Papers by Olena Martynyuk
East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies
With ongoing war in the Donbas, war narratives and war images saturate public media in Ukraine, t... more With ongoing war in the Donbas, war narratives and war images saturate public media in Ukraine, the discourse contaminated by ideological remnants of the Soviet World War II cult and by fake news. Art that deals with war wounds can subvert the familiar visual language of war propaganda, where the suffering of victims is a mere pretext for touting the inevitable triumph of the heroes. Currently in Ukraine, the most prolific art in this regard is produced by women-artists who address the trauma of war through painting and installations that offer highly personalized accounts. Often touching upon extreme circumstances, their art is about tolerance, both in terms of endurance and of the mutual understanding necessary for cohabitation. Alevtyna (Alevtina) Kakhidze’s ongoing performance creates an opportunity to comprehend the war in the Donbas from multiple perspectives, including that of a gardener. She associates the tending of plants with her mother who died on occupied territory, ref...
This dissertation examines Ukrainian painting of the perestroika era produced by the last generat... more This dissertation examines Ukrainian painting of the perestroika era produced by the last generation of Soviet artists trained in the Socialist Realist method and steeped in the Manichean dualism of official and unofficial cultures. While rejecting the ideological purpose underlying their training, these Ukrainian artists witnessed not only the decomposition of Socialist Realism but also that of Soviet Socialist reality. I explore the historical circumstances during which this new art was born, displayed, and reviewed, particularly the semi-alternative exhibitions scene and the art squats illegally populated by artists in Kyiv and Moscow. Propelled by the paradoxical nature of perestroika, these artists were challenged to create a new quality in art while still invested in the past with its pre-existing art styles and specific expressions of local Ukrainian history–especially during the Baroque epoch. My analysis of major—but understudied—paintings utilizes archival materials, rare catalogues, and my interviews with numerous artists. I show that the hybrid nature of Ukrainian perestroika era painting reveals the porous nature of borders that separated East and West in the 1980s. My text shows how distant and sometimes distorted echoes of Western theoretical concepts, such as Postmodernism, Neo-Expressionism, Transavantgarde and Neo-Baroque, reached and impacted late Soviet art. These terms were freely employed by most sympathetic yet often disoriented liberal Soviet critics to describe the new phenomena. The artists themselves were not entirely familiar with the trends, yet they readily accepted—and then just as eagerly denounced—such definitions. My dissertation carefully tests and demonstrates the relevance of those theories to Ukrainian perestroika era art. My conclusions are based on a critical reexamination of Soviet era material, including the permutations of late Socialist Realist doctrine and the debates between Moscow Conceptualists and unofficial meta-realist poets. Beginning with the uproar created by [...]
Kyiv-Mohyla Humanities Journal, 2020
is a timely and urgently needed publication, as it presents Ukraine as a versatile, multiethnic c... more is a timely and urgently needed publication, as it presents Ukraine as a versatile, multiethnic country capable of harboring and nourishing complex artistic and intellectual endeavors. The book should be praised as material testimony to the author's travails of many years in countering incredulity in the very category of the Ukrainian avant-garde and also in complicating this category, moving beyond nativist or ethnic approaches to the idea. This publication compiles many of Shkandrij's previously published and partially reworked materials from websites or strictly academic articles to book chapters, as it narrates the story of the "cultural ferment among artists from Ukraine" (p. xi). Through a versatile mosaic of painting, posters, sculpture, film, and literature, the author addresses previously overlooked specifics of the phenomenon that not only originate from Ukrainian territory, but are connected to it by their traits. While tackling the issue, Shkandrij shares a wealth of information based on archival research and his direct communication with some artists' families. The reader learns not only the biographies of the leading artists, but also essential historical context, including Ukrainization (as part of korenizatsiia policies) and a very useful periodization that encompasses the rise and fall of the avant-garde movement in Ukraine. Like many authors working on understudied regions such as Ukraine, Shkandrij is compelled to combine field work with conceptualization, simultaneously filling gaps in factual knowledge and theoretic comprehension of the avant-garde in its Ukrainian dimension. Overtasked by the inherent complexity of his subject, the author muddles matters by attempting to weave some previously published materials together in one book, which suffers some inconsistencies and redundancies as a result. I refer to the excellent review by Oleh S. Ilnytzkyj, published on H-SHERA in March 2020, which
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Papers by Olena Martynyuk