Visual Experiments of Soviet Nonconformist Artists 1960s-80s February 23, 2007

Inspired by the innovations of the Russian avant-garde, Soviet nonconformist artists took a step further by abandoning conventions that kept word and image in separate categories. This can be seen as an example, in the continuation of the strong connection between visual artists and poets particularly in Moscow. Many conceptual artists worked in literary forms while poet-conceptualists appropriated forms typical of visual arts, such as book-objects or card-poems. Nonconformist artists, trained as book designers and illustrators, created word/image art in the form of hand-produced books and journals. More generally, artists explored the relation between form and meaning in the production of texts as images -- and texts in relation to images. In some cases, as in the works of Ilya Kabakov, and Victor Pivovarov, words and images are of equal visual impact and importance; in others, as in the work of Leonid Lamm and Rimma Gerlovina, the text itself constitutes the entire image.