Alistair Hicks, Doublethink, the Pervasive Legacy of the Revolution

This is not a typical lecture about the great avant-garde artists of the Revolution but it is about a much more surprising legacy of the Russian Revolution – the change of thinking away from the Greek linear approach that dominated Western civilisation
for over 2000 years. George Orwell defined Doublethink as holding two contradictory thoughts in one’s head at the same time. Pavel Pepperstein points out that Orwell and most Westerners since have thought of doublethink as a negative concept. He and other Russian artists have demonstrated how it can be a positive concept. This talk will follow this change of thinking through such diverse artists as Pepperstein, Erik Bulatov, Nikita Alexeev, Yuri Albert, Bruce Nauman, Anselm Kiefer, Raymond Pettibon, Marko Maetamm, Merike Estna, Tracey Emin, Keith Tyson, Nedko Solakov, Raqs Media Collective and the Yangjiang Group. Alistair Hicks is a curator and author of Global Art Compass. He worked as Senior Curator at Deutsche Bank for twenty years. His latest book is a survey of 21st art, The Global Art Compass, Thames and Hudson (2014). Hicks has been an art critic
for such diverse publications as The Spectator, The Times and Vogue. He wrote School of London (Phaidon, 1989) and New British Art in the Saatchi Collection, (Thames & Hudson, 1989). Earlier this year he curated Doublethink: Double vision, an exhibition of 34 international artists