The actual discourse of boychukizm: illustration cycle by B. Blank and M. Fradkin 1935

Abstract

The article is devoted of detailed of analysis of the illustrative cycle of the two Ukrainian artists, followers of the Boychuk school — Ber Blank (1897–1957) and Moses Fradkin (1904–1974) to the famous novel «The Legend of Thyl Ulenspiegel and Lamme Goedzak» (1867) by Belgian novelist Charles De Coster. Their graphic interpretation is both reflection of the totalitarian contradictions of their era and challenge to its conventions. Their actual discourse is not devoid of doom: they are contemporaries of Stalinist dictatorship, they are also its victims. But they are trying metaphorically show horror of their time, embodied, for example, in the torture of the Inquisition, the persecution of dissidents. Subsequent illustrators of that novel were not so pessimistic (especially, Evgeniy Kibrik, in the future — the brilliant illustrator of Nikolay Gogol and Romain Rolland), but they paid more attention to Thyl Ulenspiegel, informal Flanders rebel leader. However, illustrative cycle of Ber Blank and Moses Fradkin is rather a novel without a hero. They prefer to depicts crowds of people engulfed in suffering (as it was accepted at Boychuk’s school). There is little resistance to the invaders, which feels doomed in 1930s. But much attention is paid to the denunciation to the representatives of the clergy (they were especially persecuted by Soviet power). It is interesting that the artists also ignored comic element of Coster’s novel, which was discovered by artists of the post-war era based on the theory of laughed culture of Mikhail Bakhtin. However, illustrative cycle of Blank and Fradkin is not only monument of its time. Long before the Second World War and Holocaust, they already foresaw the world catastrophes on the material of the European history of XVIth century. At same time, they did not abandon of expressive and decorative style characteristic of their teachers, and even continued this style, slightly modifying.