IZO

Russia-China

For Russian readers, there is an interesting dissertation by Chen Chzhen Vei, entitled 20th Century Chinese Realist Painting, presented at the Repin Institute in 2006, which explores the links between Chinese and Russian art. Download the synopsis here (pdf). Via Maria Roguleva.

News round-up

More on the North Attleboro Yakovlev, including an image (pdf). The Times speculates (pdf) that Boris Berezovsky was bidding at Sotheby's modern sale on Monday night. An interview (pdf) with Mike Alewitz, an artist inspired by Soviet revolutionary art, who is giving a lecture, Agitprop: Street Art of the Revolution, today at 2 pm, at the Central Connecticut State University: Samuel S. T. Chen Fine Arts Center. The  exhibition Nostalgic Technologies, by Svetlana Boym, has its opening reception at the Transit Gallery, Cambridge MA, on Wednesday, February 21.

New Deal, bad deal

The Art Newspaper reports that works created under US New Deal programmes in the thirties are being systematically sequestered by the US government. When will a curator mount the show that contrasts and conmpares American and Soviet art at this time?

Juche Realism

An article in openDemocracy describes the art of North Korea, a successor in some respects to Stalinist and Maoist Socialist Realism. Apparently it is now termed Juche Realism, Juche being Kim-Il-Song's guiding national idea. Below, paintings in the museum in Pyongyang, an image from Jane Portal's slide-show: it does of course look just like a Soviet museum circa 1950.

Mao not for sale

Gif.ru reports (in Russian) that the proposed sale in Beijing of a historic image of Mao Zedong will not now go ahead: a private treaty sale is being negotiated.

Mao for sale

Gif.ru reports (in Russian) that an important early portrait of Mao Zedong will soon be auctioned in Beijing. According to the report, the portrait in question was the prototype for numerous copies and reproductions and also for Andy Warhol's image of Mao. Predicted price: $120,000.