Past Imperfect
318 Episodes from the Life of a Russian Artist

Translated from the Russian by Alice Nakhimovsky

Cloth $34.95    |    978-0-8156-0901-8    |    2008

Reviews
"Thoughtfully written, it is wry and incisive, expressing an artist’s vulnerability, steely resolve."
—Jewish Book World

"A fascinating translation of a memoir-in-anecdotes by the brilliant artist and writer Grisha Bruskin."
—Mann About Town

Description
As a soviet underground artist, Grisha Bruskin was propelled to prominence after the unprecedented success of his paintings at the Sotheby Moscow auction of 1988. Since then his work has been exhibited all over the world at the Guggenheim, the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the Jewish Museum in New York.

Past Imperfect deftly captures the artist’s experiences as a Jew in Russia, the reality of life in an empire permeated by ideology, and the centrality of family. Saturated with insight and irony, each story offers a small vignette of Bruskin’s life. Photographs throughout the book create a distinct dialogue between word and image. Alice Nakhimovsky’s elegant translation conveys Bruskin’s sharp wit and strong style, superbly rendering Past Imperfect in English.

View other books on Judaic Traditions in Literature, Music, and Art

Author and Translator
Grisha Bruskin was born in Moscow in 1945 and grew up in a Jewish family under the Stalinist and post-Stalinist state. Since leaving Russia in 1989, he has exhibited in major museums all over the world. He is associated with the Marlborough Gallery in New York.

Alice Nakhimovsky is professor of Russian and Jewish studies at Colgate University. She is the author of Russian-Jewish Literature and Identity and Witness to History: The Photographs of Yevgeny Khaldei.

6 x 9, 376 pages, 46 illustrations