Art and Revolution: Ernst Neizvestny, Endurance, and the Role of the Artist

by John Berger

Book Overview

In this prescient and beautifully written book, Booker Prize-winning author John Berger examines the life and work of Ernst Neizvestny, a Russian sculptor whose exclusion from the ranks of officially approved Soviet artists left him laboring in enforced obscurity to realize his monumental and very public vision of art. But Berger's impassioned account goes well beyond the specific dilemma of the pre-glasnot Russian artist to illuminate the very meaning...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679737278
• ISBN13: 9780679737278
• Release Date: March 1998
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Berger's Insights on Russia via Neizvestny

This extended essay brings to light the otherwise obscure artist Ernst Neizvestny. Berger's gaze intensifies on the particular circumstances of Neizvestny to draw out broader tendencies also being traced in the book, such as Russian iconic art, Soviet revolutionary art and politics, and aspirations of art more generally:"[Neizvestny] is concerned with neither viscera no complexes. He is concerned with creating an image of man that celebrates his total nature."Berger's prose flashes with insight into both Russian art and Neizvestny's sculpture. He lays out his critique sensibly and presents the subject with enough balance between the social, biographical, and critical that the reader is consistently drawn forward along each of those perspectives. The prints - like Berger's words - are also well-chosen and provide a solid visual basis for the discussion at hand.Concerning the rant that closes the book: it is an anachronism largely because of its hopes for the Soviet Union. However, our discomfort at reading it may also betray our own cynicism about the truth that we face an "intolerable condition of inequality in the world".