Victor Tupitsyn’s new book, The Museological Unconscious. Communal (Post)Modernism in Russia, is a sweeping, expert treatment of Russian art from the late 1950s to the present day. Like Dr. Doolittle’s pushmi-pullyu, which Tupitsyn cites in one of his chapter headings, the author himself is a kind of hybrid being who is both inside and outside the Russian art scene he describes.

MEL JORDAN AND MALCOLM MILES (EDS.), ART AND THEORY AFTER SOCIALISM. BRISTOL, (UK/CHICAGO, USA: INTELLECT BOOKS, 2008). 125 PP.

The cover image for Art and Theory After Socialism—a ramshackle hammer and sickle inscribed with the Russian word restoran (“restaurant”)—informs prospective readers know that the book’s primary focus will be on Eastern Europe.

“The notion of art,” Boris Groys writes near the start of Art Power, “is today almost synonymous with the notion of the art market.” In less dexterous hands, this argument could swiftly slip into hollow polemic. But Groys continues with something surprising: “to perceive the critique of commodification as the main or even unique goal of contemporary art is just to reaffirm the total power of the art market – even if this reaffirmation takes a form of critique.”