This dissertation examines the critical reception and historical construction of Russian art in the United States between 1917 and 1939. The study focuses on two main types of Russian art; that of the Russian avant-garde, and that of artists who emigrated to the United States and achieved a high level of critical visibility and commercial success there during the 1920s. The discussion of the Russian emigre artists concentrates on the treatment of their work in the American curatorial system and art market. It examines the critical strategies used to promote these artists, particularly in the writings of Christian Brinton, who formulated a new category termed 'Slavic art' which relied on theories of racial essentialism. The subsequent decline of the careers of the emigre artists can be explained partly by reference to the reorientation in American critical values after the early 1930s. Research on the interpretation of the Russian and Soviet avantgarde in the United States is focussed on two main Modernist institutions; the Societe Anonyme during the 1920s and the Museum of Modern Art in New York after 1929. The Societe Anonyme's management of its large collection of Russian avant-garde art is discussed in relation to the contrasting aesthetic perspectives and political alignments of Katherine Dreier and Louis Lozowick, and compared with alternative interpretations in western Europe. The study of the representation of the Russian avant-garde by the Museum of Modern Art is concentrated on the writings of Alfred Barr and his critical theory of Modernism. Barr's account of the history of Russian Constructivism and Soviet cultural policies in 1936 is seen to have performed an important function for establishing an ideological position for the ascending discourses of American Modernism in opposition to the competing positions of conservative anti-Modernism and left-wing aesthetics.

In this thesis artwork is defined, through analogy with quantum mechanics, as the conjoining of the nonsimultaneously measurable momentum (waves) of artwork-text (words within the primary sources and exhibition catalogues) with the position (particles) of artwork-objects (artist- productivity/exhibition-quantities). Such a proposition allows for the changes within the artwork of the Russian avant-garde to be charted, as such artwork-objects are juxtaposed with different artwork-texts from 1902 to 2009. The artwork of an initial period from 1902 to 1934 is examined using primary-source artwork-text produced by Russian artists and critics in relation to the contemporaneous production-levels of various types of Russian-avant-garde artwork-objects. The primary sources in this dataset are those reproduced in the artwork-text produced by the 62 exhibitions described below, and those published in John E. Bowlt's 1991 edition of Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism. The production of artwork in the latter period from 1935 to 2009 is examined through consecutive exhibitions, and the relationship between the artwork-text produced by these exhibitions and the artwork-objects exhibited at them. The exhibitions examined within this thesis are 62 containing Russian avant-garde artwork, held in Britain from 1935 to 2009. Content analysis, using an indices-and-symptom analytical construct, functions to convert the textual, unstructured data of the artwork-text words to numerical, structured data of recording-unit weighted percentages. Whilst artist-productivity and exhibition-quantities of types of artwork-object convert the individual artwork-objects to structured data. Bivariate correlation, descriptive statistics, graphs and charts are used to define and compare relationships between: The recording units of the artwork-texts; the artist-productivity/ exhibition-quantities of types of artwork-objects; the structured artwork-text data and structured artwork-object data. These various correlations between structured artwork-text data and structured artwork-object data are calculated in relationship to time (Years) to chart the changes within these relationships. The changes within these relationships are synonymous with changes within Russian avant-garde artwork as presented from 1902 to 1934 and within the 62 British exhibitions from 1935 to 2009. Bivariate correlations between structured artwork-texts data and structured artwork-objects data express numerically (quantitatively) the ineffable relationships formed over time by large sets of unstructured data in the continued (re)creation of artwork.