Description

B.U. Kashkin's circle created outsider art in various media, but especially painting, distributing it to the public during their Punk-Skomorokh perfromances. B.U. Kashkin encouraged amateur artists to experiment with public art.

Era

Perestroika

Date

1989

Annotation

This image by artist Antip Odov (the pseudonym of Vladiimir Bolotov), “Every Sunday at 3 PM at the Dam, the skomorokhi (jesters) will gift society pictures!” (1989) represents the communal, participatory nature of this radical artistic project, depicting B. U. Kashkin himself as a literally inverted “great leader” who is massively larger than the little people below him. In its stylization of hierarchy, the image recalls 1930s-era portrayals of Stalin and Lenin. In contrast to these somber and weighty images, B.U.Kashkin is shown upside-down and standing on his hands, unstable and ludicrous, above a crowd that is not reverential, but cavorting in joyful, individualistic dance. The artifact, made to be gifted to strangers, exemplifies the ephemeral materiality of Perestroika-era art consciously ignoring both the norms of Soviet art and the new market realities of the Post-Soviet period in the search for a renewed artistic community.

Geography: Place Of Origin

Sverdlovsk

Associated People

B. U. Kashkin and Shaburov, Aleksandr (Alexander)

Geography: Place Of Focus

Sverdlovsk

Bibliographic Reference

Shaburov, A. pub. in B.U. Kashskin (1938-2005): Life and Works of the Ural Punk-Skomorokh, ed. by Shaburov, Ekaterinsburg: Ural Government Center for Contemporary Art, 2015.