Volume 10, Number 9 · May 9, 1968
Art and Apparat
By C.
Unofficial Art in the Soviet Union
by Paul Sjeklocha, by Igor Mead
California, 216, 75 plates (30 color) pp., $15.00
It would be difficult to imagine a more promising combination of circumstances for the success of this book: a much discussed yet scarcely known topic (trends in modern Russian painting) explored jointly by an artist (Igor Mead) in a good position to make valuable judgments and a political sociologist (Paul Sjeklocha) well read in Russian history and theory. Moreover the authors accompanied the exhibition of American Graphic Arts touring the Soviet Union, an exhibition which was naturally of the greatest interest to Russian painters, though they were probably even more anxious to show examples of their own work to their American colleagues than to see the Exhibition itself. Like bait on a fishing rod Mead and Sjeklocha were thus able to attract a great many artists, and then to see, to photograph, and to purchase a large number of works which would be completely inaccessible to the usual tourist.
Review, 2857 words
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