Authors

Beniamino Foschini¹;  ¹ Theaterakademie "August Everding", Germany

Discussion

This paper focuses on the Moscow art scene during the fall and winter of 1909–1910, a pivotal period when contemporary visual art began to captivate audiences on a grand scale and the media began to recognize the commercial potential of cultural scandal. During this period of artistic ferment and ideological conflict, Moscow’s artists grappled with pressing issues of morality, artistic freedom, social acceptance, and self-promotion.

All this can be found in two case studies: Kazimir Malevich’s participation in the production of Leonid Andreev’s Anathema at Stanislavskii’s Moscow Art Theater and Natal’ia Goncharova’s and Mikhail Larionov’s participation in the third Golden Fleece exhibition. But that’s not all: both internal and comparative analyses of works and processes will show the three artists’ insightful awareness and handling of pictorial concepts and devices from vernacular sources such as satirical magazines – and their tradition and history – and cabaret stagings: it’s the birth of the avant-garde out of the spirit of caricature.

Special attention will be paid to those magazines and cabarets with artistic aspirations and contemporary consciousness, such as Arkadii Averchenko’s Satirikon on the one hand, and Nikita Baliev’s Letuchaia mysh’ [The Bat] on the other, both of which have played a leading role in advancing the debate through caricature, pastiche, satire, grotesque, and parody.