Pyotr Pavlensky’s Subject-Object Art Theory is both a manifesto and a method—an incendiary redefinition of what art can and should be in an era of increasing repression. Known for his radical public events, such as setting fire to government buildings, stitching his lips shut, or nailing his own body to the ground, Pavlensky has been called a provocateur. In this book, he offers his own framework: subject-object art, a practice that redefines the position of art with respect to power and forces state mechanisms to work for art.

Venturing past the confines of political art, he examines the historical intersections of art and power, situating his work within a lineage of radical avant-garde movements. Whether seen as a guide or an act of defiance in itself, Subject-Object Art Theory urges the reader to rethink artistic freedom—not as an abstract ideal but as a means of bringing art back to its true independence.

PYOTR PAVLENSKY was born in 1984 in Leningrad and now lives in Paris. He began developing his artistic practice in 2012, while still in Russia, and soon gained worldwide renown. Initially his art was labelled political, but in 2021 Pavlensky rejected this term as inconsistent with the essence of his work. Redefining his practice as subject-object art, he formulated its theoretical foundations and has now combined them into a book.

ANNA ASLANYAN’s translations from Russian include A Journey to Inner Africa by Egor Kovalevsky (2020) and Sergei Tretyakov’s essays for a forthcoming anthology of modernism. She is the author of Dancing on Ropes: Translators and the Balance of History (2021), a popular history of translation.

Publisher: Seagull Books
Language: English