“Is Disagreement among Artists a Good Thing?”

The defining professional emancipation of Russian artists in the late nineteenth century occurred with the privatization of art exhibitions—from an exhibition ruled by the Academy and other state-sponsored institutions, to one that was independently run. This change was realized by the Peredvizhniki group (also known as the Wanderers), which was founded in 1870 and consisted of Moscow and St Petersburg artists who organized touring art exhibitions. Chapter 4 takes as its starting point the only known attempt to relate this major shift in Russian exhibiting practices to similar institutional developments in western Europe. In 1894, in his article “Is disagreement among artists a good thing?,” the critic Vladimir Stasov enthusiastically compared the Peredvizhniki with two recent momentous splits within major official exhibitions in Europe: the Paris Salon in 1891 and the Münchener Glaspalast in 1893. To be sure, the art critic largely misrepresented the nature of the schisms and the driving forces behind what has become known as the early Secessionist movements. The chapter, however, argues for and indeed scrutinizes the significant common threads between the developments in Russia and Western Europe, which had effectively ended the long-standing practice of official, Salon-type shows and their claims to sole artistic legitimacy and marketing opportunity.