPITSYN
The Museological Unconscious Communal (Post)Modernism in Russia
THE MIT PRESS
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
LONDON, ENGLAND
VICTOR TUPITSYN
© 2009 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales promotional use. For information, please email
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This book was set in Sabon and Univers by Graphic Composition, Inc., Bogart, Georgia. Printed and bound in Spain. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tupitsyn, Viktor, 1945– The museological unconscious : communal (post) modernism in Russia / Victor Tupitsyn. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-262-20173-5 (hard cover : alk. paper) 1. Avant-garde (Aesthetics)—Russia (Federation) 2. Dissident art—Russia (Federation) 3. Art and state— Russia (Federation) 4. Art, Russian—20th century. 5. Art, Russian—21st century. I. Title. N6988.5.A83T87 2009 709.47’09045—dc22 2008031026
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To Margarita
CONTENTS PREFACE INTRODUCTION SUSAN BUCK-MORSS IN CONVERSATION WITH VICTOR TUPITSYN
ix
1
Civitas Solis: Ghetto as Paradise
13
1
2
Communal (Post)Modernism: A Short History
33
3
Moscow Communal Conceptualism
101
4
Icons of Iconoclasm
123
5
The Sun without a Muzzle
14 5
6
If I Were a Woman
169
7
Pushmi-pullyu: St. Petersburg-and-Moscow
187
8
Batman and the Joker: The Thermidor of the Bodily
203
9
The Body-without-a-Name
213
10 Notes on the Museological Unconscious 11
Negativity Mon Amour
229 249
12 Post-Autonomous Art
263
13 Rublevskoe Chaussée
277
NOTES
297
INDEX
329
PREFACE
This book presents the history of contemporary Russian art as a communal paradigm—a model that grants the opportunity to discuss and analyze seemingly disconnected and incompatible events as effected by a number of communal phenomena, such as communal living, communal perception, and communal speech practices. Because of this “communalizing” approach, many artists and art movements are brought together for the first time, as if they were the tenants of one large communal apartment. This common approach to a variety of issues is based on the theory that the optical unconscious of the Soviet people was structured like communal speech. Admittedly, all texts in this publication have been guided by a look-alike principle—the analogy between communal speech and communal vision is linked to the imperative of seeing through the eyes or on behalf of the “collective other.” Everything that appealed to the communal eye in post–World War II Russia is critically scrutinized in The Museological Unconscious, including the reproductions of up to one hundred artworks from both Soviet and post-Soviet periods. The reference to “communal p