The Russian Historical Tradition Is Marked by a Deep Appreciation of and Devotion to the Arts

"REBIRTH OF RUSSIAN PAINTING" "rebirth of life," "Russian Renaissance," "a new era in creation," "the beginning of a new civilization": such were the aspirations of the Russian artistic vanguard in the early 20th century.¹ The Russian renaissance was, of course, encouraged by contact with creative innovations in Western Europe. But during the years from about 1908 to 1915, native Russian sources were in abiding ascendance over Western influence. Ii completely different painting exhibitions of 1913 may exist taken as paradigms for the resolution of these two opposing sources, Western and native: one was Mikhail Larionov's "Target" exhibition, at which he and Nataliia Goncharova exhibited their most radically abstract, rayist paintings; the other was an exhibition of aboriginal Russian icons celebrating 300 years of Romanov dynastic rule in Russia. Larionov'southward "Target" exemplified a trend toward extreme individualism in artistic manner, while the icon exhibition was a paragon of collective, bearding art, and an fine art which, despite variations conditioned by place and time, embodied a tradition of sacred imagery rooted in Eastern, Byzantine painting, and well-nigh unchanged over centuries. In the increasingly nationalistic spirit of the years preceding World War I, Larionov's "Target" group came to reject the Western influences that had given rise to the rayist fashion. And in rejecting individualism, they turned to the East, to their ain national roots and to the Eastern artistic tradition. This surprising convergence of aims and intentions was, still, but part of a larger appreciation of native Russian art that began much earlier.

It is generally agreed that the rediscovery of native arts and crafts, including the art of icon painting, brought well-nigh a renaissance of Russian art between most 1875 and the First Earth War. Certainly the revival of the crafts, together with the Slavophile movement in the second half of the 19th century, was a crucial factor in the evolution of painters in the circumvolve effectually Savva Mamontov (1841–1918), a wealthy Moscow industrialist and patron of the arts. This national heritage, plus the example of the English Arts and crafts Motion and Fine art Nouveau, gave rise to a flourishing product of arts and crafts which began in the workshops at the country estates of both Mamontov and Princess Mariia Tenisheva (1867–1928), which although not at these estates afterward the Revolution, lasted well into the 1930s. The decorative work at Mamontov's estate, Abramtsevo, centered on the building and furnishing of the estate's church. In painting the icons for the church, Vasilii Polenov, Ilya Repin and Apollinarii Vasnetov might be said to have pioneered in the reevaluation of Russia'southward most ancient artistic tradition.

The icon was for centuries the focus of Russian Orthodox devotion, and the key role of the holy images in the Russian renaissance was confirmed by the coincidence of Slavophile and archeological aspirations from about 1856 on. At the close of the century Russian icons were beingness nerveless, catalogued and exhibited. Collectors like Pavel Tretyakov (whose collection and proper name were given to Moscow's master museum of Russian painting), Ilya Ostroukhov, Stefan Riabushinsky and Nikolai Likhachev, as well appreciating the icon as a historical document, established icons equally a serious category in the fine arts.

The famed ballet impressario Serge Diaghilev included a department of icon paintings (from the Likhachev Drove) in the sampling of Russian painting which he organized for the 1906 Paris Salon d'Automne. The Diaghilev icons, notwithstanding, were unimpressive, as centuries of dirt, darkened varnish and repainting obscured the icons' vibrant colors. The cleaning of the holy images did not begin in hostage until well-nigh 1910, leading upwards to the 1913 Romanov exhibition.

Past 1912 much writing had been published on icon and church fresco painting in Russia. Both Likhachev and Ostroukhov wrote on icons, and it is apparent from Ostroukhov's manuscript that collectors appreciated the fact that, as religious art, "the fashion of the icon represents the transfigured state of beings and things."² Ostroukhov'southward manuscript—undated but, from internal evidence, written effectually 1913—demonstrates the mental attitude of the collector at the time of the Romanov exhibition:

The icon takes united states of america into an absolutely special earth, one which has nothing in mutual with the world of painting—into the world beyond, a globe created by faith and filled with representations of the spirit, not of the flesh.

This globe is unreal and therefore it is implausible to approach the icon with demands that it embody real problems of earthly phenomena. . . .

And right at present our own—specifically our own—ancient Russian icon, so joyously close and comprehensible to Russian people of one-time, is revealed to an astonished world, equally an art of the highest achievements of the homo spirit, the equal to which must exist sought only in the art of ancient Arab republic of egypt. ⁱⁱⁱ

Ostroukhov shared his dearest of both Russian icons and Egyptian art with Henri Matisse. In fact, he was Matisse's guide through collections of Russian icons, as well as various Moscow cathedrals and monasteries, when he visited Russia in the fall of 1911. Ostroukhov described Matisse'due south reaction:

Y'all should have seen his please at the icons. Literally the whole evening he wouldn't leave them lonely, relishing and delighting in each one. And with what finesse! . . . At length he alleged that for the icons alone it would have been worth his while coming from fifty-fifty further abroad than Paris, that the icons were at present nobler for him than Fra Beato [Angelico] . . . Today Shchukin 'phoned me to say that Matisse literally couldn't slumber the whole night because of the acuity of his impression. ⁴

Matisse's astonishment at the beauty of Russian federation'south newly cleaned icons was reported in the Russian daily press, which printed a running relate of his activities while in Moscow. The yr 1911 marked the height of Matisse's influence on the Russian vanguard, so his ecstatic reaction to Russia's national heritage was not taken lightly. This undoubtedly had a profound consequence on Russian artists' sense of national pride and distinctiveness.

There can be piffling doubt about what fascinated Matisse in the Russian icon. As a painter, he delighted in its formal characteristics: the flat, rich colour; the dematerialized subjects; the inverse perspective, which effectively prevents the viewer from entering the holy image, or from imagining its space every bit a continuation of his own (this is especially evident in the famous Royal Doors).

Only the icon equally a symbol of an ideal national past and an inspiration to a transformed future life was crucial to the renewed interest in Russia'south holy images. This cistron, more any other, explains the reevaluation of this heritage in the start two decades of the 20th century, at precisely the fourth dimension of greatest formal and technical innovation in the painting of the Russian vanguard. Every bit Dmitrii Sarabianov quite rightly points out, of all the distinctive features of Russian painting, "surely the about important element is the very ethos of its art, one . . . that is always inwardly continued to the destiny of the nation, to its national characteristics, and to the idiosyncracies of the national genius."⁵

Contempo studies of early on 20th-century Russian fine art and literature take shown that this sense of national destiny was never felt more keenly or more memorably expressed than in the two decades before the October Revolution.^six Such a sense of destiny links up with a long-standing Russian tradition of apocalyptical thought upheld by the icon image since Russia's Christianization in the late 10th century. The icon as symbolic bearer of the message of Christianity, in every Russian Orthodox household, gave a sense of ultimate purpose non merely to the life of the individual laic, but to his nation as well. The concept of Moscow as the Third Rome crystallized this sense of national destiny and centered it in the very centre of modern Russian federation in the beginning of the 16th century.

While the rest of Europe developed the theory of the divine right of kings, political idea in Russia tended to focus on the Tsar every bit "the living icon of God, just as the whole Orthodox Empire is the icon of the heavenly world." Even today, pictures of Russia'south political leaders serve a function similar to that of the icon.^vii Isaak Brodsky's Lenin in the Smolnyi Institute, 1935, though it eschews all the formal characteristics of icon painting, is clearly the epitome of Russian Communism'south patron saint.

The 17th century, equally Sarabianov writes, was a period of transition in which icon techniques were applied to the painting of individual portraits such as those of Prince Mikhail V. Skopin-Shuisky, and Peter I's fool, Yakov Turgenev. Thank you to the impact of Peter I's Westernization entrada, begun in the 18th century, Russia was not in a position to rediscover its own heritage until the Slavophile movement in the mid-19th century.

In the circle of Savva Mamontov, Mikhail Vrubel found a home in the 1890s. Even before, however, Vrubel had worked nether a friend of Mamontov'southward, Adrian Prakhov, who undertook in the mid-1880s the restoration and decoration of the twelfth-century Kievan church of St. Kirill. For this project Vrubel studied both Byzantine mosaics and Russian icons. Various scholars accept linked Vrubel's icons for St. Kirill's, particularly his Madonna and Kid, 1884–85, and his fresco of the Prophet Moses, 1884, with the Demon prototype that began to haunt Vrubel's imagination in 1885.^viii In that location are indeed clear visual links among these pictures. In Vrubel'south several paintings of the Demon, his monumental Bogatyr, 1898, and his Pan, 1899, a general current of myth-making prevails. This is evident in, and perhaps central to, the art and literature of other assembly of the World of Art move. Thus Vrubel'due south art is linked by this myth-making tendency with such paintings as Viktor Vasnetsov'due south Battle of the Scythians and the Slavs, 1881: "Vasnetsov'south work, similar that of Vrubel, was seen by many of the World of Art members every bit the incarnation of an archaic, barbaric strength, a world of ancient fable and elemental unity."^ix This sense of a unity inherent in before, more primitive cultures lay at the very centre of the myth-making trend; in the writings of the artist Leon Bakst, and the Symbolist poets Viacheslav Ivanov, Maksimilian Voloshin and Andrei Belyi, a return to archaic weather condition was seen as the only ways of rescuing man from his fractured civilization and from an invidious chaos of excessive individualism in which he plant himself at the turn of the century. The deep interest of the World of Art group in ancient myth and popular legend was paralleled in the trip the light fantastic toe by the Ballets Russes, and in drama by Nikolai Evreinov's productions at St. Petersburg'south Antiquarian Theater (1907–08, 1911–12). In the sphere of the visual arts one should note Valentin Serov's Rape of Europa, 1910, as well as Ivan Bilibin's illustrations to Russian fairy tales, published from 1901 onwards.¹⁰

The return to earlier national cultures was not a condition peculiar to Russian art. One could cite Picasso's work of 1907 which looked to aboriginal Iberian sculpture; or the artists of Dice Brücke, who looked to medieval German woodcuts; or Vassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, whose Blaue Reiter Almanac and exhibition of 1912 contained examples of Russian folk prints (lubki) and Bavarian painting on glass (a sort of German peasant icon tradition).¹¹

In Russia itself the interest in primitive cultures was spurred by contact with primitivism in contemporary European art—in particular by Gauguin'due south journey to Tahiti.¹² Accounts of Neo-primitivism in Russian federation mention icon painting in the list of native sources for the new style but rarely endeavor to do more than enumerate the general formal characteristics borrowed from icon painting by Neo-primitivist painters.¹³ Under the leadership of Mikhail Larionov and Nataliia Goncharova, this motion totally repudiated French influence (though afterward acknowledging its debt to information technology). These artists declared themselves emphatically for, and responsive to, native Russian folk art—the lubok signboard painting and the icon.¹⁴

The timing of the Neo-primitivists' declaration for native art is significant. It came within 2 years of Matisse's visit to Russia, and in the very twelvemonth of the large, stunning premiere exhibition of newly cleaned Russian icons in Moscow. Critical reaction to this bear witness was swift and emphatic. In fact, the exhibition gave a new sense of urgency to the debate on the state of contemporary Russian fine art—specifically in relation to its bully heritage, the tradition of icon painting.

The icon exhibition spurred Larionov to mount his own showing of icons and folk prints that same yr. Most of the works exhibited—including French images d'Epinal, Chinese, Western farsi, Tatar and Japanese prints and drawings—were, in fact, from Larionov's own art collection. Though the collection was Larionov'south, Goncharova, rather than he, executed paintings (1909–1911) closer both in mood and structure to icons; she manifestly dreamed of decorating an entire church, and to this end prepared 18 sketches.¹⁵ Of religious art, Goncharova said:

I hold that art which is religious and art which glorifies the state were always the nearly perfect, largely because art is traditional to a pregnant caste and not theoretical. An artist knew what he was representing and why, and that fact clarified and determined his thought; in that location remained just to create for it the most perfect, the most definite course. ¹⁶

Goncharova's religious paintings were held in loftier esteem past her contemporaries considering, in addition to causing a scandal when they were shown at the "Donkey'southward Tail" exhibition in Moscow in 1912, they spoke eloquently to the spiritual strivings of her own artistic group at the time. A member of her circle wrote the following near Goncharova's religious paintings:

All these are works of great artistic significance—non to mention the dazzler of their color, expressiveness, monumentality, painterly excellence, all those qualities which are strongly to the credit of decorative art; the almost important cistron in these [religious compositions] is their amazing spiritual animation. ¹⁷

While Goncharova's religious compositions follow icons in their field of study thing and in their mood of spiritual contemplation, the paintings of Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin (1878–1939) await near direct to the classic formal devices of icon painting, especially "spherical" perspective. Moreover, while Goncharova just dreamed of decorating a church, Petrov-Vodkin actually received a commission for church icons, in 1911–12 (from Pavel I. Kharitonenko [1852–1914], also an important collector of ancient Russian icons) and painted frescoes in other churches in 1902–03, 1911 and 1913.¹⁸ Petrov-Vodkin'south Bathing of the Red Equus caballus, 1912, his Female parent, 1912–thirteen, and his famous Saint petersburg 1918 (painted in 1920) show potent affinities with the formal limerick and coloration of icons; Mother and Petrograd 1918 besides derive their theme from that of icons, the near pop subject of which was the Madonna and Child. Equally John Bowlt states in his foreword to the Metropolitan Museum's current Russian and Soviet Painting catalogue, "Petrov-Vodkin's Bathing of the Red Horse is a superb example of this new awareness of Russian federation's pre-Petrine artistic tradition: not only does information technology depend on the same dense torso color of the quondam Russian icon, but besides (equally Dr. Sarabianov points out in his introduction) it contains a deep mythological and philosophical value." The philosophical relation is specifically to the myth-making tendency of the Symbolist motion, of which Petrov-Vodkin may exist said to exist the last vital exponent in the early on teens.¹⁹

Having painted icons and frescoes for churches, Petrov-Vodkin knew but how of import it was to report this tradition, just he besides realized how fruitless it was to think of icon painting as anything other than absolutely finished and incapable of being revived.²⁰ In the disquisitional reception of Petrov-Vodkin's work in 1913–23 mention was unremarkably made of the link with ancient Russian art, only a great deal more than attending was paid to Petrov-Vodkin's "striving for purism, for a purity of painterly aims and means. Form, color, purely painterly limerick which renders colorful harmony—here are the chief sources of creative feeling."²¹

Since 1910 artists had written increasingly of the bones elements of painting: witness numerous theoretical statements by Kandinsky, Vladimir Markov (Matvejs), David Burliuk, Mikhail Larionov, Aleksandr Shevchenko, Olga Rozanova and Kazimir Malevich.²² Moreover, attention to craftsmanship and its elements had been a vital part of the esthetic of the Russian Symbolist poets—the writings of Andrei Belyi, in particular, a poet, novelist and theoretician who explored the bones craftsmanly elements non simply of literature, merely of painting, sculpture and music as well.²³ This is linked to the evolution of mod linguistic theory and led ultimately to the rise of the Russian Formalist school of literary criticism, which too focused on an assay of the basic elements of mythology and poetry. Belyi fabricated the categorical argument that "each word is, before all else, sound" (think of Maurice Denis on European painting).²⁴ Such developments in both painting and poetry were linked throughout the early decades of the 20th century. And in painting, specially, the analysis of the formal traits of the Russian icon, equally well every bit of the lubok print, lent itself to the rise of such formalist concern.

Aleksandr Shevchenko advanced a new colour principle which he chosen "flowing color" in his 1913 booklet Neo-primitivizm:

Flowing color is encountered for the first time, as a quite definite painterly principle, in our icons, where it is expressed in the highlighting of the garments past colors flowing (passing) on into the background. ²⁵

In the spirit of exactly this type of formal assay, a recently published report past the Soviet art historian Lev Zhegin (Shektel) is invaluable for understanding the compositional devices employed in numerous Neo-primitivist paintings of the Russian vanguard. His lazyk zhivopisnogo proizvedenii (Moscow, 1970) is an analysis and explanation of illumination, of the different types of perspective and spatial composition and of the Due south-shaped and the curved line in icon painting, in comparing with Oriental arts. Zhegin's close association with Larionov doubtless sparked his interest in compositional analysis and in comparison of Russian icons with the painting of other Oriental cultures. Equally John Bowlt suggests, the very remoteness of such arts every bit the myth and the icon from life in the 20th century opened them to such analysis.²⁶ Zhegin's report offers considerable insight into the Russian Neo-primitivists' appreciation of icons; information technology has, in fact, pioneered a new area of fine art history which now should be incorporated into our study of the Neo-primitivists. We can no longer interpret the piece of work of artists like Larionov and Goncharova, Malevich and Tatlin solely—or even importantly—in light of Western artistic developments.

Without, however, denying entirely the influence of French art, nosotros must now assert the importance of icons for the early paintings and theater designs of Vladimir Tatlin, for example, who probably became interested in icons around 1911, thanks to the influence of Nataliia Goncharova (then painting her own religious compositions). The importance of holy images for Tatlin's use of the curved line as the bones compositional device in his Fish Vendor, 1911, for instance, becomes obvious when this painting is compared with the 14th-century icon of Our Lady of the Don. Tatlin's assimilation of icon tradition is stressed more than than once by the Russian critic Nikolai Punin (1888–1953), who fifty-fifty states, "the influence of Russian icons on Tatlin was immeasurably greater than Cézanne'south and Picasso's influence on him. . . ." Punin'due south bias toward the textile culture of painting, sculpture and architecture, which inclined him to stress the material qualities of paint every bit used past the aboriginal icon painters,²⁷ goes far beyond the purely spiritual abstraction and dematerialization that the Symbolists discovered in Russia's holy images.

At the plow of the century Russian icons had been specially appreciated for their links with music. Not just did their iconography in the 14th and 15th centuries draw on images from Russian church building music, but the forms of ancient icons were fifty-fifty looked upon every bit approaching musical forms,²⁸ an idea which lone would have endeared the holy images to the Russian Symbolists. The purity of artistic means which artists and critics required around 1910–15 was held up as the bones benchmark for a renewed art of painting. Furthermore, this new art must not use old forms, simply must invent an entirely new vocabulary in lodge to enter "the new era in creation—an era of purely artistic achievements."²⁹

As modern linguistics discovered at the time, all language is at base an arbitrary arrangement, including the "language" of art. An emphasis on purity of means made the pick of forms and colors based on traditional conceptions, or on the idea of "copying" the visual phenomena of the globe, completely obsolete. Instead, a new science of form and color, arbitrary but based on scientifically verified criteria, became a necessity for the avant-garde.³⁰ Scientific analysis of the color and formal properties of painting was central to the larger evolution of sensibility manifest in the art and literature of the years just before World War I, an development of sensibility correspondent to a new creative era, in Kandinsky's phrase, "the Epoch of Great Spirituality."³¹ Kandinsky's theory of art itself stressed the preeminence of the artist in the evolution of mankind'due south sensibility, and described this miracle graphically as a great triangle, at the apex of which stands the artist, constantly advancing the consciousness of mankind—which ranges itself in e'er broader levels, and ever greater numbers, below him.

Malevich's new way of painting, Suprematism, may best be understood precisely within the context of this evolution of a new artistic sensibility.³² For Malevich was much involved with the aspiration toward a renewed, purified vocabulary of painting, and strongly believed that the higher evolution of consciousness and human being sensibility would first manifest itself in art and literature. His writings of 1915–16 are breathless with this excitement at being in the forefront of an evolving sensibility. Earlier he as well had come to appreciate Russia'southward icon tradition, and under the influence of Goncharova, outset about 1911, Malevich painted themes of peasant life similar to hers. Malevich's 1911 painting Peasant Women at Church and pictures of peasants, such as The Orthodox, 1911, clearly point to the influence of Russian icons and church frescoes. The Orthodox, in item, has been quite correctly tied to icons, owing non simply to its frontal, mostly iconic visual quality, merely besides to its sense of "a security of belief and compactness of purpose."³³

The human face in Malevich'south compositions of 1911–14 gradually yielded to flat planes of color (Portrait of Ivan Kliun, 1912–thirteen; Portrait of M. V. Matiushin, 1913; Woman Beside a Poster Cavalcade, 1914). As William Simmons suggests, the face is replaced by Malevich's Suprematist square.³⁴ And whatever else it might be (for Punin "the square as an actual form [is] characteristic of man initiative"³⁵), the square became the icon of the new historic period. Although he denied that the icons which hung in his parents' dwelling house near Kiev always impressed him, Malevich nevertheless referred not infrequently to the painting of the human face up in his writings of the time, and, in fact, called his square "the face of the new art," and "the new confront of the Suprematist world. . . . I meet in it what people at 1 time used to meet before the face of God."³⁶ Perchance Malevich agreed in principle with Andrei Belyi's view that "in the center of art must stand the living image of the Logos, i.e. the Visage."³⁷

Malevich'southward attitude toward the icon itself, and toward painting in the way of icons, notwithstanding, is necessarily similar to that of Petrov-Vodkin and of Nikolai Punin. Malevich writes:

The icon can no longer exist the same meaning, goal and means that it was formerly: it has already passed into the museum where it can exist preserved under the new meaning, not of a religious conception, but of art. But as we get deeper into new creative significant it loses even that significance and naught can be invested in it, for it will be the soulless mannequin of a past spiritual and commonsensical life. ³⁸

Aleksandr Benois, in his review of the December 1915 "0.10" exhibition, saw Malevich'due south Black Square equally an icon, writing: "Undoubtedly, this is actually that 'icon' which the futurists posit in place of madonnas and 'shameless' Venuses, this is really 'supremacy over the forms of nature' . . ." In answer to Benois, Malevich referred to "the face of [his] square" and stated:

I have the only naked, frameless icon of my time (like a pocket) and it'due south difficult to fight. But the happiness in being unlike you lot gives the strength to go further and further into the void of the wilderness, for only there lies transfiguration. ³⁹

Transfiguration is a vital concept in Malevich's view of himself equally an artist who has already achieved a college stage of evolution, has transformed himself "in the zilch of course . . ." As Belyi advocated in his essay on future art published five years before, the creative person must "become his ain artistic form" for "only this form of creation still promises the states conservancy."⁴⁰ This sense of transfiguration through, and for the sake of, art links Malevich once again with the traditions of icon painting, for one of the primary personal criteria for an icon painter that comes down to us in all the traditional literature is that he be "a 'transformed person' in order to exist able to nowadays in his work a transfigured existence and a transfigured universe."⁴¹

In guild to achieve this, Malevich, along with other vanguard artists, advocated the overthrow of subject matter, as it was merely a hindrance to pure painting: "Painters should carelessness bailiwick thing and objects if they wish to be pure painters." ⁴² Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948), Russian religious philosopher and one-time art and literary critic, expressed like sentiments in 1918:

Only man'southward spiritual cognition can comprehend the transition from the old, decaying world to the new globe. Only man's creatively aggressive attitude to the elementally occurring process tin beget new life and new beauty. The generation of futurists of all shades reflects this elemental process too passively. In such ultra-new currents equally suprematism, the long-urgent problem of the final liberation of the creative deed from the power of the natural-objective world is sharply raised. Painting from purely painterly elements must create a new earth, completely unlike the whole natural globe. In it must be neither nature with all its forms, nor man. This is not only the liberation of art from the subject area [siuzhetnosti], it is liberation from the unabridged created world, [a liberation] which rests on creation out of zip. ⁴³

At the time of Russia's great exhibition of icon paintings in 1913 the pertinence of this material to abstract fine art was more obvious than it afterward became. In the Saint petersburg art periodical Apollon the exhibition was hailed as "a revelation to the states all; is information technology not the beginning of a new artistic consciousness in Russian federation?"⁴⁴ Nikolai Punin, subsequently taking the opportunity to compare European contemporary art unfavorably with Russian icons, said:

Tin can nosotros at present count the solar day and the year of the opening of the Moscow exhibition [of icon painting] as the day and the year of the beginning of our rebirth? Or is it only the last ray of the setting lord's day? Is it possible, at final, to say: "nosotros, Russians, are proud of our artistic heritage and notwithstanding know how to cock tents on the top of the mountain, ⁴⁵ over which will polish only the eternal, blessed heaven, Art?" We shall run across; today or tomorrow all this will go evident, and information technology is possible that it will adapt us to return repeatedly to questions which can scarcely exist touched here. ⁴⁶

At that place is a definite apocalyptic annotation in this statement, specially in the reference to the "final ray of the setting dominicus." It is a notation that is given added emphasis in the Symbolist poet Maksimilian Voloshin's (1877–1932) reaction to this extraordinary revelation of Russian icons. In a similarly apocalyptic tone, Voloshin likens the time-darkened olifa—the varnish or drying oil used on Russian icons—to a tomb that has preserved the icons' clear colors. He closes his brusque commodity with a statement that should come as no surprise in such an atmosphere of expectancy as possessed Russia just before the Get-go Globe War. Referring again to olifa, Voloshin says:

Graves do non open up accidentally; these works have been thrust out of the grave at exactly that moment of history when they are needed. In days of profound artistic collapse, in years total of the disorder of aspiration and of purpose, ancient Russian art is revealed in order to give a lesson in the harmonious balance between tradition and individualism, betwixt method and intention, betwixt line and color. ⁴⁷

Here, ascent from the grave—as the Concluding Judgment—was the beacon to a new, transfigured life. In that location tin can be no uncertainty that Russian artists of the avant-garde looked to information technology for inspiration, as a true sign that a new life was about to begin.

Margaret Betz is preparing her Ph.D dissertation on French modernistic art in Russia at the City Academy of New York.

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NOTES

The works illustrated in this commodity are from the exhibition "Russian and Soviet Painting," which volition be on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, through June 26th. It volition also be shown at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco from August 6th to October 9th.

1. These phrases are taken from a multifariousness of artistic statements dating 1902–1916. All are collected and translated in full by John E. Bowlt, in Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism 1902–1934, New York, 1976, pp. 5. 8, 11, 108, 113. I would like to thank John E. Bowlt, Rose-Carol Washton Long and Charlotte Douglas for their manufactures and lectures, which have inspired each stage of the inquiry and writing of this article: the staff of the Slavonic Sectionalization of the New York Public Library, for their untiring aid in locating inquiry material. Primary among the basic sources in preparing this commodity were J.H. Billington, The Icon and the Axe, New York, 1966; J.Due east. Bowl. trans. and ed., Russian Art of the Avant-garde: Theory and Criticism 1902–1934, New York, 1976; C. Gray, The Russian Experiment in Art, New York, 1971; and D. and T.T. Rice, Icons and Their History, Woodstock, Northward.Y., 1974. Translations are my own, except where noted.

two. G. Galavaris, Icons from The Elvehjem Art Center, Madison, Wisconsin, 1973, p. 24.

3. I.Southward. Ostroukhov, manuscript reprinted in Mastera iskusstva ob iskusstve, 7, ed. A.A. Fedorov-Davydov and G.A. Nedoshivin, Moscow, 1970, pp. 231–232; hereafter, this anthology is cited as Mastera, VII. Ostroukhov began collecting icons in 1909; see P. Pertsov, Khudozhestvennye muzei Moskvy, Moscow, 1925. p. 71.

4. Yu A. Rusakov, "Matisse in Russian federation in the Autumn of 1911," trans. J.East. Bowlt, Burlington Mag, CXVII, 866 (May 1975), pp. 285–286.

five. D.V. Sarabianov, "Introduction," trans. J.E. Bowlt, to the Metropolitan Museum catalogue Russian and Soviet Painting (New York, 1977). p. xvi. Sarabianov has investigated turn-of-the-century Russian painting's response to this sense of national destiny in a book of essays on selected artists, Russkaia zhivopis' kontsa 1900kh-nachala 1910kh godov, Moscow, 1971; hereafter cited as Sarabianov, Russkaia zhivopis'.

vi. Among these studies are two articles and a book by R-C. W. Long: "Kandinsky and Abstraction: The Part of the Subconscious Image." Artforum, X, 10 (June. 1972). pp. 42–49: "Kandinsky's Abstract Style: The Veiling of Apocalyptic Folk Imagery," Art Journal, XXX1V, 3 (Spring 1975), pp. 217–228; and The Hidden Paradigm: The Development of Kandinsky's Abstract Way, 1909–1914, to exist published by Oxford University Printing. See likewise South.D. Cioran, The Apocalyptic Symbolism of Andrej Belyj, The Hague, 1973.

7. Billington, The Icon and The Axe, pp. 47–77, 26–37. The quotation is from M. Fedotov, The Russian Religious Listen, New York, 1960, p. 208.

eight. S. Ya. Yaremich, Mihail Aleksandrovich Vrubel', Moscow, 1911, p. 54; for this reference, I am indebted to Aline Pritchard, currently writing a Ph.D. dissertation on "The Art of Mikhail Vrubel." See also N.A. Prakhov, Stranitsy proshlogo, Kiev, 1958, pp. 98–99; and N.One thousand. Tarabukin, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel' (written in the 1930s), Moscow, 1974, pp. nineteen-21. Reproductions of the above-mentioned paintings may be found in Yaremich, pp. 34–35, 29, 63, 70.

9. J.E. Bowlt, "Synthesism and Symbolism: The Russian Earth of Art Movement." Forum for Modern Language Studies, IX, 1 (Jan. 1973), p. 45

10. A. Benois, working with Diaghilev on the production of the Ballets, wrote a fascinating article on the current state of ballet: "Beseda o balete," in Teatr. Kniga o novom teatre, St. Petersburg, 1908, pp. 95–121; in the same anthology, A. Belyi addressed gimmicky drama as a myth-making event: "Teatr i sovremennaia drama," pp. 261–289. For Evreinov's productions, meet E. Stark, Starinnyi Teatr, Petersburg, 1922; Evreinov'southward theory of drama as an integral part of man'due south primordial, pre-esthetic nature, though published earlier, received definitive statement in his book, Teatr kak takovoi, Petrograd, 1912, pp. 29–39. Contemporary accounts of his productions are in Russkie vedomosti, XLV, 71 (25 Mar. 1908), p. 6. and XLIX, 273 (27 November. 1911), p. five.

The Lithuanian painter Mikalojaus Ciurlionis was as well accepted every bit part of the Globe of Art movement from his arrival in Saint petersburg in 1909; his interest in native Lithuanian folk arts paralleled the increasing examination of Russian folk arts, and betwixt 1908 and 1910 Ciurlionis published 2 articles on this topic. These are reprinted in Mastera, VII, pp. 622–626.

11. J. Golding, "The Demoiselles d'Avignon," Burlington Magazine, C (May 1958, pp. 155–163. P. Selz, German Expressionist Painting, Berkeley, 1974, p. 79. The Blaue Reiter Almanac, ed. Due west. Kandinsky and F. Marc (Documentary ed. by K. Lankheit). New York, 1974.

12. See, for example, Southward. Makovsky's review of the Russian Bluish Rose grouping exhibition: "Golubaia roza." Zolotoe runo, 1907, no.v, pp. 25–28. See likewise J.East. Bowlt, "The Blue Rose: Russian Symbolism in Art," Burlington Magazine, CXVIII, 881 (Aug. 1976), pp. 566–575.

13. Apart from Alan Birnholz's contempo article "On the Significant of Kazimir Malevich's 'White on White,'" Art International, XXI, 1 (1977). pp. 9–16, 55, a single exception is J. E. Bowlt's comparison of Kazimir Malevich'due south Morning in the Village Later a Snowstorm with the Novgorodian icon Christ's Entry into Jerusalem, in "Neo-primitivism and Russian Painting," Burlington Magazine, CXVI, 853 (Mar. 1974), p. 139. This should be supplemented past reading the analysis of the Malevich painting by C. Douglas, "The New Russian Art and Italian Futurism," Art Journal XXXIV, 3 (Spring 1975), pp. 229–239.

fourteen. A. Shevchenko, Neo-primitivism. Ego teoriia. Ego vozmozhnosti. Ego dostizheniia, Moscow, 1913. Northward. Goncharova, "Predislovie k katalogu vystavki. 1913 g," reprinted in Mastera, VII. pp. 487–490. K. Larionov and N. Goncharova, "Luchisty i budushchniki. Manifest," Oslinnyi khvost i Mishen', Moscow, 1913, p. 12. Translations of all the above by J.E. Bowlt, in Russian Fine art of the Avant-Garde, pp. 41–sixty, 87–91.

15. T. Loguine, Gontcharova et Larionov, Paris, 1971, pp. 33–37, presents a French translation of the catalogue of Larionov'due south icon and folk print exhibition. On Goncharova's religious paintings, see. Yard. Chamot, Gontcharova, Paris, 1972, p. 36. The religious paintings are listed in E. Eganbiuri, Nataliia Goncharova. Mikhail Larionov, Moscow, 1913, p. Ix–13.

While the religious compositions reveal the influence of icons and lubki, Goncharova'southward paintings of peasant themes, such as Washing Linen, in this exhibition, too comport a direct human relationship to a suite of 17th-century Russian miniatures on agricultural and genre themes, reproduced in Zolotoe runo,1906, no. 7–9, pp 89–96.

16. East. Eganbiuri, Nataliia Goncharova. Mikhail Larionov, pp. eighteen-19.

17. 5. Parkin, "Oslinnyi khvost i Mishen'," Oslinnyi khvost i Mishen', p. 59.

18. Meet the listing of Petrov-Vodkin'south master works: "Spisok glavykh proizvedenii K.S. Petrova-Vodkina," Apollon, 1915, no.3, pp. 21–24. I would like to give thanks John Bowlt for information concerning the artist's earliest church building decoration. On Petrov-Vodkin's spherical perspective, see Sarabianov, Russkaia zhivopis', pp. 33–54.

Church fresco paintings were a significant source for certain of Pavel Filonov'southward works, such as Faces, 1919, in this exhibition. Many of Filonov's compositional devices were influenced by ancient artifacts of Southwest Russia and Siberia. Faces, in addition, has the quality of a Byzantine mosaic in the structure of its color. J.East. Bowlt, "Pavel Filonov." Russian Literature Triquarterly, 12 (Spring 1975), pp. 374, 381, 392, due north.fourteen. The "In Thee Rejoiceth" fresco (destr.) from the porch of the Cathedral of the Annunciation in the Kremlin, Moscow, bears a striking resemblance to Faces. Filonov could accept seen photos of this fresco in Zolotoe runo, 1906, no. 7–9, p. 37 and between pp. 40–41, or in I. Grabar, Istoriia russkogo iskusstva, Six, Moscow, 1911, pp. 287–296. See J.East. Bowlt, "Pavel Filonov," Studio International, CLXXXVI, 957 (July–Aug. 1973), p. 31; and "Pavel Filonov: His Painting and His Theory," The Russian Review, XXXIV, 3 (July 1975), pp. 290–291.

19. V. Dmitriev praised Bathing of the Ruby-red Horse equally "The first banner, the commencement word of an approaching epoch of Russian artistic life," and related information technology specifically to icons of the Novgorod schoolhouse: "Kupanie krasnago konia," Apollon, 1915, no. 3, pp. 15, 18.

20. K.S. Petrov-Vodkin, "Zhivopis' budushchego," a lecture read in April 1912; reprinted in Mastera, Vii, p. 448. Other artists were actively trying to revive a Byzantine mode of painting at this time, and their efforts were plant intriguing, merely ultimately merely fashionable, because the business of contemporary art "does not concern the resurrection of an aboriginal art, only the creation of our own." N. Punin, "Vizantiiskaia vystavka rabot L. Kramarenko i A. Tarana," Apollon, 1913, no. iv, pp. 42–43.

21. A. Rostislavov, "Zhivopis' Petrova-Vodkina," Apollon, 1915, no. three, p. 12. Articles in improver to that in n. xx, which link this creative person's work to icon painting are: 5. Dmitriev, "Po povodu vystavok byvshikh i budushchikh,"Apollon, 1914, no. 10, pp. 16–17; and G. Shaginian, "K. S. Petrov-Vodkin," Russkoe iskusstvo, 1923, no. i, p.xvi.

22. Nerveless and translated past J. E. Bowlt, in Russian Fine art of the Avant-Garde.

23. J. E. Bowlt, "Synthesism and Symbolism," pp. 35–48. A. Belyi, "Formy iskusstva," Mir iskusstva, 1902, no. 2, pp. 343–361; his "Print sip formy five estetike," Zolotoe runo, 1906, no. xi–12, pp. 88–96; and his "Budushchee iskusstvo," Simvolizm. Moscow, 1910, pp 449–453.

24. A. Belyi, "Magiia sloe," Simvolizm, p. 430. Denis was very highly regarded by the Russian vanguard in the early on 1910s. On the emergence of Russian Formalism, see K. Pomorska, Russian Formalist Theory and its Poetic Ambiance, The Hague, 1968; and J. E. Bowlt, "Russian Formalism and the Visual Arts," 20th Century Studies, no. vii–8 (Dec. 1972), pp. 131–146.

25. Trans. by J. Due east. Bowlt, Russian Art of the Advanced, p. 51. N. M. Tarabukin as well wrote especially of the colour in Russian icons in "Opyt teorii zhivopist" an essay written 1916, published originally in Moscow. 1923, and translated into French by A. B. Nakov and M. Pétris, in Le dernier tableau, Paris, 1972.

26. "Russian Ceremonial and the Visual Arts," p. 139.

27. N. Punin, "Obzor novykh techenii v iskusstve Peterburga," Russkoe iskusstvo, 1923, no.1, p. 18. For this reference, I am indebted to Gail Harrison, currently working on a Ph.D. dissertation on Tatlin'south Monument to the 3rd International.

Punin's statement must be understood in the context of his preference for Russian traditions over strange influence, which he incorporated into his articles from virtually 1913 on, culminating in his advocacy of Tatlin's "culture of materials"; see Punin's Tatlin (Protiv kubizma), Petersburg, 1921, p. 11–12.

28. Billington, The Icon and The Axe, p. 38. Ostroukhov, in the manuscript cited in annotation 3, draws an analogy between icons and musical forms; reprinted in Mastera, VII, p. 232. The English language art critic, Roger Fry, somewhat afterwards wrote eloquently on the musical purity of Russian icons: "Russian Icon Painting From the Western European Point of View," in M. Due south. Farbman, ed., Masterpieces of Russian Painting, London, 1930, pp. 38, 58. Cf. John Bowlt'south discussion of the links between painting and music: "Synthesism and Symbolism," pp. 39–40, 46–47.

29. O. Rozanova, "Osnovy novogo tvorchestva i prichiny ego neponimaniia," translated past J. E. Bowlt, Russian Art of the Avant-Garde, p. 108.

30. Run across J.E. Bowlt, "Concepts of Color and the Soviet Avant-garde," and C. Douglas. "Colors Without Objects." The Structurist, no. thirteen/14 (1973-74), pp. 20-29 and 30-41 respectively.

On the capricious nature of language systems, run across F. de Saussure. Course in General Linguistics (originally published in 1915), translated past W. Baskin, New York. 1959. p. 67.

31. V. Kandinsky, "Soderzhanie i forma," Salon 2. Mezhdunarodnaia khudozhestvennaia vystavka, ed. V.A. Izdebsky, Odessa, 1910, p. sixteen.

32. An excellent analysis of the history and significance of this evolution in Russian federation is by C. Douglas, "Views from the New World. A. Kruchenykh and K. Malevich: Theory and Painting," Russian Literature Triquarterly, 12 (Spring 1975). pp. 352–370. See too S.P. Compton, "Malevich'due south Suprematism––The Higher Intuition," Burlington Mag, CXVIII, 881 (Aug. 1976), pp. 577–585.

33. W.South. Simmons, "Malevich's Black Square: The Icon Unmasked," Paper presented at the 61st Annual Meeting of the College Fine art Association of America, New York, 27 Jan., 1973. A. C. Birnholz, "On the pregnant of Kazimir Malevich's 'White on White.'" Art International, XXI, i (1977), pp. 9–16, 55, even more concretely links Malevich's Suprematism to the tradition and meaning of Russian Icon painting.

34. Ibid.

35. Northward. Punin, "Obzor novykh techenii v iskusstve Peterburga," p. 22. Come across also S. M. Eisenstein, "Dinamicheskii kvadrat," Izbrannye proizvedeniia five shesti tomakh, Ii, Moscow, 1964, pp. 317–328. Allow me thank John Bowlt for bringing this article to my attention.

36. K. Malevich, Essays on Art, trans. by Ten. Glowacki-Prus and A. McMillan, ed. by T. Andersen, 2, Copenhagen, 1968, pp 148–151. Quotations are from: Malevich, Ot kubizma i futurizma k suprematizmu. Novyi zhivopisnyi realizm, Moscow, 1916, trans by J. Bowlt, Russian Art of the Avant-Garde, p. 133; and Malevich, letter of the alphabet of iii Apr. 1920 to P. Ettinger, trans. by S. Bojko, From Surface to Space: Russian federation 1916–24, Cologne, 1974, p. 54.

37. A. Belyi, "Emblematika smysla," Simvolizm, p. 79.

38. Yard. Malevich, "The Question of Imitative Fine art," Essays on Fine art, I, p. 170.

39. A. Benois, "Posledniaia futuristicheskaia vystavka, Rech 9 Jan. 1916, reprinted in L. F. D'iakonitsyn, Ideinye protivorechlia v estetike russkoi zhivopist kontsa 19 - nachala 20 vv., Perm, 1966, p. 213. Malevich's respond, preserved in the Country Russian Museum, Saint petersburg, is reprinted on pp. 214–215.

forty. K. Malevich, Ot kubizma i futurizma . . ., trans past J. Bowlt, Russian Art of the Avant-Garde, p. 118. A. Belyi, "Budushchee iskusstvo," Simvolizm, p. 453.

41. G. Galavaris, Icons from The Elvehjem Art Center, p. 29.

42. Malevich, Ot kubizma i futurizma . . ., trans. past J. Bowlt, Russian Art of the Advanced, p. 130.

43. N. Berdyaev, Krizis iskusstva, Moscow, 1918, pp. xiv–15.

44. Essem (S. Makovsky?). "Vystavka i khudozhestvennaia zhizn': Vystavka drevne-russkago iskusstva," Apollon, 1913, no. 5. p. 38.

45. Hither too, the theme of transfiguration is evident, for information technology was at Christ'due south Transfiguration, the starting time manifestation of His divinity, that Peter suggested that three tents be erected on the mount, for Christ, Moses and Elijah (Matt., XVII: 1–nine; Mark, Nine: 2–10; Luke, Nine: 28–36).

46. N. Punin, "Vystavka i khudozhestvennaia zhizn': Vystavka drevne-russkago iskusstva." Apollon, 1913, no. v, pp. 41–42.

47. M. Voloshin, "Chemu uchat ikony?" Apollon, 1914, no. five, pp. 26–29.