I gratefully acknowledge the thoughtful and useful comments of the editors of Slavic Review and several anonymous readers.

1. Albert's comments were part of a symposium on Moscow conceptualism held at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts on March 13,2012, and I am grateful to the artist for supplying a copy of his remarks. Here and throughout, I have used accepted English spellings of the artists’ names, wherever established. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.

2. Zakharov, Vadim, “Moskovskii kontseptualizm: Vzgliad iznutri,” in Titov, German, ed., Kh.D.K. Al'manakh, no. 1 (Vologda, 2011), 11.Google Scholar The Sotheby auction in 1988, billed as the “first international art auction in Moscow since the Bolshevik revolution,” galvanized Moscow's unofficial art world. Howell Raines, “Soviet to Hold Art Auction in Pact with Sotheby's,” New York Times, February 27, 1988, at http://www.nytimes.com/1988/02/27/arts/soviet-to-hold-art-auction-in-pact-with-sotheby-s.html (last accessed December 4, 2015). Andrew Solomon's journalistic account of the Sotheby event in his study The Irony Tower: Soviet Artists in a Time ofGlasnost (New York, 1991) gives a sense of its importance at the time. As Zakharov's frustrated comments in 2010 suggest, serious appraisal of the artists would take longer than their inclusion in the western art economy did. Critical reception has improved since that auction, but as Albert's comments in Finland in 2012 make clear, received opinion about Moscow conceptualism can narrow, rather than expand, understanding of the movement.

3. This more recent definition of conceptualism—no longer “romantic“—comes from Boris Groys, “Communist Conceptual Art,” in Boris Groys, Max Hollein, and Manuel Fontan del Junco, eds., Total Enlightenment: Conceptual Art in Moscow, 1960-1990 (Frankfurt, 2008), 30. Groys's early article “Moscow Romantic Conceptualism” first gained wide attention when it appeared in the alternative publication A-Ia, no. 1 (1979) 3-11. It is reprinted in Boris Grois, Utopiia i obmen: Stil Stalin. 0 novom. Stat'i (Moscow, 1993), 260-74. Another reevaluation can be found in Boris Groys, “Moscow Conceptualism Twenty-Five Years Later,” in Irwin (group), ed., East Art Map: Contemporary Art and Eastern Europe (London, 2006), 408.

4. The identification of first and second generations is problematic, since certain “second-generation” artists such as those in the Nest group (Gnezdo, made up of Donskoi, Roshal', and Skersis) began exhibiting before some in the “first generation.” Nevertheless, the generational divisions, based primarily on the artists’ years of birth, are a common shorthand in scholarship on Moscow conceptualism, and I retain them here.

5. See, for example, Jesse, Matthew Jackson's study The Experimental Group: Ilya Kabakov, Moscow Conceptualism, Soviet Avant-Gardes (Chicago, 2010).Google Scholar Art historian Terry Smith faults Jackson's “otherwise excellent survey” for its uncritical acceptance of the term Moscow conceptualism. Terry Smith, “One and Three Ideas: Conceptualism before, during, and after Conceptual Art,” e-flux, no. 29 (November 2011), at http://www.e-flux.com/journal/one-and-three-ideas-conceptualism-before-during-and-after-conceptual-art/ (last accessed November 5,2015); and in Groys, Boris, ed., Moscow Symposium: Conceptualism Revisited (Berlin, 2012), 63.Google Scholar Kabakov's work fits traditional descriptions of conceptualism imperfectly, and critic Andrei Kovalev comments on the resulting critical tautology, noting that Kabakov is not a conceptualist “in the true sense of the word,” yet he “is the founding father of the movement, so he has to be defined as the ‘conceptualist.'” Kovalev, quoted in Konstantin Akinsha, “Between Lent and Carnival: Moscow Conceptualism and Sots Art (Differences, Similarities, Interconnections): A Series of Interviews,” in Alia Rosenfeld, ed., Moscow Conceptualism in Context (Munich, 2011), 28. Monastyrski was featured at the Venice Biennale and a major retrospective exhibit in Moscow in 2011. Yelena Kalinsky's impressive selection of documents by Collective Actions helped create interest in the group and Monastyrski's leading role in it. Kalinsky, Yelena, ed., Collective Actions: Audience Recollections from the First Five Years, 1976-1981 (Chicago, 2012).Google Scholar Octavian Esanu attempts an updated map of Moscow conceptualism in his intriguing study Transition in Post-Soviet Art: The Collective Actions Group before and after 1989 (Budapest, 2013), but his focus is also on Monastyrski and the artists around him.

6. Bartelik, Marek, “The Banner without a Slogan: Definitions and Sources of Moscow Conceptualism,” in Rosenfeld, , ed., Moscow Conceptualism in Context, 16.Google Scholar

7. Roberts, John, “Conceptual Art and Imageless Truth,” in Corris, Michael, ed., Conceptual Art: Theory, Myth, and Practice (Cambridge, Eng., 2004), 305 Google Scholar

8. Albert's comments were part of a presentation titled “Word and Image” that he gave at the National Center for Contemporary Arts: “Zaiavlennaia tema ‘Slovo i izobrazhenie'… menia nikogda v zhizni ne interesovala, ni otnoshenie mezhdu slovom i izobrazheniem, ni slovo kak takovoe ni izobrazhenie kak takovoe.” A video recording of the talk was posted on Theory and Practice, at http://theoryandpractice.ru/videos/443-slovo-i-izobrazhenie (accessed July 16,2012; no longer available).

9. In his study of western conceptual art, Charles Harrison identifies three broad categories of writing by visual artists: writing as “documentary accompaniment to artistic practice,” as “literature,” and as “art.” Harrison, Charles, Conceptual Art and Painting: Further Essays on Art and Language (Cambridge, Mass., 2001), 3.Google Scholar These distinctions provide a useful, if approximate, framework for investigating text in Moscow conceptualism as well. For an approach to Moscow conceptualism that emphasizes its “programmatic interaction with literature,” see Bobrinskaya, Ekaterina, “Moscow Conceptualism: Its Aesthetics and History,” in Groys, , Hollein, , and Junco, del, eds., Total Enlightenment, 57.Google Scholar Kabakov comments at length on the significance of Russian literature for the visual arts in remarks about his installation Fly with Wings ﹛Mukha s kryl'iami), reprinted in Kabakov, Il'ia, “0 mestnom iazyke,” in Tri installiatsii (Moscow, 2002), 234-40.Google Scholar “Documentary” writing played a crucial role in the work of Monastyrski and other Collective Actions artists, as copious records from their organized trips out of town testify. See Poezdkizagorod: Kollektivnye deistviia, 1977-1998 (Moscow, 1998). Artist Joseph Kosuth's distinction between “stylistic conceptual art,” which uses text as a “new kind of paint,” and “theoretical conceptual art” reminds us that some use of text is formal rather than philosophical. Kosuth, Joseph, “1975,” in Alberro, Alexander and Stimson, Blake, eds., Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology (Cambridge, Mass., 1999), 335, 337.Google Scholar

10. Erjavec, Ales, introduction to Ales Erjavec, ed., Postmodernism and the Postsocialist Condition: Politicized Art under Late Socialism (Berkeley, 2003), 3.Google Scholar

11. The term is from Vitalii Komar, “Sots-art i ontsial'nyi sots-kontseptualizm,” in Aleksandra Danilova and Elena Kuprina-Liakhovich, eds., Pole deistviia: Moskovskaia kontseptual'naia shkola i ee kontekst, 70-80 gody XX veka (Moscow, 2010), 137.

12. The 1972 creation of Komar and Melamid, sots art used the symbols of socialist realism to examine and criticize official doctrine and conformist art from “within.” One of many styles they employed, sots art was adopted by numerous other artists and developed into a movement in its own right.

13. Orlov, Boris, “0 passionarnosti al'ternativnoi kul'tury semidesiatykh (iz razgovora za chashkoi chaia),” in Kizeval'ter, Georgii, ed., Eti strannye semidesiatye, ilipoteria nevinnosti: Esse, interv'iu, vospominaniia (Moscow, 2010), 209.Google Scholar

14. Natalia Tamruchi, for example, differentiates between Moscow conceptualism and sots art as separate “collective trends in Russian non-official art.” Tamruchi, Natalia, Moscow Conceptualism, 1970-1990 (Roseville East, 1995), 10.Google Scholar

15. See “Dmitrii Prigov. Ot renessansa do kontseptualizma i dalee, 16 maia 2014-9 noiabria,” Gosudarstvennaia Tret'iakovskaia galereia, at http://www.tretyakovgallery.ru/ru/calendar/exhibitions/exhibitions4484/ (last accessed November 5, 2015). The artist objected to the term being applied to his work elsewhere, preferring to describe it as postmodern rather than conceptual. He noted that “we were engaged in sots art, then recognized ourselves as conceptualists,” but “it turned out that from the very beginning we were practicing our own version of proto-postmodernism…. Stylistically, we belonged to conceptualism, but strategically, to postmodernism.” Prigov, D. A. and Shapoval, S. I., Portretnaia galereia D. A. P. (Moscow, 2003), 93, 94.Google Scholar

16. Michel Foucault, “What Is an Author?,” in Donald Pieziosi, ed., The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology (Oxford, 1998), 305.

17. In this context, see artist Iurii Leiderman's comment in a 2008 interview that Komar and Melamid, the Nest group, and Albert were close to conceptualism, while Kabakov, Monastyrski, and others are described as conceptualist only “because of a misunderstanding.” Baryshnikova, Dasha, “Predopredelennosf interpretatsii. Interv'iu s Iu. Leidermanom,” Iskusstvo, no. 5 (2008): 71.Google Scholar

18. Epstein, Mikhail, After the Future: The Paradoxes of Postmodernism and Contemporary Russian Culture, trans. Miller-Pogacar, Anesa (Amherst, 1995), 207.Google Scholar Komar and Melamid's gesture challenges Epstein's contention that Russian postmodernism is a world of quotations in which statements are “never” pronounced “as a form of self-expression.” Mikhail Epstein, “The Origins and Meaning of Russian Postmodernism,” in Ellen E. Berry and Anesa Miller-Pogacar, eds., Re-Entering the Sign: Articulating New Russian Culture (Ann Arbor, 1995), 38.

19. Groys, Boris, “Text as a Ready-Made Object,” in Balina, Marina, Condee, Nancy, and Dobrenko, Evgeny, eds., Endquote: Sots-Art Literature and Soviet Grand Style (Evanston, 2000), 35 Google Scholar. The relatively short-lived group Medgermineftika (Inspektsiia “Meditsinskaia Germeneftika“) was formed in late 1987 by Pavel Peppershtein (Pivovarov), Sergei Anufriev, and Iurii Leiderman. For a brief history of the group, see “Istoriia,” Moskovskii kontseptualizm, www.conceptualism-moscow.org/page?id=1678 (last accessed November 5, 2015).

20. The classic late Soviet dictionary, Ozhegov, describes the transparant as “fabric with images or inscriptions, attached to a frame.” Its definition—“holiday banners on the streets“—makes the association with public demonstrations complete. Slovar’ Ozhegova: Tolkovyi slovar’ russkogo iazyka, s.v. “TRANSPARANT,” at http://www.ozhegov.org/words/36232. shtml (last accessed November 5,2015). These banners were typically made of red cotton, soor kumach, which was used extensively for the purpose and became synonymous with Soviet power after the revolution.

21. The emphasis Komar and Melamid placed on individual agency distinguishes their robust assertion of artistic authority from the negotiated “performative shifts” that Alexei Yurchak argues were typical in late Soviet ritualized speech. Yurchak describes the “principle of performative shift,” in which “the signifiers of authoritative discourse (how it represents) were meticulously reproduced, but its signifieds (what it represents) were relatively unimportant.” Yurchak, Alexei, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton, 2006), 114.Google Scholar Fuller discussion of the role such ubiquitous but “unseen” texts played in Soviet society at the time can be found in Mary A. Nicholas, ‘“We Were Born to Make Fairytales Come True': Reinterpreting Political Texts in Unofficial Soviet Art, 1972-1992,” Canadian Slavonic Papers 53, nos. 2-4 (June- September-December 2011): 335-64.

22. Komar recalls the artists’ pride in “becoming our own personal creations” (my sami stali svoimi sobstvennymi personazhami), which he describes as the “end of loneliness.” Komar, “Sots-art,” 135. Elsewhere he notes that “no one has yet understood that sots art was never irony toward anyone else. It was always self-irony and auto-parody.” Komar, , “Interv“iu,” in Donskoi, Roshal', Skersis, Gnezdo (Moscow, 2008), 151.Google Scholar

23. Invented personalities were, Gurshtein points out, essential both to sots art and to the artists’ interrogation of “the myth of the tortured artist.” She indicates that this idea of personazhnost’ eventually became widespread in Moscow conceptualism. Ksenya A. Gurshtein, “TransStates: Conceptual Art in Eastern Europe and the Limits of Utopia” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2011), 186. Victor Tupitsyn argues that “the camouflaging of the authorial T became… rather typical for Moscow communal conceptualism.” Tupitsyn, Victor, The Museological Unconscious: Communal (Post)Modernism in Russia (Cambridge, Mass., 2009), 60.Google Scholar

24. Hoptman, Laura J., “Seeing Is Believing,” in Hoptman, Laura J. and Beke, Laszlo, eds., Beyond Belief: Contemporary Art from East Central Europe (Chicago, 1995), 2.Google Scholar

25. This description is from Albert's comment on a retrospective exhibition of Moscow conceptualism in 2010. lurii Al'bert, “Sots-art,” in Danilova and Kuprina-Liakhovich, eds., Pole deistviia, 138. Caution is appropriate with such statements, since unofficial artists, Albert included, often had to play the role of creator, art historian, collector, and critic of their own works. Komar describes underground artist Eduard Shteinberg's negative reaction to their work in an interview from 2010. “Interv'iu s Vitaliem Komarom,” in lurii Al'bert, ed., Moskovskii kontseptualizm: Nachalo (Nizhnii Novgorod, 2014), 85.

26. Quoted in Balabanova, Irina, Govorit Dmitrii Aleksandrovich Prigov (Moscow, 2001), 103.Google Scholar

27. Quoted in Akinsha, “Between Lent and Carnival,” 26. Erofeev's irritation with such broad humor seems to reflect the still commonly held opinion that in Russia fine art had to be serious. Erofeev's vehemence suggests the continued difficulty these second-generation artists would encounter in their attempts to escape what Melamid calls the “prison” of style. “Interv'iu s Aleksandrom Melamidom,” in Al'bert, ed., Moskovskii kontseptualizm, 115.

28. Pivovarov questions his colleague Kabakov's later comments about his “antipathy” to Komar and Melamid's “gags” [smekhuechki). “ Interv'iu s Viktorom Pivovarovym i Milenoi Slavitskoi,” in Al'bert, ed., Moskovskii kontseptualizm, 136. Kabakov's reported hostility again reflects the sense that humor is inappropriate to “high” art.

29. Al'bert, “Sots-art,” 138. In a rich irony, such artists were also viewed as spokespersons for the west. Sots art's direct allusion to Andy Warhol's pop art made the conscious though often tenuous connection that these artists imagined with the west obvious. Monastyrski argues that interest in the west set Komar and Melamid's group apart from other Moscow conceptualists. See Andrei Monastyrskii, “Kak Vadim Zakharov Koshutom Diushana razbil,” at http://vadimzakharov.com/images/texts/Monastyrsky_rus.pdf (last accessed November 5, 2015). One-time conceptualist Vladimir Sorokin sees this as a more general trend, claiming that “in the 1970s and 1980s, Moscow conceptualists claimed with one voice that they were agents of western culture in the USSR.” Vladimir Sorokin and Nikolai Sheptulin, “Razgovor o moskovskom kontseptualizme, sostoiavshiisia zimnim dekabr'skim vecherom 2007 goda v podmoskovskom Vnukove,” Khudozhestvennyi zhurnal 70, no. 2 (October 2008): 26. Tupitsyn suggests that many Soviet “nonconformists” ended up serving “unwittingly” as “apologists for the Western cultural establishment.” Tupitsyn, , Museological Unconscious, 53.Google Scholar

30. “Interv'iu s Erikom Bulatovym,” in Al'bert, Moskovskii kontsepualizm, 45. Komar makes a similar point in his comment that sots art brought Soviet slogans “into the dissident kitchen. And therefore at first there were very many negative reactions from the left and the right.” Komar, “Interv'iu s Vitaliem Komarom,” 86.

31. Masterkova-Tupitsyna, Margarita, “APTART: Ekspansiia postmodernizma,” in Kizeval'te, Georgiir, ed., Perelomnye vos'midesiatye v neofitsial'nom iskusstve SSSR (Moscow, 2014), 360-61.Google Scholar She describes the difficulty certain first-generation artists had with this change and contrasts it with second-generation figure Nikita Alexeev's “desperate” desire to free himself from artistic “sectarianism” (366–67).

32. Al'bert, “Sots-art,” 138.

33. Komar, , “Interv'iu,” in Donskoi, Roshal', Skersis, Gnezdo, 151.Google Scholar This is part of what allows Albert to argue that Komar and Melamid were themselves postmodernists: “Classic Anglo-American conceptualism was already concluding, and the conceptualism of our teachers Komar and Melamid was different—you could say—postmodern. The main point is that we all already knew that conceptualism already existed and we worked with that fact in mind” (Klassicheskii anglo-amerikanskii kontseptualizm uzhe konchalsia, a kontseptualizm nashikh uchitelei Komara i Melamida byl drugim—mozhno dazhe skazat'— postmodernistskim. Glavnoe, my vse uzhe znali, chto kontseptualizm uzhe sushchestvuet, i rabotalisetimfaktom vpamiati). Yuri Albert, e-mail to author, October 20,2009. Quoted by permission. Melamid describes the pair's postmodern emphasis on continual evolution in his comment that “we changed ideas all the time. We could work up new concepts all the time and change all the time.” “Interv'iu s Aleksandrom Melamidom,” 115.

34. Al'bert, “Sots-art,” 138; Iurii Al'bert, master-class lecture, Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia, October 5, 2012, at http://mdfschool.ru/events/videoarchive/yury_albert_video/lecture (last accessed November 28, 2015).

35. Zhigalov, A. A., “Izmeneniia v khudozhestvennom soznanii na neofitsial ‘noi stsene 1970-kh godov,” in Zorkaia, N. M., ed., Khudozhestvennaia zhizri Rossii 1970-kh godov kak sistemnoe tseloe (Petersburg, St., 2001), 212.Google Scholar Zhigalov and fellow artist Natal'ia Abalakova played an important role in the unofficial Moscow art world, particularly in the Apt-Art exhibits of the early 1980s. Their ongoing TotArt project builds on numerous aspects of Moscow conceptualism.

36. Skersis, , “Semidesiatye: Sem'-nol’ v nashu pol'zu,” in Kizeval'ter, , ed., Eti strannye semidesiatye, 250-51.Google Scholar He argues that this pursuit elevates such work to the level of “meta-art.” Skersis, Albert, and Andrei Filippov later expanded on this idea by organizing exhibits as part of the Cupid (Kupidon) collective, for which each of the artists contributed works devoted to a common theme. A Cupid exhibit at the Stella Foundation in 2009 had three titles, one of which, “The Artist and His Model,” speaks directly to the idea of art as the continual exploration of various models. See “Iurii Al'bert, Viktor Skersis i Andrei Filippov. Show and Tell. Khudozhnik i ego model'. Omut,” Stella Art Foundation, at http://safmuseum.org/exhibitions/237/ (last accessed November 5,2015), for a brief description of the exhibit.

37. Monastyrskii, “Kak Vadim Zakharov Koshutom Diushana razbil.” Monastyrski's reference to logocentrism is just one example of the broad application this term has received in discussions of late Soviet culture. Depending on the speaker, its meaning can vary to indicate everything from an artistic fascination with the hollow nature of “Soviet-ese” to a conviction that the Stalinist regime—indeed, totalitarianism in generaldepends on the written word. Such a conviction—like Claude Levi-Strauss's argument in Tristes Tropiques that the “primary function of writing” is “to facilitate the enslavement of other human beings“—often underpins discussions of the Soviet period, despite its general unsuitability to the Russian experience. Claude, Levi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques, trans. Russell, John (New York, 1961), 292.Google Scholar Levi-Strauss's approach, evolving out of romanticism, is echoed in Jacques Derrida's insistence on “writing in the common sense” as the “carrier of death.” Derrida, Jacques, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty, Spivak (Baltimore, 1998), 17 Google Scholar.

38. Monastyrskii, “Kak Vadim Zakharov Koshutom Diushana razbil.” Monastryski argues that the black “inscriptions on white” in Albert's textual works connect him explicitly to western artists Joseph Beuys, Vito Acconci, Chris Burden, and others.

39. See Zakharov's reaction to a characterization of the movement as a “hermetic system” in his interview with Leonid Lerner wherein the artist uses the term superotkryta. Vadim Zakharov and Leonid Lerner, “Nastroiki zreniia,” Iskusstvo, no. 5 (2008): 68.

40. The famous Nest piece, described below, gave the group its collective name, although the artists exhibited collectively as “Donskoi. Roshal'. Skersis” as well. The group was primarily active from 1975 to 1979. The Russian National Center for Contemporary Art and the Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography awarded the Nest the 2007 Innovation Prize for creative contributions to the development of contemporary art.

41. For information about both the Bulldozer exhibit and the 1975 VDNKh exhibit, see Talochkin, Leonid and Alpatova, Irina, eds., “Drugoe iskusstvo,” Moskva, 1956-76: K khronike khudozhestvennoi zhizni (Moscow, 1991), esp. 211-17 and 240-44.Google Scholar

42. The nest was recreated as part of a retrospective exhibit at the National Center of Contemporary Arts in Moscow in 2008. Documentary photographs from the original exhibition are included in the catalogue Donskoi, Roshal', Skersis, Gnezdo. The catalogue refers to the work as Hatch Eggs! (The Nest) (Vysizhivaite iaitsa! [Gnezdo]) throughout, but, according to Skersis, the original title was Hatching a Spirit (Vysizhivanie dukha), and that is the one I use here.

43. Quoted in Akinsha, “Between Lent and Carnival,” 29.

44. The brash command, followed by an exclamation point, may have alluded as well to the need for courage in unofficial artistic endeavors. “Eggs” (iaitsa) is a euphemistic term for testicles in Russian.

45. “Interv'iu s Viktorom Pivovarovym,” in Al'bert, ed., Moskovskii kontseptualizm, 136. Pivovarov draws a direct line from Komar and Melamid and their “revolutionary” work Paradise (Rai) to the nest.

46. Comments on the tube come from Skersis, “Osnovnye proizvedeniia” (Principal Works), an unpublished manuscript from late 1981 or early 1982 in the artist's personal archive. The open nature of the discussion Skersis imagines there contrasts with the carefully orchestrated artistic conversations managed by Kabakov, Monastyrski, and other first-generation conceptualists. As Victor Tupitsyn points out, Monastryski “often interpreted everything himself, and he did it in advance, or he directed others’ interpretations It was a theater for one actor, in which everyone else played the role of an extra.” In the same vein, Tupitsyn notes, Kabakov “created all his spectators himself.” “Interv'iu s Margaritoi Masterkovoi-Tupitsynoi i Viktorom Agamovym-Tupitsynym,” in Al'bert, ed., Moskovskii kontseptualizm, 106.

47. A., Erofeev and Volkova, T., eds., Soobshchniki: Kollektivnye i interaktivnye proizvedeniia v russkom iskusstve, 1960-x-2000-x gg. (Moscow, 2005), 40.Google Scholar The curators of the Soobshchniki (Accomplices) exhibit mistakenly argue here that Nest performances were “purposely pointless.“

48. Use of the communication tube in Sergei Solov'ev's 1987 film Assa suggests its general appeal. The cult film starred film director Stanislav Govorukhin, famous rock musician Viktor Tsoi, and visual artist and actor Sergei “Afrika” Bugaev. The role of humor in unofficial Russian art warrants further study, particularly regarding the Nest and other second-generation artists. As Komar notes in an interview with critic 01 ‘ga Kholmogorova about the Nest, humor was what most distinguished them from the “deadly seriousness that dominated their surroundings.” Vitalii Komar, “Interv'iu,” in Donskoi, Roshal', Skersis, Gnezdo, 151.

49. Iurii Al'bert, “Moskovskii kontseptualizm. Nachalo, ,” in Al'bert, , ed., Moskovskii kontseptualizm, 6 Google Scholar. Albert remembers Komar and Melamid speaking about sots art “as one of their conceptual projects.” Al'bert, Iurii, “Kommentarii,” in Donskoi, Roshal', Skersis, Gnezdo, 21.Google Scholar

50. Yuri Albert, personal communication, October 15, 2010.

51. See the brief discussion of this krug zainteresovannykh lits in Ekaterina Degot’ and Vadim Zakharov, eds., Moskovskii kontseptualism (Moscow, 2005), 158.

52. John Bowlt notes that the younger generation of artists was more “au courant with international contemporary trends” and they were “outgrowing” the “often parochial concerns” of many in the preceding generation. John E., Bowlt, “10 x 10,” in his 10 + 10: Contemporary Soviet and American Painters (New York, 1989), 12,19.Google Scholar

53. Benamou, Michel, “Presence and Play,” in Benamou, Michel and Caramello, Charles, eds., Performance in Postmodern Culture (Madison, 1977), 3.Google Scholar Albert may be consciously building in these works on Komar and Melamid's Post-Art series as well as imagining what, or who, will be left after the “end” of modernism. The unique character of performance art by second-generation artists, including Skersis, Albert, Zakharov, and Filippov, needs further attention as a significant phenomenon in its own right and an important influence on Russian actionism and other performance art. Bryzgel's, Amy Performing the East: Performance Art in Russia, Latvia, and Poland since 1980 (London, 2013)Google Scholar is a welcome exception to the general dearth of critical studies of the subject.

54. Karandash (Pencil) was a favorite cartoon character from Albert's own childhood. Invented in 1956, Karandash became the symbol of the thaw-era children's magazine Veselye kartinki (Cheerful Little Pictures) and was the embodiment of Soviet pedagogytinged erudition and good will. A talented artist in his own right, Karandash used his nose, a large sharp red pencil, to bring a variety of other characters and objects to life.

55. Albert's introduction to the series can be found at “Avtoseriia,” Moskovskii kontseptualizm, at http://www.conceptualism-moscow.org/page?id=624 (last accessed November 8, 2015). Works from the Autoseries are used as commentary in John E. Bowlt, “Yurii Albert,” 10 + 10,44.

56. The entire Autoseries and other textual works can be viewed at “Avtoseriia,” Moskovskii kontseptualizm, at http://www.conceptualism-moscow.org/page?id=624'lang=ru (last accessed December 1,2015).

57. The distinction is Albert's own, made in a Paris interview with the author, October 15,2010.

58. Albert's list mentions members of the Nest individually, as was frequently done in the years the group was active. Skersis appears twice on the list, apparently because he was integral to the SZ partnership and active as a solo artist as well. Another textual work by Albert from June 1981 shares his conviction that “the most interesting people working in Moscow right now are Vadim Zakharov and Viktor Skersis” (oil on fiberboard, 37 X 33.8 cm). The January text mentions as well Albert's art teacher Katya Arnold, Melamid's wife; artist Igor Lutz, with whom Zakharov cooperated, particularly in 1979; and artist Nadezhda Stolpovskaya, Albert's wife and coauthor of several projects with Zakharov. Albert's interest in the formalist critic Iurii Tynianov, mentioned at the end of the list, deserves additional study. Ekaterina Bobrinskaia discusses Tynianov's relevance to the unofficial Moscow art scene in E. Bobrinskaia, Chuzhie?, vol. 1, Neofitsial'noe iskusstvo: Mify. Strategii. Kontseptsii (Moscow, 2013), esp. 192-97.

59. The exhibit Apt Art beyond the Fence ﹛Apt-Art za zaborom) was a two-day affair held outside Moscow in September 1983 as an extension of the series of unofficial apartment exhibits that had been taking place that year and the previous one in artist Nikita Alexeev's Moscow apartment. Beyond the Fence—the preposition za can mean both “behind” or “beyond“—provided the artists with ample room for exhibiting their work in the open air and temporarily relieved the tension that had attended their semi-clandestine gatherings at Alexeev's. Alexeev briefly discusses the phenomenon of Apt Art in his autobiographical Riadipamiati (Moscow, 2008). Margarita and Victor Tupitsyn helped bring Apt Art to the attention of the west, although this influential if short-lived undertaking merits further attention. Dodge, Norton, ed., Apt Art: Moscow Vanguard in the ‘80s (Mechanicsville, 1985).Google Scholar The Mukhomors were a Moscow-based art group in the early 1980s whose sensibility at the time tended toward late Soviet punk. Members included Sven Gundlakh, Konstantin Zvezdochetov, Sergei and Vladimir Mironenko, and Aleksei Kaminskii.

60. Albert, Paris, October 15,2010.

61. Al'bert, “Kommentarii,” 21.

62. Esanu, , Transition in Post-Soviet Art, 99.Google Scholar The reference to trickery is part of Nikita Alexeev's 1980 categorization of different types of work by Collective Actions in Nikita Alexeev, “0 kollektivnykh i individual'nykh aktsiiakh 1976-1980 gg.,” in Poezdki za gorod, 88. Alexeev's departure from Collective Actions and his career as a whole deserve further study.

63. The work is described in brief at “Caresses and Kisses Make People Ugly, 1982-83,” Moskovskii kontseptualizm, at http://www.conceptualism-moscow.org/page?id=406'lang=en (last accessed November 8,2015), and documented at length in Viktor Skersis and Vadim Zakharov, Gruppa SZ: Sovmestnye raboty, 1980-1984,1989,1990 (Moscow, 2004). In Wandering through an Exhibit (Stone in Shoe) (Khozhdenie po vystavke [Kameri v botinke]), an audience performance work that he repeated several times between 2001 and 2009, Albert requested that visitors to various museums view the displays only after placing a small stone in one of their shoes. The pebble was intended both to distract and to concentrate spectators’ attention on the art they were viewing.

64. Aranda, Julieta, Wood, Brian Kuan, and Vidokle, Anton, “Preface,” e-flux, no. 29 (November 2011), at http://www.e-flux.com/journal/preface/ (last accessed November 8, 2015)Google Scholar.

65. Zakharov's exasperated certainty that this opinion will win him “the sharpest ostracism” from both western and Russian critics may reflect annoyance with the role of “beleaguered artist at war with the authorities” that is almost automatically assigned to Russian artists even today. Zakharov, Vadim, “Vos'midesiatye—konets vechnosti,” in Kizeval'ter, , ed., Perelomnye vos'midestiaye, 234.Google Scholar See also Ekaterina Degof's comment from 1997 that when a Russian artist “exhibits in the West he almost inevitably represents Russia.” Yekaterina Degot, “Theatre of Envy: Commentary to ‘Terrorist Naturalism,'” i_CAN, at http://www.c3.hu/ican.artnet.org/ican/text8ee9.html?id_text=18 (last accessed November 10, 2015). Irina Aristarkhova notes that Russians were continually asked to “confirm whatever their new [western] friends thought had happened to us under Soviet rule.” Irina Aristarkhova, “Beyond Representation and Affiliation: Collective Action in Post- Soviet Russia,” in Blake Stimson and Gregory Sholette, eds., Collectivism after Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination after 1945 (Minneapolis, 2007), 254.

66. This is Terry Smith's description of what he argues was one of two possible strategic approaches to the term by artists who wished to keep their conceptual work “at a (critical) distance from Art (as an institution).” The other approach, according to Smith, was to insist that the term be applied so broadly “as to be meaningless.” Smith, “One and Three Ideas,” 2.

67. Albert, Yury and Vadim, Zakharov, “Beauty, Though, Saves the World!,” Flash Art International, no. 139 (March-April 1987): 91.Google Scholar

68. Bryson, Norman, Word and Image: French Painting of the Ancien Regime (Cambridge, Eng., 1981), 3.Google Scholar

69. Albert, “Beauty, Though, Saves the World!,” 91. See other such comments about real and contemporary art in one of Albert's “unrealized projects” for a proposed exhibit on the “new Russian Utopia” at “Neosushchestvlennye raboti,” Moskovskii kontseptualizm, at http://www.conceptualism-moscow.org/page?id=293'lang=ru (last accessed November 10,2015). Albert's comments suggest the validity of Jane Sharp's remarks on the complexity of such “references to preceding traditions” in late Soviet art. Sharp, Jane A., “After Malevich—Variations on the Return to the Black Square ” in Kivelson, Valerie A. and Neuberger, Joan, eds., Picturing Russia: Explorations in Visual Culture (New Haven, 2008), 233.Google Scholar

70. The idea for the early opening was originally one of Albert's “unrealized” projects from November 9,1998. Its realization in France was scheduled for the Louvre on October 13, 2010. As luck would have it, however, Paris was awash with anti-Sarkozy fervor, and, like others in the city that day, museum workers were occupied by meetings to discuss the idea of a general strike. As a result, the early openings had to be delayed by one day. Yuri Albert, personal communication, October 13,2010.

71. Palmer, Richard, “Toward a Postmodern Hermeneutics of Performance,” in Benamou, and Caramello, , eds., Performance in Postmodern Culture, 27, 29.Google Scholar

72. Epstein, “Origins and Meaning,” 38.

73. See the volume Camnitzer, Luis, Farver, Jane, and Weiss, Rachel, eds., Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s-1980s (New York, 1999)Google Scholar, especially the article “About Early Soviet Conceptualism,” 98-107, by Margarita Tupitsyn, one of the first critics to draw attention to important differences within the movement. Along similar lines, Albert notes paradoxically that the “term ‘Moscow conceptualism’ is broader than ‘conceptualism'” itself. Al'bert, “Kommentarii,” 21.

74. Orlov, “0 passionarnosti,” 207. This study was part of the research project “A Political History of the Future : Knowledge Production and Future Governance 1945-2010” (FUTUREPOL), funded by the European Research Council, at Sciences Po, Paris. I thank the FUTUREPOL team, particularly Jenny Andersson, as well as Barbara Czarniawska, Irina Sandomirskaja, and the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.