"Bulldozer Art": Truth and Myths about the Exhibition of Nonconformists, which lasted no more than a minute

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The attitude of the Soviet government to contemporary art was not always negative. Suffice it to recall that in the first years after the revolution, the art of the avant-garde was almost state officialdom. Its representatives, such as the artist Malevich or the architect Melnikov, became famous all over the world and at the same time were welcomed in their homeland. However, soon in the country of victorious socialism, advanced art ceased to fit into the party ideology. The famous "bulldozer exhibition" of 1974 became a symbol of the confrontation between the authorities and artists in the USSR.

Nonconformists from the underground

Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, having visited the exhibition of avant-garde artists in the Manege in 1962, not only criticized their work, but also demanded "to stop this disgrace", calling the paintings "daub" and other, even more indecent words.

After the defeat by Khrushchev, unofficial art spun off from the official art, it is also non-conformist, alternative, underground. The Iron Curtain did not prevent artists from making themselves felt abroad, and their paintings were bought by foreign collectors and gallery owners. But at home it was not easy to organize even a modest exhibition in some cultural center or institute.

When Moscow artist Oscar Rabin and his comrade, poet and collector Alexander Glezer opened an exhibition of 12 artists at the Friendship Club on the Enthusiasts Highway in Moscow, two hours later it was closed by KGB officers and party workers. Rabin and Glezer were fired from their jobs. A couple of years later, the Moscow City Party Committee even sent instructions to the capital's recreation centers prohibiting the independent organization of art exhibitions.

In these conditions, Rabin came up with the idea to put the canvases on the street. The authorities could not give a formal ban - free space, and even somewhere in a vacant lot, did not belong to anyone, and the artists could not break the law. However, they also did not want to quietly show their works to each other - they needed the attention of the public and journalists. Therefore, in addition to the typewritten invitations to friends and acquaintances, the organizers of the "First autumn viewing of paintings in the open air" warned the Moscow City Council about the action.

Exhibition against subbotnik

On September 15, 1974, not only 13 declared artists came to a vacant lot in the Belyaevo area (in those years, in fact, the outskirts of Moscow). The exhibition was awaited by foreign journalists and diplomats convened by them, as well as expected policemen, bulldozers, firefighters and a large team of workers. The authorities decided to interfere with the exhibition by organizing a subbotnik on that day in order to improve the territory.

Naturally, no pictures were shown. Some of those who came did not even have time to unpack them. Heavy machinery and people with shovels, pitchforks and rakes began to drive the artists from the field. Some resisted: when a participant in an organized subbotnik pierced the canvas of Valentin Vorobyov with a shovel, the artist hit him on the nose, after which a fight ensued. In a scuffle, a reporter for The New York Times had a tooth knocked out with his own camera.

The bad weather made matters worse. Due to the last night of rain, the wasteland was full of mud, in which the brought paintings were trampled. Rabin and two other artists tried to throw themselves on the bulldozer, but they could not stop it. Soon, most of the exhibitors were taken to the police station, and Vorobyov, for example, took refuge in a car with a German friend.

The very next day, the scandalous popularity began to grow into mythology. For the "bulldozers", as the paintings from the "bulldozer exhibition" began to be called, they began to give out other works, and foreigners were ready to pay a considerable sum for them. Rumors spread that the exhibition was attended not by 13 people, but 24. Sometimes the number of artists in such conversations rose to three hundred!

"Prague Spring" for art

It is difficult to assess the artistic value of the exhibition - in fact, it lasted no more than a minute. But its social and political significance exceeded the value of the destroyed paintings. The coverage of the event in the Western press and the collective letters of the artists presented the Soviet government with a fact: art would exist even without their permission.

Two weeks later, an officially authorized street exhibition was held in Izmailovsky Park in Moscow. In subsequent years, nonconformist art gradually seeped into the "Beekeeping" pavilion at VDNKh, into the "salon" on Malaya Gruzinskaya and other sites. The retreat of power was forced and extremely limited. Bulldozers have become as much a symbol of suppression and repression as the tanks in Prague during the "Prague Spring". Most of the exhibitors had to emigrate within a few years.

They eventually received their recognition: for example, Evgeny Rukhin's painting "The Pliers" was sold at the Sotheby's auction, the works of Vladimir Nemukhin ended up in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid became the world's most famous representatives of social -art - directions parodying the Soviet officialdom.

Reproductions of some of the works of the "bulldozer" artists are presented below. Perhaps some of them could have turned out to be on the September morning of 1974 in the Belyaevsky wasteland:

Continuing the theme of life in the USSR, the story of what Soviet people were proud of and what they were not told about.