‘Forbidden’ Work of Dissidents

When this millennial century ends in less than three years, even the most venturesome art will, technically, become history. Russian dissident artists beat everybody to that punch when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Now a fascinating sampling of their work is on view at Art Center in Pasadena under the title “Forbidden Art: The Postwar Russian Avant-Garde.”

It consists of some 76 paintings, sculpture, photographs and works on paper by 36 artists who refused to toe the Communist Party line. Drawn from the collection of Russian emigre Yuri Traisman, this traveling show is being circulated by Curatorial Assistance and was selected by its director, Robin Berg. A catalog is in preparation but was, alas, not ready for this stop.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the ensemble is how harmless it looks and how conventional. It’s hard to imagine that 20 years ago it would have been seen as daring and subversive. That’s a great lesson in the way art derives its meaning from cultural context. These guys were only radical in comparison to their enemy, the apparatchiks of the official style Socialist Realism. Without opposition, the work is drained of tension and becomes, well, poignant.

The restrictions on Soviet life were so draconian that simply making this art was authentically courageous. None of it, however, is even as confrontational as a political cartoon. Artists relied instead on a profound sense of irony typical of Russian humor but not always readily accessible to outsiders.

The earliest work on view, for example, is “Power to the People” by Kritski, Sokolovski & Group. To innocent eyes it’s indistinguishable from a potboiler in the official embalmed realist style. It depicts Lenin, looking heroic, addressing an audience of workers looking worshipful. Aside from its presence here, about the only clue to its intended irony is its date. It was painted in 1957 just four years after the death of Stalin. His departure marked the beginning of a relative expressive thaw that made this art possible. In that circumstance Kritski & Co. might be saying, “Oh goodie, deviation no longer means instant death, just exile to the Gulag, expulsion from your union or unemployment.”

Among the most recent pieces is Aleksandr Kosolapov’s “McLenin.” It’s a Pop-derived work complete with McDonald’s golden arches and Lenin standing in for the Kentucky Fried colonel. Made in 1991 during Gorbachev’s glasnost period, it’s clearly a sarcastic rumination on the potential arrival of capitalism, Western-style. A little empathy suggests that even Soviet dissidents felt ambivalent about swapping one style of conformity for another. Leonid Lamm provides a similar example in “Dollar.” It transforms the hammer-and-sickle emblem into the sign for bucks.

As Williamson Gallery director Steven Nowlin remarked, these artists felt so beleaguered they didn’t even strive for originality. For them it was sufficient to simply emulate artists who’d been suppressed by Stalin or Hitler. Thus appear a gaggle of people who paraphrase the original Russian avant-garde.

Vladimir Nemukhin’s work alludes to the old revolutionary art group Knave of Diamonds. The artist who calls himself Afrika perversely emulates El Lissitzky in his “Anti-Lissitzky Series.”

German Expressionism has its admirers. None is more fervent than Viacheslav Kalinin. He translates Otto Dix’s vision of Weimar decadence into Russian. Since the Communist state wasn’t known for public orgies, Kalinin’s work looks a bit nostalgic.

There’s a negative lesson embedded in this exhibition. It has to do with art becoming so embroiled with ideology that it loses its bearings. Like much art made today in the West, its excessive involvement with the topical and the political make it quickly dated and ephemeral. It takes an artist as great as Goya or Jacques-Louis David to overcome the problem.

That’s undoubtedly why Russian dissident art dealing with commonplace things brings welcome relief. There are exceptionally touching and well-made gray Photo-realist paintings of a day at the beach and a woman sleeping on a streetcar by Semyon Faibisovich. A photo collective called the Synthesis Group is represented by an image of a nude girl sleeping on a beach called “The Rose Colored Evening.” She’s surrounded by a red cartoon bed painted on the sand.

Such works body forth impressions of longing, oppression and romantic dreams that speak across borders to the human predicament.

* Art Center College of Design, Williamson Gallery, 1700 Lida St., Pasadena; through May 3, closed Mondays, (626) 396-2244.