Marriage at Cana. Boschiana 1977

Oleksandr Aksinin created this print, titled "Marriage at Cana. Boschiana" in 1977. Aksinin was Ukranian, and this print was made when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. So in considering the meaning of the image, it's important to remember that artists operated under a system of state patronage. The Soviet government promoted art that glorified the state and communist ideals. Aksinin's print, with its combination of religious subject matter and overt stylistic reference to Hieronymus Bosch, would have been a challenge to those norms. Bosch’s nightmarish visions of hell and human folly would have been regarded as formally inventive, but ideologically suspect. In this context, Aksinin’s "Boschiana" appears as a courageous expression of artistic and spiritual freedom. To understand this piece better, we need to research Aksinin's life and work, as well as the cultural politics of the Soviet Union in the 1970s. This will help us to understand how art can act as a form of cultural resistance.