is an art historian interested in Russian religious philosophy and, more generally, problems relating to the role of religion in modernity. She has held research positions at several institutions, including the University of Edinburgh (2007), the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences in Belgium (2010), the IWM (2011-2013 and again in 2018), the University of Cologne (2015-2016), the University of Aix-Marseilles (2017).
Overturning an adherence to cultural classics has historical precedents. For the Soviet avant-garde, revolution meant dispensing with symbols of reverence: everything from Renaissance paintings to Tolstoy. And, in the process, the likes of Mayakovsky left their own work ultimately open to being cancelled, both conceptually and for real.
During the Second World War, Pope Pius XII failed to recognize the plight of victims. Today, Russia’s Patriarch Kirill supports the Kremlin’s ‘special military operation’, denouncing liberal rights, especially those of LGBTQ+ communities, and, consequently, Ukraine’s majority Orthodox Christian community.
The ‘discovery’ of Medieval icons after a 1913 exhibition marks a shift in the Russian avant-garde’s self-image. From now on, the path of western modernism would be abandoned in favour of a distinctively ‘Russian’ art. But in inventing a tradition for themselves, avant-gardists ‘rediscovered’ a sensibility that didn’t need unearthing.