Dmitri Aleksandrovich Prigov (russian: Дми́трий Алекса́ндрович При́гов, 5 November 1940 in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...

– 16 July 2007 in MoscowDmitri Prigov, leader of conceptualist school, dies at age 66
news agency AP via ''International Herald Tribune'', 16 July 2007) was a Russian writer and artist. Prigov was a

dissident A dissident is a person who actively challenges an established political or religious system, doctrine, belief, policy, or institution. In a religious context, the word has been used since the 18th century, and in the political sense since the 20th ...

during the era of the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

and was briefly sent to a

psychiatric hospital Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental health hospitals, behavioral health hospitals, are hospitals or wards specializing in the treatment of severe mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, dissociat ...

in 1986.''New York Times'' "Dmitri Prigov, 66, Poet Who Challenged Soviet Authority, Dies" 20 July 2007
/ref>

Early life and career

Born in Moscow,

Russian SFSR The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR or RSFSR ( rus, Российская Советская Федеративная Социалистическая Республика, Rossíyskaya Sovétskaya Federatívnaya Soci ...

, Prigov started writing poetry as a teenager. He was trained as a sculptor, however, at the Stroganov Art Institute in Moscow and later worked as an architect as well as designing sculptures for municipal parks.

Artistic career

Prigov and his friend Lev Rubinstein were leaders of the

conceptual art Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called insta ...

school started in the 1960s viewing performance as a form of art. He was also known for writing verse on tin cans. He was a prolific poet having written nearly 36,000 poems by 2005. For most of the Soviet Era, his poetry was circulated underground as

Samizdat Samizdat (russian: самиздат, lit=self-publishing, links=no) was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the document ...

. It was not officially published until the end of the Communist era. His work was widely published in émigré publications and Slavic studies journals well before it was officially distributed. In 1986, the K.G.B arrested Prigov, who performed a street action by handing poetic texts to passers-by, and sent him to a psychiatric institution before he was freed after protests by poets such as

Bella Akhmadulina Izabella Akhatovna Akhmadulina ( rus, Бе́лла (Изабе́лла) Аха́товна Ахмаду́лина, tt-Cyrl, Белла Әхәт кызы Әхмәдуллина; 10 April 1937 – 29 November 2010) was a Soviet and Russian poet, ...

. From 1987 he started to be published and exhibited officially, and in 1991 he joined the Writers' Union. He had been a member of the Artists' Union from 1975. Prigov took part in an exhibition in the USSR in 1987: his works were presented in the framework of the Moscow projects "Unofficial Art" and "Modern Art". In 1988 his personal exhibition took place in the USA, in Struve's Gallery in Chicago. Afterwards his works were many times exhibited in Russia and abroad. Prigov also wrote the novels ''Live in Moscow'' and ''Only My Japan'', and was an artist with works at the

Moscow Museum of Modern Art The Moscow Museum of Modern Art is a museum of modern and contemporary art located in Moscow, Russia. It was opened to public in December 1999. The project of the museum was initiated and executed by Zurab Tsereteli, president of the Russian Ac ...

. He had many strings to his bow writing plays and essays, creating drawings, video art and installations and even performing music. Prigov, together with philosopher

Mikhail Epstein Mikhail Naumovich Epstein (also transliterated Epshtein; russian: Михаи́л Нау́мович Эпште́йн; born 21 April 1950) is a Russian-American literary scholar and essayist who is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Cultural Theo ...

, is credited with introducing the concept of "

new sincerity New Sincerity (closely related to and sometimes described as synonymous with post-postmodernism) is a trend in music, aesthetics, literary fiction, film criticism, poetry, literary criticism and philosophy that generally describes creative works ...

" (''novaia iskrennost' '') as a response to the dominant sense of absurdity in late Soviet and

post-Soviet The post-Soviet states, also known as the former Soviet Union (FSU), the former Soviet Republics and in Russia as the near abroad (russian: links=no, ближнее зарубежье, blizhneye zarubezhye), are the 15 sovereign states that wer ...

culture.

, "On the Place of Postmodernism in Postmodernity," in Mikhail Epstein, Aleksandr Genis, Slobodanka Vladiv-Glover, eds., ''Russian Postmodernism: New Perspectives on Post-Soviet Culture'' (Berghahn Books, 1999), , p. 457,
excerpt
available at

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...

. Alexei Yurchak, "Post-Post-Communist Sincerity: Pioneers, Cosmonauts, and Other Soviet Heroes Born Today," in Thomas Lahusen and Peter H. Solomon, eds., ''What Is Soviet Now?: Identities, Legacies, Memories'' (LIT Verlag Berlin-Hamburg-Münster, 2008), , p.258-59
excerpt
available at

. Prigov referred to a "shimmering aesthetics" that (as explained by Epstein) "is defined not by the sincerity of the author or the quotedness of his style, but by the mutual interaction of the two." In 1993 Prigov was awarded Pushkin Prize of Alfred Toepfer Stiftung F.V.S. and in 2002 he won Boris Pasternak Prize. Dmitri Prigov died from a heart attack in 2007, aged 66, in Moscow. He had been planning an event where he would sit in a

wardrobe A wardrobe or armoire or almirah is a standing closet used for storing clothes. The earliest wardrobe was a chest, and it was not until some degree of luxury was attained in regal palaces and the castles of powerful nobles that separate accommo ...

reading poetry while being carried up 22 flights of stairs at

Moscow State University M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...

by members of Voina Group. In 2011

Hermitage Museum The State Hermitage Museum ( rus, Государственный Эрмитаж, r=Gosudarstvennyj Ermitaž, p=ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)ɨj ɪrmʲɪˈtaʂ, links=no) is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is the largest ...

presented an important monographic exhibition of Prigov's art in Venice during 54th Biennale.

Spelling of his name

Prigov's name in his native Russian Cyrillic lettering, Дми́трий Алекса́ндрович При́гов, has been rendered in English in various ways, with variations in the spelling of his first and middle names: * Dimitri Prigov –

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. ne ...

, ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' * Dimitrii Aleksandrovich Prigov * Dimitrij Aleksandrovich Prikov, ''Russian Literature'', a periodical * Dmitry Aleksandrovich Prigov –

Encyclopædia Britannica The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various t ...

* Dimitry Prigov – ''The St. Petersburg Times'' (English language, Russia) ''The Moscow Times''Peter, Thomas
"Artists Mock Establishment With Sense of Absurd"
Reuters article as printed in ''The Moscow Times'', 24 July 2008, retrieved 14 January 2009

Selected filmography

*''

Khrustalyov, My Car! ''Khrustalyov, My Car!'' (russian: Хрусталёв, машину!, Khrustalyov, mashinu!) is a 1998 Russian comedy-drama film directed by Aleksei German and written by German and Svetlana Karmalita. It was produced by Canal+, CNC, Goskino, ...

'' (1998) *'' Taxi Blues'' (1990)

References

External links

The End(s) of Russian Poetry: An Interview with Dmitry Prigov
by Philip Metres

an overview that includes some Prigov poems

poet

Ron Silliman Ron Silliman (born August 5, 1946) is an American poet. He has written and edited over 30 books, and has had his poetry and criticism translated into 12 languages. He is often associated with language poetry. Between 1979 and 2004, Silliman wr ...

provides a useful memento to Prigov, with links to pieces on Prigov, including Silliman's own blog-essay from 22 March 2006
Biography of Dmitri Prigov

Bibliography of poetry in English translation

Prigov PennSound page
with sound recording of "Alphabets"
Prigov poems
tr. into English at Jacket {{DEFAULTSORT:Prigov, Dmitri 1940 births 2007 deaths Writers from Moscow Soviet Nonconformist Art Russian male poets Russian male novelists Pushkin Prize winners Russian contemporary artists 20th-century Russian poets 20th-century novelists Soviet dissidents 20th-century Russian male writers Kandinsky Prize Stroganov Moscow State Academy of Arts and Industry alumni