Joseph Moiseevitch Tchaikov. De la Ruche des Makhmadim à l’idéologie soviétique (1910-1937)

Abstract

The reliefs decorating the propylaea of the Soviet pavilion at the 1937 Exposition Internationale in Paris were recently rediscovered on French soil, along with their sculptor, Iosif Chaykov (1888-1979). The study of Chaykov’s oeuvre raises the question of the relationship between art and ideology, while enabling us to grasp the complexity of the Russian avant-garde between about 1910 and 1930, well beyond the usual limits. Making his formal experiments a quest for identity, Chaykov defied classification. With him, La Ruche was no longer that of Chagall and Soutine, but a laboratory for the creation of a “Jewish style in the visual arts”. The Yiddish avant-garde found its place within the Russian avant-garde, and the “super-eclecticism” of Jewish art defined by Abram Efros became the means of attaining the universal.