Modernism and the Spiritual in Russian Art

Louise Hardiman, Nicola Kozicharow

Description

In 1911 Vasily Kandinsky published the first edition of ‘On the Spiritual in Art’, a landmark modernist treatise in which he sought to reframe the meaning of art and the true role of the artist. For many artists of late Imperial Russia – a culture deeply influenced by the regime’s adoption of Byzantine Orthodoxy centuries before – questions of religion and spirituality were of paramount importance. As artists and the wider art community experimented with new ideas and interpretations at the dawn of the twentieth century, their relationship with ‘the spiritual’ – broadly defined – was inextricably linked to their roles as pioneers of modernism.

This diverse collection of essays introduces new and stimulating approaches to the ongoing debate as to how Russian artistic modernism engaged with questions of spirituality in the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. Ten chapters from emerging and established voices offer new perspectives on Kandinsky and other familiar names, such as Kazimir Malevich, Mikhail Larionov, and Natalia Goncharova, and introduce less well-known figures, such as the Georgian artists Ucha Japaridze and Lado Gudiashvili, and the craftswoman and art promoter Aleksandra Pogosskaia.

Prefaced by a lively and informative introduction by Louise Hardiman and Nicola Kozicharow that sets these perspectives in their historical and critical context, Modernism and the Spiritual in Russian Art: New Perspectives enriches our understanding of the modernist period and breaks new ground in its re-examination of the role of religion and spirituality in the visual arts in late Imperial Russia. Of interest to historians and enthusiasts of Russian art, culture, and religion, and those of international modernism and the avant-garde, it offers innovative readings of a history only partially explored, revealing uncharted corners and challenging long-held assumptions.

Sujets

• Arts
• Religión
• History of art
• Spirituality
• Russia
• Modernism
• ART

Informations

• Publié par: Open Book Publishers
• Date de parution: 14 novembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783743414
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 9 Mo

Extrait

MODERNISM AND THE SPIRITUAL IN RUSSIAN ART


Modernism and the Spiritual in Russian Art
New Perspectives
Edited by Louise Hardiman and Nicola Kozicharow






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© 2017 Louise Hardiman and Nicola Kozicharow.
Copyright of each chapter is maintained by the author.


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Louise Hardiman and Nicola Kozicharow, Modernism and the Spiritual in Russian Art: New Perspectives . Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2017, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0115
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The publication of this volume has been made possible by a grant from the Scouloudi Foundation in association with the Institute of Historical Research at the School of Advanced Study, University of London.
ISBN Paperback: 978-1-78374-338-4
ISBN Hardback: 978-1-78374-339-1
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DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0115
Cover image: Mikhail Vrubel, Демон (сидящий) or Demon Seated (1890), detail, Wikimedia, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Vrubel_Demon.jpg
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Contents
Acknowledgements
1
Notes on Transliteration and Conventions
3
Notes on Contributors
5
1.
Introduction: Modernism and the Spiritual in Russian Art
Louise Hardiman and Nicola Kozicharow
9
2.
From Angels to Demons: Mikhail Vrubel and the Search for a Modernist Idiom
Maria Taroutina
37
3.
‘The Loving Labourer through Space and Time’: Aleksandra Pogosskaia, Theosophy, and Russian Arts and Crafts, c. 1900–1917
Louise Hardiman
69
4.
Kazimir Malevich, Symbolism, and Ecclesiastic Orthodoxy
Myroslava M. Mudrak
91
5.
Spirituality and the Semiotics of Russian Culture: From the Icon to Avant-Garde Art
Oleg Tarasov
115
6.
Re-imagining the Old Faith: Larionov, Goncharova, and the Spiritual Traditions of Old Believers
Nina Gurianova
129
7.
‘Russian Messiah’: On the Spiritual in the Reception of Vasily Kandinsky’s Art in Germany, c. 1910–1937
Sebastian Borkhardt
149
8.
Ellis H. Minns and Nikodim Kondakov’s The Russian Icon (1927)
Wendy Salmond
165
9.
Stelletsky’s Murals at Saint-Serge: Orthodoxy and the Neo-Russian Style in Emigration
Nicola Kozicharow
195
10.
The Role of the ‘Red Commissar’ Nikolai Punin in the Rediscovery of Icons
Natalia Murray
213
11.
Ucha Japaridze, Lado Gudiashvili, and the Spiritual in Painting in Soviet Georgia
Jennifer Brewin
229
Select Bibliography
265
Illustrations
289
Index
299


Acknowledgements
Above all, we are grateful to our authors for enriching this book with their outstanding research and writing, and for sharing our interest in its theme. The project to publish this book evolved from discussions at a conference, ‘On the Spiritual in Russian Art’, which we organised at Pembroke College, Cambridge, on 7–8 September 2012, in honour of the centenary of the publication of Vasily Kandinsky’s On the Spiritual in Art (1910–12). The event was the first international symposium to be hosted at the University of Cambridge by the Cambridge Courtauld Russian Art Centre (CCRAC), an academic collaboration established by Rosalind P. Blakesley of the Department of History of Art at the University of Cambridge and Professor John Milner of The Courtauld Institute with the goal of promoting and supporting Russian and Soviet art scholarship in Britain. 1 This volume reflects many of the values which the centre has sought to promulgate in the years since its founding in 2011, and stands as lasting testament to the stimulating dialogue that took place at the inaugural conference. We would like to thank the speakers and delegates, and especially Rosalind Blakesley, Richard Marks, Maria Mileeva, John Milner, Robin Milner-Gulland, and Elizabeth Valkenier for contributing to a memorable two days. Our keynote speakers, Wendy Salmond and Oleg Tarasov, not only gave outstanding presentations but have encouraged us throughout the process of the ensuing book project, and we are delighted to include chapters based on their papers here. We thank the funders of the conference for their support: the British Association for Slavonic and Eastern European Studies (BASEES); the George Macaulay Trevelyan Fund, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge; and the Department of History of Art, Cambridge. We also gratefully acknowledge the award of a Publication Grant from the Scouloudi Foundation in association with the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, towards the costs of this book. At Open Book Publishers, we are indebted to Alessandra Tosi, Bianca Gualandi, Lucy Barnes, and our cover designer, Heidi Coburn. We thank Alessandra and all those others who gave invaluable feedback on the manuscript at various phases of its creation, and two independent peer reviewers for their constructive comments. Finally, we thank our families, friends, and colleagues for their patience, encouragement, and unstinting support (and, of course, those of our authors); they have all played their part in the making of this book.


1 For more information, visit: http://www.ccrac.org.uk . John Milner has since stepped down from his role as co-director, and this position is held by Dr Maria Mileeva of The Courtauld Institute.


Notes on Transliteration and Conventions
This book uses a modified form of the Library of Congress transliteration system with some exceptions. For readability, we leave out diacritical marks from proper names and nouns (e.g., Vrubel) in the main text, but maintain these in footnotes. Patronymics of Russian names are not used, and when a Russian name or place has a conventional or generally known transliteration that differs from the Library of Congress System, this has been used (e.g., Alexandre Benois, not Aleksandr Benua, and Nicholas Roerich rather than Nikolai Rerikh; Tretyakov Gallery). We use ‘y’ instead of ‘ii’ or ‘yi’ ( Kandinsky , not Kandinskii), except for the titles of Russian texts in the footnotes. Standard western names are used for Russian rulers (Peter the Great, Nicholas I) and places (Moscow, Munich); however, we use the Ukrainian transliteration Kyiv, rather than Kiev. If an alternative method of transliteration has been used in a quotation from a source or in a source citation, this is upheld. We also maintain original spelling in quotations, rather than altering these to reflect British English. When the title of a publication or an artistic group appears for the first time in the main text, its translated name in English is used together with a transliteration of the Russian in parentheses; when the title is used again later, only its translation is stated. However, in the footnotes and bibliography, only the transliteration is given, with no English translation. When quoting Russian text in footnotes, original orthography has been used wherever possible, including pre-1917 spellings upheld in emigration (such as ‘ago’, rather than the currently used form, ‘ogo’). This older orthography is used to maintain the integrity of émigré texts, but at the same time, letters which were eliminated after the Revolution, such as ‘і’, are not used. Translations of quotations are the author’s own unless stated otherwise in the footnotes.


Contributors
Sebastian Borkhardt studied History of Art, East Slavonic Philology, and Religious Studies in Tübingen and St Petersburg. After completing his MA, he began doctoral research at the University of Tübingen. His dissertation examines the role of the Russian roots of Vasily Kandinsky in the reception of the artist’s work in Germany and is supervised by Professors Eva Mazur-Keblowski (Tübingen) and Ada Raev (Bamberg). Borkhardt has received scholarships from the State Graduate Funding ( Landesgraduiert