Collective Body - by Christina Kiaer (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Dislodging the avant-garde from its central position in the narrative of Soviet art, Collective Body presents painter Aleksandr Deineka's haptic and corporeal version of Socialist Realist figuration not as the enemy of revolutionary art, but as an alternate experimental aesthetic that, at its best, activates and organizes affective forces for collective ends. Tracing Deineka's path from his avant-garde origins as the inventor of the proletarian body in illustrations for mass magazines after the Revolution through his success as a state-sponsored painter of monumental, lyrical canvases during the Great Terror and beyond, Collective Body demonstrates that Socialist Realism is best understood not as a totalitarian style, but rather as a fiercely collective art system that organized art outside the market and formed part of the legacy of the revolutionary modernisms of the 1920s. Collective Body accounts for the way the art of the October Revolution continues to capture viewers' imaginations through the sheer intensity of its evocation of the elation of collectivity, making viewers not only comprehend but also truly feel socialism, and retaining the potential to inform our own art-into-life experiments within contemporary political art. Deineka figures in this study not as a singular master, in the spirit of a traditional monograph, but as a limited case of the system he inhabited and helped to create"--

Book Synopsis

A study of the Socialist Realist aesthetic focusing on the artist Aleksandr Deineka.

Dislodging the avant-garde from its central position in the narrative of Soviet art, Collective Body presents painter Aleksandr Deineka's haptic and corporeal version of Socialist Realist figuration as an alternate experimental aesthetic that, at its best, activates and organizes affective forces for collective ends. Christina Kiaer traces Deineka's path from his avant-garde origins as the inventor of the proletarian body in illustrations for mass magazines after the revolution through his success as a state-sponsored painter of monumental, lyrical canvases during the Terror and beyond. In so doing, she demonstrates that Socialist Realism is best understood not as a totalitarian style but as a fiercely collective art system that organized art outside the market and formed part of the legacy of the revolutionary modernisms of the 1920s. Collective Body accounts for the way the art of the October Revolution continues to capture viewers' imaginations by evoking the elation of collectivity, making viewers not just comprehend but truly feel socialism, and retaining the potential to inform our own art-into-life experiments within contemporary political art. Deineka figures in this study not as a singular master, in the spirit of a traditional monograph, but as a limit case of the system he inhabited and helped to create.

Review Quotes

"Kiaer is the ideal guide to Deineka's equivocal position in the Soviet political-aesthetic landscape. She has long been conspicuous among Anglophone historians of Soviet art for how seriously she takes the socialist project and the idea of a revolutionary art. . . . At the center of the Collective Body is an exploration of the degree to which Deineka specialized, if not wholly intentionally, in a distinctly feminist aesthetics, in his large-scale paintings of women workers, sports players and fighters, throughout the twenties and thirties. For Kaier, 'in his consistent refusal to depict women within conventions of femininity, sexuality and objectification, Deineka unexpectedly becomes the historical conductor - in the sense of an electrical conductor - of a profound socialist feminism'."

-- "New Left Review"

"Kiaer's Collective Body is promising to become a seminal publication on Deineka for years to come. The book is beautifully designed and features a broad array of rare illustrations, many of which are no longer accessible to Western scholarship. . . . the book effectively challenges pervasive stereotypes about Soviet art. With its wide range of themes, methods, and historical materials, Collective Body is not only a highly anticipated monograph on Deineka but also an excellent and intellectually stimulating study of Soviet art's formative period. Most importantly, it promotes a complex and nuanced approach to researching this legacy--an approach especially vital to preserve during a time of a violent political and cultural war."
-- "H-Net"

"Collective Body is a tour de force: at once a history of a single artist, of Soviet art practice in the 1930s--and of Soviet culture more broadly. Kiaer writes with ease and sophistication, using brilliant close readings of artworks to illuminate her social and historical context in new ways. This is scholarship of a very high order."--Emma Widdis, University of Cambridge

"Aleksandr Deineka's depiction of sensual bodies was labeled by Russian critics 'lyrical socialist realism.' Traversing three decades of artistic debates and realignments, Kiaer elucidates this paradoxical stylistic label and gives us a new reading of the complexities of a Soviet and Stalinist world that remains as fascinating as it is disturbing. This highly original study puts the revolutionary avant-garde and its aftermath in a new perspective."--Romy Golan, City University of New York

About the Author

Christina Kiaer is the Arthur Andersen Teaching and Research Professor of art history at Northwestern University. She is the author of Imagine No Possessions: The Socialist Objects of Russian Constructivism, coauthor with Robert Bird and Zachary Cahill of Revolution Every Day: A Calendar, and coeditor with Eric Naiman of Everyday Life in Early Soviet Russia: Taking the Revolution Inside.