The reception of Picasso's art in the USA in 1920s-1940s: the case of a Russian emigrant Ivan Dombrovsky / John Graham

Relevance. The reception of Pablo Picasso's art in the 1920s-1940s in the USA, primarily in New York art sphere, is exemplified by its reception by a Russian emigrant artist Ivan Dombrovsky / John Graham (1886-1971). Graham's active artistic, critical and teaching activities in New York was instrumental to the acknowledgement of Picasso's modernist art, which entered the American context in part due to the activities of the Russian emigration circles that were part of the European cultural tradition and had an increased - due to their exilian status - ability to understand “the others.” Purpose. To reveal the evolution of the reception of Picasso's art and personality by the Russian emigrant artist John Graham, whose experience, knowledge and taste significantly influenced the American artistic process of the 1920s-1940s. Research Objective. To find the forms of reception of Picasso's art in Graham's painting, to analyze the specificity of his understanding of Picasso's art features that would correlate with his own artistic practice in the 1930s; to specify the reasons for the introduction of negative reception of Picasso by John Graham in the 1940s. Methods. This study employs methods of comparative analysis, principles of theory of reception, as well as biographical method, clarifying the influence of the artist's personal social and cultural experience on his reception of “the other.” Results. The reception of Picasso's art and personality by Ivan Dombrovsky / John Graham has a certain evolution. Actively engaging with Picasso's motives, images, subjects and approaches during his early period (1920s), he gradually enters a more deliberate communication with the famous master within the sphere of his art practice. In the 1930s, he introduces Picasso as an iconic figure in his several essays and in his main theoretical work - System and Dialectics of Art (1937). In 1942, Russian artist voluntarily combines artworks by Picasso, other famous Europeans, Russian emigrants and young Americans at the exhibition French and American Painters, which played an important part in the development of abstract expressionism in the USA. However, later Graham demonstratively and crudely ruptures his longstanding reverence in a number of polemical essays. Conclusions. After making Picasso so popular in the USA in the 1920s-1930s, in 1940s Graham radically changes his perspectives. Having a keen sense of new trends in art, he felt the aspirations of young American artists to make New York the global artistic center as counter to Paris. A sudden change in the “weird Russian” artist's views on Picasso was a paradoxical reflection of his faithfulness to the principles of constantly changing European master, which forestall some of the strategies of the development of postmodernist art of the second half of 20th century.

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