Chapman University Chapman University Digital Commons Art Faculty Books and Book Chapters Art 2010 How America Discovered Russian Icons: The Soviet Loan Exhibition of 1930-32 Wendy Salmond Chapman University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/art_books Part of the Art and Design Commons, Christian Denominations and Sects Commons, Christianity Commons, Fine Arts Commons, History of Christianity Commons, History of Religions of Western Origin Commons, and the Slavic Languages and Societies Commons 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. This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Art at Chapman University Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Art Faculty Books and Book Chapters by an authorized administrator of Chapman University Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WENDY R. SALMOND 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.