Queer(ing) Russian Art

Brian James Baer is Professor of Russian and Translation Studies at Kent State University. Founding editor of the journal Translation and Interpreting Studies and co-editor of the Bloomsbury book series "Literatures, Cultures, Translation," his publications include the monographs Other Russias: Homosexuality and the Crisis of Post-Soviet Identity and Queer Theory and Translation Studies: Language, Politics, Desire, as well as the collected volumes Translation in Russian Contexts, with Susanna Witt, and Queering Translation, Translating the Queer, with Klaus Kaindl. Yevgeniy Fiks is a Moscow-born New York-based artist, author, and organizer of art exhibitions. Yevgeniy has produced many projects on the subject of the Post-Soviet dialog in the West. Fiks’ books include Moscow (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2013), Soviet Moscow’s Yiddish-Gay Dictionary (Cicada Press, 2016), and Mother Tongue (Pleshka Presse, 2018).

“In this impressive, wide-ranging volume, Brian Baer and Yevgeniy Fiks aim not only to take the initial steps in creating ‘a history of queer Russian art and artists’, but also to imagine ‘queer interventions in art histories’ (p. 18). [T]he volume is groundbreaking for Russian queer studies, particularly in its methodological sophistication and openness, which will undoubtedly inspire further work.”— Connor Doak, Australian Slavonic and East European Studies“Everywhere and throughout history queerness is a political act, yet missing narratives remain. That is why the comprehensive survey of queer Russian cultural practice mapped in these pages is so revelatory. The scholarly investigations contained herein are as capacious as the land-mass they mean to situate, and they are indispensable to any contemporary understanding of our accelerating international cultural and political dilemmas. Perhaps more importantly, you will be treated to probative examinations of the consequential disposition of current Russian queer cultural production, which shed light on the bold, resourceful, and inventive radicalism they represent. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned with twenty-first century meaning-making.” — Avram Finkelstein, founding member of the Silence=Death collective [OR Avram Finkelstein, artist, writer, activist]

• AcknowledgementsNote on TransliterationIntroductionBrian James Baer and Yevgeniy Fiks Part One. Theoretical Framings 1. Between Semiotics and Phenomenology: The Problem of Queer BeautyBrian James BaerPart Two. Queer Beauty in Context2. “In Appearance, Both a Lad and Lass”: Images of Androgyny in Eighteenth-century Russian ArtOlga Khoroshilova (translated by Aleksei Grinenko)3. The Queer Opacity of Alexander Ivanov’s Nudes: Between Biblical Themes and Greek Love Nikolai Ivanov (translated by Aleksei Grinenko)4. Prostitutes, Pierrots, and Priapus: The Queer Modernism of Konstantin SomovBrian James Baer 5. Modernism as the Uncanny of Stalinism: On Alexander Deineka’s Wartime DrawingsGleb Napreenko (translated by Aleksei Grinenko with Brian James Baer)6. Carnivalesque Carnality: The Queer Potential of Sergei Eisenstein’s Homoerotic Drawings Ada Ackerman7. Moscow Conceptualism’s Erotic ObjectsYelena Kalinsky8. Queering Socialist Realism: The Case of Georgy GuryanovMaria Engström (translated by Ryan Green)9. A Russian Schizorevolution?: Observations on the New Academy of Fine Arts and Queer Issues in the Late 1980s and Early 1990sAndrei Khlobystin (translated by Aleksei Grinenko)10. The Lure of Implied Transgression as Revolutionary Retrospective: The Illicit as la Belleza in Bella Matveeva’s ArtHelena Goscilo11. Sexual and Gender Dissent in a Bipolar World: Georgy Guryanov and Vladislav Mamyshev-MonroeAndrey Shental 12. “My Nationality Is My Sexuality”: The Post-Soviet, Diasporic, Non-Russian Queerness of Babi BadalovRoman Osminkin (translated by Innokenty Grekov)Part Three. Beyond Queer Beauty? Contemporary Post-Soviet Perspectives on Queer(ing) Art, Art History, and Artists 13. Architecture, Outer Space, Sex: Queering the Kollontai Commune in 1970s FrunzeGeorgy Mamedov and Oksana Shatalova (translated by Aleksei Grinenko with Adrienn Hruska)14. Soviet Union, July 1991Yevgeniy Fiks15. LGBT Violence and the Limits of Realism: Polina Zaslavskaya’s Material EvidenceVictoria Smirnova-Maizel (translated by Ryan Green)16. The Battle over Names: Radical Queer on the Russian Activist Art SceneSeroe Fioletovoe (with translations by Innokenty Grekov)17. Queer in the Land of the Bolsheviks, or the Archeology of DissentNadia Plungian (translated by Aleksei Grinenko)18. A Queer (Re)Claiming of Russian and Soviet Art: An Interview with Slava Mogutin 19. “Queer and Russian Art?”: A Conversation between Katharina Wiedlack and Masha Godovannaya20. Queering Sexual Minorities,: An Interview with Yevgeniy FiksIndex