NEW PERSPECTIVES ON RUSSIAN AND SOVIET ARTISTIC CULTURE

SELECTED PAPERS FROM THE FOURTH WORLD CONGRESS FOR SOVIET AND EAST EUROPEAN STUDIES, HARROGATE, 1990

Edited for the International COllneil for Soviet and East European Studies by Stephen White. Professor of Politics. University of GlasgoI\'

From the same publishers:

Roy Allison (editor) RADICAL REFORM IN SOVIET DEFENCE POLICY

Ben Eklof (editor) SCHOOL AND SOCIETY IN TSARIST AND SOVIET RUSSIA

John Elsworth (edilOr) THE SILVER AGE IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE

John Garrard and Carol Garran.l (editors) WORLD WAR 2 AND THE SOVIET PEOPLE

Zvi Gitelman (edilOr) THE POLITICS OF NATIONALITY AND THE EROSION OF THE USSR

Sheelagh Duffin Graham (editor) NEW DIRECTIONS IN SOVIET LITERATURE

Celia Hawkesworth (editor) LITERATURE AND POLITICS IN EASTERN EUROPE

Lindsey Hughes (editor) NEW PERSPECTIVES ON MUSCOVITE HISTORY

Walter Joyce (editor) SOCIAL CHANGE AND SOCIAL ISSUES IN THE FORMER USSR

Bohdan Krawchenko (editor) UKRAINIAN PAST. UKRAINIAN PRESENT

Paul G. Lewis (editor) DEMOCRACY AND CIVIL SOCIETY IN EASTERN EUROPE

Robert B. McKean (editor) NEW PERSPECTIVES IN MODERN RUSSIAN HISTORY

John Morison (editor) THE CZECH AND SLOVAK EXPERIENCE EASTERN EUROPE AND THE WEST

John O. Norman (edilOr) NEW PERSPECTIVES ON RUSSIAN AND SOVIET ARTISTIC CULTURE

Derek Offord (editor) THE GOLDEN AGE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE AND THOUGHT

Michael E. Urban (editor) IDEOLOGY AND SYSTEM CHANGE IN THE USSR AND EAST EUROPE

New Perspectives on Russian and Soviet Artistic Culture Selected Papers from the Fourth World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies, Harrogate, 1990

Edited by

John O. Nonnan Assistant Professor of History Western Michigan University

M St. Martin's Press

© International Council for Soviet and East European Studies and John O. Nonnan 1994 General Editor's Introduction © Steohen White 1992

Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1992 978-0-333-55323-7

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First published in Great Britain 1994 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world

This book is published in association with the International Council for Soviet and East European Studies

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

First published in the United States of America 1994 by Scholarly and Reference Division, ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies (4th: 1990: Harrogate, England) New perspectives on Russian and Soviet artistic culture / edited by John O. Nonnan. p. cm. "Selected papers from the Fourth World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies, Harrogate, 1990." Includes index.

I. Arts, Russian-Congresses. 2. Arts, Soviet--Congresses. 3. Art and state-Russia--Congresses. 4. Art and state-Soviet Union--Congresses. I. Norman, John O. , 1949- II. Title. NX556.AIW67 1994 700'.03-dc20 92-19482

CIP

ISBN 978-1-349-23192-8 ISBN 978-1-349-23190-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-23190-4

ISBN 978-0-312-08558-2

ISBN 978-0-312-08558-2

Contents

List of Plates

General Editor's Introduction

Notes on the Contributors

Introduction John O. Norman

Eighteenth-century Estate Design and Theatrical Illusion Priscilla Roosevelt

2 Catherine the Great and the English Garden Anthony G. Cross

3 Alexander III as a Patron of Russian Art

vi

Xl

X 111

7

17

John O. Nonnan 25

4 Neo-c1assicaI Aestheticism in Pre-revolutionary Russian Architecture William Craft Brumfield 41

5 Vrubel and Klimt, Moscow and Vienna James M. Curtis

6 The Role of the Moscow Architectural School in the Emergence of the Russian Avant-Garde

54

Elena Borisovna Ovsiannikova 62

7 Remaking Folk Art: from Russian Revival to Proletcult Alison L. Hilton 80

8 'From the Southern Mountains to the Northern Seas': Painting in the Republics in the Early Soviet Period Musya Glants 95

9 International Modernism or Socialist Realism: Soviet Architecture in the Eastern Republics Milka Bliznakov 112

IO Perestroika and the Soviet Creative Unions Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy 131

Index 153

v

7

7

List of Plates

Charles Cameron. stoves in the form of urns. end of the eighteenth century. N. A. Evsina. Arkhitekturnaia teoriia v Rossii vtoroi poloviny XVII/-nachala x/x veka (Moscow: Nauka. 1985)

2 Giacomo Quarenghi. Fantasy on an Antique Theme. N. A. Evsina. Architekturnaia teoriia v Rossii vtoroi poloviny XVII/-nachala X/X veka (Moscow: Nauka. 1985)

3 Nikolai Lvov. frontispiece to A Treatise on Perspective for the Benefit of Public Schools. 1788. N. A. Evsina. Arkhitekturnaia teoriia v Rossii vtoroi poloviny XVII/-nachala X/X veka (Moscow: Nauka. 1985)

4 Pietro Gonzago. wall painting for the Rose Pavilion. drawing by V. A. Zhukovskii. undated. P. Shtorkh. Guide to the Garden and Town of Pavlovsk. with Twelve Views Drawn From Nature by V. A. Zhukovskii (St Petersburg. 1843)

5 View of Alexander III's art gallery. Anichkov Palace. photograph c. 1890. Khudozhestvennye sokrovishcha Rossii. 1903

6 Nikolai Ge. Last Supper. 1866. State Tretiakov Gallery. Moscow

7 Aleksei Bogoliubov. photograph c. 1890. Private Collection

8 Konstantin Savitskii. To War. 1888. State Russian Museum. St Petersburg

9 Ivan Kramskoi. portrait of Alexander III as Tsarevich. etching. 1876. Khudozhestvennye sokrovishcha Rossii. 1903. Courtesy of Hillwood Museum. Washington. DC

10 Investiture of Alexander III with the Imperial Crown. 1883. Opisanie sviashchennogo koronovanii /mperatora Aleksandra Tret'ego (/883). Courtesy of Hillwood Museum. Washington. DC

11 Genrikh Semiradsky. Frina at a Celebration of Poseidon. 1889. State Russian Museum. St Petersburg

vi

List of Plates vii

12 Grigorii Miasoedov. Harvest Time. 1887. State Russian Museum. St Petersburg

13 Nikolai Ge. What is Truth? 1890. State Tretiakov Gallery. Moscow

14 Nikolai Ge. Crucifixion. 1892. Musee d·Orsay. Paris

15 Azov-Don Bank. Petersburg. 1908-9. Architect: Fedor Lidval. Ezhegodnik Obshchestva arkhitektorov-khudozhnikov. 1909

16 Azov-Don Bank. Petersburg. interior. Ezhegodnik Obshchestva arkhitektorov-khudozhnikov. 1909

17 Vavelberg Building. Petersburg. 1910-12. Architect: Marian Peretiatkovich. Ezhegodnik Obshchestva arkhitektorov-khudozhnikov. 1912

18 Project sketch for 'New Petersburg'. Architect: Ivan Fomin. Ezhegodnik Obshchestva arkhitektorov-khudozhnikov. 1913

19 Markov apartment house. No. 63 Kamennoostrovskii Prospekt. Petersburg. 1908-10. detail of fa~ade. Photograph c. 1915

20 Rozenshtein apartment house. No. 35 Kamennoostrovskii Prospekt. 1913-15. Architect: Andrei Belogrud. Photograph by William Brumfield

21 Mikhail Vrubel. portrait of Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel in an empire-style gown. 1898. State Tretiakov Gallery. Moscow

22 Gustav Klimt. portrait of Fritza Riedler. 1908. Osterreichischche Galerie. Vienna

23 Mikhail Vrubel. portrait of Nadezhda Zabel a-Vrubel. 1904. State Russian Museum. St Petersburg

24 Gustav Klimt. first portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. 1907. Osterreichischche Galerie. Vienna

25 V. I. Bazhenov: Moscow School of Art. Architecture and Sculpture. eighteenth century. Postcard c. 1910

viii List of Plates

26 Church of the Moscow School of Art, Architecture and Sculpture, seventeenth century, photo late nineteenth century. Archive of N. D. Vinogradov

27 Exhibition of lubki organised by N. D. Vinogradov at the Moscow School of Art, Architecture and Sculpture, 1913. Archive of N. D. Vinogradov

28 N. V. Ivanov, political caricature, 1907. Archive of N. D. Vinogradov

29 D. P. Osipov, student design for a pavilion in a park, photo c. 1910. Archive of N. D. Vinogradov

30 A. Meshkov, student design of a monastery, photo c. 1910. Archive of N. D. Vinogradov

31 Efim Cheptsov, Preparing the Teachers, 1929, oil on canvas. State Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow

32 Natalia Goncharova, Grain Harvest, 1912, oil on canvas. State Russian Museum, St Petersburg

33 Unknown artist, distaff, early twentieth century, painted wood. Borok, Arkhangelsk Province, Zagorsk State Museum-Preserve (Olga Kruglova, Narodnaia rospis' Severnoi Dviny [Moscow: Izobrazitel'noe iskusstvo, 1987])

34 A. Kulikov, Radio in the Village, 1926, papier-mache, oil, lacquer box. Fedoskino Museum of Folk Art, Moscow (Mariia Nekrasova et aI., Narodnye khudozhestvennye promysly [Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1986])

35 Vladimir Lebedev, Peasants . .. , ROST A window poster, 1920

36 Unknown artists, 'The Red Cossack' propaganda train. Photograph 1920s

37 M. Utkin, Dobrovskii Collective Farm, 1931. Extra-Mural People's University of Art Collection, Moscow (N. Shkarovskaia, Narodnoe samodeiatel'noe iskusstvo [Leningrad: Aurora, 1975])

38 David Kakabadze, Self-Portrait, 1913. (Iurii Moseshvili, 'Ia znaiu, chto delaiu', Ogonek, no. 39 [1989])

List of Plates IX

39 Lado Gudiashvili, Portrait of the Artist Niko Pirosmanishvili, 1928. State Gallery of Georgia. Tbilisi (L. Zinger and M. Orlova (eds), Istoriia iskusstva narodov SSSR. vol. 7 [Moscow: Izobrazitel'noe iskusstvo, 1972))

40 Viktor Ufimtsev, The Sea Beach, date unknown (Evgenii Kovtun, A vangard. ostanovlennyi na begu [Leningrad: Aurora, 1989])

41 Oganes Tatevosian, Sail: Celebration of a Religious Holiday, 1918. State Museum of the Arts of the Peoples of the East. Moscow (Larisa Shostko, Oganes Tatevosian [Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1977))

42 Aleksandr Nikolaev (Usto-Mumin), The Path of Life, 1924. (Evgenii Kovtun, Avangard. ostanovlennyi na begu [Leningrad: Aurora, 1989])

43 Aleksandr Volkov, The Cherry-Coloured Teahouse, 1924. State Tretiakov Gallery. Moscow (M. Zemskaia, Aleksandr. Volkov [Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1975])

44 Mikhail Kurzin, Going for a Visit, 1932. State Russian Museum. St Petersburg (Evgenii Kovtun, A vangard. ostanovlennyi na begu [Leningrad: Aurora, 1989])

45 Gevork Grigorian, Mourning the Death of Lenin, 1927. State Art Gallery of Armenia. Yerevan

46 Ural Tansikbaev, Kazakh Woman, date unknown (Evgenii Kovtun, A vangard. ostanovlennyi na begu [Leningrad: Aurora, 1989])

47 Aleksandr Bezhbeuk-Melikian, Women in Front of a Mirror, 1941. State Art Gallery of Armenia. Yerevan

48 David Kutateladze, Comrades Ordzhonikidze and Kirov in the North Caucasus in 1920, 1937 (L. Zinger and M. Orlova (eds), Istoriia iskusstva narodov SSSR, vol. 7 [Moscow: Izobrazitel' noe iskusstvo, 1972))

49 M. Ginzburg and V. I. Milinis, House of Government in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, 1927-31

50 A. Ivanitskii and A. Samoilov, Annenikend (Shaumian) community in Baku, Azerbaijan, 1925-9

x List of Plates

51 The Vesnin Brothers, Workers' Club in Stepan Razin neighbourhood, Baku, Azerbaijan, 1931-4

52 Semion Pen, State Publishing House, in Baku, Azerbaijan, 1931

53 Lev Rudnev and M. Munts, House of Government in Baku, Azerbaijan, 1936-51

54 N. Severov, Transcaucasian Soviets (later Tbilisi Communist Party) Head­quarters, Tbilisi, Georgia, 1930

55 K. Chkheidze and M. Chkhikvadze, Gruzugl Administration Building (later Georgian Academy of Sciences), Tbilisi, Georgia, 1948-54

56 A. Tamanian, House of Government in Yerevan, Armenia, 1926-41

57 M. Mazmanian, K. Alabian and G. Kochar, Workers' Club in Yerevan, Armenia, 1929-31

58 G. Kochar and Sh. Azatian, student dormitories in Yerevan, Armenia, 1962-4

x

General Editor's Introduction

The Fourth World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies took place in Harrogate, Yorkshire, in July 1990. It was an unusual congress in many ways. It was the first of its kind to take place in Britain. and the first to take place since the launching of Gorbachev's programme of perestroika and the revolutions in Eastern Europe (indeed so rapid was the pace of change in the countries with which we were concerned that the final programme had to incorporate over 600 amendments). It was the largest and most complex congress of Soviet and East European studies that has taken place. with twenty-seven panels spread over fourteen sessions on six days. It was also the most representative congress of its kind, with over 2000 participants including - for the first time - about 300 from what was then the USSR and Eastern Europe. Most were scholars. some were activists. and a few were the new kind of academic turned part-time deputy: whatever their status. it was probably this Soviet and East European presence that contributed most directly to making this a very different congress from the ones that had preceded it in the 1970s and I 980s.

No series of volumes. however numerous, could hope to convey the full tlavour of this extraordinary occasion. The formal panels alone incorporate al­most a thousand papers. There were three further plenary sessions; there were many more unattached papers; and the subjects that were treated ranged from medieval Novgorod to computational linguistics, from the problems of the handi­capped in the USSR to Serbian art at the time of the battle of Kosovo. Nor, it was decided at an early stage. would it even be desirable to attempt a fully comprehen­sive 'congress proceedings', including all the papers in their original form. My aim as General Editor, with the strong support of the International Council for Soviet and East European Studies (who cosponsored the congress with the British Association for Soviet, Slavonic and East European Studies). has rather been to generate a series of volumes which will have some thematic coherence. and to bring them out as quickly as possible while their (often topical) contents are still current.

A strategy of t~is kind imposes a cost, in that many authors have had to find other outlets for what would in different circumstances have been very publishable papers. The gain, however, seems much greater: a series of real books on properly defined subjects. edited by scholars of experience and standing in their respective fields, and placed promptly before the academic community. These, I am glad to say, were the same as the objectives of the publishers who expressed an interest in various aspects of the congress proceedings. and it has led to a series of volumes as well as special issues of journals covering a wide range of interests.

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xii GeneraL Editor's Introduction

There are volumes on art and architecture. on history and literature. on law and economics. on society and education. There are further volumes on nationality issues and the Ukraine. on the environment. on international relations and on defence. There are Soviet volumes. and others that deal more specifically with Eastern (or. perhaps more properly. East Central) Europe. There are interdiscip­linary volumes on women in Russia and the USSR. the Soviet experience in the Second World War, and ideology and system change. There are special issues of some of the journals that publish in our field, dealing with religion and Slovene studies. emigres and East European economics. publishing and politics. linguis­tics and the Russian revolution. Altogether nearly forty separate publications will stem from the Harrogate congress: more than twice as many as from any previous congress of its kind. and a rich and enduring record of its deliberations.

Most of these volumes will be published in the United Kingdom by Macmillan. It is my pleasant duty to acknowledge Macmillan's early interest in the scholarly output of the congress. and the swift and professional attention that has been given to all of these volumes since their inception. A full list of the Harrogate series appears in the Macmillan edition of this volume; it can only give an impression of the commitment and support I have enjoyed from Tim Farmiloe. Clare Wace and others at all stages of our proceedings. I should also take this opportunity to thank John Morison and his colleagues on the International Council for Soviet and East European Studies for entrusting me with this responsible task in the first place. and the various sponsors - the Erasmus Prize Fund of Amsterdam. the Ford Foundation in New York. the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. the British Council. the Stefan Batory Trust and others - whose generous support helped to make the congress a reality.

The next congress will be held in 1995. and (it is hoped) at a location in Eastern Europe. Its proceedings can hardly hope to improve upon the vigour and ima­gination that is so abundantly displayed on the pages of these splendid volumes.

University of GLasgow STEPHEN WHITE

Notes on the Contributors

Milka Bliznakov was born in Varna. Bulgaria. and is currently Professor of Architecture and Design in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. An architect. engineer. and urban planner, Bliznakov's recent publications include 'The Realization of Utopia: Western Technology and Soviet Avant-garde Architecture' in Reshaping Russian Archi­tecture (1990) and 'The Dynamic Equalitarian City' in Utopia (1989).

William Craft Brumfield is Associate Professor of Slavic Languages at Tulane University. An authority on Russian architecture, Brumfield is the author of Gold in Azure: One Thousand Years of Russian Architecture (1983) and The Origins of Modernism in Russian Architecture (1991). He edited Reshaping Russian Architecture: Western Technology, Utopian Dreams (1990) and has published numerous articles and book reviews on Russian literature. art. photography, and architecture.

Anthony G. Cross is Professor of Slavonic Studies at the University of Cam­bridge. His current research interests are in eighteenth-century Russia and Anglo­Russian cultural relations. The author of The Russian Theme in English Literature from the Sixteenth Century to the Present (1985) and editor of The Journal of Baroness Elizabeth Dimsdale, 1781 (1989), Cross has published numerous articles and contributions to books.

James M. Curtis. Associate Professor of Russian at the University of Missouri at Columbia, is the author of Solzhenitsyn's Traditional Imagination (1984) and Culture as Polyphony: An Essay on the Nature of Paradigms (1978). Curtis's articles and reviews dealing with Russian and Soviet literature, art and culture have appeared in a variety of scholarly publications. At present he is engaged in editing and translating the papers of Boris Eichenbaum.

Musya Giants, a native of the Soviet Union and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University's Russian Research Center since 1988. is presently working on a biography of the Russian-Jewish sculptor Mark Antokolskii (1842-1902). She is the editor of a forthcoming volume on sculptor Naum Aronson and has published scholarly articles dealing with art. aesthetics. and sculpture.

Alison L. Hilton is Associate Professor of Fine Arts at Georgetown University. She is completing a study of Russian Impressionism and her book Russian Folk Art and the Patterns of Life is forthcoming. An expert on Russian and Soviet art. Hilton has published articles. essays, and book reviews dealing with modem painting. folk art, women in the arts. and comparative European art history.

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xiv Notes on the Contributors

Catherine Theimer Nepomnyashchy, an Assistant Professor at Barnard Col­lege, is a specialist in Russian literature. She is currently completing a book on Andrei Siniavskii and her translation (in collaboration with Slava Yastremski) of Siniavskii's Strolls with Pushkin is forthcoming. She has published a number of articles on recent Russian literature.

John O. Norman is Assistant Professor of History at Western Michigan Univer­sity. A cultural historian, Norman is studying the role of imperial, aristocratic, and private patronage in the emergence of a Russian school of secular art, the devel­opment of a viable art market, and changes in the status and sociopolitical significance of artists in Late Imperial Russia. He is presently completing a biography of the Moscow merchant-patron Pavel Tretiakov that includes in-depth discussion of his dealings with major Russian Realist artists. He has a chapter, 'Pavel Tretiakov and Merchant Art Patronage, 1850-1900', in the volume Be­tween Tsar and People: Educated Society and the Quest for Public Identity in Late Imperial Russia, (ed.) Edith W. Clowes et al. (1991).

Elena Borisovna Ovsiannikova is a Professor at Moscow's Institute of Architec­ture. Her work on architecture, art education, and the graphic arts has been widely published in the former Soviet Union. She is the granddaughter of the eminent architect and restoration expert, Nikolai Vinogradov, whose private archive con­tains a wealth of material on Russian and Soviet art and architecture.

Priscilla Roosevelt, a Research Scholar at the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, is completing a book on the Russian country estate from 1750 to 1861. In addition to Apostle of Russian Liberalism: Timofei Granofsky (1986), Roosevelt has published a variety of articles on Russian intellectual and cultural history.