ART AND HISTORY OF BYZANTIUM IN THE WORK OF ARTIST-JEWELLER EDUARD NIKITIN

Abstract

The article is devoted to the work of Moscow artist Eduard Nikitin in the context of Byzantine decorative and applied heritage. Eduard Nikitin was born in Chelyabinsk and was educated as a sculptor. He worked as the chief artist at a factory for the production of art products in Chelyabinsk; afterwards, he became an independent jewellery artist. In modern author’s jewellery, the artist-jeweller rethinks the history of Byzantium, creates jewellery in the Art Deco style, basing on the impressions of Byzantine art. The author has always been attracted by the combination of the East and the West, common features and differences that can be expressed in jewellery plastic art. Eduard Nikitin had lived for two years in Finland and worked for Archbishop Johannes. He created a landmark work, The Fall of Constantinople, which is a rethinking of the fall of a great empire. It is worth paying attention to the set of a brooch and earrings, Evening in Byzantium, where the golden parts represent Hagia Sophia and the central blue topaz - the Bosphorus, as a connection between Europe and Asia. The combination of artistic images of monuments presents the organic syncretism of the entire outlined Asiatic region art. This region’s art was born in the regularity of society’s life and its spiritual culture on the basis of reality. The article compares samples of Byzantine art from museum collections with the works of Eduard Nikitin; the author’s views on his own jewellery work are given. In striving for the possible accuracy in the attribution of a work of art, one should not be confined to the era of its creation. Its content and form are often rooted in the distant past. As a result of a long and complex development, a “layered” semantic and artistic structure of the work appears. The fullness of this or that plot is revealed only in the “long time”, during which it is enriched with new meanings. Owing to the author’s interview, there is a synthesis of an artist and a researcher, which is valuable for the analysis of contemporary works. The features of Byzantine art are considered in the context of influence on contemporary artists; the features of the technology for creating jewellery as well as to what extent they are borrowed in modern times and replaced by new technologies are analysed. The main purpose of the article is to show the diversity of Russian contemporary art using the example of one artist.