In 1986 the Soviet government created a statute enabling citizens to form associations and clubs for the first time since the 1920s. This gave rise to the first official organizations created by unofficial artists, as well as the beginning of a vibrant gallery scene. Run by artists, curators and cultural entrepreneurs, these spaces unleashed the creative energy that now characterizes early post-Soviet Russia. Access Moscow examines the key role the first independent galleries played in the emergence of Moscow's art scene in the 1990s. Through historical texts from leading practitioners of the time, as well as new essays, the book provides a first-hand account of an art community in formation, accompanied by a chronology of key events that defined the era and a gallery-by-gallery list of important exhibitions.

Soviet propaganda against the demon drink: the latest in Fuel's Russian pop culture series

From the acclaimed authors of the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedias and Soviet Space Dogs comes Alcohol, a glorious and exhaustive collection of previously unpublished Soviet anti-alcohol posters. The book includes examples from the 1960s through to the 1980s, but focuses on posters produced during Mikhail Gorbachev's campaign initiated in 1985. These posters attempted to sober up Soviet citizens by forcing them to confront the issues associated with excessive alcohol consumption. This government-led urgency allowed the poster designers to present the anti-alcohol message in the most graphic terms: they depicted drunks literally trapped inside the bottle or being strangled by "the green snake." Their protagonists are paralytic freeloaders and shirkers who always neglect their families, drive under the influence, produce substandard work, are smashed when pregnant and present a constant danger to fellow citizens. A two-part essay by renowned cultural historian Alexei Plutser-Sarno attempts to explain, from a Russian perspective, the reasons behind this phenomenon.

A collective of artists, a gallery and a movement, APTART was a series of self-organized "anti-shows" that took place in a private apartment and outdoor spaces in Moscow between 1982 and 1984. These covert and anarchic actions, which soon came into conflict with the Soviet authorities, represented a collective attempt to rethink the politics of exhibition-making and the making of a public in the absence of a public sphere.

The Pussy Riot protest, and the subsequent heavy handed treatment of the protestors, grabbed the headlines, but this was not an isolated instance of art being noticeably critical of the regime. As this book, based on extensive original research, shows, there has been gradually emerging over recent decades a significant counter-culture in the art world which satirises and ridicules the regime and the values it represents, at the same time putting forward, through art, alternative values. The book traces the development of art and protest in recent decades, discusses how art of this kind engages in political and social protest, and provides many illustrations as examples of art as protest. The book concludes by discussing how important art has been in facilitating new social values and in prompting political protests.

The Pussy Riot protest, and the subsequent heavy handed treatment of the protestors, grabbed the headlines, but this was not an isolated instance of art being noticeably critical of the regime. As this book, based on extensive original research, shows, there has been gradually emerging over recent decades a significant counter-culture in the art world which satirises and ridicules the regime and the values it represents, at the same time putting forward, through art, alternative values. The book traces the development of art and protest in recent decades, discusses how art of this kind engages in political and social protest, and provides many illustrations as examples of art as protest. The book concludes by discussing how important art has been in facilitating new social values and in prompting political protests.

Explores the social and political aspects of Russian art in a saga that spans Byzantine Christianity, the czarist splendor, the return of brutalized exiles to their homelands, and the artists who captured these moments

From 1978 to 1993, the renowned Soviet "paper architects" Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin created an incredible collection of elaborate etchings depicting outlandish, often impossible, buildings and cityscapes. Funny, cerebral, and deeply human, their obsessively detailed work layers elements borrowed from Egyptian tombs, Ledoux's visionary architecture, Le Corbusier's urban master plans, and other historical precedents in etchings of breathtaking complexity and beauty.

This book gives a fascinating overview of Russian decorative art, revealing a highly accomplished crafts tradition that persisted over nine centuries. It includes works by Peter Carl Faberg and his workshop, jeweled Byzantine icons, silver drinking vessels, and intricate enamels. Featured are two extraordinary Faberg eggs that were once in the Russian Imperial collection, including one that opens up to reveal a miniature gold replica of the Gatchina Palace, near St. Petersburg.

The decorative arts had flourished in Russia under the patronage of the tsars and their court, whose apparently limitless resources supported the production of some of the most technically sophisticated works of art ever made. With the onset of the Russian Revolution, a few individuals helped bring many of these objects to Europe and then into major private and public collections in the United States, including that of the Walters Art Museum. On the 100th anniversary of the revolution, this book tells the stories of their initial dispersal and of the collectors and dealers through whose hands they passed. Full catalog entries for each object are included.