Modernism and the Spiritual in Russian Art New Perspectives
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Modernism and the Spiritual in Russian Art New Perspectives EDITED BY LOUISE HARDIMAN AND NICOLA KOZICHAROW To access digital resources including: blog posts videos online appendices and to purchase copies of this book in: hardback paperback ebook editions Go to: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/609 Open Book Publishers is a non-profit independent initiative. We rely on sales and donations to continue publishing high-quality academic works. Modernism and the Spiritual in Russian Art New Perspectives Edited by Louise Hardiman and Nicola Kozicharow https://www.openbookpublishers.com © 2017 Louise Hardiman and Nicola Kozicharow. Copyright of each chapter is maintained by the author. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: 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 In order to access detailed and updated information on the license, please visit https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/609#copyright Further details about CC BY licenses are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ All external links were active at the time of publication unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web Digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/609#resources Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher. 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 ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-78374-340-7 ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 978-1-78374-341-4 ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 978-1-78374-342-1 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 Cover design: Heidi Coburn All paper used by Open Book Publishers is SFI (Sustainable Forestry Initiative), PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes) and Forest Stewardship Council(r)(FSC(r) certified. Printed in the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia by Lightning Source for Open Book Publishers (Cambridge, UK) Contents Acknowledgements 1 Notes on Transliteration and Conventions 3 Notes on Contributors 5 1. Introduction: Modernism and the Spiritual in Russian Art 9 Louise Hardiman and Nicola Kozicharow 2. From Angels to Demons: Mikhail Vrubel and the Search for 37 a Modernist Idiom Maria Taroutina 3. ‘The Loving Labourer through Space and Time’: Aleksandra Pogosskaia, 69 Theosophy, and Russian Arts and Crafts, c. 1900–1917 Louise Hardiman 4. Kazimir Malevich, Symbolism, and Ecclesiastic Orthodoxy 91 Myroslava M. Mudrak 5. Spirituality and the Semiotics of Russian Culture: From the Icon to 115 Avant-Garde Art Oleg Tarasov 6. Re-imagining the Old Faith: Larionov, Goncharova, and the Spiritual 129 Traditions of Old Believers Nina Gurianova 7. ‘Russian Messiah’: On the Spiritual in the Reception of Vasily 149 Kandinsky’s Art in Germany, c. 1910–1937 Sebastian Borkhardt 8. Ellis H. Minns and Nikodim Kondakov’s The Russian Icon (1927) 165 Wendy Salmond 9. Stelletsky’s Murals at Saint-Serge: Orthodoxy and the Neo-Russian Style 195 in Emigration Nicola Kozicharow 10. The Role of the ‘Red Commissar’ Nikolai Punin in the Rediscovery of 213 Icons Natalia Murray 11. Ucha Japaridze, Lado Gudiashvili, and the Spiritual in Painting in Soviet 229 Georgia Jennifer Brewin 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 (Landesgraduiertenförderung) of Baden-Württemberg and the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes). His research interests include modernism, with a particular focus on Russian art, as well as reception history, human-animal studies, and contemporary museum practice. Borkhardt is a member of the Russian Art and Culture Group based at Jacobs University in Bremen (http:// russian-art.user.jacobs-university.de) and co-editor of the 2017 issue of Experiment: A Journal of Russian Culture which is dedicated to the memory of Dmitry Sarabyanov. Jennifer Brewin is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge. Her research, supervised by Dr Rosalind Polly Blakesley, explores the interaction of painting and national politics in Soviet Georgia under Stalin.