Callum Tilley

In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine, 1900–1930s at the Royal Academy, 29 June – 13 October 2024.
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At first glance, In the Eye of the Storm seems to promise an exhibition presenting conflict expressed through art. However, upon arriving at The Gabrielle Jungels-Winkler Galleries at the Royal Academy, this title initially feels somewhat misleading. Ukraine’s past is often conceived of as violent and conflicted, yet this exhibition challenges expectations by presenting an alternative story. The careful curation creates a serene space where art from Ukraine is presented in a calm, almost edifying setting. The exploration of Ukrainian modernism in all its forms, from the beginning of the 20th century to the 1930s, is a window into the artistic world of early twentieth-century Ukraine. The exhibition encourages you to not only consider these pieces within a broader geopolitical setting but also to appreciate them as a part of Ukraine’s multicultural heritage.

Presenting over seventy works of art, most of the works are on loan from the National Art Museum of Ukraine, and the Museum of Theatre, Music and Cinema of Ukraine. The story of how the pieces themselves came to be here is dramatic itself, having been smuggled out of Ukraine in a secret convey on 15th November 2022, just hours before Kyiv was hit with some of the worst bombings since the beginning of the Russian invasion.

The exhibition presents Ukrainian modernist art in an attempt to showcase the ‘multiplicity’ of the changing styles and movements in a multicultural country. Whilst expectations may have created a predisposition for a conflicting presentation – the clashes of artistic styles, the ‘invasion’ of Russian influences – the artistic movement is much more fluid than that. The curation aims to showcase the ‘multiplicity of artistic approaches and identities in Ukrainian modernism’, including the ‘fusion of Ukrainian, Polish, Russian and Jewish communities’. This successfully allows the art to reflect Ukraine’s multiculturalism, challenging potential perceptions of Ukrainian cultural homogeny. As such, modernism is defined here not as a style, but as a multi-stylistic movement.

The curation of these pieces both posits cultural autonomy and ties it to wider movements in both Western Europe and Russia, yet does so without tension; this is a fluid influence, not cultural conflict. It explores the development of artistic movements and their influences from different schools, notably those modernists leaving the National Academy of Visual Arts and Architecture in Kyiv and schools in Paris and St Petersburg. The Western European styles are reflected in the Cubist-influenced paintings at the beginning of the exhibition; particularly illustrative of this are Composition (Genova) by Alexandra Exter (1912) and Carousel by Davyd Burliuk (1921), both of which show different ways in which the modernist European movements influenced art in Ukraine. Exter’s Cubist influence is evident in the distorted and overlapping shapes, coupled with contrasting colours. Burliuk’s futuristic use of contrasting shapes and colours provides a chaotic setting for the horses and a singular human, who half-blends into the shapes of the background. This piece feels Picasso-esque in its use of Cubism, showcasing Western European influences on Ukrainian artists.

The exhibition also offers depictions of Ukrainian peasantry in less futuristic styles. Painted only a year before Exter’s Composition (Genova), Ukrainian Peasant Woman by Volodymyr Burliuk (1910-11) uses realism to more faithfully depict a Ukrainian woman. The lack of Cubism allows the curation to display the range of styles in Ukrainian modernism, especially compared to the range of pieces hanging next to it.

There are also other stylistic ties to European movements – Mykhailo Boichuk’s Dairy Maid (1922-23) blends Byzantine artistic characteristics with Italian medievalist religious art to depict a Ukrainian manual worker in a piece that feels remarkably modern. The juxtaposition of the artistic styles with the subject matter – traditional figure, avant-garde stylistic blend – does not feel jarring but rather shows how modernism in Ukraine evolved organically. It is not displaying tension between styles, but rather the artistic absorption of them, tying Ukraine to Europe through artistic styles whilst maintaining cultural autonomy through the unique blend of style and subject matter.

This is not to say that the exhibition ignores conflict entirely. The depiction of anti-Jewish pogroms in Manuil Shektman’s Jewish Pogrom (1926) pays attention to the darker side of Ukraine’s multiculturalism that often goes overlooked, with the suffering of the Jewish community and the chaotic violence of the pogrom conveyed through the visceral depictions of the people in the foreground and the conflicting colour palette. The inclusion of this piece recognises the fundamental importance of Jewish artists to the development of Ukrainian art. Shektman was a Boychukist – a follower of Boichuk, a leading artist in the Ukrainian modernist movement – and was instrumental in cultivating Jewish art through the Odesa Museum of Jewish Culture, of which he was head. This piece represents both Ukraine’s multiculturalism as well as the role of Jewish artists in shaping this diverse artistic scene, yet also illustrates the prejudice and persecution that many minorities faced. It is a story both of vibrance and violence, relayed here through art.

Elsewhere, allusions are cast to other areas of conflict in Ukrainian history; the inclusion of Socialist Realist pieces towards the end of the exhibition recalls the Soviet invasion and attempt to impose cultural homogeny onto Ukraine. State-mandated artistic styles demanded that artists represent life both as it was and how it was ideally meant to be under Communism. This unrealistic depiction, featuring labourers against idyllic pastoral backdrops, provided Soviet propaganda of agricultural vitality even as forced collectivisation proved detrimental to the U.S.S.R.’s agricultural economy. The dissonance is perhaps even more pronounced in the Ukrainian context, where the Holodomor – Stalin’s artificially-induced famine – killed millions of Ukrainians. Scholars remain divided on whether this was a deliberate attempt at genocide, but the Socialist Realist pieces in the exhibition allude to darker themes in Ukraine’s history than their bright tones and optimistic characters would suggest.

The exhibition’s curation successfully acknowledges the fluidity of the Ukrainian artistic landscape. It does this by including a multiplicity of styles under the umbrella of ‘modernism’ without it feeling jarring. As such, perhaps the title ‘Eye of the Storm’ represents Ukrainian modernism differently. Despite often being perceived to be chaotic, the eye is actually the point at the centre of a storm in which there is no wind; the chaos surrounds the central point, but it remains calm. The art presented in this exhibition, in its ‘calm’ depiction of artistic evolution, is perhaps reflective of this metaphorical interpretation. Although Ukraine was, and remains, a flashpoint of geopolitical conflict – World Wars, the Russian Revolution, invasions, pogroms – the art does not reflect this tension; the art, and the movement it represents, is the calm at the eye of this storm. The exhibition is a reminder that Ukraine’s artistic development is vibrant and fluid, full of cultural exchange and absorption, and not confined to war and violence. While both are influenced by it, Ukraine is not defined by its conflict, and neither is its art.
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Image credit: Installation view of the ‘In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine, 1900-1930s’ exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (29 June – 13 October 2024). Photo © Royal Academy of Arts, London / David Parry. © Anatol Petrytskyi

Callum Tilley is a History finalist at Durham University specialising in modern European and political history, intellectual history, and the history of political thought. He also has special interests in politics, and the intersection between politics, philosophy, and artistic media. Callum’s essays and articles have been published in The London Magazine, Palatinate (of which he is a Comment Editor), Wayzgoose Magazine, and Kleio Historical Journal. Outside of writing, he is a classical musician and enjoys playing in his college string quartet, and rows competitively for University College, Durham.