Victor Arnautoff and the politics of art / Robert W. Cherny.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cherny, Robert W., author.

Series:

Working class in American history

The working class in American history

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Arnautoff, Victor Michail, 1896-1979.

Arnautoff, Victor Michail.

Arnautoff, Victor Michail, 1896-1979--Criticism and interpretation.

Artists--United States--Biography.

Artists.

Art--Political aspects.

History.

Russian American artists.

Criticism and interpretation.

United States.

Russian American artists--United States--Biography.

Art--Political aspects--United States--History--20th century.

Art.

Art and society--United States--History--20th century.

Art and society.

Genre:

Biographies.

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

History.

Physical Description:

xx, 312 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2017]

Summary:

A leading West Coast modernist, Victor Arnautoff reigned as San Francisco's leading mural painter during the New Deal era. Yet that was only part of an astonishing life journey from Tsarist officer to leftist painter that reflected a century of tumult in politics and art. Robert W. Cherny's masterful biography of Arnautoff braids the artist's work with his increasingly leftist politics and the tenor of his times. Delving into sources on Russian émigrés and San Francisco's arts communities, Cherny traces Arnautoff's life from refugee art student and assistant to Diego Rivera to prominence in the New Deal's art projects and a faculty position at Stanford University. As Arnautoff's politics moved left, he often incorporated working people and people of color into his treatment of the American past and present. In the 1950s, however, his participation in leftist organizations and a highly critical cartoon of Richard Nixon landed him before the House Un-American Activities Committee and led to calls for his dismissal from Stanford. Arnautoff eventually departed America, a refugee of another kind, now fleeing personal loss and the disintegration of the left-labor culture that had nurtured him, before resuming his artistic career in the Soviet Union that he had fought in his youth to destroy. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Childhood in a Troubled Land, 1896-1914 1

2 "The Ineptitude of Command," 1915-1921 11

3 Wandering Russians, 1921-1925 34

4 "The Best Pupil in the Class," 1925-1929 43

5 "Under Rivera's Guidance," 1929-1931 59

6 "Perhaps the Most Gifted of the Local Muralists," 1931-1935 75

7 King of Parilia, 1935-1941 106

8 Art, Politics, and War, 1941-1945 134

9 DETCOM and COMSAB, 1945 1953 149

10 "An Unwanted Guest in America" 1953-1961 176

11 "I Am Home," 1962-1979 204.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780252040788

0252040783

9780252082306

0252082303

OCLC:

956633848