Boris Groys
Encyclopedia
Boris Efimovich Groys is an art critic, media theorist, and philosopher. He is currently a Global Distinguished Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at New York University
and Senior Research Fellow at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design
in Karlsruhe
, Germany. He has been a professor of Aesthetics
, Art History
, and Media Theory at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design
/Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe and an internationally acclaimed Professor at a number of universities in the United States and Europe, including the University of Pennsylvania
, the University of Southern California
and the Courtauld Institute of Art
London.
. From 1976-1981 he served as a research fellow at the Institute of Structural and Applied Linguistics
at the University of Moscow. In 1981 he emigrated from the USSR to the Federal Republic of Germany, where he pursued various scholarships. He earned a Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Münster
, Germany.
During his time in the Soviet Union, Groys participated in the unofficial cultural scenes of Moscow and Leningrad, publishing in “37,” “Chasy,” and other samizdat
magazines. In 1979 he published the essay “Moscow Romantic Conceptualism” in the art magazine A-YA
, in which he coined the term applied to the art movement “Moscow Conceptualism
.”
Groys is a pioneering theorist in reflection on socialist art and postmodern art
, without evaluating either. Western thinkers such as Clement Greenberg
had criticized socialist art, especially socialist realism
, for being mass art and made it an aesthetic taboo. Groys re-evaluated socialist art production, challenging the norms of aesthetics by pushing a thesis based on Walter Benjamin
in the very interpretation of politics, claiming that modernism
had survived in the "total artwork" (Gesamtkunstwerk
) of Stalinism
. This thesis is charged with having pushed a new generation of thinkers into re-evaluating the Socialist aesthetic heritage (among others Miško Šuvaković, Marina Gržinić, and Ana Peraica) recognized as the discourse of post-socialist art
.
Groys is a member of the Association Internationale des Critiques d'Art
(AICAO), and has served as a fellow of numerous institutions including International Research Center for Cultural Studies (IFK) in Vienna, Austria, Harvard University Art Museum, and the University of Pittsburg
. In 2001 he served as Director of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. From 2003 to 2004 he headed the research program Post-Communist Condition in cooperation with Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe
and the Federal Cultural Foundation of Germany.
Groys has also published Thinking in Loop: Three Videos on Iconoclasm, Ritual and Immortality (DVD, 2008). The videos were produced between 2002 and 2007. Each of these videos combines a theoretical text written and spoken by the author with film footage fragments taken from different movies and film documentations.
He co-curated the exhibition Medium Religion with Peter Weibel
at the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe
, (2009 Karlsruhe, Germany). Groys will be the curator of the Russian Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale 2011.
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
and Senior Research Fellow at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design
Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design
The Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe is a Germany university founded in 1992 by Professor Heinrich Klotz, who also founded its sister institution, the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe...
in Karlsruhe
Karlsruhe
The City of Karlsruhe is a city in the southwest of Germany, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, located near the French-German border.Karlsruhe was founded in 1715 as Karlsruhe Palace, when Germany was a series of principalities and city states...
, Germany. He has been a professor of Aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
, Art History
Art history
Art history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and style...
, and Media Theory at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design
Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design
The Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe is a Germany university founded in 1992 by Professor Heinrich Klotz, who also founded its sister institution, the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe...
/Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe and an internationally acclaimed Professor at a number of universities in the United States and Europe, including the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
, the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
and the Courtauld Institute of Art
Courtauld Institute of Art
The Courtauld Institute of Art is a self-governing college of the University of London specialising in the study of the history of art. The Courtauld is one of the premier centres for the teaching of art history in the world; it was the only History of Art department in the UK to be awarded a top...
London.
Biography
Groys attended high school in Leningrad. From 1965–1971 he studied mathematical logic at the University of Leningrad, subsequently working as a research fellow at various scientific institutes in LeningradLeningrad
Leningrad is the former name of Saint Petersburg, Russia.Leningrad may also refer to:- Places :* Leningrad Oblast, a federal subject of Russia, around Saint Petersburg* Leningrad, Tajikistan, capital of Muminobod district in Khatlon Province...
. From 1976-1981 he served as a research fellow at the Institute of Structural and Applied Linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
at the University of Moscow. In 1981 he emigrated from the USSR to the Federal Republic of Germany, where he pursued various scholarships. He earned a Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Münster
University of Münster
The University of Münster is a public university located in the city of Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. The WWU is part of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, a society of Germany's leading research universities...
, Germany.
During his time in the Soviet Union, Groys participated in the unofficial cultural scenes of Moscow and Leningrad, publishing in “37,” “Chasy,” and other samizdat
Samizdat
Samizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader...
magazines. In 1979 he published the essay “Moscow Romantic Conceptualism” in the art magazine A-YA
A-YA
A-YA , Cyrillic:«a-Я» — журнал неофициального русского искусства , was an underground Russian art revue...
, in which he coined the term applied to the art movement “Moscow Conceptualism
Moscow Conceptualists
The Moscow Conceptualist, or Russian Conceptualist, movement began with the Sots art of Komar and Melamid in the early 1970s, and continued as a trend in Russian art into the 1980s...
.”
Groys is a pioneering theorist in reflection on socialist art and postmodern art
Postmodern art
Postmodern art is a term used to describe an art movement which was thought to be in contradiction to some aspect of modernism, or to have emerged or developed in its aftermath...
, without evaluating either. Western thinkers such as Clement Greenberg
Clement Greenberg
Clement Greenberg was an American essayist known mainly as an influential visual art critic closely associated with American Modern art of the mid-20th century...
had criticized socialist art, especially socialist realism
Socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
, for being mass art and made it an aesthetic taboo. Groys re-evaluated socialist art production, challenging the norms of aesthetics by pushing a thesis based on Walter Benjamin
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German-Jewish intellectual, who functioned variously as a literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist...
in the very interpretation of politics, claiming that modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
had survived in the "total artwork" (Gesamtkunstwerk
Gesamtkunstwerk
A Gesamtkunstwerk is a work of art that makes use of all or many art forms or strives to do so...
) of Stalinism
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
. This thesis is charged with having pushed a new generation of thinkers into re-evaluating the Socialist aesthetic heritage (among others Miško Šuvaković, Marina Gržinić, and Ana Peraica) recognized as the discourse of post-socialist art
Post-socialist art
Post-socialist art is a term used in analysis of art arriving from post-socialist countries taken as different in their nature from Western, Postmodern art.Crucial for such art is that:...
.
Groys is a member of the Association Internationale des Critiques d'Art
International Association of Art Critics
The International Association of Art Critics was founded in 1950 to revitalize critical discourse, which suffered under Fascism during World War II. AICA was initially affiliated with UNESCO as a non-governmental organization...
(AICAO), and has served as a fellow of numerous institutions including International Research Center for Cultural Studies (IFK) in Vienna, Austria, Harvard University Art Museum, and the University of Pittsburg
University of Pittsburgh
The University of Pittsburgh, commonly referred to as Pitt, is a state-related research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787 on what was then the American frontier, Pitt is one of the oldest continuously chartered institutions of...
. In 2001 he served as Director of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. From 2003 to 2004 he headed the research program Post-Communist Condition in cooperation with Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe
Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe
The Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe in Karlsruhe, Germany is an interdisciplinary art museum and research institution focusing on new media....
and the Federal Cultural Foundation of Germany.
Selected publications
Groys has written over 150 articles on modern and contemporary art and Russian art and intellectual history in several languages. His books include- The Communist Postscript (2010)
- History Becomes Form: Moscow Conceptualism (2010)
- Going Public (2010)
- Art Power (2008)
- The Total Enlightenment: Conceptual Art in Moscow 1960-1990 (2008)
- Ilya KabakovIlya KabakovIlya Kabakov, Russian Илья́ Ио́сифович Кабако́в , is a Russian-American conceptual artist of Jewish descent, born in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine. He worked for thirty years in Moscow, from the 1950s until the late 1980s. He now lives and works on Long Island...
: The Man Who Flew into Space from His Apartment (2006) - Dream Factory Communism (2004)
- The Total Art of Stalinism (1992).
Groys has also published Thinking in Loop: Three Videos on Iconoclasm, Ritual and Immortality (DVD, 2008). The videos were produced between 2002 and 2007. Each of these videos combines a theoretical text written and spoken by the author with film footage fragments taken from different movies and film documentations.
Curatorial activities
Groys has curated numerous exhibitions, including- Fluchtpunkt Moskau at Ludwig Forum (1994 Aachen, Germany)
- Dream Factory Communism at the Schirn GallerySchirn Kunsthalle FrankfurtThe Schirn Kunsthalle is Frankfurt's active exhibition space located in the heart of the old city next to the Dom , exhibiting both modern and contemporary art. Exhibitions in recent years included retrospectives of Wassily Kandinsky, Marc Chagall, Frida Kahlo, Alberto Giacometti, Bill Viola, and...
(2003-2004 Frankfurt, Germany) - Privatizations at the KW Institute of Contemporary Art (2004 Berlin, Germany)
- Total Enlightenment: Conceptual Art in Moscow 1960–1990 (2008-2009 at Kunsthalle SchirnSchirn Kunsthalle FrankfurtThe Schirn Kunsthalle is Frankfurt's active exhibition space located in the heart of the old city next to the Dom , exhibiting both modern and contemporary art. Exhibitions in recent years included retrospectives of Wassily Kandinsky, Marc Chagall, Frida Kahlo, Alberto Giacometti, Bill Viola, and...
in Frankfurt, Germany, and Fondacion March in Madrid, Spain).
He co-curated the exhibition Medium Religion with Peter Weibel
Peter Weibel
Peter Weibel is an artist, curator and theoretician.Raised in Upper Austria he started to study French and cinematography in Paris...
at the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe
Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe
The Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe in Karlsruhe, Germany is an interdisciplinary art museum and research institution focusing on new media....
, (2009 Karlsruhe, Germany). Groys will be the curator of the Russian Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale 2011.
External links
Research and projects
- Boris Groys at Former West by BAK Utrecht
- Boris Groys at Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe
- page HfG Karlsruhe
- The Postcommunist Condition Project
- Symposium "Revisiting Conceptual Art" at Stella Art Foundation
- list of available books and essays by Groys, 2010
- announcement Sternberg Press/e-flux
- Stella art foundation facebookpage
- stella art foundation group