SiberianThe reforms of Peter the Great represent a kind of unique act of self-colonization of the Russian people: one part of it pretended to be foreigners, in their most terrible and threatening guise, and began to consistently and radically persecute everything Russian and to impose everything that was most modernized and Western for that time, which real foreigners, if they had really conquered Russia, probably would not have done.
Pavel Filonov's works are most reminiscent of the concept of "rhizomes" introduced by Deleuze/Guattari. They are, as it were, fragments of an infinite and complexly intertwined energy network, which includes the circulatory, nutritional and nervous systems of plants, animals and humans to the same extent as, say, technical, electrical energy supply systems.
Later (after 1917), abstract elements increasingly gain predominance in Pavel Filonov's paintings, which visually refer to Kandinsky, to the Rayonism of Mikhail Larionov and to the geometrism of the Russian avant-garde in general. At the same time, Filonov's works are immediately recognizable, since all their elements are greatly reduced and incredibly detailed.
The art of Pavel Filonov is more reminiscent of European expressionism, surrealism or magical realism - it seems expressive, tragic and psychological, i.e. directly opposite in its main intention of depsychologizing art, characteristic of the main line of the Russian avant-garde.
Pavel Filonov's early paintings are especially reminiscent of German expressionist art: they also refer to the tradition of religious art and strive to create the effect of indistinguishability between the past and the present, or between everyday life and ritual, while using the formal techniques of French Fauvism and Cubism.
Today's cynicism and objectivism may tomorrow be perceived as old-fashioned idealism and utopianism.
The art market triumphs over other markets because its mechanisms are more efficient. In a traditional market, for value to emerge, something must be produced and at the same time generate demand. In the art market, it is enough to decide to select a certain object from the flow of life and give it value as a work of art for it to actually emerge.
Russian avant-garde artists made full use of the political power they were initially given to liquidate the art market in the country, subordinate all art to a single party control, centralize and nationalize artistic life: the state, totalitarian in political and economic terms, had to become a total artistic work, since this was the avant-garde project from the very beginning.
The goal of the entire artistic strategy of the Russian avant-garde was to deprive the art consumer of his independent, external, comfortable position: the viewer had to be drawn into the work of art by means of an aesthetic shock or by transforming his entire everyday environment. It was no longer the viewer's taste and appreciation that would decide the fate of the work of art in the market system of supply and demand, but the artist had to completely transform the viewer's taste.
Society gives the artist the right to drag any "garbage from life" into the exhibition space, turning it into art by the very act of exposition. This right of initial selection preserves the artist's priority over the curator: the choice made by the curator is always secondary, the range of things from which he can choose is limited to those on which the artist's gaze has already stopped once.