Books

Books and essays on unofficial Soviet Art written by or compiled with G. Kiesewalter's contributions

Below are some books, collections and brochures on unofficial Soviet Art written or compiled, or featuring essays by George Kiesewalter.

A Study in Light Colors
In Artists Studios
Insider
'Those Strange Seventies or Loss of Innocence' (Rus. Эти странные семидесятые, или Потеря невинности). Edited, compiled, and designed by G. Kiesewalter. Moscow: New Literary Observer publishing house, 2010. ISBN 978-5-86793-773-7
G. Kiesewalter. 'The New Hagiography Project'. MMOMA, 2011.
G. Kiesewalter. 'The Communal Body of Moscow' (Rus. Коммунальное тело Москвы). Moscow: Restart/Polidiz, 1999
'The Watershed Eighties in Unofficial Soviet Art '(Rus. Переломные восьмидесятые в неофициальном искусстве СССР). Edited, compiled, and designed by G. Kiesewalter. Moscow: New Literary Observer publishing house, 2014. ISBN 978-5-4448-0142-0
G. Kiesewalter. 'Samizdat as a Means of Survival for Unofficial Soviet Artists.'
G. Kiesewalter. 'Time of Hopes, Time of Illusions. On the Problems of the History of Soviet Unofficial Art. 1950-1960: Articles and Materials.' (Rus. Время надежд, время иллюзий. Проблемы истории советского неофициального искусства. 1950–1960 годы: Статьи и материалы). Moscow: New Literary Observer publishing house, 2018. ISBN 978-5-4448-0732-3
G. Kiesewalter. 'Soviet Fine Art in the Mirror of Western Press'
G. Kiesewalter. 'Reports from under-the-walls' (Рус. «Репортажи из-под-валов»)
G. Kiesewalter. 'One Evening with Anatoly Zverev'. Zverev Centre, Moscow. 2015
On some peculiarities of early Moscow actionism

    1. A Study in Light Colors. In: Eduard Steinberg. Biographical materials, Мoscow: NLO, 2015. ISBN 9785444802397. This anthology is dedicated to Ed Steinberg’s life and work as viewed by his friends and colleagues.
    2. In Artists’ Studios. Moscow: Ekaterina Cultural Foundation, 2021. ISBN 9785905256042. Based on b/w photographs, multicolor reproductions of the artists’ works, and texts, this album features the most interesting Moscow artists and their studios captured by Kiesewalter in the 1970s-1980s.
    3. Insider. Moscow: Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, 2016. ISBN 9785990561236. This diverse photographic album allows readers to look into the informal artistic milieu that boiled around Kiesewalter in the 1970s-1980s.
    4. The book Those Strange Seventies or the Loss of Innocence features memoirs and interviews with active participants in the cultural life of the 1970s, the representatives of the intellectual and artistic environment of Moscow, writers and poets, artists and musicians, collectors and art historians. They present different views on the events of the decade, contradicting each other, and these contradictory testimonies make it possible to see a difficult and eventful time in some polyphonic completeness. Moscow: New Literary Observer, 2010. ISBN 9785867937737.
    5. This well-illustrated brochure presents a combination of an accompanying text and a detailed description of the New Hagiography project displayed in the halls of the MMOMA museum in Moscow in 2011.
    6. The key concept of the book The Communal Body of Moscow was to highlight the lifestyle of Moscow’s avant-garde artists and their images using photographs and short texts so that the readers can better understand their art. The book consists of three albums that were created separately in the 1980s: The Moscow Communal Life, “Love Me, Love My Umbrella” and The Artists’ Apartments.
    7. The co-authors of this essay and interview collection, ‘The Watershed Eighties’, people of different beliefs, discuss here the unofficial culture of the USSR in the 1980s when visual art was still closely connected with literature and music. The contradictory and crucial decade brought the creative “layer” new opportunities and joys, along with new problems. In the variety of styles of the ambiguous observations of the eyewitnesses and participants in the events of those years, the reader will find unexpected pictures of the bygone era. Moscow: New Literary Observer, 2014. ISBN 9785444801420.
    8. This anthology contains Kiesewalter’s essay ‘Samizdat as a Means of Survival for Unofficial Soviet Artists’. In: Acta samizdatica / Записки о самиздате. Anthology: Issue 2. Compiled by E.Strukova, B.Belenkin, with contributions from G.Superfin; SHPL of Russia; International Memorial. Moscow, 2015. ISBN 9785852093660, ISBN 9785990234123.
    9. The book Time of Hopes, Time of Illusions. On the Problems of the History of Soviet Unofficial Art. 1950-1960: Articles and Materials. (Moscow: New Literary Observer, 2018. ISBN 9785444807323) attempts at analyzing the cultural trends of the so-called thaw period after Stalin’s death when the left and samizdat appeared in Soviet culture. It presents a combination of interviews with the artists, musicians and critics of the 1950s-60s, some authentic materials of the time, and an analysis of publications in the West on unofficial Soviet art. The issues covered in the book, to list just a few, feature the formation of the mentality of “thaw” and “thaw culture”, the relationships of unofficial artists, official institutions and authorities, information exchange with the West in those years, a detailed review of various exhibitions of the period, etc.
    10. This anthology features Kiesewalter’s essay ‘Soviet Fine Art in the Mirror of Western Press. A Review of Art and Culture Publications in Western Media from 1960 to 1970’. In: Western Art. The Sixties in the XX century. Moscow: BooksMArt, 2021. ISBN 9785907267510.
    11. The book Reports from under-the-walls presents an alternative history of unofficial culture in the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s through the eyes of foreign journalists, supplemented by interviews with its heroes. Мoscow: NLO, 2022. ISBN 9785444818138.
    12. This brochure features the famous Soviet nonconformist artist Anatoly Zverev’s essential views on life and art and some portraits of the artist made by Kiesewalter in the mid-1980s.
    13. This collection of texts features Kiesewalter’s essay ‘On some peculiarities of early Moscow actionism’. In: From Underground to Actionism. Russian Context. Belgrade, 2024. ISBN 9788686845993.

 

One of Kiesewalter’s online publications in English is featured in the Estonian art magazine Kunst #1, 2022: https://ajakirikunst.ee/?c=magazine&l=en&n=2022-1. It is a unique selection of texts and photos, dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the influential Estonian artist and theoretician Tõnis Vint (1942-2019).