Soviet Dissident Artists: Interviews After Perestroika

The 47 artists interviewed here, who broke with the official style of Soviet socialist realism, outspokenly discuss their harassment by artists' unions and the KGB, their sense of isolation and their exposure to Western avant-garde art. Their freewheeling work, ranging from neo-expressionist to conceptualist, constitutes an oasis of authenticity within the conformity of the Soviet system. All the paintings and sculptures reproduced in the 27 color and 18 b&w plates are in the collection of nonconformist Soviet art at Rutgers University's Zimmerli Art Museum. This collection was recently donated by Norton Dodge (also interviewed here), an American economist and Sovietologist who, beginning in the early 1960s, smuggled 10,000 works by dissident artists out of the U.S.S.R. Renee Baigell is a student of comparative literature; Matthew Baigell is a Rutgers art history professor. (Dec.)