Introduction

[...]the idea became prevalent in much of the scholarship that was produced in the twentieth century, leading even experts like S. Frederic Starr to describe Russian art as “remarkably subject to Western European influences.” Each article forces a reconsideration of the biases that have inhered to studies of modernism in the Russian context—a subject that has been the focus of much recent scholarship and resonates well beyond the fields of art history and literary studies.10 All three articles also share the use of specific methodological approaches that assist in their effort to overturn what Partha Mitter once called “the embedded hierarchy implied by the modernist canon.” [...]the cluster as a whole challenges the conventional narrative of Russia's peripheral modernism by recalibrating our idea of what it meant for Russian artists to be “influenced” by the styles, subjects, and techniques of their west European counterparts. Mitter, “ Decentering Modernism: Art History and Avant-Garde Art from the Periphery,” The Art Bulletin 90, No. 4 (Dec., 2008): 538. Besides those sources contained elsewhere in these notes, just a few of the most notable works on this topic include: