Diary of a Madman - 36 

Andre Lanskoy made Diary of a Madman - 36 with collage on paper, at an unknown date. The collage medium itself has a history, closely associated with the rise of modernism and its institutions. Lanskoy was a Russian-French artist who worked across the 20th century, and he used abstraction to express the reality of feeling. The title, ‘Diary of a Madman,’ might indicate his sense of alienation from the changing social conditions of the time. Russian art had a specific public role after the revolution of 1917, which insisted on art’s accessibility. But Lanskoy was part of a wave of emigration, as the Soviet Union grew less tolerant of abstraction. He settled in Paris, which at that time was the institutional centre of the art world. It’s important to note that abstraction was not some purely aesthetic choice, but a response to this condition. To understand Lanskoy better, we need to look at the histories of Russian and French art institutions and also trace the artist's biography across different national contexts. This will help us fully understand the role of art in understanding and shaping social change.