4th International Khardzhiev conference in Thessaloniki

The 4th International Khardzhiev conference in Thessaloniki

22-23 October 2021, Thessaloniki, Greece

Organization: MOMus Museum of Modern Art – Costakis Collection

Conference Management: SYMVOLI I Conference and Cultural management

The fourth International Khardzhiev conference will focus on the way collectors mediate and foster the continuity, legacy and lineage of Russian modernist art forms. It will look into the subject of the new archival theories and if they can broaden or change the perspective on Soviet collections of modernist art. Lastly, it will examine how the official and unofficial collecting practices interacted in the various historical timeframes in the Soviet Union, with a special reference to the issue of rehabilitation of the unofficial art when such private collections transition to public.

The collector culture that flourished during the Russian Thaw (the post-Stalin epoch of the 1950s and 1960s), with the leading names of Avant-garde collectors Costakis and Khardzhiev, is a typical phenomenon of that period that played a major role in the preservation of cultural heritage. With its typical atmosphere of limited liberties, an aspiring civil society, combined with ongoing political repression, and ongoing politicization of aesthetics, the history of collecting in Soviet times, also mediated and informed the collecting practices of Western-European and American private and public collections.