Historiemåleri och bilder av vardag : Tatjana Nazarenkos konstnärskap i 1970-talets Sovjet
This thesis focuses on the Soviet painter Tatyana Nazarenko and her position as an influential artist in the Soviet Union of the 1970’s, a decade when Nazarenko depicted everyday life and events from Russian history. The main purpose of this thesis is to shed light upon the importance of especially these motifs in their historical, political and aesthetic context. In this way, the thesis is a study of the artist’s work in a contextual perspective. In order to understand the general conditions for Soviet Art in the 1970´s, and Tatyana Nazarenko´s picture world, the official State-regulated Art is given attention, as Socialist Realism came to be the normative frame of reference for artistic life and the individual artists. Artistic life in the Soviet Union was well regulated and official Art dominated from the early 1930´s until the collapse of the Soviet Union, while especially during the 1970´s, became subjected to so-called unofficial Art, also known as underground. The unofficial, as well as the official Art, became important for Tatyana Nazarenko, for, while not belonging to either side, she came to have a constant relationship with them. She belonged, however, to a small art circle, balancing between the official direction and criticism of the system, later known as permitted. This thesis clarifies the relationship between what is defined as official, permitted and unofficial Art. In exposing her aesthetic strategies, it is shown in what way she deviates from the official and how far the artist could extend the permitted limitations. On the question of her aesthetic strategies a further question arises of how an awareness of history is expressed in motif and form. Finally, the importance of women’s experience in her picture world is discussed. Picture material in this thesis is composed partly of some thirty works from Tatyana Nazarenko´s own production and partly of works with a contextualized and comparative function, encompassing some fifty works taken from Soviet Art History. A few examples from Western Art History constitute further comparative material. The motifs consist mainly of depictions of historical events and pictures of everyday life i.e. genre pictures.