Denis Maksimov

Denis Maksimov is a cultural historian. He is the Foyle Curator of Exhibitions and
Public Programming at Pushkin House (London) and a Lecturer at the Institute of
Contemporary Art (Moscow). He runs the Lecture Performance Archive, an
interdisciplinary research project, and co-founded Avenir Institute, an artistic think
tank. His work explores the intersection of politics, aesthetics, and futures through
various mediums, such as artistic projects, public programming, consulting,
mentoring, writing, and teaching. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in
London and a Member of the International Association of Curators of Contemporary
Art (IKT). He has a BA in Politics and an MA in European Studies and pursued a
PhD in Politics at HSE Moscow; a DipHE in Fine Art from the Antwerp Royal
Academy of Fine Arts, an MRes in Art and Design from the KdG University of
Applied Sciences and Arts; and is completing his PhD in History of Art at the
University of Edinburgh. He is based in London and Athens.

Contributions

Central & Eastern Europe | Contemporary Crisis and Dissent

Political Agony and the Legacies of Romanticism in Contemporary Art

In 1907, Oskar Kokoschka (1886­–1980) was commissioned to create an illustrated fairy tale for the children of Fritz Waerndorfer, founding member and financial supporter of the Wiener Werkstätte, Vienna’s premier design workshop. In Die träumenden Knaben (The Dreaming Boys, 1917), Kokoschka produced a haunting narrative poem about the awakening of adolescent sexuality, set on distant islands, far removed from modern city life and bourgeois society. His meticulously crafted text draws on familiar tropes from classical and contemporary literature, including works by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Viennese writer Peter Altenberg. While nostalgia is an essential trope of the Romantic period, Kokoschka’s work subverts this emerging canon. His work transforms what should have been a Romantic-style evocation of nostalgia and passes traditional wisdom through myth into a critical dismantling of such a gesture. The designs in the artist’s lithographs exemplify the prevalent decorative style of fin de siècle Vienna, showcasing his adept integration of various “primitivist” trends in European art. This is evident in Die träumenden Knaben’s cloisonné-like outlines, unconventional perspectives, and flat color planes.