If you wanted to create impactful art challenging the status quo in a repressive country, you’d think you would have to go “underground.”

Indeed, that’s exactly where a new, alternative art form called Moscow Conceptualism arose in the late Soviet era – operating in secrecy, away from viewers, critics, and especially those in power. 

But Russian professor Mary Nicholas says that a subset of Moscow artists of the time – who she considers among the most influential -- challenged the idea they should be hidden -- and with great impact. 

For Nicholas, Exhibit A is a street procession in 1978, where a small group of conceptual artists called The Nest carried a red banner down a Moscow street. 

“They painted a banner that looked like it might be a official banner that should have a Soviet slogan on it -- like ‘Onward to the victory of communism!’ —and instead they borrowed an image from American Abstract Expressionist Franz Klein, painted it on the banner, and walked down the street, symbolizing that art is for all of us so we should engage with it,” says Nicholas. 

The event – called “Art to the Masses” -- is pictured on the cover of Nicholas’ new book, Moscow Conceptualism, 1975-1985: Words, Deeds, Legacies. 

The book takes the study of Moscow Conceptualism to a place where no one has gone before. It is not just a primer on the topic, but an argument that previous analyses of the movement by art historians are incomplete because they neglect the important contributions of a younger generation of conceptual artists in Moscow.

“Instead of being insular and inward looking and contemplative to a fault, the younger artists were more open, and they were funny. They used humor as a tool – almost as a weapon. It was a much more grounded, more democratic process of making art,” says Nicholas. “These people had this idea that art was powerful when it was open and unscripted and taking place in an uncontrolled environment.” 

Nicholas, who is in her 35th year at Lehigh, knew a lot of writers and artists from many years of studying and working in Russia, starting as a college student in the 1980s. They remain “dear friends” so Nicholas had easy access to information. But moving “Moscow Conceptualism” from idea to print was a difficult journey.

“This has been a real challenge in part because I was arguing against the standard approach to Moscow Conceptualism,” she says. “I had to struggle to get my point of view heard. I spent at least a decade trying to publish works in smaller venues and going regularly to scholarly conferences to explain why my approach was valid. I think I’ve succeeded.”

To understand Nicholas’ challenge, it’s important to understand the history of Moscow Conceptualism. “Official” Socialist Realist art in the Soviet Union was art by people with permission to be artists, a mandated style that promoted a scripted image of the state. “You showed happy workers. They might be struggling because it’s hard to build a factory, but you had to show that they were going to be successful,” says Nicholas. “It was like Normal Rockwell meets Soviet ideology.”

Moscow Conceptualism – created by “unofficial” artists who didn’t always have access to materials or studios or exhibit spaces – was a challenge to that scripted narrative.  Many in the earliest generation of Moscow Conceptualists worked as artists for the state by day – painting slogans or doing commissions. At night in their underground world, and with a very small group of trusted friends, they created and discussed a different kind of art. 

Those artists, Nicholas says, “set themselves up as Don Quixote figures in the face of the all-powerful state.”

“The people fighting for the right to express themselves in direct conflict with the Soviet state were brave individuals. But by accepting that the state was the enemy, they condemned themselves to always losing. The state can arrest you or send you to a psychiatric institution or control whether you keep your job and have access to paint.”

The group of artists Nicholas documents refused to accept the futility of that common approach to unofficial art. “Liberating yourself from the notion that you’re engaged in a battle with the state by bringing art into daily life in a more consistent way can be freeing for people trapped in autocratic regimes,” says Nicholas. 

The younger group of conceptualists was more knowledgeable about Western art and felt that art needed to be in the open for all to engage with. Artists didn’t need to be part of an exclusive club to talk about art or understand it. In a bold way, the group worked within the system while at the same time rebelling against it. 

Many of the younger artists made their living in jobs such as night watchmen or janitors to have more time for their art and more ability to create art without ideological pressure.

Nicholas tells the story of The Nest, a group which rejected the elitist notion of art for art’s sake and favored a more open, democratic dialogue about everyday concerns.  The group got its name from an interactive piece – “Hatching a Spirit” – it presented in an unprecedented exhibit of unofficial artists in Moscow’s main exhibition hall in 1975. Never before had unofficial art been displayed in an official venue.

This exhibit was a state sanctioned response to the public relations debacle of the previous year, when the government destroyed works in an unsanctioned outdoor exhibit of unofficial art by dousing the display with water cannons, running over it with trucks and setting works on fire. The debacle – which became known as the Bulldozer show – was widely criticized and received headlines in the West.

The Nest’s performance piece stood out even in the exhibit’s sea of nonconformity. The artists wove a nest from branches and leaves and sat in it, contemplating art and inviting others to join them. People did, and a spirit of open communication was fostered. “It was weird, but for this younger generation it was transformative,” says Nicholas. 

The same spirit applied to the “Art to the Masses” event of 1978. Nicholas writes that it “played consciously on the convention of orthodox Soviet texts in its literal interpretation of the slogan ‘Art Belongs to the People,’ while simultaneously allowing the artists to resituate the sign for their own purposes. By appropriating Kline’s work and hoisting it in public, the artists insist on the right to choose their own terms of communication.”

The Nest’s work was provocative. It attempted to reclaim space otherwise denied them and to challenge state control of artistic expression. 

“Art historians often overlook The Nest, yet the group was the tipping point of Moscow Conceptualism, moving late Soviet unofficial art definitively from modernism to postmodernism,” says Nicholas. “When Gorbachev came to power and introduced concepts of openness and rebuilding, these Moscow conceptualists felt they were vindicated.”

Nicholas is grateful for having had the chance to experience Moscow Conceptualism in its early phase in the underground. “It turned out by luck, by fate, I was in the right place at the right time,” she says.

She says the story of these artists offers lessons for those struggling today in repressive countries around the world.

“When you are caught in a regime that is trying to repress your ability to think and behave and live, you can sometimes make more progress by freeing yourself creatively. Imagining a different freedom can be more liberating than trying to go head on against a power that is always going to overmatch you. It’s not hard for an autocratic state to stalk the individual; it’s hard to stop individuals who imagine themselves free of those constraints.”