Fwd: Suprematism, Unovis Lazar Khidekel - Harriman Institute, October 8

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Date: Mon, Oct 6, 2014 at 10:07 PM
Subject: Suprematism, Unovis Lazar Khidekel - Harriman Institute, October 8
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*Suprematism, Unovis and Lazar Khidekel*



Harriman Institute at Columbia University

420 West 118th Street, 12th Floor

New York, NY 10027

918 IAB (panel); Harriman Atrium (reception)



Exhibition on view: September 10 - October 15, 2014



*RECEPTION & PANEL DISCUSSION: *October 8, 6:00 PM

  Join us for a reception and panel discussion to commemorate the 100 years
of Suprematism, 95 - of UNOVIS (Affirmers of the New Art) and the 110th
Anniversary of Lazar Khidekel (1904-1986), the Suprematist artist,
visionary architect, pioneer of environmentalism and founding member of the
UNOVIS group.



The exhibition includes twenty four images in print form - paintings,
drawings, period photographs, UNOVIS documents, and publications, including
the legendary AERO, Khidekel’s handmade book from 1920, considered as one
of the first ecological manifestos of the modern era. This rich set of
material comes from the Khidekel Archive, one of the most comprehensive
archives of the Russian avant-garde.

Moderated by *Dr. Regina Khidekel*, the discussion will explore different
aspects of Suprematism including the UNOVIS educational system, the
Suprematist painting and its development in the works of the younger
“UNOVIS” generation. Also to be examined Lazar Khidekel's Suprematist
painting, his role in the transition of Suprematism from a 2-dimensional
art form to a movement which found its expression in real life - visible
today in architecture, the processes of urbanization, and futuristic yet
environmentally conscious city planning of the time.

Speakers: *Dr. Regina Khidekel,* art critic, curator and president of the
Lazar Khidekel Society, director of Russian - American Cultural Center in
New York - York (RACC), the author of numerous publications on the history
of Russian avant-garde.

Slide presentation about life and work of Lazar Khidekel.



*Dr. Masha Chlenova*

*The Endpoint of Painting:  UNOVIS and the Transformation of the Lived
Experience*
A few months after his arrival at the Free Art Studios in Vitebsk in late
1919, Kazimir Malevich announced that the medium of painting had reached
its limit and it was time to create art that would directly transform the
fabric of everyday experience. “Having established definite plans for the
Suprematist system,” the artist wrote inDecember 1920, “I am entrusting the
further development of what is now architectural Suprematism to young
architects in the broadest sense of the word.”

This talk will explore the inner logic of development of Malevich’s
abstract system and the expanded form it took in the artistic practices of
the collective UNOVIS, whose members decorated streets, designed printed
materials, created reliefs and architectural models. Driven by a paramount
urge to transcend boundaries between artistic mediums, UNOVIS created a
radical language that briefly became synonymous with the highest ideals of
the revolution. The formative stages of Lazar Khidekel’s artistic practice
will be examined in this context.

Masha Chlenova is an art historian and curator specializing in 20th century
art with a focus on Russian avant-garde. She received a PhD in Art History
from Columbia University with a dissertation entitled “On Display:
Transformations of the Avant-garde in Soviet Public Culture, 1928-1933.”
Most recently she was a curatorial assistant at the Department of Painting
and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, where she worked with Leah
Dickerman on a major survey of abstraction across the mediums entitled
*Inventing
Abstraction, 1910-1925* and an upcoming retrospective of Francis Picabia.
Her writing has appeared in the journal *October* and in exhibition
catalogs published by MoMA, the Guggenheim Museum, and Tate Modern.



*Anna Bokov*, Ph.D. Candidate, Yale University, will talk about the
pioneering  educational systems at UNOVIS and Vkhutemas. Although
short-lived, these avant-garde schools were critical platforms for
experimenting with new design methods and for developing new modernist
design language.



*Dr. Xenia Vytuleva* *“Decoding Modernities”*

Operating with formulas, algorithms and codes, Soviet Avant Garde
architecture still remains a black box in the context of modern histories.
Dr. Vytuleva’s talk is addressing Avant Garde legacy, its interrelation
with the neo-scientific discourse, migration of metaphors and tropes from
various ideological and disciplinary platforms, contextualizing the legacy
of Lazar Khidekel’s spatial experiments within a broader fabric of
contemporary cultures.

*Xenia Vytuleva* is an architecture historian and theorist and curator. She
holds a Ph.D. in Art History and is currently a visiting assistant
professor at Columbia University in NY. A recipient of various grants and
awards, and most recently the Graham Foundation for the Project "Soviet
Secret Cities during the Cold War", Dr. Vytuleva is writing extensively on
theory of preservation and theory of Architectural Representation. A head
researcher at the Institute of the Theory and History of Architecture
(NIITIAG) at the Russian Academy of Science, Moscow, Vytuleva is currently
working on a book entitled “Aesthetics of Uncertainty in Experimental
Practices of the 20th Century”. She is a member of DoCoMoMO, Russia, and
the program “Preserving the Architectural Heritage” in Moscow, co-organizer
and consultant of Columbia University platform at Venice Biennale 2014.

*About Lazar Khidekel*
Lazar Khidekel worked closely with Marc Chagall, El Lissitzky and Kazimir
Malevich in Vitebsk from 1918 to 1922, where he became an important
proponent and theoretician of Suprematism and a founding member of the
UNOVIS group (Affirmers of New Art), which included other notable artists
such as El Lissitzky, Nina Kogan, Vera Ermolaeva, Ilya Chashnik, and
Nikolai Suetin.

While still a student of Petrograd/Leningrad Institute of Civil Engineers
(1922-1929), Lazar Khidekel became an influential force in fueling
Suprematist ideas among faculty members and students, by lecturing,
building bridges between LISI and INKhuK, and creating the first
Suprematist architectural project - the Workers' Club (1926). Widely
published in Russia and abroad, this project expressed the new direction of
Leningrad avant-garde architecture, the Suprematist Constructivism.

In the 1920s, Lazar Khidekel, the only architect in Malevich's group,
developed innovative ideas for futurist cities which included communal
houses and Suprematist skyscrapers, suggesting a new way of life. Among his
realized projects were socialist towns conjoining industrial and
residential complexes (1930-1932), the first radio-theater, House of Radio,
the first three-hall Movie Theater, as well as schools and educational
institutions. Khidekel’s projects of the 1930s were granted landmark status
in the 1960s.

Today, with the rise of the Internet as a platform for independent
thinkers, we can learn a great deal about the relevance of Khidekel’s
visionary projects, as seen in two recent online discussions of this aspect
of his work:

Khidekel’s vision still manage to look futuristic, arguably more so than
most of the Metabolists or Situationist projects that today feel
retro-futurist, inextricably tied to the past. Khidekel’s work remains
endlessly floating towards the future.

As Edwin Heathcote from Financial Times states:  “Khidekel is barely known
compared with his now-stellar contemporaries, yet in his fusing of art,
architecture and urbanism, he remains arguably the most visionary of them
all.”
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/0c4b0fde-0d04-11e4-bcb2-00144feabdc0.html#axzz38Sx7gLsE

A documentary film *Lazar Khidekel*, Kanal Kultura, 2011, and
animation *Khidekel
Element – Suprematism for Humanity* from the ongoing The 14th International
Architecture Biennale in Venice, will also be shown.

            *Shown in Russia, USA and Europe*:

·         First State Exhibition of Local and Moscow Artists, Vitebsk, 1919

·         UNOVIS exhibitions, Vitebsk, Moscow 1919-1922

·         The First Russian Art Exhibition, Galerie van Diemen, Berlin, 1922

·         Exhibition of Paintings by Petrograd Artists of All Trends,
Academy of Fine Arts, Petrograd, 1923

·          First exhibition of the research departments of the Institute of
Artistic Culture, May 25 to June 8, Leningrad, 1924.

·          First Exhibition of Modern Architecture, Moscow, VKhUTEMAS, 1927

·         Leningrad Architecture for 18 years. Russian Museum. Leningrad,
1935

·         The Great Utopia Guggenheim Museum, NY 1992

·         The Great Utopia State Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow, 1993

·         Europa, Europa SchirnKunsthalleFrankfurt, 1994

·         Lazar Markovich Khidekel. Suprematism and Architecture, Leonard
Hutton Galleries, NY, 1995

·         Kazimir Malevich.Werk und Wirkung, Museum Ludwig Koln, 1995

·          Russian Jewish Artists in a Century of Change, The Jewish
Museum, NY , 1996

·         In Malevich’s Circle, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, 2000

·         The Rediscovered Suprematist, Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich, 2010-11

·         Proun Gallery, Moscow 2010, 2011, 2012

·         The Rediscovered Suprematist -2,The Lowenhoff, Zurich , 2012

·         The Floating Worlds and Future Cities, The YIVO Institute, NY 2013

·         Aviation and Avant-Garde, The Moscow Jewish Museum/Tolerance
Center, 2014

·         *Khidekel Element-Suprematism for Humanity* at Absorbing
Modernity: 1914-2014, Venice Architecture Biennial 2014

·         *Building Drawings, Drawing Buildings, *exhibition and panel
discussion at Pushkin House, London. July 9 – September 25, 2014

·         The International Lazar Khidekel Award ceremony will take place
in Baku in October 2014.

·         *Lazar Khidekel and Suprematism*, book by Prestel Publishing will
be released onOctober 15, 2014.

·         Exhibition at Modernism Gallery, San Francisco, November 2014

The Russian American Cultural Center (RACC) is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3)
organization, est. in 1998. Museum quality exhibitions on Russian
avant-garde, contemporary art and photography, collections, archive
preservation, research and scholarly publications, a wide range of cultural
and literary events, and film festivals enhancing the NY art scene.
Support our work: donate and become a RACC member.
*www.russianamericanculture.com*



Suprematism, Unovis & Lazar Khidekel - Harriman Institute, October 8



-- 
Tamara Jhashi, Ph.D.
Interim Associate Provost
Associate Professor of Art History
Oakland University
Rochester, MI  48309
248.370.3102
248.821.4766

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