The man who returned from space to his apartment――An overview of the cosmos in Russian art of the past 30 years

The doyen of unofficial Soviet art, Ilya Kabakov, presented the installation “The Man who Flew Into Space from His Apartment” in his Moscow studio in 1984-5 (Fig 1). In Kabakov’s piece, space was an allegory of the outside, non-Soviet world, the world where the Soviet man emigrated to, overcoming the resistance of the Iron Curtain and imperial gravity. The installation was prophetic in several ways: it prefigured Kabakov’s own departure for the West and it foreshadowed the breakdown of the walls that divided the Soviet and the outside world. It also help launch the cosmos as a theme in Russian art in and of itself.

The Soviet Union collapsed the same year as the 30th anniversary of space flight, although with a lag of a few months. On November 30, 1991 an exhibition called “Mamka – Cosmos” (Mommy – Space) opened at Propeller, a gallery in Moscow. The exhibit was constructed around an esoteric concept of the cosmic mother, which logically extended to the concept of “Father Earth”. This carnivalesque  juxtaposition already displayed the postmodern irony that would come to define the following years—the project was quite literally animated by that energy. Many important artists took part in the show, including Y. Leiderman, P. Pepperstein, S. Anufriev, I. Kitup, D. Gutov, P. Aksenov, K. Bokhorov, I. Bury, A. Doroshenko, V. Dubossarsky, K. Zvezdochetov, V. Koshlyakov, B. Matrosov, A. Savko, V. Samoilova, A. Sigutin, A. Sobolev, A. Ter-Oganian, D. I. Topolsky, D. Filippov, V. Fedorov, V. Fishkin, I. Chatskin, and M. Chuikova.

Y. Leiderman, P. Pepperstein and S. Anufriev, from the Medical Hermeneutics group, along with Kitup and Gutov, worked together to create a catalog of the same name, which serves as a window onto the organic artistic process of the pre-digital era (Fig. 2). The text of the catalog pursued revisionist aims in keeping with the changing of eras underway in those years: in their writing, the artists try to make sense of historical time through the theme of space. By contrast, the visual art published in the catalog can safely be classified as pop art of the particular Moscow perestroika-era variety, a movement fueled by gloomy chthonic forces, the same forces that would later feed into the “Russian poor” trend at the beginning of the new millennium. Indeed, at a legendary exhibition called “Russian Poor” in 2008, the theme of space sounded again, this time in the immortal creation of Alexey Kallima, who assembled out of “Soyuz-Apollo” cigarettes a nostalgic, olfactory, almost Proustian image, close to the heart of every Soviet smoker (Fig.3).

For the first two decades after perestroika, Russian culture experienced unprecedented growth. Capitalism drove everyone crazy, like a narcotic intoxication. At the first post-Soviet raves, the artist Andrei Bartenev established the theme of the space carnival, which his many students, including Sasha Frolova and Roman Yermakov, later developed. Bartenev’s spectacular—or as they now call it, instagramable—art is a rare example of criticism of the world order without depressing deconstruction and hysterical attacks to tear everything down all the way to the foundations. And yet, as a teacher, his influence is equal to the revolutionary artists of the first Russian avant-garde, such as Malevich, Chagall, Kandinsky. In his art the bright future is already here, and everyone can take part in the celebration of freedom of expression.

Many of the same Soviet-era nonconformist artists who helped establish the theme of space in Russian art continued to feature the cosmos in their work long after the Soviet Union collapsed. Take the Collective Actions group, which was created in 1976 by Andrei Monastyrsky and included artists such as Georgy Kizevalter, Igor Makarevich, Elena Elagina, Nikita Alekseev, and Nikolai Panitkov. In 2004, some members of the group held an action called “Flight to Saturn” (Fig.5). Participants went to a snowy field outside Moscow. They placed bread with portraits of scientists atop a printed diagram from one of Monastyrsky’s books of poems. An audio recording of G. Harrison’s story “Pressure” played as they carried out these movements.

The seemingly absurd interactions of the Collective Actions group with the bottomless Soviet geography are similar to the strange and at times inexplicable interactions of humanity with extraterrestrial space, like NASA sending Lego figurines to Jupiter. The parallel between Russia’s impenetrable darkness and cold with the darkness of the cosmos became a plot device for the writer Viktor Pelevin in his short novel “Omon Ra” (1992).

In Russian, the cosmos has particular connotations related to a philosophical creed that began in the nineteenth century. The movement united famous Russian and Soviet scientists and researchers, philosophers, writers, mystics, poets, and artists under the aegis of cosmos and immortality, later earning the name “cosmism”. The founder of this movement, which continues in different forms to this day, was Nikolai Fedorov (1829-1903). At the core of the philosophy of cosmism is the problem of immortality. Overcoming the physical limitations of the human body, the cosmists thought, would open up the possibility of traveling to different universes, regardless of time and distance. A contemporary of Marx (1818-1883) and Engels (1820-1895), Fedorov saw the root of evil not in private property, but in death itself. At the same time, he shared their atheism, which denied the existence of God or any universal reason, and thus placed upon man the responsibility for finding a solution to death and a means of resurrecting those who have already died. Just as humanity now faces the task of stopping climate change and bloody wars, cosmism invited the most powerful minds of the time to rally to the threat of the most ancient enemy, death.  They saw the exploration of space and the settling of accessible exoplanets as the solution to the population growth that would result from transcending death.

Fedorov’s ideas resonated in the works of such writers as Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and also had a direct influence on the development of the space industry in the Soviet Union. Some evidence suggests that Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a prominent scientist and esoteric cosmist who played a key role in the Soviet space program, was a disciple of Nikolai Fedorov.

Both Collective Actions and the Medical Hermeneutics groups engaged with the problem of cosmism in their works. By the time of the Mamka—Cosmos exhibit, cosmism had fallen out of fashion. Pavel Pepperstein, in his contribution to the show, presents cosmism as something vulgar. Yet as is often the case, the next generation undertook a revival of the cosmic ideas. In 2010, students of the Rodchenko School, including Mikhail Maximov, Peter Laden, and Anastasia Dergacheva, formed the art association “Up” to listening to the graves for Maximov’s project «Necrophonia». The group «Up» also came to include the artists Daniil and Lyudmila Zinchenko, Dmitry Venkov, Nikita Pavlov, Antonina Baever, Victoria Chupakhina, Grigory Selsky, and Mikhail Zaikanov.

The group’s approach consists of three components: following the ideas of cosmism and building a temple of cosmism as a universal platform for the interaction of culture and science. Not surprisingly, the artists worked mainly in the genre of video art, as well as in happenings, which also exist in the archive as video documentation. The project “Russia Up!” (2010, 15 min.) features Daniil Zinchenko’s lyrical hero, who climbs up a birch tree and tries to take off for space, though he lacks any of the equipment needed to fly. Peter Laden’s “Yu” video plays on the cosmos as gospel, with Yuri Gagarin as a Christ-like figure in the Holy Land. Antonina Baever and Dmitri Venkov traveled in 2013 to India and the United States in search of the temple of cosmism, which allowed Moscow audiences to learn about the architecture and economic structure of the Indian commune of Auroville [Like the Sun, 2013, 60 min. Time Shall Be No More Project https://www.dimitrivenkov.com/time-shall-be-no-more].

The work the group of media artists “Up” seems to have spilled over the edge of Russian cosmism as such. A peculiar culmination of the work of the association “Up” was Daniil Zinchenko’s film “Elixir”, which was admitted to the out-of-competition screening of the prestigious Berlin Film Festival in 2016.

Almost in parallel to ”Up” (2010), the leftist artist Arseny Zhilyaev began his international career as a cosmist, coming to the philosophy of immortality through researching avant-garde museology. Zhilyaev draws attention to the fact that cosmism in Fedorov’s original version was devoid of the mystical connotations that the philosophy received in the early 20th century, and especially in the 1980s. According to contemporary cosmists, the struggle against death, as well as the exploration of space, are achievable tasks. In Zhilyaev’s work, cosmism emerges as a logical continuation of utopian, revolutionary leftist ideas.

At the same time, Zhilyaev provides an important definition for understanding this trend in a global context: “Cosmism can be compared with the new futurisms of the late 20th and early 21st centuries: afro-futurism, ethno-futurism, gulf futurism.” Zhilyaev and the Russian-American artist Anton Vidokle set up the “Cosmos Institute”, dedicated to the study of cosmism (https://cosmos.art).

Vidokle himself creates visually impeccable video manifestos with extended quotations from Fedorov. In 2019, he made a film in Japan (and Ukraine). In “Inhabitants of Space”, the artist draws a parallel between Soviet (Ukrainian) and Japanese concrete architecture. Both are presented as echoes of cosmic ideas, while the postwar Japanese butoh dance is compared plastically to the medieval danse macabre. These global parallels are filled with a special meaning, thanks to the smooth rhythm of the resurrection ritual that the video becomes.

Another artist who requires no introduction for the Japanese viewer is Leonid Tishkov. His art is one endless interaction with the moon. For Tishkov,  the cosmos is the cradle of poetry.

Immortality, ecumenism and poetry are all important for understanding the concept of space in contemporary Russian art. The representation of space exploration itself is equally important. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the space industry, like much of Russian industry, found itself in crisis. Only international projects helped keep space travel going. As the current Russian leadership has become ever more isolationist and the prospects for development have faded, so too has the space program stagnated. Artists have reflected on these political changes in their work too, once again through the theme of the cosmos. One witty response to both the return of a Soviet-style totalitarian regime and the hopeless state of the Russian space industry was this another prophetic painting:

Uliana Dobrova. May, 2022

Used literature

1. Mamka-Cosmos. Moscow: Propeller, 1991. [rus] 
2. Davy M.M. Le symbole de la mère cosmique au XIIeme siècle occidental. P. 371-380
3. Mamka-cosmos. Invitation. 30.11.1991. The Russian Art Archive Network (RAAN).  Inv. APF.PB-1991-E77 [rus]
https://russianartarchive.net/en/catalogue/document/E77
4. Farewell, modernist aura! // Artguide 06.09.2013.
https://artguide.com/en/posts/413-proshchai-aura
5. Institute of Cosmos https://cosmos.art
6. Artchive: Evolution of Spirit [rus]
https://artchive.ru/encyclopedia/4460~Cosmism?ysclid=l14efw7aen
7. Boris Groys. Russian cosmism // The Art Newspaper Russia. 17.07.2015 [rus]
https://www.theartnewspaper.ru/posts/1886/
8. Sergey Guskov. Cosmisms Big and Small [rus]
http://moscowartmagazine.com/issue/39/article/792
9. Marina Simakova. No Man’s Space: On Russian Cosmism.// E-flux. June, 2016. Issue #74
https://www.e-flux.com/journal/74/59823/no-man-s-space-on-russian-cosmism/
10. Lee Cavendish. Eight of the stranger things sent into space // All about space Magazine.  Feb. 14, 2020.
https://www.space.com/strangest-things-sent-into-space.html