Russia in a Box: Art and Identity in an Age of Revolution by Andrew L. Jenks (review)

Abstract

576 SEER, 85, 3, JULY 2OO7 rapidly and unevenly across the central and eastern Balkans, Norris goes on to interpret the identity anxieties provoked by this rapid transformation. His original and convincing reading of B. Stankovic's novel Tainted Blood goes against the current of previous interpretations which had frozen an image of Stankovic as nostalgic defender of 'the old ways'. Indeed, Norris shows that Stankovic's novel can be read as a storyofmodernization which is always under the threat of barbarity and the 'gap'. The chapter on the representations of city lifeand modern identityends with an interpretation of Borisav Pekic's Pilgrimageof Arsenije Njegovan, (recendy published as TheHouses of Belgrade by Northwestern University Press). Haunted by wars and an almost regular, periodic cycle of destruction, in addition to a revolution at the end ofWorld War Two, Belgrade was never permitted to develop fully,and the rural has remained a threat. That iswhy the same issues of identity and modernity lie at the core ofmost recent literature and films, such as Vladimir Arsenije vie's novel In the Hold, Slobodan Selenic's Premeditated Murder, or Kusturica's Underground. War always means a return to barbarism. David Norris's book In the Wake of the BalkanMyth: Questions ofIdentityand Modernitywould fitneady on a bookshelf between Maria Todorova's Inventing the Balkans and Vesna Goldsworthy's Inventing Ruritania. It is a valuable con tribution to the same set of issues, all themore so for reversing widely-held perspectives and shedding light on the Balkan's 'writing back' with much original interpretation, careful and convincing analyses and a sensitivity for textual details. School ofSlavonic andEast European Studies Zoran Milutinovic University CollegeLondon Jenks, Andrew L. Russia ina Box: Art and IdentityinanAge of Revolution. Northern Illinois University Press, DeKalb, IL, 2005. ix + 264 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Selected bibliography. Index. $38.00. This study charts the transformation of the peasant artists of the village of Palekh from icon painters inTsarist Russia to secular folk artists in the Soviet era, in the context of 'a comprehensive exploration of Russian national identity across several historical epochs' (p. 5). Palekh art as a source of Russian tradition was 'discovered' by none other thanGoethe in 1814. Produced by serfs, many ofwhom made fortunes (notably, the Safonovs), it satisfied an elite demand for Russian motifs in Orthodox culture promoted by Nicholas I's Official Nationality and a bur geoning interest in Russian history and collecting old icons. In the later nineteenth century, idealization of Palekh rested on notions of sacred labour, natural materials, national religion and living folk tradition (p. 15),akin to the precepts underpinning arts and crafts movements in the West. Intellectuals such as V. P. Bezobrazov, G. D. Filimonov, V. T. Georgievskii and N. Kondakov discovered and sponsored the 'village academy' and sought to 'save' icon painting from mechanization, rooted in romantic beliefs about the artists' 'real, genuine, national' way of life (p. 31). (Others denigrated them REVIEWS 577 as 'god-daubers' or worse.) Palekh art was encouraged by such bodies as Nicholas IF sCommittee for theTutelage ofRussian Icon Painting (1901) and its associated (unsuccessful) school. The state sought to control production under the idealized notion of collective endeavour, but clashed with market forces, reflecting the regime's own dilemma over modernization and preser vation. Banning machine-made icons, for example, would have ruined artists elsewhere. By the 1917Revolution the workshops were on the verge of collapse. However, the lack of a clear Bolshevik party line on the nature of Socialist culture and the role of ethnic identityallowed all manner of forms to emerge, including Palekh 'folksiness' (skazochnost). A romanticized vision of pre industrial ruralRussia integratedwith Soviet motifs, national in form, socialist in content ? and secular. From 1922, under the inspiration of the artists A. Glazunov and I. Golikov, Palekh switched itsproduction from icons to the familiar black-backgrounded lacquer boxes that foreigners snapped up. Golikov's most successful subjectwas The Battle,which was 'inspired by hatred of the tsaristorder' (p. 85), while utilizing pre-revolutionary style and motifs. The clich? is that saintswere transformed intoRed Army fighters,but Soviet ization was not dominant: stylized creatures, plants and rocks transferred direcdy from sacred to secular ground, as did highlighting...