ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book describes direct conceptual, material, and institutional links between the inventive majolica works created by Mikhail Vrubel in the late nineteenth century and the ensuing experimentation in porcelain production and industrial design during the Soviet period. It discusses the distinction between realism and modernism and explores what lingers between tradition and innovation in the art of Ilia Repin. The book examines the alternative paths that modernism took in the communist and post-communist contexts, respectively. It focuses on the late nineteenth-century art group the Partnership for Touring Art Exhibitions, or the Peredvizhniki, but examines it from an unprecedented vantage point. The book explains that the relationship between identity politics and artistic production is perhaps still more charged and complex in the post-Soviet context.
