Soviet Art Research Articles

“Not a Word about Politics, but What Agitation! What Propaganda!”: Soviet Cultural Diplomacy in Latvia in the Interwar Period

The article discusses some aspects of Soviet cultural diplomacy in Latvia during the interwar period. Using the example of work in Latvia it is shown that Soviet cultural diplomacy is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, including state propaganda and interaction between people in addition to official state relations. Various means were used to propagate and disseminate the achievements of the Soviet Union — controlled scientific contacts, organized exhibitions and book exchange, supervised cultural ties of creative intelligentsia, provided tours for Soviet artists, etc. All this made it possible to go beyond the diplomatic sphere and carry out a whole range of tasks to influence the “Western intelligentsia”. The Baltic States and particularly Latvia provided multifold possibilities for such work since common past gave rise to a certain spiritual affinity with Russian culture among the Latvian intelligentsia. Also NKID wanted to use the means of cultural diplomacy for political rapprochement with neighbors — Baltic States and Finland. These efforts were consistent and coordinated with foreign policy goals: in 1925—1929 it was closely connected with the negotiations on the conclusion of the guarantee and trade treaties. The internal political situation in Latvia also influenced the intensity of cultural contacts: after the 1934 Latvian coup d’état and establishment of the authoritarian regime of K. Ulmanis the possibilities of cultural and propaganda activities in Latvia were reduced. In 1930s VOKS’ activity in Latvia was aimed at maintaining a positive image of the USSR on the eve of the conclusion of the mutual aid pact (October 5, 1939), resisting German influence, searching loyal intelligentsia. Moscow often placed stake on those who were connected with Russian culture, and — after Ulmanis’ coup d’état — opposed the authoritarian regime. For many of them the contacts with VOKS and Latvian Society of cultural rapprochement with USSR identified their political, scientific or artistic career after the annexation of Latvia by the USSR.

РАЗВИТИЕ МЕТОДА СОЦИАЛИСТИЧЕСКОГО РЕАЛИЗМА В СОВЕТСКОМ ИСКУССТВЕ 1930-КОНЕЦ 1950-Х ГГ

РАЗВИТИЕ МЕТОДА СОЦИАЛИСТИЧЕСКОГО РЕАЛИЗМА В СОВЕТСКОМ ИСКУССТВЕ 1930-КОНЕЦ 1950-Х ГГ

The Geography of Revolutionary Art

This article argues that a focus on Ukraine challenges the general understanding of culture in the revolutionary period, which either focuses on artists working in Moscow making Soviet art, or on non-Russian (Ukrainian, Jewish or Polish) artists in the regions making “national” art. Neither paradigm captures the radical shift in infrastructure during the imperial collapse and civil war. Placing the regions at the center of analysis highlights how Kyiv was an important cultural center during the period for later artistic developments in Europe and in the USSR. It shows that revolutionary culture is fundamentally wartime culture. Finally, the article argues that peripheral visions are central to a full geography of culture in order to trace how cultural infrastructures collapse and are re-constituted.

Возвращение к диалогу: Киргизия и Россия

The article analyses the dynamics of Kyrgyz art in the context of the 20th and 21st century culture. We are witness to an integrative breakthrough currently taking place: due to the creation and growth of the Eurasian Union, a new large-scale geopolitical integrity is being formed. The Kyrgyz Republic has become a full member of the Eurasian Union and has begun to establish new economic ties. However, a lasting alliance cannot exist without common ideological paradigms and goals, without the many common values accumulated over the last century in the spheres of science, education, social structure, security, and common historical memory. Above all is the value of friendship and cooperation between nations that generates joint creative activity in all spheres of Eurasian cultural space. The article briefly recounts the development stages of the Soviet art of Kirghizia, influenced by the paradigm of the revolutionary 1920s and 1930s, tested by the hardship of war and post-war times, promoted during the era of high civilisational achievements of the 1960s and 1970s, affected during the subsequent sociocultural crisis, and, finally, revitalized in the period of cultural transformation in sovereign Kyrgyzstan. The author raises the issue of the modern development of art based on the cultural dialogue between Russia and the countries of the Eurasian Union with the emphasis on the need for cultural understanding of the Eurasian phenomenon and its systematic components of interconnected loci in the context of modern science. Art can also become an indispensable institution integrating the Eurasian space, a universal platform for a dialogue between cultures. From this point of view, it is necessary to return to the established formats of dialogue between Russian and Kyrgyz artists and also to create specific new ways of interaction in the field of visual arts.

Methods of Graphic Design of the Collected Editions: from the Experience of Soviet Artists of the 1920s

For the first time, there is presented the comprehensive analysis of the works of Soviet artists of book of the second half of the 1920s, engaged in the book design of the collected works. The flood of the book market with multi-volumes of fiction can be considered a kind of revenge of “big forms”, reaction to the previous stage of book culture, where brochure played the leading role. In the second half of the 1920s, the collected works were most often published in soft-covers. Each volume could be issued as a separate book, strikingly different from the other volumes. This gave the artists a certain freedom of manoeuvre and allowed to break the ingrained stereotypes. There was widely used a spectacular technique: the cover drawing was the same for all volumes, but the colouring of each volume varied.The aim of the article is to expand the established ideas about the book design of the 1920s, to consider and introduce into scientific circulation the forgotten works of known artists. The author carried out the comparative analysis of the multi-volumes issued by the leading publishing houses of those years, using the complex of complementary methods: bibliological, art historical and general historical.Gosizdat was the undisputed leader in the quantitative indicators of publications of the collected works, but its artistic policy in that area was characterized by old-fashioned conservatism tended to minimize the visual elements. The famous publishing house “Academia” in those years published the collected works quite rarely, but enriched the art of book with graphic cycles of such outstanding masters as V.A. Favorsky and N.P. Akimov. The book designers of the publishing house “Zemlya i Fabrika” were particularly successful and consistent in updating the appearance of the collected works: their works had a broad stylistic range and tendency to experiment. Creative search of artists of the 1920s deserves the attention of book historians, designers, illustrators, publishers, because it can give them productive creative ideas.

National and Cultural Identity in Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s Diary Entries

In this article, I analyze the construction of national and cultural identity in Diary (1940s–1950s) of Oleksandr Dovzhenko (1894–1956), Ukrainian-born and known as Soviet director, film producer, and screenwriter. The means of construction of the national identity is based on the constant recollection of Dovzhenko’s past in Ukraine. Being a nationalist in the Civil war (1917–1919) and subsequently living in the Soviet Union, Dovzhenko was not its genuine resident. After the Soviets established their control in Ukraine, Dovzhenko’s spiritual rebirth as a Soviet citizen did not fully occur. However, in these diary entries the future is associated with the Soviet ideology and the creation of a new better society in the frame of communist ideological paradigm. Thus, in Dovzhenko’s diaries, two identities can be distinguished, Ukrainian and the Soviet, and they coexist in the diary narrative. Their logic is inclusive and complementary rather than oppositional. The artist criticizes the Soviet regime and very often returns his childhood in the village of Sosnytsia in the Chernihiv region of Ukraine. Artist’s past becomes a traumatic memoir, mainly associated with Stalin’s criticism of his cinemanovel “Ukraina v ohni” (“Ukraine in Flames”, 1943). Since the scandal around this book, Dovzhenko tries to prove Stalin that he is absolutely a Soviet artist. In the diary entries, he also writes about his sorrow and nostalgia for Ukraine, his homeland; and he cannot be considered as a genuine Soviet artist. Although the filmmaker could not express his thoughts openly due to ideological pressures, traces of such reflections may be found in his diary, which combined both Ukrainian and Soviet elements. Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s multilayered self-narration encompasses his nationalist past and the Soviet legacy in all of its complex psychological interactions. Dovzhenko’s diary is a unique record providing the artist’s self-reflections under the Stalinist regime.

Aleksey Ilyushin and second wave of Odessa`s avant-gardism

The article deals with the little-known and nonetheless vivid page of the history of informal Soviet art — «apartment exhibitions» in Odessa 60s–80s of the ХХth century. The article is outlined the main transformational processes of the development of the art of nonconformism, which laid the foundation for the emergence of the following trends of contemporary Ukrainian art. The main reasons for the emergence of socio-cultural phenomenon, an alternative ideology of socialist realism, that was first called «Odessa underground», and then got a more traditional name — «nonconformism».

ПРОБЛЕМА СВЕТСКОЙ РЕЛИГИОЗНОСТИ В ТЕОРЕТИЧЕСКОМ ИСКУССТВОЗНАНИИ ИЕРЕМИИ ИОФФЕ

The article is devoted to the problem of secular religiosity in the theoretical heritage of the Soviet art critic Ieremiya Ioffe (1888-1947). Particular attention is paid to his work “Synthetic Study of Art and Sound Cinema” (1937), where the issues of modern media philosophy are considered in the broad cultural and political context. The comparative analysis of the works by Ieremiya Ioffe and the Soviet philosopher Mikhail Lifshitz written in the 1930s makes it possible to clarify the research strategies of the two scientists. The author also touches on the problem of the correlation of Ieremiya Ioffe’s creative works with Walter Benjamin’s ideas.

Wystawa "100 lat realizmu w sztuce polskiej" w Akademii Sztuk Pięknych ZSRR w Moskwie (1952) w kontekście polsko-radzieckich stosunków kulturalnych w latach 1949-1955

The article analyses the exhibition named „100 lat realizmu w sztuce polskiej” [100 Years of Realism in Polish Art] at the Academy of Fine Arts in Moscow in 1952 and its reception in the artistic environment of USSR in the context of Polish-Soviet artistic relations in 1949–1955. The exposition, prepared by the Committee of the International Cultural Cooperation with and the Ministry of Culture and Art, consisted of the Polish art of the 19th century and the art of a few previous years. It was supposed to present to the Soviet party the progress of the implementation of Socialist Realism in Poland on the basis of the Soviet example and Polish tradition of realistic art. However, the implementation of the scheme deviated from the official declarations due to both including in the exhibition the turn of the century, as well as presenting the issues of modernism and the selection of modern pieces, resulting from the specific emphases in the cultural policy of the time. The contemporary department was composed of pieces of artists from the ‘Sopot School’, combining in its art the Socialist Realism doctrine with elements of colourism. Opening the method onto elements of the Impressionism tradition was dictated by a need to break the deadlock which the Polish art found itself in soon after the 1st OWP. The exhibition caused a reaction in the environment of Soviet critics and artists, exposing differences in attitude towards art in the two countries, which, in the conditions of the political dominance of USSR, had been deepened further with time, impinging on the artistic relations dynamics.

"I wanna sing...!". Almost detective story about the folk songs from the animated film “There once was a dog”

Relevance. 1982 is a special year for the Soviet Union cinematography because this year animated short film “There once was a dog” directed by soviet artist Eduard Nazarov (1941–2016) was showed up. Cartoon is based on a Ukrainian folk tale “Sirko” about friendship between the old enemies: a gray wolf and a home dog, who was kicked out the house by owners. Phrases and songs from the film (by the way, in the initial version – “Dog’s life”) became well-known. In 1983 authors won awards at international film festivals in Denmark and France. This animated film became one of the populariest in the end of XX century.So, very frustrating is the fact that today there is no exact data about the performers of favorite folk songs, or, moreover, about their geographical origin. In the titles of the movie there is no information about music that sounds. This was the reason of the long-term confusion. A long time there was considered that all folk songs from “There once was a dog” are performed by well-known authentic folk ensemble “Drevo” from Kryachkivkavillage Pyryatyn district Poltava region. But songs from the short movie are different by songs performed by the ensemble, which were recorded by ethnomusicologists or published on audio discs. They are different by polyphonic texture, timbre and manner of the singers. Thus, it became obvious that songs from the cartoon were performed by other ensembles. The object of the article was to search for the original recordings used by E. Nazarov in the cartoon.So, after long term searching, the answer was found. Two songs from animation short film were found in the audio fund of Ukrainian Broadcasting Company. They were recorded for the radio program “The gold springs” (1980-1993) leading by Halyna Verhovynets.A humorous song "Ta kosyv bat’ko" was sung by authentic ensemble from Solonytsia village of Lubny district Poltava region.Ballad “Oi tam na hori” was performed by authentic ensemble from Pulyntsi village Lubny district Poltava region.Petrivka (ritual summer period song) “Oi do boru stezhechka”, which was sound from the third verse “Schob do mene solovei prylitav”, origins from the Nedilysche village Emilchyn district Zhytomyr region. The authentic version was recorded by ethnomusicologist of Kyiv conservatory Volodymyr Matvienko in 1977. But in short-film it is performed by reconstructive ensemble by O. Shevchuk, V. Ponomarenko, P. Aron and T. Tonkal.Due to collaboration of Kyiv ethnomusicologists all the songs of the cartoon were identified. With methods of comparative and stylistic analysis there was found original recordings used by E. Nazarov in his film “There once was a dog”.

СОВЕТСКИЙ СОЮЗ КАК «НОВАЯ ПЕРВОБЫТНОСТЬ». НЕОРТОДОКСАЛЬНЫЙ МАРКСИЗМ ИЕРЕМИИ ИОФФЕ

The article examines the “new primitive state” conception of the prominent Soviet art critic and culture expert Ieremia Ioffe. The problem of “primitive state revival” in socialist art and culture, designated by the theoretician, is considered in this work in the context of the history of the Russian religious and philosophical modernism, artistic avant-garde, art criticism historiography and western humanist thought of the XX century (Spengler, Benjamin, McLuhan). I. Ioffe’s utopic conception is estimated regarding his poststructuralist complex of ideas and the elements of “life philosophy” in his creative work.

Українська мистецтвознавча медієвістика у вищій школі 1960-1980-х років: межі можливого (Роздуми над науковим доробком Якима Запаско)

The article analyzes the sociopolitical, cultural and scientific contexts of the development of Ukrainian art medieval studies. A prominent person in the art history of the second half of the twentieth century was Professor Yakim Zapasko. His main achievements as a medieval art critic, in particular those concerning the history of the Ukrainian hand-written book, have been found out. The main attention is focused on the problem of the possibilities and limitations of the Ukrainian Soviet art medieval studies.

Fowler, Mayhill C. Beau Monde on Empire's Edge: State and Stage in Soviet Ukraine (review)

REVIEWS 557 Russian Book presents the unfortunately truncated painting by Vladimir Dubossarskii and Aleksandr Vinogradov entitled ‘Russia’ (oil on canvas, 2008). The original shows a pair of eyes presumably belonging to a female reader who intently stares at her onlookers whilst the lower part of her face is covered by a book featuring just one word as its title: Russia. In the Palgrave Macmillan partial reproduction, however, any subtlety is gone — the image itself becomes nearly invisible, and the single piercing eye that survives from the original painting is recklessly blotted out by the green square of the series’ logo (‘New Directions in Book History’), as well as Pristed’s book title. Of course, the author is not to blame for the publisher’s lack of taste or, perhaps, for its limited production budget, but it is ironic that in the world of scholarly publications, and especially of those devoted to the intricate art of book history and cover design, aesthetic standards and marketing considerations are still considered to be insignificant. Department of Russian Studies Yuri Leving Dalhousie University Fowler, Mayhill C. Beau Monde on Empire’s Edge: State and Stage in Soviet Ukraine. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, ON, Buffalo, NY and London, 2017. xvi + 282 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Selected bibliography. Index. $75.00. Beau Monde on Empire’s Edge provides a fascinating study of early twentieth-century theatre in Soviet Ukraine. Mayhill Fowler examines conventional questions such as the relationship between artists and the state and the role of art in society. She also illuminates broader concerns about empire, the relationship between periphery and centre, Soviet nationality policy and ‘internal transnationalism’, defined as ‘the exchange of peoples, goods, and ideas across the real — and imagined — borders inside the Soviet Union’ (p. 87). Arguing that the periphery was ‘central to early Soviet cultural production and reception’ (p. 9), Fowler traces the region’s declining significance as the Soviet cultural topography evolved into a hierarchy with Moscow (and to a lesser extent Leningrad) at the top and Ukraine and other regions increasingly identified as a periphery with lower-quality art. She approaches these questions through a collective biography of important Soviet artists and officials from the region of ‘the Russian Imperial Southwest’ (p. 9) and their interactions primarily in the Kharkiv ‘beau monde’, Fowler’s term for the ‘elites, artists, officials, hangers-on, friends, enemies, and the loose circles of milieux crossing the world of the arts and the world of officialdom’ (pp 15–16). Some artists, such as Mikhail Bulgakov, Les Kurbas and Solomon SEER, 96, 3, JULY 2018 558 Mikhoels (not from Ukraine but many of his GOSET artists were) will be familiar to scholars. Other artists, usually those who stayed in Ukraine, will be new (and their ongoing obscurity outside Ukraine speaks to her argument). Fowler highlights the richness of the cultural production among Ukrainians, Russians, Poles and Jews, although she focuses less on aesthetic achievements and more on the circumstances that made them possible (p. 20). She does analyse specific productions when they demonstrate the workings of the beau monde. ‘Soviet Ukrainian’ culture emerged from competing struggles within Soviet Ukraine as well as between Soviet Ukraine and Moscow. Although highlighting the unique developments in Ukraine, Fowler also shows that the entire Soviet Union represented a larger beau monde, and other regions throughout the country had their own. By the late 1930s, the Kremlin stood at its apex. Fowler discusses the impact of pre-Revolutionary expectations regarding theatre on post-Revolutionary developments. Most importantly she notes that despite tsarist censorship, local needs trumped central prescriptions, and the centre could not intervene because it lacked staff and these officials did not have the necessary language skills. Artists embraced the growing role of the state in arts affairs and ongoing local control in the 1920s. Government funding provided viable livelihoods after pre-Revolutionary instability. That support facilitated the developments of two key trends: officialization and provincialization. Many pro-Revolutionary artists in Ukraine viewed their role as creating a new Soviet Ukrainian culture, but they discovered that officials did not always agree that it could emerge from Western European as well as domestic traditions. The extensive development of a professional...

PROBLEMS OF MONUMENTAL SCULPTURE SYNTHESIS IN ENSEMBLES OF THE CITY OF MAKHACHKALA

Objectives. The main objective was to study the problem of synthesising monumental sculpture in architectural ensembles of the city of Makhachkala. The term “problems of synthesis” includes a number of key rules and patterns, from the correct solution of which depends the harmonious inclusion of monuments in the environment. Methods. The study of monumental art installations is based on the methodological and theoretical studies of Soviet art historians and architectural researchers, based on a wide range of requirements for the installation of monuments in an urban environment. The research methods also include the spiritual and aesthetic, formal-stylistic and ideological-content aspects of the analysis of works of monumental art. Results. The most famous sculptural monuments of the city of Makhachkala were analysed, the positioning of which required the authors to solve art-aesthetic and spatial-compositional problems intelligently, ensuring positive perception of the monuments in connection with the architectural layout of the city. Various historical situations of specific locations of Makhachkala were explored (road forks, island sections of ring roads, parks, squares, alleys, etc.), which create favourable or unfavourable conditions for the installation of sculptural monuments. The main provisions given in this article can be used as a criterion for evaluating and analysing works of monumental art as well as to provide methodical guidelines in planning development for both the construction of new and the reconstruction of old monuments of the capital. Conclusion. The urban development of Makhachkala, involving high density residential areas and a profusion of monuments in the ring roads and squares, requires a special, creatively sensitive approach to problems of synthesis of architecture and plastic arts, on which both the harmonious appearance of urban ensembles and a comfortable living environment depends. The choice of the monument type and its ideological and semantic canvas for a specific locality, the solution of composition-spatial problems, the establishment of scale and limits of near and far points of view, the direction of lighting, colour, texture, individually provided for each individual monument, comprise the main imperatives underpinning the creative approach of Dagestan sculptors and architects working on the improvement of our capital city.

Cooperative Avant-garde: Rhetoric and Social Values of the New World of Arts in the System of the All-Russian Union of Artists’ Cooperatives ’Vsekokhudozhnik’

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Actualization and Deactualization in Art Studies

What is a national theoretical tradition in art history? Description of the history of art theory is based on the experience of the Russian Institute of Art History (The Zubov Institute), which was founded as a private educational institution and became a center of art studies. In fact, art theory and art history was actualized in Russia largely thanks to the Institute of Art History. Valentin Zubov and his colleagues had introduced a new viewpoint on the history of art as an important and independent science with its specific place in Russian humanities. On the example of the Institute we examine the change of attitude to the science about art in the 1920-1930s, mostly under ideological pressure. The paperscrutinizes the process of actualization of a new branch of knowledge and its deactualization in the time when sociological method and Marxist theory became the basis for Soviet art studies. Thereby deactualization makes a non-ideological art theory one of cultural exclusion zones. Chang of scientific pragmatism in the field of art studies transforms its grammar and, in fact, destroys art studies themselves.

Contribution of Artists Teaching at the Russian Federation S.A. Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography into Formation and Development of the Fine Arts in Mongolia in 20th century

The relevance of studying the contribution of artists and educators of Russian art for formation and development of the creative method of masters in Central Asian countries is due to the importance of this topic for solving the theoretical and practical problems of contemporary art history. Since the second half of the 20th century, the influence of Russian art school on art of the countries of the socialist community has increased. Russian universities have become base centers of higher art education. As a result, the main number of masters of art in Mongolia are graduates to Soviet and Russian art institutions. With appearance in 1935 of the studio "Mongolkino" in Ulan Bator, there was appear need for connoisseurs. Mongolian creators got the opportunity to obtain good education in the Soviet Union in VGIK. When learning students mastered programs aimed at comprehensive creative education. Priceless contribution to formation of the creative method of young masters was made by the artist-educators B.V. Dubrovsky-Eshke, F.S. Bogorodsky, Yu.I. Pimenov and others. Particular attention in pedagogical activity they drawn to the development and improvement of the creativity of the student. We were taught to think and feel images, constantly develop creative individuality, professionalism and at the same time preserve national roots. In the 50s, Mongolian painters Ochryn Myagmar and Purev Tsogzol were educated at VGIK. They passed the school of Soviet art and based on it stood at the origins of the Mongolian cinema. Artists work in various genres and techniques, in the mainstream of European artistic methods. Perfectly knowing how to draw, they write with oil and watercolor. For both artists, work on the nature is fundamental. With a perfect mastery of this creative approach, they remain deeply national masters. VGIK pedagogical school gave the basic footing for the development of cinema in Mongolia and further stimulated the creative potential of new generations of filmmakers. So the Mongolian visual and film art enriched with innovative artistic principles.

From the Space Program to Soviet Video Art: The Film Experiments of Bulat Galeev

The aim of this paper is to highlight the close ties between experiments in Soviet science and art; between the official and the unofficial in Soviet art and culture in the 1960s. I focus on the work of the physicist and filmmaker Bulat Galeev (1940–2009) and the cinematic experiments he conducted under the auspices of the radiomechanics laboratory at the Aviation Institute in Kazan. Inspired by the writings of Aleksandr Skriabin on music, light and synesthesia, Galeev founded the Special Construction Bureau (SKB) Prometei in 1962, where his team engaged in research and experimentation with recorded light and sound, producing films intended officially for Soviet astronauts. I look at Galeev’s early films and his publications on art and science, especially his writing on the early Russian and Soviet Avant-garde, to trace the conceptual and institutional connections that inspired and promoted his work at Prometei. I also look at interviews with Galeev and his later publications to draw attention to the larger community of scientists who created artistic work under the umbrella of the Soviet military-industrial complex.

«Мы являемся подлинными наследниками всего великолепия человеческой культуры»: стилистические ориентиры в монументальной живописи СССР 1930-х годов

The article considers both general issues related to the practice of Soviet artists in monumental painting, and the problem of mastering the heritage of art of past eras — one of the most relevant for the artistic process in the USSR in the 1930s. Special attention was paid to the development of wall painting and the training of mural artists throughout the whole decade. This was due not only to designing new public spaces (buildings, metro, exhibition pavilions), but, first of all, pursued propaganda goals. The panels and murals were included in the ensembles, endowed with a special suggestion due to the large size of canvases or frescoes, illusionistic pictorial techniques, the dioramic principle of constructing a single work and the whole ensemble, which, as it were, includes the viewer as part of a crowd embraced by a strong emotional impulse. To achieve the heyday of Soviet art (as well as the greatest psychological impact), it was necessary to use all available means: to combine the possibilities of different spatial arts (“the synthesis of the arts”), as well as the artistic achievements of the past. The examples of the ‘mastering’ of the art of antiquity, the Italian Renaissance, Old Russian wall painting, baroque, folk handicrafts on the example of Palekh painting, Art Nouveau, and also the art of the countries of the Far East by Soviet artists are considered successively in the article. A comparison with foreign practice shows that the adoption of retrospective stylizations corresponded to the global fashion, but it was Soviet art that strove for a comprehensive mastery of the world heritage and worked out on its basis images that were widely replicated in the future and formed a kind of Soviet canon. They can be called “the peaceful sky of the Soviet country”, “Soviet holiday”, the procession of the peoples of the USSR, etc. The field for experiments with stylization was reduced during the 1930s, in the 1940s the process ended in the dominance of official classicism.

Ural Pictures by Roman Semashkevich: The Principle of Narration

This article analyses the Ural period in the creative work of R. M. Semashkevich and the master’s previously unknown works. Contemporaries perceived the artist as a person of natural talent, who abstained from disputes about the ways of development of Soviet art. However, Semashkevich’s correspondence testifies to his critical view of the decision of the authorities to limit creative freedom, he wanted to demonstrate a different approach to socialist realism. It was important for him to build a method by which a painter, even staying within the framework of the ideological order, would be able to cultivate objective artistic values. Semashkevich’s artistic method of the early 1930s is characterised by the significant role of the pace of drawing; in his sketches, created in rapid succession, in one breath, the viewer is captured not only by their external accuracy, but also by the author’s passion, his mastery of the “narrator”. The directness of the “narrative” with all the possible angularities and conventions gives the viewer a sense of complicity, and it is on this that the artist builds his principle of narrative. It was important for the master not only to fix nature, but also to find a composition move, and build a figurative scene in a figurative way. The artist went on a trip across Northern Urals (1933) and then worked in Zlatoust (1934–1935), trying to find his “direction in the present”. His creative business trip became an opportunity for him to realise his individual artistic programme: he borrowed his plots from stories by old Bolsheviks — participants of the Revolution and the Civil war, and developed a special system of narration, combining elements of primitivism, popular print, and references to Barbizon painters and Cezanne. At a personal exhibition in Zlatoust, he presented historical and revolutionary paintings in which he demonstrated his understanding of the new realistic art. Using “graphic paradoxes” and colour dissonances, he created a sense of internally contradictory historical action in which casual episodes were characterised by the power of a heroic legend, and the artistic system verging on the primitivism or theatrical decorativeness gave rise to a sense of authenticity.