Ilya Glazunov: The Sacrificer of the National Spirit

Abstract

The article explores the philosophical meaning of Ilya Glazunov’s paintings. The author states that the artist understood the art not as the aesthetic category, but through the idea of worship. The artist considered it his ultimate mission to bring Russian meanings back to the Russian people. Essentially, this entails overcoming our metaphysical groundlessness. This approach allows us to characterize the art of Ilya Glazunov as modern and even topical in the era of cultural and intellectual desolation. In this sense, the literalism of Glazunov’s images becomes the strong side of his works. The author of the article introduces the concept of the triptych of the Russian consciousness in the twentieth century, comprised of Mikhail Nesterov’s The Soul of the People, Pavel Korin’s Farewell to Rus and Ilya Glazunov’s Eternal Russia, and explores the idea of Holy Russia shared by these artists. In this connection, the author considers the philosophical meaning of the idea of the God-bearing people, sobornost’ and the diff erences between the Christian logic and the logic of the Antichrist. The author examines the artist’s attitude to avant-garde, realism and icon painting and explains why Ilya Glazunov preferred realism in art. While avant-garde images are apophatic and icon painting exists only within the church consciousness, realistic religious painting turns out to be a direct path to the perception relying on sobornost’. Special attention is paid to Ilya Glazunov’s illustrations of the works of classical Russian literature and his attitude to Fyodor Dostoevsky. The argumentation is entirely based on the analysis of Ilya Glazunov’s specifi c paintings.