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2010 How America Discovered Russian Icons: The Soviet Loan Exhibition of 1930-32 Wendy Salmond Chapman University, [email protected]
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Recommended Citation Salmond, Wendy. “How America Discovered Russian Icons: The oS viet Loan Exhibition of 1930-32.” In Alter Icons: The Russian Icon and Modernity, edited by Douglas Greenfield and Jefferson Gatrall, 128-43. Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.
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HOW AMERICA DISCOVERED RUSSIAN ICONS THE !illiiiET LflllN El!HI!!IT!IlN flF 18311-1932
On 14 October 1930, the first exhibition from Novgorod; three icons by the fifteenth· of Russian icons ever to take place in the century master Andrei Rublev from the United States opened at the Museum of iconostasis of Vladimir's Dormition Fine Arts in Boston. Over the next nineteen Cathedral; and Dionysius's two great icons months it traveled to nine venues across the of Saint Kirill Belozersky from the late country, introducing the American public sixteenth century. But it was the story of to a form of medieval painting virtually how such icons were rescued from neglect unknown outside Russia.' Billed as the and restored to their original state that "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Loan made the exhibition a major cultural event Exhibition;' its avowed goal was to share of the early Depression era. Interwoven with the outside world the full story of with the scholarly, objective history of Russian icon painting's evolution from the stylistic evolution was a dramatic contem twelfth to the nineteenth centuries, thereby porary saga of discovery and liberation. adding a vital missing chapter to the history Photos of the exhibition as it was installed of medieval art. at the Cleveland Museum of Art show how 'Ihe exhibition's organizers sent abroad emphatically the marks of scientific conser· some of the oldest and most significant vation were left visible on the surfaces of icons then in Soviet collections. They key icons, a constant reminder of their jour included the twelfth-century Saint Nicholas ney from a dark, soot-encrusted past to a from the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in light-· filled present ofradiant color (fig. 1 o ). Novgorod; the thirteenth-century Saint r.fhe metaphor of restoration was not John with Saint George and Saint Blaise lost on the American public. It did much to
128 resolve the paradox of an atheist, iconoclas the regime's most effective publicity stunts. tic government protecting and promoting That the Soviets' venture failed, at least as the art of a religion that it was determined initially conceived, may be deduced from to exterminate. Here, it seemed, was a the conspicuous absence of important revolutionary regime that genuinely cared Russian icons from the great majority of about cultural patrimony, rescuing art American museums and private collections. treaSures of universal significance from a Instead, a very different sort of icon church whose clergy had neither taken captured the imagination of private collec adequate care of them nor allowed others to tors, icons of relatively recent date whose do so. In liberating icons from the clutches value lay in their secular aura of human of religion, the Soviets reclaimed them as tragedy and imperial splendor. great works of art that transcended the narrow confines of ritual and superstition. SOVIET PLANS AND PREPARATIONS Even as it promoted the universality of Although its organizers downplayed the the icon and the striking modernity of its fact, the Soviet loan exhibition was essen "significant form;' however, the exhibition tially a prerevolutionary idea. A thriving quietly pursued a second agenda: to create a market for icons had developed in Russia in market demand for icons in the bourgeois the decade leading up to World War l. This West. Long before the Cold War made such coincided with a new culture of concern for tactics commonplace, these secularized national heritage that highlighted the role icons were pulled into the Soviet Union's of conservation, expressly opposing it to the ideological battle with the West, and the "vandalisrns" of the Orthodox Church. 2 The story of the icon's salvation became one of "discovery" of the icon by collectors,
FIG. 10 View of the Soviet Loan Exhibition at tile Cleveland Museum of Art, showing a copy of Andrei Rub!ev's icon of the Old Testament Trinity, a deesis icon of the Archangel Gabriel, and a partially cleaned vita icon of Saint Nicholas. Archives, Cleveland Museum of Art, Records of the Registrar's Office: Gal lery View Photographs, Gallery 9 [Gallery 220.1. Russian icons, 18 Feb ruary-20 March 1932.
HOW AMERICA DISCOVERED RUSSIAN ICONS 129 aesthetes, and scholars owed much to the of Art and Antiquities (from 1924, the skills of a cadre of master icon painters, Central State Restoration Workshops)' who used the secrets of their craft to return performed heroic acts of rescue and ancient icons to their original state by preservation under the most adverse removing layers of darkened varnish and conditions. Driven by the urgency of saving overpainting. The extraordinary beauty of unique vvorks from destruction, but also by the paintings brought about a fundamental the thrill of the bunt, the commission reassessment of early Russian art, a process launched a series of expeditions searching that reached its high point in the exhibition in particular for icons of the pre-Mongol of icons from private collections held in period and works by the elusive and Moscow in 1913.3 "Before three or four legendary Andrei Rublev.' Even miracle years have passed;' it was predicted, working icons were subjected to intense "Europe will be thinking of a simi.lar scrutiny by a team of restorers led by exhibition, and Russian icon painting Grigory Chirikov (all of them active in the will become an honored guest in Western prerevolutionary collecting boom) and museums:'4 closely supervised by Grabar and Anisimov. These hopes for international recogni The commission used X-rays, insisted on tion of Russia's greatest cultural asset were scrupulous photo documentation, and dashed by the outbreak of war in 1914 and outlawed the dubious restoration practices the disruption that followed the 1917 (so-called antiquarian restoration) of the Revolution. When the collecting and prerevolutionary period. In the course of restoration of icons started up again, in the 1920s, the boundaries of icon history 1918, it was in a very different world. \1\Tith expanded and shifted in response to their the decree on the Separation of Church and discoveries. A series of exhibitions featuring State (1918), the Orthodox Church was newly restored icons was held in Moscow, stripped of its legal claim to the rich followed by an exhibition of fresco facsimi storehouses of its churches and monaster les in Berlin in 1926.3 The vwrkshops' ies. 11woughout the Civil War period pioneering work attracted the admiring monasteries were liquidated, churches attention of the European scholarly com demolished or converted to secular pur munity through its journal, Questions of poses, and private property abolished. Restoration (Voprosy restavratsii) (1926-28), The result was a flood of confiscated and and members' contributions to internation displaced icons. al journals. As the icon's natural habitat disap But in e.rly 1928, official cultural peared, opportunities for its scholarly study policy shifted drastically. On 23 january, the blossomed. 5 Once off-limits to profane decree "On Measures to Intensify the contact, the church's oldest and most Export and Realization of Antigues and venerated icons were now accessible to Works of Art" was issued, orchestrated to scientific study. Under the leadership of coincide with the start of the First Five- Year Igor Grabar and Alexander Anisimov, the Plan. Henceforth, the Soviet functionaries Commission on the Restoration of V\Torks in Gostorg (the state trade organization)
130 CURATORS AND COMMISSARS and Antikvariat (its Head Office for Buying celebrate "our achievements in the field of and Realizing Antiquarian Objects, created restoration:' Only in this manner could a in 1925) were to exercise exclusive control demand be created, proper prices estab over the selling and export of art and lished, and a long-term market assured. antiques. 'The foreign currency raised went "After such a triumphal march across to fund Soviet industry.' Although such Europe;' Grabar argued in another memo, sales had been occurring sporadically since "prices for Russian icons will increase 1921, a period of unprecedented cultural tenfold."" To satisfy Gostorg's demand for "dumping" now began, paralleling the immediate profits and to offset any expens dumping of Soviet wood pulp and grain on es, he also proposed that a proportion of the the international market. In such a climate, icons exhibited would be auctioned off at even icons were potentially realizable the close of the exhibition. cultural assets, and Gostorg was already Gostorg approved, and the exhibition making plans to market them. was rapidly organized, drawing on the It was at this point that Igor Grabar, collections of museums in Moscow, director of the Central Restoration Work Leningrad, and the provinces, on recently shops, intervened. 10 Disgusted by the Soviet restored icons still in the restoration authorities' inept handling of the interna workshops, and on the vast reserves in state tional art market (large quantities of storerooms. 13 Grabar was very clear about museum -quality art were being sold at the parameters of the selection. This was to bargain prices), fearing the heavy-handed be a purely Soviet enterprise, including tactics they might bring to selling icons, none of the great works from prerevolution~ but also eager to promote his workshops' ary collections. Against the wishes of his achievements, Grabar sent Gostorg a colleagues, who feared the icons would proposal for selling icons abroad, drawing never return from abroad, Grabar insisted on the supply-and-demand principles of the on including critical early works of the capitalist art market: "Experience shows twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries that all major turnovers of specific groups without which, he argued, the full history of of works of art have invariably been icons could scarcely be understood.14 prepared for ahead of time by the appropri- Where vital works were too fragile to travel, ,- ate commercial circles, by orchestrating a such as the twelfth-century Vladimir series of measures geared toward creating a Mother of God (pL 1) and Rublev's Old demand and introducing some sort of Testament Trinity (pL 2), exact copies were 'fashion: IfNarkomtorg [the People's to be made by the workshop staff. 15 Particu Commissariat of Trade J wants to make a lar care was taken not to include works big business out of icons, it must quicldy confiscated from private collections that start puffing up 'the Russian icon' and could become the subject oflawsuits with creating a fashion for it:'" Grabar's strategy emigres. Also excluded were especially was to arrange a traveling exhibition venerated, miracle-worldl}-g icons that complete with the scholarly apparatus of might rouse the ire of the Orthodox abroad. catalog, articles, and lectures, its purpose to The result was an exhibition in which some
HOW AMERICA DISCOVERED RUSSIAN ICONS 131 of the newly discovered jewels of Russian With the late addition of the United icon painting rubbed shoulders with what States to the exhibition's itinerary, Grabar Cmigre writer Vladimir Weidle described hoped to see vindicated his personal as a handful of copies and "a whole set of conviction that the United States was the second-class icons."J 6 In addition, a stock most fertile ground on which to build a of more commonplace icons was selected, commercial icon market. In 1924, he had cleaned, and appraised in preparation for accon1panied an exhibition of contempo the foreign market. rary Russian art to New York and had come The itinerary evolved in fits and starts, away with the impression that "in contrast expanding as the success of the exhibition to the meager European market, America became assured. From February through presents a quite sufficient demand for the May 1929, it toured five cities in Germany, work of Russian artists:'22 H!? had specifi the first country to recognize the Soviet cally noted that "the best -selling are the government and the hub of Soviet efforts to 'Russian goods; everything that in the sell large quantities of Russian art abroad.l 7 American imagination is 'very Russian,' and After a month in Vienna, the exhibition particularly religious things."23 Moreover, he moved on to the Victoria and Albert knew that American collectors had domi Museum in London, where thirty thousand nated the international art market over the visitors saw it in six weeks. A splendid past three decades. 24 In April1929, he catalog was published with essays by reported to Antikvariat from the exhibi Sir Martin Conway and art historian tion's Cologne venue: "More than once Roger Fry. lS people approached me to ask whether it Staff from the restoration workshops was possible to buy in Moscow anything in Moscow accmnpanied the exhibition, remotely equal to the icons being shown giving lectures and demonstrations. They here, and also whether it was possible to were also charged with negotiating prices buy copies. To the first question we an and selling, although there is no evidence swered that in Moscow one can buy that they were successful in securing actual first -class icons .... I propose that the only sales.l9 Ultimately, Antikvariat abandoned country where they will be able to be the idea of direct sales for fear of negative liquidated is the United States of America publicity, and the exhibition became and perhaps Paris."25 exclusively promotional. 20 By the time it arrived in the United States, Americans AMERICAN RECEPTION AND PERCEPTION were guile categorically informed that When the crates containjng the icons "none of the paintings are for sale, the arrived in Boston, in August 1930, the significance of the Exhibition being in that American public was very much a tabula it introduces to the Western world a branch rasa on which to inscribe a new Soviet of art produced by a culture different from history of icons. "It is not altogether our own, yet springing from the same unreasonable that the word 'icon' should parent stem-the art of Byzantium in the summon a mental image of something very 21 twelfth century." dim and esthetically rather dull;' wrote one
132 CURATORS AND COiVJMJSSARS journalist.26 In prerevolutionary times, an had reached a crescendo that spring. The American's encounter with icons was U.S. press gave daily bulletins on the closing generally "limited to those small metal of churches, the persecution of clergy and bound panels with perforations for showing believers, and the demonstrative destruc the painted figures underneath"-in other tion of icons. On 2 February 1930, Pope words, the mass- produced icons that Pius XI launched a "holy crusade against populated the visual landscape oflate the Soviet Union:' Prayer meetings were imperial Russia. 27 Anyone wishing to read held in New York's Cathedral of Saint John up on the subject could consult a meager the Divine and Saint Patrick's Cathedral as a handful of recent publications by the "protest against the religious persecutions emigre scholars Nikodim Kondakov and in Soviet Russia." In March, the American Pavel Muratov, but these were already Committee on Religious Rights and outmoded, since they depended on infor Minorities issued a report that "religious mation and collections formed before the persecution appears to prevail in Russia on revolution. Those intrepid individuals who a scale unprecedented in modern times." It made the pilgrimage to the Soviet Union was in this climate that the exhibition were almost certain to come across icons opened in Boston that October and would for sale in markets or on the street, and they continue to operate over the next two years. often bought them as souvenirs. But with Thus in 1931, the Cathedral of Christ the no icons in American museums to educate Savior, Moscow's largest church, was their taste and little information availabl.e in demolished, while the "war on Easter" English, these occasional collectors were produced "great bonfires in which sacred babes in the woods when buying these articles are burned, torchlight processions, misleading and ambiguous images. 28 mock-religious carnivals with floats Yet while they knew next to nothing ridiculing sacred customs."]() In 1932, the about Russian icons, Americans were final year of the exhibition, the Alexander fascinated by every aspect of life in the Svirsky Monastery was turned into the young Soviet Union, and the media offered Soviet Union's largest colony for prostitutes a steady stream of information and com and beggars, Leningrad's Kazan Cathedral mentary. Co'Cerage was especially heavy on Nevsky Prospect reopened as the throughout 1930. "fl1e campaign for Museum of the History of Religion and establishing djplomatic relations between Atheism, and mass arrests of clergy began the United States and the Soviet Union was nationwide. being vigorously fought in the Senate, a The discrepancy between the Soviet scandal on the dumping of!umber and pulp regime's iconoclastic campaign of destruc had just broken, and reports of slave labor tion and its sudden sponsorship of icons ("a murderous harvest soaked with human was an inevitable theme in press coverage of blood;' to quote Representative Hamilton the exhibition. On the whole, though, the Fish) were rife." But the most emotionally trend was to isolate the aesthetic value of charged item of news on Russia was the the exhibition from the ethical and political Soviet government's war on religion, which complications. As an article in International
flOW AMERICA DiSCOVERED RlJSSJAt.; ICO~~ 133 Studio blithely put it, "The critics who like Ruble·v's iconostasis from the Dormi condemn lthe icon exhibition 1 are divided tion Cathedral in Vladimir, left by clergy to into two can1ps: those deprecating the sacrl·· molder in an outbuilding. 'l11is theme of lege of removing holy objects from the clerical neglect had been widespread before churches, and the opponents of intercourse the revolution, but now it acquired ideo with an unrecognized government. Nobody logical urgency as a further nail in the coffin of the Orthodox Church's credibility. bothers much about either dissenting Even those disturbed by current events took faction." 3r A note in Camrnonwea! summed up the argument oft he exhibition's support the long vic"w that "when the perspective of years has robbed the antireligious and ers in these terms: "If it is art, it doesn't confiscatory action of the Soviet regime of matter in the least who wrought it or who 2 its unfortunate contemporary significance, instigated it or even who stole it:'' \\That ever the experts, the pious, and the patriotic the world of art and culture will be thankful 31 might say against it, the exhibition "was for for the ,,vork that it has accomplished." The drama of this rescue story was the average gallery goer an experience and a revelation .... Here, for those jaded with further intensified hy the genuinely thrilling western painting, were virgin fields:' 33 story of how Russian conservators had The public profile of the icons very developed pioneering techniques for quickly shifted from that of booty confis· stripping off layers of smoke-darkened cated by an impious regime to that of varnish and later overpainting to reveal the cultural ambassadors, functioning not original layer beneath in all its unsuspected unlike the model prisons and hydroelectric brilliance of color and beauty ofline. In dams that formed the itinerary for thou establishing Soviet ownership of these sands of tourists then flocking to Soviet "reborn" icons, it was conSistently stressed Russia. Reviewers repeatedly pointed out that "icons restored before 1917 are not rep the regime's commitment to the preserva resented in the exhibition~' even though the tion of cultural patrimony, even as the same restorers were responsible for icons 35 demolition of churches and the forced sales cleaned before and after the revolution. of art abroad continued unabated. Espe Only in the workshops of the Central cially effective was the way in which the Restoration Workshops were modern church became the villain of the piece, techniques like X-ray used. A new scientific while the Soviet state figured as the icon's purism was adopted, \Vith inpainting and rescuer from certain destruction. In his retouching officially out1awed.y, brief introductory essay to the catalog, The rhetoric of science's triumph over Grabar described the damage caused to superstition that permeated the exhibition masterpieces of "early Russian painting" was especially critical during 1930-32, (a term increasingly preferred to "leon") by when the Soviet campaign against religion those who used them. He conjured up "a was reaching unprecedented extremes. flat damp country" where icons were placed Some of the most sensational press photos in "somber, unheated, badly ventilated of 1930-31 sho-wed peasants making churches:' and wrote of sensational finds bonfires of their icons, young members of
ct:RATORS ANP CCJMMIS~,\FS 134 the League of the Militant Godless tearing go-between in bringing the exhibition to metal covers off icons, and laughing Red the United States, was an impassioned Army men carting icons and church spokesman for the Russian icon's relevance: fixtures out of the Simonov Monastery shortly before its demolition. The exhibi Modern painting for the la,t century tion, by contrast, seemed to offer an has been struggling to free itself from acceptable aesthetic rationale for these acts the transparent glazes and the underly of iconoclasm. As one reporter wrote, ing chiaroscuro of the Renaissance, "Russia is not always as bad as she is trying to achieve what we have come painted. Not long since the world was to recognize as "pure color" and to scandalized at the pictured representation organize that color so that it will of frenzied peasants making bonfires of convey forms without losing any of its icons, stripped from churches henceforth to color value by interposing the veils of be devoted to secular purposes. That little cast light and shadow. To some critics of artistic value perished in these fires is to the goal has been approximated by the be presumed from the care given to fine paintings of Henri Matisse, to others by examples of this religious art now gathered the frescoes of Diego Rivera. To me at into museums."37 The exhibition's secondary least it has never been more completely message was thus conveyed in the form of achieved than in many of these Russian an art history lesson: whatever they might icons of three or four centuries ago. For mean within the confines of Orthodoxy, that reason I venture to believe that once freed from their religious function, they will ultimately prove to be a source icons could legitimately be subjected to of inspiration to modern painters and rigorous culling. The vast majority was eventually exert a profound influence good for nothing and, as the catalog made on the development of modern art. 39 clear, this applied to virtually all icons produced from 18oo onward, the period of The obstacle to aesthetic appreciation that "decay." One or two of these late icons were the dematerialized otherworldliness of included in the exhibition as pointed Russian icons presented to a Western illustrations of the aesthetic decline of the audience attuned to Renaissance painting post~ Petrine era. could be removed if they were thought of as The achievements of Soviet science, the powerful visual experiences, above all as exhibition implied, made possible a new pure color. No one better described the way of seeing icons, without which they inevitability of partial understanding-of could not hope to enter the universal form's primacy over content and function history of art. The exhibition became than the English critic Roger Fry, who "another of those dramatic triumphs of had written in the London catalog the aesthetic revaluation that our modern previous year: eclecticism has made possible:'38 Lee Simonson, the young New York theater I have no idea of what this passion for designer who worked as Moscow's the most abstract religious ideas-ideas
HOW AMERICA DlSCOVERF;D RUSSIAN !CO:-.IS !3S altogether vvTithdravvn from the com mon world of human life and nature- can have implied to those who felt them. In this sense 1 find Russian art far more remote than the Byzantine art out of which it came. . . 1·here is a certain satisfaction in noting that, coming to this art as we do without previous knmvledge, without tradition al references and predilections, we almost immediately pick out those pictures which Russians have always held in most esteem .... lE]ven those who find it impossible, however dimly, to conceive the mental atmosphere of a medieval Russian artist, can meet him on the common ground of his splendid decorative inventions and his unforget table harmonies of colour.40
FIG. 11 Drawing by fifteen ... year-old Vailuy Mocre. A vivid demonstration that the icons inspired by the U•,irteenth-century icon of Saini awakened a responsive aesthetic chord was John Climacus witll Saint George and Saint Blaise their incorporation, at the Worcester in the Soviet Loan Exhibition at the Worcester .Ari Museum, March-Aprii1931. Reproduced horn Museum of Art, into the museum's child trw Bulletin of the Worcester Art Museum 22, education program (fig. 11). The Educa· no. 2 (July 1931): 30. Courtesy of the Worcester tiona! Department used the loan icons to Art Museum. initiate children lnto the nature of creativity, situating them within the contemporary shelved, potential American consumers debate on the nature of primitivism. 'D1e had been given their first basic lesson in the project's premise was that, "because of its aesthetic and historical significance of clarity and definition, primitive art is more easily understood by the child than the Russian icons. subtle art of a highly developed culture .... THE FORMATION OF AMERICAN It is allied in inspiration and in execution ICON COLLECTING with his own work and therefore stimulates 41 Measured by any standard, the exhibition him to create instead of to reproduce:' was one of the blockbusters of the early On a number oflevels, then, the Depression era. l11e directors of some of exhibition had prepared the ground for the America's most prestigious museums brisk sales that were presumably to follow. scrambled to secure the show for their V\Thile initial plans to sell the icons straight institutions in response to the quite out of the exhibition had to be reluctantly
C\.)l\ATOF.S AND COM)..{l';,;\l('i 136 unanticipated public interest. Extensive and exhibition of Byzantine art held in Paris in enthusiastic press coverage was accompa 1931, at the close of which a large number nied by a Hurry of publications in the of items changed hands.)""' scholarly press. Meanwhile, back in Those Americans who did buy icons in Moscow and Leningrad, stockpiles of icons the 1930s were attracted to a very different set aside for export awaited their buyers. sort of icon, for very different reasons. Customers for icons did indeed emerge Almost without exception, they were late in the United States in the wake of the icons of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and traveling exhibition, but not for the icons nineteenth centuries. During "the great that Grabar might have chosen. Only the tourist invasion" of 1929--30, the legal collection acquired in 1935 by Pittsburgh export of icons as souvenirs was heavily businessman George T·Iann could legiti promoted. At the behest of the trade organs, mately be described as "important," in that the Soviet Union's new tourist industry, it reflected in microcosm the sweep of the headed by Intourist, actively encouraged icon's long history as first presented in tl1e visitors to buy liberally in the Torgsin traveling exhibiti.onY 111e unique Hann ("Trade with Foreigners") and commission collection aside, the collecting of icons in shops. Travelers' anecdotes re1nind us how the United States turned away from the ubiquitous such commercial outlets were in kinds of serious early icons promoted the 1930s and how icons acquired there through the loan exhibition in favor of the were generally seen as souvenirs or curios. late icons it explicitly marginalized. In addition to icons purchased in the "l11ere is no doubt that the impact of the Soviet Union, the effort to create a market Depression on the American art market on American soil proved decisive for the made it extremely difficult for icons to formation of American icon collections and compete for scarce resources with more public attitudes toward icons. Working tried and true forms of art, such as Old through intermediaries, the Soviets devised Master painting and French eighteenth "sale-exhibitions" as a mechanism for century furniture. Despite the exhibition's liquidating on the American market the glowing reviews and excellent attendance personal effects of the imperial family, figures, no American museum took confiscated from their residences at Tsar advantage of the opportunity to actively skoe Selo, Gatchina, the Anichkov Palace, add important early icons to its collection. and the Winter Palace. In January 1931, the When, for instance, at the end of 1931 Wallace H. Day Galleries at 16 East 6oth Count B. Mus in-Pushkin offered the Street in New York held an exhibition of director of the Brooklyn Museum both an decorative arts from the Hermitage Palace, exhibition of icons and an entire collection the contents of which were sold off after a for purchase, he was told that he was short delay when Grand Duchesses Ksenia unlikely to "succeed," because "interest in and Olga sued (unsuccessfully) to prevent ikons is confined to such a small number the sale. The sale included icons, for the that the chances of sale would be very most part small nineteenth-century slight:'" (This was in marked contrast to the devotional icons embellished with silver
ifOW f\MF.R\CA DISCOVERED RUSSIA),! iCONS 137 covers, and the purchasers, so it was de vertu, ecclesiastic vestments, and the reported, were mainly women looking for table linens of the imperial family. Many of objets to decorate their homes. the icons that passed through the Hammer Then in early 1932, just as the official brothers' hands, and those of their main loan exhibition of icons was moving on to American competitor, Alexander Shaffer, in the Cleveland Museum of Art, entrepreneur the 1930s, were accompanied by parchment Armand Hammer and his brother Victor testimonials asserting that they were from launched the first of their celebrated the private apartments at Tsarskoe Selo, the 46 department -store sales of Russian imperial Winter Palace, and Gatchina. Icons now in art at Scruggs-Vandoort-Barney in St. the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Metropoli Louis. The previous March, the Hammers tan Museum of Art, the Rochester Memo had begun marketing "Fine Russian Icons rial Art Gallery, and many private collec 47 and Relics from Royal Russia" out of their tions were acquired in this way. Following LErmitage Galleries at 3 East 5 2nd Street. the department -store sales, the Hamme~s The new enterprise involved a marketing established Hammer Galleries in New York, strategy that Armand Hammer would later which was "fed by a continuing stream of recall with cynical relish: "I promoted the art objects from Moscow ... a collection hell out of the sale by giving it a healthy of Hammer family and Soviet -owned 48 dose of snob appeaL l ordered the printing merchandise." TI1e Hammers were under no illusions of fancy price tags embossed with the Impe rial Romanoff two-beaded eagle crest and about the aesthetic value of their stock, prepared an elaborate catalog that paid marketing them not as works of Russian tribute to the 'skilled artisans devoted to painting, but as "a collection of memora the glory of the czar: ... Our success in bilia, freighted with human interest and St. Louis led to sales in eight other stores, drawn together by a thread of lasting culminating in a huge sale at Lord & Taylor significance:' As the Hammers' sales brochure for 1935 put it, "To possess even in New York." Repeating his initial success at depart one of these relics is to own a bit of the ment stores across the country (three of the world's history, to have at hand tangible evidence of the rise and fall of a great cities had also been hosts to the traveling • exhibition)," Hammer targeted a particular Empire .... And too, there is romance in kind of American collector for the art bringing into our homes these various entrusted to him, including late icons: beautiful objects that once delighted the women (some wealthy but not always so) eyes of monarchs, that furnished an who found special significance in owning imperial background for the young Grand something that had once belonged to the Dukes and Duchesses of far away mysteri 49 murdered Romanov family. Aesthetically ous Russia." As for the icons, they were to distinct from earlier icons, whose monu serve as decorative notes in the domestic mental simplicity had elicited comparisons interior, helping "to consecrate a quiet with the modernist aesthetic, they were part corner for a few minutes' rest in the season's of an inventory that included Faberge objets busy rush:'
CURATORS A:-;D COMMISSARS 138 In the slick sales patter of the Hammers' that emerged in its wake are to this day Depression-era marketing, these icons considered of minor importance (full of came to the end of a long journey of "tourist junk," one writer observed) .52 The transformation. Stripped of their original exhibition had expressly driven horne the liturgical function, they acquired a new point that, by 1700, icon painting was in identity, joining the assortment ofimperial decline, a determination that was to remain possessions that could be used in the in effect until the disintegration of the American home, "either for decor, to Soviet Union. The Hammers' cheap market embellish the cabinets of your own collec~ ing ploys, with their department -store tions, or for actual use in the routine of environment and emphasis on icons as everyday Iiving." 50 Their appraised value decorative t0uches within a contemporary had little to do with their intrinsic proper decor, above all the perceived "decadence" ties as paintings, still Jess with their devo and tinselly surface effects of the icons tional function, and everything to do with themselves, so far removed from the "pure the associations the viewer brought with painting" and transcendent effects of him or her. 1he intense gleam of small Golden Age icons-all played a part in silver and enamel oklads, often arranged in situating American collections at the very symmetrical clusters on the wall, created an bottom of an emerging aesthetic hierarchy aesthetic that is still closely associated with that ans'"'wered the expectations of Western Russian icons in the United States. The modernist aesthetics and Soviet scientific "startling modernism" of the great church materialism alike. Rhetorically, the exhibi icons seemed very far away. tion established the uneasy and unequal coexistence of two sorts of icon, one rare CONCLUSION and desirable, the other plentiful and lVfuch to the relief of Russia's museum despised. Moreover, the emphasis on the community, the icons in the loan exhibition problems of attribution and dating-which returned home intact at the conclusion of resulted from Orthodoxy's liturgical the American tour, although not always to practices (repainting, copying)-made the institutions that had loaned them. In potential buyers wary of investing heavily 1934, the Central State Restoration Work in important icons and contributed to the shops were purged and closed down, and resistance of American museums to many of its staff members repressed and collecting and displaying Russian icons. The imprisoned, including Anisimov and complicated legacy of this early experiment Chirikov. 51 Thereafter, the workshops' in Soviet cultural diplomacy affects the functions and collection were transferred perception of icons in the United States to to the State Tretiakov Gallery. the present day. In the United States, although the traveling exhibition had been a great public relations success, it had signally failed to produce a systematic and informed market base. 'The few American icon collections
f-lOW t\!viER!CA DISCOVERED RUSSIAN ICONS 139 N!lTE!i Til CHAPTER 6
I. After two months at the Petersburg: Zhurnal 'Neva'; Letnii Vyzantii i Drevnei Rusi 1920-1930 Museum of Fine Arts in Boston Sad, 1999), 133. gody: Po materialmn arkhivov. (14 October-14 December 1930), (Moscow: lzdatel'stvo Akademii 6. T11e commission \Vas part of the the exhibition traveled to the gornikh nauk, 2ooo), 289. Collegium on Museum Affairs and Metropolitan Museum of Art in However, the actual idea and the Preservation of Works of Art and New York (1.3 January-23 political clout to realize it seem to Antiques (1918-24). February 1931); the Worcester have been c_;rabar's. ln March Museum of Fine Arts (March 7. On the theme ofRublev, see 1927, Anatoly Lunacharsky had April); the Rochester Memorial Lindsey Hughes, "Inventing agreed to a similar proposal by Grabar for sending an icon Art Gallery (opened 1 May); the Andrei: Soviet and Post-Soviet De Young Memorial Art Museum, Views of Andrei Rub lev and His exhibition to Frankfurt (Manu San Francisco (1 July-31 August); Trinity Icon;' Slavonica 9, no. 2 script Division, Sta,te Tretiakov the Saint Paul Art Center in (2003): 83-90. Gallery, henceforth OR GTG, f. Minnesota (9 October-9 1 o6, 16761, line 1). Presumably, 8. Byzantisch-russische Monu November); the Art Institute of Lunacharsky's waning authority mentalmalerei. Chicago (22 December-17 prompted Grabar to renew his January 1932); the Cleveland 9. Sud'by muzeinykh kollektsii: campaign: in August 1928, he Museum of Art (18 February-2o Materialy VI Tsarskosel'skoi wrote to the Gostorg administra March); and the Cincinnati Art nauchnoi km~ferentsii (St. tion (OR GTG, f. 1 o6, ed. kh. 527) Museum (April). Petersburg: Tsarskoe Selo, 2000), before sending the memo to A. 130. On the phenomenon of the Ginzburg, head of Antikvariat, 2. See particularly the journals Soviet sales of art and antiques in which is published in his collected Mir iskusstva (18g8~ .. 1904) and the interwar period, see Nikolas letters (see note 11 belovv). In a Starye gody (1907-1.6) for H'in and Natal'ia Semenova, letter to Glavnauka of January expressions of the intelligentsia's Prodannye sokrovishcha Rossii 1929, however, he disavowed his hostile attitude toward the clergy. (Moscow: Trilistnik, 2000); own role, writing that the
3. Vystavka d~·ewze-russkogo Waltraud Bayer, ed., Verkaufte exhibition was "formed on the iskusstva ustroennaia v 1913 godu v Kultur: Die smvjetischen Kunst initiative of Gostorg, which oznamcnovanie chestvovaniia und Antiquitdtenexporte, conceived the entire exhibition'' 300-/etiia tsarstvovaniia Doma 1919-1938 (FrankfUrt am Main: (OR GTG, f. 106, ed. kh. 529, Roman.ovykh. Imperatorslcii Peter Lang, 2001); and Anne line 1). Odom and Wendy R. Salmond, Moskovskii arkheologicheskii 11. Letter from Grabar to A. M. irzstitut imeni Imperatora Nikolaia eds., Treasures into Tractors: The Ginzburg, 20 September 1938, in Semng of Russia'S Cultural II (Moscow: [Institut], 1913). Igor' Grabar' Pis'ma 1917-1941 Heritage, 1918-1938 (VVashington, 4. Pavel Muratov [review], Starye (Moscow: Nauka, 1977), 179. D.C.: Hillwood Museum and gody (April1913): 31. Gardens, 2009). 12. OR GTG, f. 106, 527. 5. "By the mid-1920s icons had 10. Grabar's role in organizing the 13. 'The provenance of the icons in disappeared from public buildings exhibition is unclear. Anisimov the exhibition was as follows: and remained, according to data complained that it was essentially Central Restoration Workshops for Moscow, in only 76 percent of he who organized it, while Grabar (26), Anlikvariat (1 3), Novgorod workers' homes. fn 1925 ... this got to accompany it and "make an Museum (g), State Historical figure was reduced to 59 percent:' 'international' career for himself." Museum (13), Trctiakov Gallery N. B. Lebina, Povsednevnaia zhizn' See L L. KyziasOV 140 CUR/l.TORS AND COMMISSARS Saint Sergius (8 each), Vladimir 18. Michael Farbman, cd., 21. "Early Tcons in Boston Show," Museum ( s), Yaros!avJ (4), Masterpieces of Russian Painting Art News 29 (4 October 1930): 30; Arkhangel, Pskov, and Donskoy (London: A. Zwemmer, 1930). ft Literary Digesl, 6 December 1930, Monast-ery Museums (2 each), and was Roger Fry \Nho first suggested 18 ·19. one each from Tver, Rostov, and that the Victoria and Albert 22. Russian State Archive of Aleks HOW AMF:RLCA DiSCOVERED RUSSiAN iCONS 141 in English prior to 1930 were conceived in good will and an Point of View;' in Farbman, ed., limited to two scholarly mono dedicated to the promotion of .AJasterpieces of Russian Painting, graphs: Nikodim Kondakov, The cultural relations between the s6, ss. Russian [con, trans. Ellis Minns peoples of the Soviet Republics 4L '~'\.rt and the Child.;' Bulle! in oj (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927), and tbe /\merican public. lt fosters the \f\lorcester Art Museum 2 2 (July and Aleksandr Anisimov, Our mutual amity, world peace, 3 February 193.1., J. World Her Sacred Icons," 1 8. 44. I am grateful to Dr. Belen 30. Charles Phillips, "The Soviet 35. Alexandre Anisimov, Evans of the Metropolitan Easter," Commonweal, 1 April ''I.: Exposition des anciennes icones Museum of Art for providing me 1931, 597· russes;' Gazette des beaux-arts, 20 with information on th{~ sales February 1930,11. For an emigre from the Paris Exposition 31. "Noles of the Month;' perspective on the works internationale d'art byzantin (28 International Studio, February excluded, see Veidle, "Russkie May-9 july 1931 ) . .1.931., 49· The legal problem of ikony v Lon done," 2. American museums accepting an 45. From St. Louis, the stock went exhibition from an unrecognized 36. In practice, these uncompro to Marshall Field's (Chicago), government was solved when the mising standards proved Bullocks Wilshire (Los Angeles), American-Russian Institute for untenable, and by the late 1920s Balle's (Cleveland), the Emporium Cultural Relations with the Soviet retouching was widely used. (San francisco), B. Forman Co. Cnion assumed responsibility for (Rochester), Kaufmann's 37. "Atheist Russia Lends the the exhibition during its tour of (Pittsburgh), Woodward & World Her Sacred Jcons;' 18. the United States. The first branch Lothrop (\Nasbington, D.C ), ;;md of the ARI was created in New 38. Flint, "Russian Icons on View Lord & Taylor (New York). York in 1927 and by 1929 had at the Metropolitan," 34· 46. Alexander Schaffer opened spread to many other American 39. Bulletin of the Mdropolitan his own gallery, the Schaffer cities. A major goal was to Museum o.f Art 26 (January 1931): 6. Collection of Russian Imperial promote recogniLon of the Soviet Treasures, at Rockefeller Center government, but it was generally 40. Roger Fry, "Russian Icon in 1933. touted as "an adventure in Painting from a Western-Europe international understanding. It is 142 CUKATORS AND CO~vlMiSSARS 47 Lillian P1·au buu.ght her hrsr !(-on at rht l.ord & Taylor cxhibitilln in January t933, ~md _\lrs. James Sibky Watson purdt o{ Eliiah 111 his Fiery Chariot for S3;5 at B. hnman Co. Th \V'ith I knry hl\qrck Jli(' Doric Side (!(Power: !lie Ned Annnnd J-fmnmer (:-.1(?\V YurL Simon & Schuster, 1 c;'}2), i oG 49. I-Lumner Galleries, inc., 'i,'<'aw,'njn 50, Ih'a'W'CS the Pa!nces of Old nussia, 1935. 51. On lhe 1:1te of these men and others engaged in the study of nwdievc1l Russian culture in the J 9 3os, ~ce Kyzlasova, fstoriirJ ored!estvennoi rwuki. On Anis1m()v in particular, see Shirley A. Clade's chapter in this volume. 52. Edward fay Epstein, Dossier: 771e Seer('/ History of Armand flmnmr (0.'cw York: Carroll & Graf, 199~), 138. il1l\\" A,'vli:l