Mary A Nicholas
Biographic Data
| ID | 3922136 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mary A Nicholas |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mary A |
| FAMILY NAME | Nicholas |
| SIGNATURE | NICHOLAS M A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Lehigh University |
| ORCID | 0009-0001-2468-5599 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 20 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1991 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Performance on the Margins
The so-called social turn toward collaborative art practices in the West has a curious but rarely discussed parallel in unofficial art in the late Soviet Union where collaborative performance art served as a significant catalyst for artistic innovation, particularly during the watershed period between 1975 and 1985. Pathbreaking performances by the Nest, SZ, and others, as well as the important collaborative art movement AptArt between 1982 and 1…
Moscow Conceptualism, 1975–1985
As the last generation of underground artists in the Soviet Union and the first on the post-Soviet scene, Moscow conceptualists provide a unique point of view on the breakup of the USSR, the changing role of unofficial art in a repressive state, and the beginning of a new world order in both art and politics. Offering a counter-narrative to the tradition of Socialist Realism that dominates Soviet art history, this book provides insight into the p…
Reassessing Moscow Conceptualism
This essay argues for a radical reassessment of Moscow Conceptualism to incorporate the underappreciated Nest, the group of artists Gennady Donskoy, Mikhail Roshal, and Victor Skersis active in Moscow from 1974 to 1979. The Nest's emphasis on models of shared artistic investigation, audience autonomy, and unconstructed aesthetic response helped reshape Moscow Conceptualism in the late 1970s and early 1980s, making their experience essential to un…
Metaphor and the Material Object in Moscow Conceptualism
Discussions of conceptual art both East and West have focused on the notion of “dematerialization” of the artwork and the substitution of “art as idea” for concrete works of art. Yet such an approach oversimplifies the role of materiality in works of conceptual art generally and underestimates the transformative role of the concrete object in early Moscow conceptualism in particular. An examination of the Nest, an influential group of artists act…
Rereading Moscow Conceptualism
The most important Russian artistic movement of the end of the twentieth century, Moscow conceptualism has been described as sectarian, esoteric, and self-absorbed, with an affinity for substituting longwinded commentaries for visual images. Such definitions, while compelling for some participants in the movement, fail to describe adequately the work of a number of unofficial Moscow artists from the late Soviet period, particularly the so-called …
We Were Born to Make Fairytales Come True”
Written texts became an especially significant element of unofficial pictorial art during the late Soviet period. Beginning in the early 1970s and continuing through the end of the Soviet Union, such painted words played a transformative role on the canvases of unofficial Russian artists. The resulting contrast between textual and visual art helped make conceptualism—the most important Russian art movement of the end of the twentieth century—an u…
Telling October
Dobychinskii sbornik 3
Metamorphoses in Russian Modernism
Modern Russia has been shaped by Peter the Great's sudden attempt to transform it into a European country. Since shapeshifting and identity are so closely linked in Russian history, the same theme of metamorphosis is prevalent in Russian literature and is examined here as a Russian theme, structuring principle and source of artistic identity. Barta examines the magical transformations depicted in the ancient classics and in the oral epic heritage…
The Art of Writing Badly
The art of writing badly is a phrase the Russian writer Valentin Kataev coined to describe the work that came out of the mauvist movement in Russian literature - a style of writing that consciously challenged Soviet dogma. This disobedient writing is typically characterized by an exaggerated focus on the self and by a contradiction of the collective idea. In this book, Richard Borden discusses the cultural and political context from which these a…
The Return and Other Stories
Writing a Usable past
In Writing a Usable Past, Brintlinger considers the interactions of post-Revolutionary Russian and emigre culture with the genre of biography in its various permutations, arguing that in the years after the Revolution, Russian writers looked to the great literary figures of the past to help them construct a post-Revolutionary present. In detailed looks at the biographical writing of Yuri Tynianov, Vladislav Khodasevich, and Mikhail Bulgakov, Brin…
Russian Modernism and the Female Voice
In her recent work on women's biography, Carolyn Heilbrun focuses on the difficulty faced by women authors who wish to express uniquely female experiences in a language that discounts, marginalizes or silences the female voice. Arguing in Writing a Woman's Life that live our lives through texts and can only retell and live by the we have read or heard, Heilbrun notes the problems this creates for the female author, who finds her text constrained …
The Total Art of Stalinism
Introduction: The Culture of the Stalin Era in Historical Perspective3Ch. 1The Russian Avant-Garde: The Leap over Progress14White Humanity15Red Agitation19Ch. 2The Stalinist Art of Living33Judgment Day for World Culture37The Typology of the Nonexistent50The Earthly Incarnation of the Demiurge56Ch. 3Postutopian Art: From Myth to Mythology75The Lost Horizon81The Avant-Garde Artist as the Little Man84Stalin's Best Pupils89Poet and Militiaman95A Crue…
Developing The Critic's Corner‘
During the fall of 1992, we were engaged in a project at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, to develop interactive video materials for use in upper‐level Russian language courses. Over the course of the semester, we worked together, as language teacher and instructional designer, on a pilot computer software program that uses Russian film clips on video laserdisc to improve writing and speaking skills and stimulate students' critical thinking. The…
Formalist Theory Revisited
Russia according to Women
Autobiographical Statements in Twentieth-Century Russian Literature
Rossija glazami zenscin
Boris Pil'niak and Modernism
Although his career as a Russian prose writer spanned more than twenty years, Boris Pil'niak is now remembered primarily for a single early novel and for two later short stories that gained him political notoriety with an increasingly hostile public. Much of the rest of Pil'niak's work, discounted even during his lifetime, has still not received the wide readership it deserves, a fact that is puzzling in light of his innovative talent and conside…
Developing The Critic's Corner‘
During the fall of 1992, we were engaged in a project at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, to develop interactive video materials for use in upper‐level Russian language courses. Over the course of the semester, we worked together, as language teacher and instructional designer, on a pilot computer software program that uses Russian film clips on video laserdisc to improve writing and speaking skills and stimulate students' critical thinking. The…
Formalist Theory Revisited
Autobiographical Statements in Twentieth-Century Russian Literature
Rossija glazami zenscin
Boris Pil'niak and Modernism
Although his career as a Russian prose writer spanned more than twenty years, Boris Pil'niak is now remembered primarily for a single early novel and for two later short stories that gained him political notoriety with an increasingly hostile public. Much of the rest of Pil'niak's work, discounted even during his lifetime, has still not received the wide readership it deserves, a fact that is puzzling in light of his innovative talent and conside…
Formalist Theory Revisited
Russia according to Women
The Total Art of Stalinism
Introduction: The Culture of the Stalin Era in Historical Perspective3Ch. 1The Russian Avant-Garde: The Leap over Progress14White Humanity15Red Agitation19Ch. 2The Stalinist Art of Living33Judgment Day for World Culture37The Typology of the Nonexistent50The Earthly Incarnation of the Demiurge56Ch. 3Postutopian Art: From Myth to Mythology75The Lost Horizon81The Avant-Garde Artist as the Little Man84Stalin's Best Pupils89Poet and Militiaman95A Crue…
Developing The Critic's Corner‘
During the fall of 1992, we were engaged in a project at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, to develop interactive video materials for use in upper‐level Russian language courses. Over the course of the semester, we worked together, as language teacher and instructional designer, on a pilot computer software program that uses Russian film clips on video laserdisc to improve writing and speaking skills and stimulate students' critical thinking. The…
Russian Modernism and the Female Voice
In her recent work on women's biography, Carolyn Heilbrun focuses on the difficulty faced by women authors who wish to express uniquely female experiences in a language that discounts, marginalizes or silences the female voice. Arguing in Writing a Woman's Life that live our lives through texts and can only retell and live by the we have read or heard, Heilbrun notes the problems this creates for the female author, who finds her text constrained …
The Art of Writing Badly
The art of writing badly is a phrase the Russian writer Valentin Kataev coined to describe the work that came out of the mauvist movement in Russian literature - a style of writing that consciously challenged Soviet dogma. This disobedient writing is typically characterized by an exaggerated focus on the self and by a contradiction of the collective idea. In this book, Richard Borden discusses the cultural and political context from which these a…
The Return and Other Stories
Writing a Usable past
In Writing a Usable Past, Brintlinger considers the interactions of post-Revolutionary Russian and emigre culture with the genre of biography in its various permutations, arguing that in the years after the Revolution, Russian writers looked to the great literary figures of the past to help them construct a post-Revolutionary present. In detailed looks at the biographical writing of Yuri Tynianov, Vladislav Khodasevich, and Mikhail Bulgakov, Brin…
Metamorphoses in Russian Modernism
Modern Russia has been shaped by Peter the Great's sudden attempt to transform it into a European country. Since shapeshifting and identity are so closely linked in Russian history, the same theme of metamorphosis is prevalent in Russian literature and is examined here as a Russian theme, structuring principle and source of artistic identity. Barta examines the magical transformations depicted in the ancient classics and in the oral epic heritage…
Dobychinskii sbornik 3
Telling October
We Were Born to Make Fairytales Come True”
Written texts became an especially significant element of unofficial pictorial art during the late Soviet period. Beginning in the early 1970s and continuing through the end of the Soviet Union, such painted words played a transformative role on the canvases of unofficial Russian artists. The resulting contrast between textual and visual art helped make conceptualism—the most important Russian art movement of the end of the twentieth century—an u…
Rereading Moscow Conceptualism
The most important Russian artistic movement of the end of the twentieth century, Moscow conceptualism has been described as sectarian, esoteric, and self-absorbed, with an affinity for substituting longwinded commentaries for visual images. Such definitions, while compelling for some participants in the movement, fail to describe adequately the work of a number of unofficial Moscow artists from the late Soviet period, particularly the so-called …
Reassessing Moscow Conceptualism
This essay argues for a radical reassessment of Moscow Conceptualism to incorporate the underappreciated Nest, the group of artists Gennady Donskoy, Mikhail Roshal, and Victor Skersis active in Moscow from 1974 to 1979. The Nest's emphasis on models of shared artistic investigation, audience autonomy, and unconstructed aesthetic response helped reshape Moscow Conceptualism in the late 1970s and early 1980s, making their experience essential to un…
Metaphor and the Material Object in Moscow Conceptualism
Discussions of conceptual art both East and West have focused on the notion of “dematerialization” of the artwork and the substitution of “art as idea” for concrete works of art. Yet such an approach oversimplifies the role of materiality in works of conceptual art generally and underestimates the transformative role of the concrete object in early Moscow conceptualism in particular. An examination of the Nest, an influential group of artists act…
Moscow Conceptualism, 1975–1985
As the last generation of underground artists in the Soviet Union and the first on the post-Soviet scene, Moscow conceptualists provide a unique point of view on the breakup of the USSR, the changing role of unofficial art in a repressive state, and the beginning of a new world order in both art and politics. Offering a counter-narrative to the tradition of Socialist Realism that dominates Soviet art history, this book provides insight into the p…
Performance on the Margins
The so-called social turn toward collaborative art practices in the West has a curious but rarely discussed parallel in unofficial art in the late Soviet Union where collaborative performance art served as a significant catalyst for artistic innovation, particularly during the watershed period between 1975 and 1985. Pathbreaking performances by the Nest, SZ, and others, as well as the important collaborative art movement AptArt between 1982 and 1…
Art (16 works) · Eastern European Communism and Reforms (9 works) · History (9 works) · Literature (9 works) · Aesthetics (8 works) · Political science (7 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Art history (5 works) · Art, Politics, and Modernism (5 works)