Art amongst the Cold War and Bulldozers

Anatoly Brusilovsky’s Note on the famous open-air exhibition in Soviet Moscow

 

Deployment of water cannons at the exhibition 1974. Archive of the Research Centre for East European Studies. Photo: Muriel Nägler.

50 years ago, on 15 September 1974, a small group of Soviet independent artists staged an open-air exhibition in the outskirts of Moscow. It was not approved and so the authorities sent bulldozers and water cannons to destroy it. The event went down in history as "The Bulldozer Exhibition" and became the most famous episode in Soviet underground culture. Anatoly Brusilovsky, one of the artists of the Moscow milieu, described his perspective on the Bulldozer Exhibition in a detailed note kept in the archives of the Research Centre for East European Studies. “The exhibition in Belyaevo gave a start to the increased activity of underground artists in Moscow and other cities. The situation could no longer remain the same”, wrote the artist.
 
The Soviet underground emerged as a result of the Thaw (1953-1964), the brief period of cultural liberalization associated with Nikita Khrushchev, which did not meet the expectations of artists who did not wish to portray socialist themes in a realistic manner and wanted to openly exhibit their experimental works.  By the mid-1970s, the pressure from the authorities had only increased, while opportunities to exhibit in institutional spaces had almost disappeared. The idea of an open-air exhibition in Belyaevo, the residential district of Moscow, was a strategic response. During the period of détente, the Soviet authorities were sensitive to Western reactions, and the organizers had the necessary connections to foreign correspondents to ensure that attacks on the exhibition would not go unnoticed. The disruption of the exhibition caused a huge scandal and forced the Soviet authorities to partially accommodate underground artists within official institutions. However, it did not end the political pressure on those who refused to accept the new rules or were particularly outspoken. Many of the participants and organizers of the exhibition eventually emigrated.
 

Anatoly Brusilovsky’s note on the "Bulldozer Exhibition", date unkown. Archive of the Research Centre for East European Studies. Photo: Maria Klassen.
 
The Bulldozer exhibition laid the groundwork for the heroic narrative surrounding the Soviet underground scene, which was both promoted and challenged from within. Brusilovsky, for instance, believed that artists should stay away from politics: "An artist does not need cheap sensations. He is convinced that only art that does not take sides will survive. Independence is his goal".
 
Natasha Fedorenko
 
Further reading:
Agamov-Tupitsyn, Victor: The Bulldozer Exhibition, Moscow 2014.
Gleser, Alexander: Iskusstvo pod Bul’’dozerom (Sinyaya Kniga), Paris 1976.
Bernstein, Charles: Vitaly Komar: The Avant-Garde, Sots-Art and the Bulldozer Exhibition of 1974, https://jacket2.org/commentary/komar-sots, 2021 [09.09.2024].
 
Natasha Fedorenko is a doctoral candidate at Constructor University, Bremen. Her forthcoming dissertation is dedicated to the self-fashioning and artistic strategies of Anna Tarshis and Sergei Sigov, a couple of the Soviet unofficial art scene.