Искусство ГУЛАГа: выставка в Университете Чикаго (Regenstein Library) / Gulag Art: An Exhibit in Joseph Regenstein Library

Gulag Art

an exhibit running through December 2010 in Regenstein Library, the University of Chicago.

Искусство ГУЛАГа

выставка, посвященная искусству ГУЛАГа, экспозиция открыта до конца декабря 2010 г. в библиотеке Университета Чикаго (Regenstein Library).

"For both the professional artists and amateurs who were able to create artworks within the Gulag, the lack of oppressive Party mandates limiting content and stylistic expression would have meant greater freedom to experiment with style and content. However, due to the limited choice of subjects, materials and inadequate time to complete each work, artworks which were created by prisoners in the Gulag camps can be described as “journalistic” in style, more often than not depicting scenes or elements from the prisoner’s daily life — their immediate surroundings — such as landscapes, portraiture, domestic still-lives and interiors, as well as narrative scenes depicting human torture, the realities of imprisonment and harsh physical labour. Portrayals of landscapes with churches and graveyards point to the high mortality rates of the “revolutionary era” of the Stalinist Soviet Union.

In the Gulag, creativity took on many forms, from written memoirs (such as one work currently on display by Evfrosiniia Kersnovskaia), to arts and crafts, paintings and body art. Tattoos were the common marks of identification among the “real” criminals. Professional artists who found themselves in concentration camps were often “employed” by the criminals, drawing tattoos in exchange for food or “protection” from other inmates. The subject matter varied according to every criminal’s past. Tattoos were markings which spoke of the horrible deeds that every vor (“thief”) had performed or where they “did time” for their crimes. Among the most popular tattoos were the images of Soviet leaders. These were often applied to chest right over the heart or at the back of the head in the hope that guards were less likely to shoot a prisoner through the image of a great leader. Other tattoos were of explicitly sexual content, employing anti-Semitic and sexist imagery, swastikas, demonic characters, and allegorical motifs. There were also tattoos which marked a prisoner’s time in the Gulag, explicitly pointing to the horrific death tolls, listing the names of the camps through which the prisoner had survived and various propaganda slogans.

There are currently 290 Gulag museum initiatives on the territory of the former USSR, none of which appear to be state-sponsored. Information relevant to cultural undertakings of the Gulag camps is scarce and the number of visual artists who suffered imprisonment during the Stalinist reign is an elusive figure. Official records, written and revised numerous times, prove to be somewhat unreliable. The Memorial society is the largest organization which is currently working on preserving the memory of the Gulag through its digital database as well as the Virtual Museum. The Virtual Gulag Museum brings together research and archives from the former Soviet Union to record the existence of the Gulag and the suffering of its victims. Its collection of visual artifacts remains the most accessible and significant in the study of Gulag arts and crafts.

The exhibit is located in the Second Floor Reading Room of Regenstein Library and will run through December 2010."

Info is complied by Katya Pereyaslavska, Guest Curator, University of Toronto.
The source: CEERES eBulletin

О библиотеке / More about the library itself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenstein_Library