Impressionism in the Land of the Bolsheviks: Questions of Art, Reality, and Ideology in the Interwar Soviet Union

Extract

Between the First and Second World Wars, the historical and ideological significance of Impressionism in relation to contemporary art and the Soviet project was fiercely contested.¹ This article examines key philosophical and critical debates, while also noting frequent divergences in the attitudes of theorists, critics, artists, and curators about the merits of Impressionism. While not comprehensive, this article tracks the persistence of particular questions regarding Impressionism: as a contradictory form of realism, a problematic Weltanschauung, a potential source for a specifically Russian/Soviet art of the future, and a decisive turning point in the history of art. Following an introduction to the pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary status of Impressionism, the article explores the considerable impact of German thought on Russian interpretations in the 1920s, the heightening of ideological rhetoric in the mid-1930s, and the re-evaluation of Impressionism in an ambitious 1939 exhibition and a corresponding but never published anthology.

Impressionism in Russia Before and After the Revolution: Modernist Approaches