ARTIST’S VISUAL REPRESENTATION OF THE PORTRAIT OF HERMANN IN A.S. PUSHKIN’S “QUEEN OF SPADES”

Abstract

Among the Russian emigrants of the 1920s—1930s, there was a specific community of the representatives of artistic world who supported the tendency to preserve the national culture and at the same time sought to bring it into the world context, taking into account the creative searches conducted at that time. One of those representatives of emigration was the painter, graphic and scenographer V.I. Shukhaev (1887—1973). It was in France where he developed the conception of artist’s books that were perceived as special pieces of art, in which all elements of the book had their meaning. Two significant works of V.I. Shukhaev in the field of book graphics are associated with the name of A.S. Pushkin: those are the illustrations to the story “Queen of Spades” and the tragedy “Boris Godunov”. This article uses the French edition of 1923 of A.S. Pushkin’s “Queen of Spades” as a material for research. This edition was chosen because in there V.I. Shukhaev not only performed the illustrations, but also presented his own original vision of the work. He clarified and specified different individual features of the narrative construction of the story, using his inherent artistic language. The subject of this specific study is the originality of V.I. Shukhaev’s vision of the story’s main character — Hermann, the peculiarities of his portrait characteristics, and the methods of its organization. Consistent reading of the work is, undoubtedly, reflected in the illustrative space of the story. The artist almost creates his own perspective of the text vision, focusing on the dramatic component of the work. He uses the visuality of Pushkin’s image to bring out his own reader’s conception of reading the “Queen of Spades”. The article demonstrates basic working methods of the artist, who proved to be the successor of traditions and the innovator. As an illustrator, V.I. Shukhaev not only withstood the competition with French artists, but also made his own findings: he proposed the principle of installation in graphics, developed a new method of ink drawings, created a single artistic complex of the book from its cover to the last ending. V.I. Shukhaev proved that the design fully adequate to the author’s idea is possible only if the artist creates all the parts of the book’s image, subordinating them to a single creative conception.