
“‘We Treasure Our Lucid Dreams.’ The Other East and Esoteric Knowledge in Russian Art 1905–1969”
Tapping into the recent craze for spiritually minded exhibitions, “‘We Treasure Our Lucid Dreams.’ The Other East and Esoteric Knowledge in Russian Art 1905–1969” throws down the gauntlet to the formalist art history of Soviet art. It instead proposes, through a wide array of archival documents, an alternative narrative in which creative and spiritual inquiries were closely related to extrasensory perception, mystical practices, and occult knowledge as informed by the conditions of the fin de siècle, World War I, and the collapse of the Russian Empire. As in any time of upheaval, those dissatisfied