03.11.2010  Grand Opening of the Museum of Russian Art

• Grand Opening of the Museum of Russian Art, featuring two exhibitions: “NO EXIT” ART and THE STORY DOESN’T END THERE Open on Saturday and Sunday, November 13th & 14th, 1:00pm to 6:00pm Reception on Saturday, November 13th, from 3:00pm to 6:00pm at the Museum of Russian Art, 80 Grand St., Jersey City, NJ 07302-4522 The Museum of Russian Art (MoRA) is celebrating its grand opening in its beautifully restored space in Jersey City, just a short train ride from downtown Manhattan. On Saturday, November 13, 2010, MoRA opens with two exhibitions. “No Exit” Art includes over forty works on paper by all of the leading figures of the Nonconformist movement, including Bulatov, Kabakov, Masterkova, Nemukhin, Sitnikov, Sveshnikov, Vassiliev, Yakovlev and Zverev. Also known as “Unofficial Art” or the “Second Avant-Garde,” Nonconformism emerged in the Soviet Union from the cultural void left by Stalinist repressions and World War II. Starting in the mid-1950s, Nonconformists worked in a stunning variety of artistic modes, boldly asserting their participation in the processes of Russian and Western art, from actionism to abstract expressionism, from tachism to pop art. But they were compelled to do this in a situation best described as “internal exile.” It was a two-fold exile. First, although they had second-hand knowledge of the living artistic world outside of the USSR, they had no access to that world. And second, while they were generally permitted to draw, paint and sculpt, they were effectively prohibited from exhibiting or publishing images of their works. The result was to isolate them from the very society in which they lived. It was an artistic life in a bubble, art with no exit. Eventually, a very partial solution was provided by art collectors who smuggled Nonconformist works to the West. But the extraordinarily difficult circumstances under which that art was produced made for one of the most intriguing and best known artistic movements of the 20th century. As the name of the second exhibition indicates, however, The Story Doesn’t End There. This exhibition, too, features artworks on paper, by three of the most talented members of the generation that followed Nonconformism: Leonid Lerman, Elena Sarni and Vasily Kafanov. Many of the Nonconformists eventually found their “exit,” leaving the Soviet Union for Europe and the US. Born in the USSR, Lerman, Sarni and Kafanov left as young artists with the vast majority of their artistic careers still before them. They have lived for years in the West, mostly in New York, and they are as much a part of the local art world here in the West as they are of the continuing life of Russian art. For them, participation in the artistic progress of the outside world is not a forbidden paradise, but a creative life, one for which their background gives them a special appreciation. As a result, their art is more cosmopolitan than that of their predecessors; where Nonconformist aesthetics is always politically attuned, these artists are focused on artistic culture itself. But from the Nonconformists they have inherited a vision of art not as entertainment or decoration, but as a communicative act. Art must convey a kind of “message,” ineffable and intangible though that message may often be. The exhibition will run through the middle of January. More further inquiries please contact John William Narins at (818) 642-9225 call the museum at (201) 332-9200 or check out the museum’s new webpage www.moramuseum.org