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[THE PIONEERING MARXIST-SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY OF RUSSIAN ART FROM THE LATE 19TH TO THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY] Russkoye iskusstvo promyshlennogo kapitalizma [i.e. Russian Art of Industrial Capitalism]

Fedorov-Davydov, A.

Item #2552

Moscow: G.A.KH.N., 1929 (Tsentr. poligraf. shk. FZU im. t. Borshchevskogo "Mospoligraf"). 248 pp.: ill., portraits, charts. 23x15,7 cm. In original publisher’s constructivist wrappers. Rebacked in later paper, Soviet bookshop stamps on the rear wrapper, light wear, but otherwise in a very good condition.

Scarce. 1 of 2,500 copies. First and only edition. Text in Russian. 11th book in the series Istoriya i teoriya iskusstv: [v 12 vyp.] [i.e. History and Theory of Art: [in 12 issues]]. With numerous black and white reproductions of early Russian paintings.
A controversial and the earliest Marxist-sociological analysis of Russian art from the 1880s to the early 20th century, compiled by the Soviet art historian Alexei Fedorov-Davydov (1900–1969) in 1929. Earlier that year, Fedorov-Davydov was appointed head of the Department of New Russian Art at the Tretyakov Gallery, which sought to reorganize the museum’s presentation according to Marxist principles. These efforts culminated in the Experimental Comprehensive Marxist Exhibition, a radical attempt to apply sociological analysis to art. However, by 1933–1934, the approach was heavily criticized as a “vulgar sociological” method, and Fedorov-Davydov left his post, never again producing exhibition projects or texts as methodologically ambitious as his Russian Art of Industrial Capitalism.
The edition is divided into three sections, analyzing painting, sculptures, and architecture from the 1880s up to the revolution through the lens of Marxist sociology. As noted in the foreword, “most of the works discussed in this study are held in the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and the State Russian Museum in Leningrad.” From the first lines, the author mentions Peredvizhniki, an influential group of Russian realist artists, who formed an artists' cooperative in protest of academic restrictions. Fedorov-Davydov portrays their organization as a bourgeois commercial venture rather than a genuine stylistic movement. He argues that by the 1870s, the “concrete social preaching” of the Wanderers was replaced by “abstract psychologism,” and that “the rapid pace of industrial capitalism at the turn of the century fostered the depoliticization and social decline of art.”
In the following sections, the book becomes the first to examine the formal and stylistic characteristics of Russian modernism within the broader social and economic framework of industrial capitalism. Although Fedorov-Davydov does not use the term “modernism,” which was not yet widely adopted, he employs Marxist terminology to describe the formalist emancipation and growing autonomy of the arts. He discusses groups such as Jack of Diamonds, Target, and Donkey’s Tail, observing provocatively that “having passed through all stages of its development, painting committed suicide in Malevich’s Black Square.”
At the close of the book, Fedorov-Davydov presents the concept of stankovism—a synthesis of traditional easel painting with industrial and technological aesthetics. He argues that stankovism is a product of capitalist production and mechanized labor, representing both the formal liberation of art and its increasing separation from material social production.
Throughout the rest of the book, Fedorov-Davydov examines the evolution of formal and stylistic categories (space, volume, light, and color), showing how they mirror the rise of industrial capitalism, the mechanization of production, and the increasing predominance of easel painting. He emphasizes the bourgeois nature of artistic forms and argues that aesthetic developments are inseparable from the broader social and material context.
The edition includes about 70 black and white illustrations of early Russian paintings, showcasing early Russian paintings, architectural works (including communal houses in Moscow), and sculptures.

Price: $350.00