Between Industry and Art: Display. - The Painting as Photographic Exposure. - Artist, Frame-maker and Client. - The Avant-garde. - The Antiquary and Dismantlement. (original) (raw)
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The notion of the frame in art can refer not only to a material frame bordering an image, but also to a conceptual frame. Both meanings are essential to how the work is perceived. In Framing Russian Art, I investigate the role of the frame in its literal function of demarcating a work of art and in its conceptual function affectingthe understanding of what is seen. The first part of the book is dedicated to the framework of the Russian icon. Here, I explore the historical and cultural meanings of the icon's, setting, and of the iconostasis. Then my study moves through Russian and European art from ancient times to the twentieth century, including abstract art and Suprematism. Along the way, I pay special attention to the Russian baroque period and the famous nineteenth century Russian battle painter Vasily Vereshchagin. This enlightening account of the cultural phenomenon of the frame and its ever-changing functions will appeal to students and scholars of Russian art history.
Introduction and the Chapter 1 of the book: Oleg Tarasov. Framing Russian Art. From Early Icons to Malevich. London: Reaktion Books, 2011, pp. 7 - 104.
In the Introduction I'd like to emphasize that the differentiation and development of different forms of frame for the visual image is a most important phenomenon in European culture. It is linked by a multitude of invisible threads to changes in humanity’s picture of the world and its value-system. On that level the frame suggests and permits the study of a picture not in isolation, but in its close interaction with the whole culture of an age. More concretely, out of this there also emerges the fundamental object of my investigation – the history of the interaction of person and image, in which the frame is problematized as a distinct means for perceiving the world. The Introduction also defines the methodological and historiographic preconditions for this task. The first part of the book is devoted to the framing of the icon. In the first chapter “Symbolic Unity” I devote particular attention to the autonomy of the frame of the medieval sacred image, that is to say to the close link between the appearance of the window-like frame with the development of the concept of an independent mimetic image.
The Dialogues Between the Verbal and the Visual in the Artworks of Vladimir Makovsky (1846-1920)
Afanaseva I.A. The Dialogues Between the Verbal and the Visual in the Artworks of Vladimir Makovsky (1846-1920) // The 5th International Conference on Art Studies: Research, Experience, Education (ICASSEE 2021). Amsterdam : Amsterdam University Press, 2021. P. 7-16., 2021
Painting and literature are often viewed as two different types of art, but the line between them is rather arbitrary. The classification dichotomy of the painting and the literature is associated with the traditional division of the arts and the prevailing aesthetic experience. In the second half of the 19th century, the writer and the artist worked in a single space of narrative and visual imagery. In this paper, the author analyzes the parallels between the paintings of Russian artist Vladimir Makovsky (1846—1920) and the texts of Russian writers of the 19th century. The research describes not only specific parallels of verbal and visual texts, but also analogs of rhetorical figures and visual tropes. The semantic content of many works by V. Makovsky is polysyllabic. A special role here belongs to metaphors, antitheses, hyperboles and comparisons. Paintings by V. Makovsky require an analytical approach from the viewer, reflection of the literary text. In this regard, the works of V. Makovsky literally "read" by the viewer.
Theories of ekphrasis—the literary description of an artwork—have traditionally addressed the figurative contest between verbal representation (text) and visual representation (image) that structures the trope. Little attention has been paid to the material, physical aspect of the artwork and especially the solid, touchable picture frame. This article examines the function of the frame-as-object in the context of ekphrasis and nineteenth-century realist narrative. It argues that the physical border of the picture frame operates as a demarcating device in the ekphrastic text, as a door-like liminal space that outlines and maintains the boundaries of representation. Moreover, the picture frame’s material presence facilitates both representation and perception in the nineteenth-century realist text. It renders the artwork described more visible, touchable, real. Three nineteenth-century Russian literary works serve as case studies: Nikolai Gogol’s story “The Portrait" (1842), Lev Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina (1873–77), and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot (1869). By analyzing ekphrastic scenes in which painted figures step out of the picture frame, this article shows how the frame becomes intertwined with questions of representation, aesthetics, and realist narrative. Article available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/uwPiXAWJaenKQyWWfix2/full
“Dreaming of Russia”. National-Romantic Features in Art Nouveau, 2019
The National-Romantic trend in Russian Art Nouveau is characterized by a lyrical approach to the past, including imagery from folklore. This tendency is also identifiable within the global development of Art Nouveau, each country expressing its national identity in highly characteristic forms in design and architecture. Art Nouveau coincided with the zenith of Symbolism and, therefore, transmitted both its universal ideas and the unique creative psychology of the individual artist, who often based personal quest upon local traditions and innate cultural memory. This article analyzes the poetics of this style in Russia. The lyrical and mythological approach towards artistic images, influencing design, form, and meaning, is studied through an examination of the works of artists close to the Abramtsevo circle and the innovative experiments of the World of Art group (1898-1904).
ART AS A POLITICAL ACT: THE RUSSIAN AGIT-PROPS OF THE 1920S
Art-e Sanat Dergisi, 2020
Emerged in the mid-19th century, the mechanical reproduction techniques changed the definitions of work of art, artist, and social role of art. These transformations have triggered an extensive socio-cultural revolution during the 20th century. Art turned out to be an instrument for guiding the masses; and the communist ideology politicized aesthetics as a strategy of the power. The Russian Constructivists of the 1920s utilized agitation and propaganda techniques (agit-props) in their art for creating an aesthetic language for the political propaganda. This study argues that the Russian avant-garde aiming to bring art into everyday life and urban space became an instrument for aestheticization of politics. The scope is limited to the agit-props appropriated by the Bolshevik power. Dwelling on textual and visual documents from literature, it scrutinizes the topic with a historical interpretation research method. It aims to discuss the agit-props within the framework of politics and aesthetic revolution in everyday life and urban space.
2014
This volume of 13 essays presents rigorous new research by Western and Russian scholars on Russian art of the 19th and early 20th centuries. More than three decades after the publication of Elizabeth Kridl Valkenier’s pioneering monograph, Russian Realist Art, this impressive collection showcases the latest methodology and subjects of inquiry, expanding the parameters of what has become an area of enormous intellectual and popular appeal. Major artists including Ilia Repin, Valentin Serov, and Vasily Kandinsky are considered afresh, as are the Peredvizhnik and Mir iskusstva movements and the Abramtsevo community. The book also breaks new ground to embrace subjects such as Russian graphic satire and children’s book illustration, as well as stimulating aspects of patronage and display. Collectively, the essays include a range of approaches, from close textual readings to institutional critique. They also develop major themes inspired by Valkenier’s work: the emergence and evolution of cultural institutions, the development of aesthetic discourse and artistic terminology, debates between the Academy of Arts and its challengers, art criticism and the Russian press, and the resonance of various forms of nationalism within the art world. These and other subjects engage multiple disciplines—those of art history, Russian studies, and cultural history, among others—and promise to fuel a vibrant and ascendant field.
Chapter 2 of the book: Oleg Tarasov. Framing Russian Art. From Early Icons to Malevich. London: Reaktion Books, 2011, pp. 104 - 203.
This chapter is devoted to an analysis of the interior of the church of the Saviuor Not Made by Hands at Abramtsevo (1881 – 2), which serves as an interesting example from which to trace the very history of the framing of the Russian religious image. In the process particular attention is paid to museum displays of Old Russian icons at the beginning of the twentieth century, when in the context of the neo-Kantian aesthetics, Old Russian icons began to be regarded as works of painting.