The 1970s, the notorious era of stagnation, the era of dull, censored, fake official art. However, it was precisely this decade that became a period of extraordinary upsurge and a bright flowering of unofficial or nonconformist art.
The 1970s, the notorious era of stagnation, the era of dull, censored, fake official art. However, it was precisely this decade that became a period of extraordinary upsurge and a bright flowering of unofficial or nonconformist art. “The culminating event is the 1974 Bulldozer Exhibition. The abscess burst. “Underground”, non-conformist art came out of cellars, narrow closed circles into the social cultural space,” recalls the artist Viktor Pivovarov. The book contains essays, interviews and memoirs of artists, poets, musicians, direct participants in the cultural events of that time, which gave Russian art the second half of the twentieth century, despite the pressure of the external environment, an incredible impetus for development. The current classics: Eric Bulatov, Vladimir Nemukhin, Vladimir Martynov, Lev Rubinstein, Oscar Rabin, Ilya Kabakov, Vladimir Sorokin — reflect on the era that not only turned out to be a good school for survival, but also gave rise to a new aesthetics and poetics. “Turn”, “Time of joyful discoveries”, “Seventies. Seven — zero in our favor», «Being yourself» — these are just a few headlines of these vivid memories, after reading which we will finally say goodbye to the myth of the «suffocating seventies».
New Literary Review, 464 p.