The paper is dedicated to the political meanings in drawings and paintings by Boris Grigoriev (1886-1939), a Russian artist of the later period of the World of Art group and the caricaturist for the satirical magazine New Satirikon. In 1918, these works were published as a series entitled Intimité. Consisting of seemingly unrelated sketches of urban entertainments - such as cabarets and circuses - alongside depictions of commercialised sexuality and other even more elusive images, the series is populated, in most cases, by female figures. It emerged, somewhat paradoxically, at a time hardly convenient for such a theme: the First World War was gradually giving way to the Revolution and then to the Civil War. Nonetheless, sexuality in Russia remained a subject of constant negotiation - in art, literature, and public discourses - and carried an unmistakably political charge.

A straightforward reading might suggest that Intimité represents a retreat into a world of erotic fantasy - which, in some respects, it certainly does. However, such an interpretation overlooks the ambiguities within the series' signifying dynamics. Firstly, the works explore the blurred boundaries between the private and the public spheres at a time of social and political crisis in Russian Empire. Intimacy implies something personal and hidden, yet, paradoxically, it requires a degree of exposure in order to remain intimate. While Grigoriev ostensibly presents his subjects in intimate, sometimes introspective states, he simultaneously exposes this intimacy to the gaze of the viewer, positioning the latter as voyeur and intimacy itself as spectacle. Namely, Grigoriev repeatedly stages scenes in which visibility, performance, and the gaze are intricately interwoven. Secondly, at the centre of the Intimité - a title that appeared in French, seemingly to emphasise its frivolous connotations - stands the deliberately modern, unidealised (female) body, which tends to be read within the context of modernist explorations of sexuality and related notions of personal freedom. Thirdly, it is crucial to recall that this period also marked shifting gender hierarchies - manifesting in crisis of conventional masculinity and femininity - as well as the gradual collapse of the old regime of sexual regulation, exemplified by the abolition of state surveillance of prostitution.