Art In Russia Research Articles

The Murals of the Hall of the Facets in Moscow Kremlin: Returning to Folk Spirit

Is devoted to the repainting of 16th century murals in the Hall of the Facets in Moscow Kremlin by the Palekh icon­painters Belousovs which was organised on the occasion of the coronation of Alexander III by Georgy Filimonov, a famous archaeologist. While Alexander III considered the “restored” painting as the important element of the celebrations that were to display the idea of sacrosanctity of tsarist autocracy, Filimonov believed that the paintings of the Hall were to contribute to the development of the truly national art in Russia.

Performing the East: performance art in Russia, Latvia and Poland since 1980

art in Western Europe and North America developed in part as a response to the commercialisation of the art object, as artists endeavoured to create works of art that could not be bought or sold. But what are the roots of performance art in Eastern Europe and Russia, where there was no real art market to speak of? While many artworks created in the 'East' may resemble Western performance art practices, their origins, as well as their meaning and significance, is decidedly different. By placing specific performances from Russia, Latvia and Poland from the late- and post-communist periods within a local and international context, this book pinpoints the nuances between performance art East and West. Performance art in Eastern Europe is examined for the first time as agent and chronicle of the transition from Soviet and satellite states to free-market democracies. Drawing upon previously unpublished sources and exclusive interviews with the artists themselves, Amy Bryzgel explores the actions of the period, from Miervaldis Polis's Bronze Man to Oleg Kulik's Russian Dog performances. Bryzgel demonstrates that in the late-1980s and early 1990s, performance art in Eastern Europe went beyond the modernist critique to express ideas outside the official discourse, shocking and empowering the citizenry, both effecting and mirroring the social changes taking place at the time. Performing the East opens the way to an urgent reassessment of the history, function and meaning of performance art practices in East-Central Europe. -- Publisher's website.

Wonderlands of the Avant-Garde: Technology and the Arts in Russia of the 1920s. By Julia Vaingurt. Studies in Russian Literature and Theory. Evanston: North-western University Press, 2013. xii, 310pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. $45.00, hard bound.

Wonderlands of the Avant-Garde: Technology and the Arts in Russia of the 1920s. By Julia Vaingurt. Studies in Russian Literature and Theory. Evanston: North-western University Press, 2013. xii, 310pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. $45.00, hard bound. - Volume 73 Issue 3

Between the Soviet Past and Genghis Khan: Visual Arts in Contemporary Buryatia

The paper explores the Soviet and post-Soviet art discourse of the Russian Republic of Buryatia. While during the Soviet time, the art discourse in Buryatia and other national republics of the USSR was considerably influenced by the Soviet nationality policy, the post-Soviet art is being absorbed by the national revival discourse. The Soviet nationality policy fostered a contradictory national discourse that had a crucial impact on arts. The implementation of this discourse on visual arts in the Soviet national republics, as well as the effects on the artistic scene in post-Soviet Buryatia, will be showcased here by looking at the art and artistic career of two artists Dashi Namdakov and Zorikto Dorzhiev. Dashi Namdakov and Zorikto Dorzhiev are visual artists with Buryat roots whose art has become quite popular among the Russian economic and political elite. Sculptor Dashi Namdakov has made a remarkable breakthrough in the Russian art scene with his mysterious bronze statues. Since 2007 his name has become well-known in Russia and abroad as a result of his collaboration with the producer of the film Mongol by Sergey Bodrov. His exhibitions in the Tretyakov Gallery, the Hermitage, and the Beijing Museum created a big media stir. Among other projects, he has now been asked to create a statue of Genghis Khan in London. Zorikto Dorzhiev has also carried out one-man shows in prominent exhibition places in Russia and abroad. Their works are obviously inspired by their ethnicity and rooted in Buryat mythology and the Buddhist and Shamanist religions. The artists are particularly notable for two things: firstly, their working practices and career strategies, and secondly, the reception of their art in Russia and abroad. How is the artistic and economic logic combined in their careers? How is their art perceived in the Russian artistic field?

“Art Girls”: Philanthropy, Corporate Sponsorship, and Private Art Museums in Post‐Communist Russia

AbstractRussian art sponsorship is dominated by women of the oligarch elite. Rather than dismissing this phenomenon as a faddish diversion of new money, this article takes a broader perspective on the motivations of these “art girls” along a trajectory of Russian women's involvement in patronage, philanthropy, and sponsorship extending back to the late eighteenth century. It considers how socio‐political circumstances have shaped philanthropy directed at the arts in Russia, and uses interviews to explore the reasons behind this recent focus on the contemporary in the sponsorship of exhibitions, art centers, and private museums in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Siberia.

War on the Ru-net

When the controversial Russian art collective Voina (War) painted a rudimentary outline phallus on the Liteinyi Bridge in Saint Petersburg one summer night in 2010, few could have predicted that ten months later they would be named laureates of the prestigious Innovation Prize. This article examines the historical context of protest art in Russia as well as the contemporary online response to Dick Captured by the FSB on a number of popular comments forums to argue that the work has become an open-ended, democratic performance; an internet icon that emerges from and relies on the mass, active participation of its online audience.

Masterpieces of Russian stage design, 1880-1930

'Masterpieces of Russian Stage Design 1880-1930' examines the Lobanov-Rostovsky collection of stage design, in turn outlining the history of modern Russian art: one of the most important interludes within the cultural renaissance of the early twentieth century. Unique in size, scope, and composition, the collection is unequalled; artists include celebrities such as Bakst, Benois, Goncharova, Larionov, Malevich, Popova, Rodchenko, and Tatlin as well as less familiar names such as Anisfeld, Lissim, Remisoff, and Soudeikine. This volume (the first of a two-part set) includes over 200 colour illustrations of selected designs as well as an introduction, interview, indices (to artists, theatre companies, and primary productions), a glossary of terms, and a comprehensive bibliography for the visual and performing arts in Russia. From Neo-Nationalism and Symbolism through Cubo-Futurism and Suprematism to Constructivism and Socialist Realism, Masterpieces of Russian Stage Design guides the reader through the movements, styles, productions and projects that attracted many of Russia s early twentieth-century artists to the stage. The companion volume, 'Encyclopedia of Russian Stage Design' ISBN: 9781851497195 (to be published in 2013), is the catalogue raisonne of the Lobanov-Rostovsky collection.

Несостоявшийся альянс: деятели «новой русской школы» на службе у Александра III

The author of this article points out a complicated relations between the Imperor Alexander III and the functioners of «The New Russian School». There are examined Alexander’s nationalist preferences in painting and music and his policy toward the fine arts in Russia. The article demonstrate some similarities in concepts of «Russian» and «National» between the Imperor and the members of «Russian Five» and explane the reasons of their failed alliance.

De Strasbourg à la Russie : histoire d'une émigration (XVIIIe siècle et début du XIXe siècle)

The article focuses on the activity of French immigrants in Saint-Petersburg and Moscow in the 1 8th century. After noticing the large amounts of people from Strasbourg living in Russia at that time, the author highlites their activity in both capitals of the Russian Empire. It seems that Strasbourg natives played major roles in education and in the arts in Russia at the end of the 1 8th century. While some of them took an active part in the Russian literary life, others contributed by their writings to the development of knowledge about Russia in France. Many immigrants from Strasbourg worked in the field of education, opening boarding schools or working at the Cadet corps, the famous Saint-Petersburg military middle school. Immigrants from Strasbourg may also be found among artists, members of the French clergy abroad and even businessmen operating in both capitals. For instance it seems that the Moscow French book market may have been almost monopolized by booksellers from Strasbourg at the end of the 18th century.

Russia's Itinerant Painters

AbstractVisual arts in Russia languished through most of her history, partly because the Orthodox Church frowned on pictorial representation, partly because there was virtually no middle class to purchase paintings. In the mid-eighteenth century Russia acquired an Academy of Arts which produced works largely in classical style and content. This changed in the 1870's when, under western influence, a group of Russian artists formed a society of "Itinerants" committed to painting in the realistic mode and to exhibit their works in various cities of the Empire rather than solely in the capital cities of St. Petersburg and Moscow, as had been the custom until then. Their canvasses depicted everyday life in Russia as well as historical scenes; they also painted portraits of contemporaries. This special issue deals with the lives and work of nine leading Itinerant painters. The movement gradually lost popularity toward the beginning of the twentieth century as Impressionism and Abstract art replaced it, but it revived in the Soviet period. Today it is greatly favored by the Russian public which swarms the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the largest collection of Itinerant art.

Komiks: comic art in Russia

Komiks: comic art in Russia

Reevaluating Greatness in the Time of War

Reevaluating Greatness in the Time of War

First There Was the Word: Early Russian Texts on Modern Jewish Art

The influx of Jewish artists of Russian origin into the modern fine arts in the beginning of the twentieth century was remarkable in its magnitude, lack of historical precedent, and an ex-nihilo quality. The list only begins with Marc Chagall, Boris Aronson, El Lissitzky, Mane-Katz, Robert Falk, Abram Manevich, Chaim Soutine, Issachar Ryback, Joseph Tchaikov, and Osip Zadkine, and can be supplemented many-times fold. How do we explain that a generation of Jewish artists from Russian and Eastern Europe, like none before, suddenly developed an interest in making fine art? This question is usually answered in broad strokes by reference to demographic and social changes, including the loosening of restrictions, mass migration, growing secularisation and the rise of Zionism and Bundism. The two nineteenth-century precursors in Russia, Marc Antokol'sky and Isaac Levitan, are also mentioned and several in Germany, including Moritz Oppenheim, Maurycy Gottlieb, Samuel Hirsenberg, Isidore Kaufman, and Ephraim Moses Lilien. Researchers do not have a complete picture, however, of the textually embedded ideational environment out of which Jewish art in Russia emerged. In contrast, we know a substantial amount about this intellectual context in Germany and Austria, with its anti-Semitic, political and academic debates on Jewish art. This essay aims to help correct the imbalance, whereby the inquiry into the genesis of Jewish art historiography relies overwhelmingly on Germanand English-language sources. While gauging the interaction between the various discourses on Jewish art across the continent is a task for future study, here I follow Avram Kumpf's hunch that in Russia 'the concept seemed at one point to have a stronger foundation than in Western Europe'. By focusing exclusively on Russian texts, I am not assuming that they were produced in a vacuum. Certainly, there was a lively intellectual exchange taking place in Jewish journals and conferences across the Russian?German border in the years leading up to World War I. Still, it is important to acknowledge the degree to which the concept, as it developed in Russia, was locally anchored. My aim is to appreciate the unique ways in which ideas about Jewish art evolved from about 1880 to 1920 in the writings of Vladimir Stasov, Nikolai Lavrsky, Ilya Gintsburg, and others and provided a foundation for later scholarship. I also suggest that early Russian criticism, i.e. 'the word', laid the groundwork for the 'deed', or the artistic praxis of Russian Jews starting in the 1910s. The texts help fill a lacuna in our understanding of where Jewish art came from in Russia. As I contend, it is not enough to attribute Chagall's success to practical circumstances, i.e. his study at Yehuda Pen's (mostly Jewish) art school in Vitebsk and to fortuitous and generous sponsorship. The conditions that made Chagall possible were also ideational and more specific to art than political nationalism. They were set in motion decades before his first painting, 1 Overviews of this generation are provided in Avram Kampf, Chagall to Kitaj: Jewish Experience in Twentieth Century Art (Lund Humphries: London, 1990 [1984]); Kenneth E. Silver and Romy Golan (eds), The Circle at Montparnasse: Jewish Artists in Paris, 1905-1945 (The Jewish Museum: New York, 1985).

The Wanderers and Critical Realism in Nineteenth-Century Russian Painting by David Jackson (review)

reviews 543 in the battle against theOld Believers. The arguments against religious sculp tures may seem odd: without even a mention of the Second Commandment, they are condemned for being ugly and improper, liable to have noses and other bits broken off{!), so rendering them alarmingly monstrous, artistically inept, hard to clean and prone to infestation by spiders, nesting birds and mice(!), unattested in other Orthodox lands, having doubdess crept in from Poland(!). The decree certainly stemmed directiy from Peter Fs volition: however complex itsmotivation, it evidently reflects Protestant sympathies. Though it impeded the sculptural tradition, it did not obliterate it,which testifies to the popular stubbornness that filtered, and often modified or rejected, Peter's cherished initiatives. Such a response to these figures is actually backhanded testimony to their expressive power. We can nowadays feel itall themore strongly; the blurry old photographs of them in churches, smothered spookily in clothing and offerings, are astonishingly moving. Yet this quintessentially Russian art is still hardly known or appreciated, slipping down the interstices of art or devotional history: both G. H. Hamilton (on 'high' art) and Alison Hilton (on folk art) give itno more than a nod. This volume isbound to help put the record right. Universityof Sussex R. R. Milner-Gulland Jackson, David. The Wanderers and CriticalRealism in Nineteenth-Century Russian Painting. Critical Perspectives in Art History. Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 2006. xiv + 202 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Select bibliography. Index. ?55.00. The Wanderers (Peredvizhniki) ? initially acclaimed for their strident opposition to academic precepts, but later bedevilled by their posthumous conscription to the Socialist Realist cause ? have long attracted critical attention. Yet recent Russian scholarship has largely concentrated on mono graphic studies of individual artists,and it isnearly thirty years since Elizabeth Valkenier's magisterial Russian Realist Art (New York, 1977) firstappeared. David Jackson's new study is, therefore, a welcome contribution to the litera ture on a movement which dominated the visual arts in Russia for twenty years and achieved genuinely popular appeal, but still suffersfrom critical neglect in the West. Jackson's account is largely thematic. Thus a summary of the pre-history of the Society of Travelling Art Exhibits and the precursors to itsRealist agenda is followed by chapters on the visualization of the peasantry, political imagery, portraiture, history painting and the landscape school. Working largely from published accounts (just two archival sources are cited in the notes), the author analyses with subtlety and erudition some of the keyworks in each genre. Chapter six isparticularly thought-provoking, posing penetrat ing questions about the semiotics of history painting. The book culminates with an interesting chapter on the Slavic Revival and, finally, consideration of artists such as Valentin Serov and Mikhail Vrubel, whose work provides 544 seer, 86, 3, july 2008 a vital transitional step towards the avowedly aesthetic concerns of the avant-garde. Such an approach is far fromnovel, yet thisbook contains significantqual ifications to existing interpretations, and some new insights. Of particular value isJackson's discussion ofworks inprovincial or foreign collections, rath er than those in Moscow and St Petersburg alone. The account of Ilia Repin's iconic painting TheyDid Not ExpectHim {Ne^hdali), for example, mentions the important preliminary sketches in theAteneum, Helsinki, which Jackson has clearly studied at firsthand. More could be made of thismaterial, and it is regrettable that the less familiar images are not illustrated. This is doubtless no fault of the author, but due to the difficulties in securing good images from Russia and the necessary permission to reproduce them, coupled with publish ers' disquiet at the costs ofwell-illustrated books. Certainly any carping about the absence of some images should be tempered by noting that the book includes fortyblack and white illustrations, and eight colour plates. Jackson isparticularly interested in the Peredvizhniki as a 'political entity' (p. 3), and takes pains to consider the socio-political context for theirwork. There is nothing wrong with such an approach (it is thatmost frequently employed to assess the Peredvizhniki's oeuvre). The relatively limited analysis of style or technique, however, calls into question the author's claim to provide 'the first full critical analysis of theWanderers' output from an art historical perspective...

E.G. Devlet & M.A. Devlet. Myths in Stone: World of Rock Art in Russia (Russian/English bilingual edition). 472 pages, 273 illustrations, 185 colour plates. 2005 Moscow: Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences/Aletheia; 5-98639-023-7 hardback.

E.G. Devlet & M.A. Devlet. Myths in Stone: World of Rock Art in Russia (Russian/English bilingual edition). 472 pages, 273 illustrations, 185 colour plates. 2005 Moscow: Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences/Aletheia; 5-98639-023-7 hardback. - Volume 81 Issue 312

Post‐totalitarian national identity: public memory in Germany and Russia

Through a comparative analysis of Germany and Russia, this paper explores how participation in the memorialization process affects and reflects national identity formation in post‐totalitarian societies. These post‐totalitarian societies face the common problem of re‐presenting their national character as civic and democratic, in great part because their national identities were closely bound to oppressive regimes. Through a comparison of three memorial sites—Sachsenhausen concentration camp memorial in Germany, and Lubianka Square and the Park of Arts in Russia—we argue that even where dramatic reductions in state power and the opening of civil society have occurred, a simple elite–public dichotomy cannot adequately capture the nature of participation in the process of memory re‐formation. Rather, mutual interactions among multiple publics and elites, differing in kind and intensity across contexts, combine to form a complex pastiche of public memory that both interprets a nation's past and suggests desirable models for its future. The domination of a ‘Western’ style of memorialization in former East Germany illustrates how even relatively open debates can lead to the exclusion of certain representations of the nation. Nonetheless, Germany has had comparatively vigorous public debates about memorializing its totalitarian periods. In contrast, Russian elite groups have typically circumvented or manipulated participation in the memorialization process, reflecting both a reluctance to deal with Russia's totalitarian past and a emerging national identity less civic and democratic than in Germany.

Revolution Smashes Through History and Tradition

This text marks the end of a seven-year period during which, with the exception of a single short essay on Rudolf Schlichter (1920), Einstein had ceased writing on contemporary art; his art criticism from 1914 suggests weary disillusionment with the art world. a brief text, On Primitive (1919), written in the wake of the German revolution, he had declared that only revolution and participation in social reconstruction could give art a purpose.1 Evidently unimpressed with Berlin Dada's blend of art and he now believed-at least for a timethat he had found such an art in Russia. The absolute painting like they practiced absolute politics, he writes. The of the object by the artists of the Russian avant-garde was not a merely formal affair, but the destruction of both a social and epistemic order, a bourgeois order founded on possession, individualism, and the fiction of stable subjects and objects. Soaring on the wave of revolution, Einstein proclaims a dictatorship-not of the proletariat but of vision, a dynamic, functional vision, unfettered by objects, that can create a new reality. Following his argument to its radical conclusion, Einstein makes a case-for the only time in his writing-for objectless painting, for a nonrepresentational art, as well as vision directed against the object, vision as pure function. No other text of Einstein's so closely integrates politics with art theory. Einstein reiterated much of the argument presented here five years later in the section Russians after the Revolution in his Art of the Twentieth Century, but by then his political stance had softened and his verdict had soured: In the optical experiments of these there is more political conviction than painting; more Marxism than anything else.... The began with a formal utopia... and ended with quite harmless canvases, despite all the talk about

The Pioneers of Russian Art Criticism: Between State and Public Opinion, 1804-1855

The article focuses on the reviews of the periodic exhibitions held at the Academy of Arts in St Petersburg, the main venue for the display of contemporary art in Russia in the first half of the nineteenth century. The article proposes a new approach to studying Russian art criticism by linking it to the developments which took place in society, such as the formation of middle class and public opinion, the condition of the art market, the rise of the art press and its response to censorship.

Realizing Metaphors: Alexander Pushkin and the Life of the Poet by David M. Bethea (review)

in England. The museum scholar'sphilological researches,his decipheringof dead languages, also restoreda faith in the primitivemagic of words. EdgarAllen Poe in particularwas adopted as a poetic shaman and Briusovand Belyi were inspiredby his example to see poetry as a means of direct cognition which had as valid a claim as science to an objectiveknowledgeof the world. The second part of the study, the 'aesthetic renaissance', presents another paradox in the assimilation of English influence. If English writers, in their abhorrence of the modern, engaged with the primitivemass cultureof the common folk,they also united theirvision of a pre-industrialutopia with the establishmentof a self-consciousculturalelite. Russianstoo were drawnin these apparentlycontrary directions.Beguiled by the vigour of barbarianism,they were also enthralledby the prospect of an aesthetic based on refined beauty and highly individual taste. This was apparentin the enthusiasmfor the Pre-Raphaelitesthat animated the Worldof Art movement and provided inspiration for the Symbolists. The new aesthetic sensibilityspilled over from the confines of literature,art and music to affectsocial behaviour, as Polonskyconvincinglyshows. Forher, Blok'swife was entrappedby a Pre-Raphaelite image of the fair lady, and it is demonstratedhow earnestlyat the beginning of the centuryRussianaesthetesembracedWildean dandyism. This book, often surprisingin its freshinsightsand sparklingin its eloquence and wit, is an example of comparative study at its most enlightening. It enriches our understandingof both sides of a cultural exchange. Not only are the paradoxical energiesof Russianwriters,releasedfromthe thrallof positivistaesthetics,explored, but also a new perspectiveis given to Victorian Englishwriting. UNIVERSITY OF WALES, BANGOR W. GARETH JONES Realizing Metaphors:AlexanderPushkinand theLife of thePoet. By DAVID M. BETHEA. (Publications of the Wisconsin Center for Pushkin Studies, i) Madison: Universityof WisconsinPress. 1998. xviii + 244 pp. Publishedjust in time for the 1999 worldwide celebrations of the bicentennial of Pushkin'sbirth,David M. Bethea has writtena most elegant and necessarybook on the life and artof Russia'sgreatestpoet. Realizing Metaphors offersus an eruditeand courageous polemic with several of the pillars of contemporary literary theory (Freud,Bloom,Jakobson, Bakhtin,Lotman)and a vivid displayof the author'sown interpretativeskills. Bethea begins by lamenting the crisis of the humanities in our time whereby 'poetryis becoming unnecessary,a vestigialtail our eyes and ears, satisfiedby other forms of immediacy, are all too willing to forget.' He attempts against this background to answer the question 'Why Pushkin?'by suggesting that 'Pushkin gave Russiansan innerworld almostas richin promiseas theirouterworldwas rich in denial.' Anticipating his own critique of several twentieth-century schools of literarytheoryasbeing inadequatefor 'bringingPushkinbackto life' eitherbecause of their pretence of being 'based on science' or because of their over-emphasison 'structure'or 'grammar',he identifieshis own rulesfor readingPushkinas 'vectors' (directionplus force). He insiststhat Pushkin'sworlds (both his poetry and his life) can stillspeakto us, but authenticallyonly ifwe askthem the rightquestionsand try to 'understandthe problem here in Pushkin'sterms'for he was a man who chafed over time 'atbeing "justa poet",just a creatorof wordsratherthan a doer of deeds.' Pushkin's lifelong struggle to complete his 'ontological rhymes' and to erect a monument to himself'not made by hand' (nerukotvornyi) is in Bethea'schaptercalled in England. The museum scholar'sphilological researches,his decipheringof dead languages, also restoreda faith in the primitivemagic of words. EdgarAllen Poe in particularwas adopted as a poetic shaman and Briusovand Belyi were inspiredby his example to see poetry as a means of direct cognition which had as valid a claim as science to an objectiveknowledgeof the world. The second part of the study, the 'aesthetic renaissance', presents another paradox in the assimilation of English influence. If English writers, in their abhorrence of the modern, engaged with the primitivemass cultureof the common folk,they also united theirvision of a pre-industrialutopia with the establishmentof a self-consciousculturalelite. Russianstoo were drawnin these apparentlycontrary directions.Beguiled by the vigour of barbarianism,they were also enthralledby the prospect of an aesthetic based on refined beauty and highly individual taste. This was apparentin the enthusiasmfor the Pre-Raphaelitesthat animated the Worldof Art movement and provided inspiration for the Symbolists. The new aesthetic sensibilityspilled over from the confines of literature,art and music to affectsocial behaviour, as Polonskyconvincinglyshows. Forher, Blok'swife was entrappedby a Pre-Raphaelite image of the fair lady, and it is demonstratedhow earnestlyat the...

Some Thoughts on Contemporary Applied Art in Russia (1902)

Some Thoughts on Contemporary Applied Art in Russia (1902)