Essays in Honor of Elizabeth Kridl Valkenier Edited by R 0 s A LI N D p. B L A K E s LE y and M A R G ARE T s A M u Studies of the Harriman Institute NIU Press I DeKalb, IL Contents © 2014 by Northern Illinois University Press Published by the Northern Illinois University Press, List of Illustrations vii The Contemporary Reception of Ilia Repin's DeKalb, Illinois 60115 Solo Exhibition of 1891 Acknowledgments ix Manufactured in China using acid-free paper. GALINA CHURAK III All Rights Reserved Elizabeth Kridl Valkenier and the World of Russian Art Design by Shaun Allshouse Pavel Tretiakov's Icons RONALD MEYER xi WENDY SALMOND 123 Studies of the Harriman Institute Columbia University Introduction Closing the Books on Peredvizhnichestvo: The Harriman Institute, Columbia University, sponsors the Studies of ROSALIND P. BLAKESLEY Mir Iskusstva's Long Farewell to Russian Realism the Harriman Institute in the belief that their publication contributes AND MARGARET SAMU 3 JANET KENNEDY 141 to scholarly research and public understanding. In this way the In­ stitute, while not necessarily endorsing their conclusions, is pleased Academic Foot Soldier or Nationalist Warhorse? Serov, Bakst, and the Reinvention of Russia's to make available the results of some of the research conducted The Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture, 1843-1861 Classical Heritage under its auspices. ROSALIND P. BLAKESLEY 13 ALISON HILTON 152 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Brothers Konstantin and Vladimir Makovskii: Between East and West: From realism to the Silver Age : new studies in Russian artistic One Family, Two Fates The Search for National Identity in Russian Illustrated culture : essays in honor of Elizabeth Kridl Valkenier / edited by ELENA NESTEROVA 27 Rosalind P. Blakesley and Margaret Samu. Children's Books, 1800-1917 pages : illustrations ; cm. - (Studies of the Harriman Institute) Making a Case for Realism: ALLA ROSENFELD 168 Includes index. The Female Nude in Russian Satirical Images of the 1860s ISBN 978-0-87580-703-4 (pbk.) - Kandinsky's Sketch for "Composition II," 1909-1910: MARGARET SAMU 44 ISBN 978-1-60909-162-0 ( e-book) A Theosophical Reading 1. Art, Russian-Russia-History-19th century. 2. Art, Russian­ The Abramtsevo Circle: MARIAN BURLEIGH-MOTLEY 189 Russia-History-20th century. 3. Realism in art-Russia-History. Founding Principles and Aesthetic Direction 4. Silver age (Russian arts) I. Valkenier, Elizabeth Kridl, honouree. Things That Are Not: II. Blakesley, Rosalind P. (Rosalind Polly), editor of compilation. ELEONORA PASTON 59 III. Samu, Margaret, editor of compilation. IV: Series: Studies of the Marianne Werefkin and the Condition of Silence Harriman Institute. Tolstoy, Ge, and Two Pilates: J 0 H N E. B 0 W LT 20! N6987.5.R4F76 2014 A Tale of the Interarts 709.47'09034-dc23 JEFFERSON J.A. GATRALL 79 2013041731 Contributors 209 Painting History, Realistically: Index 2II Frontispiece from Ilia Repin, Abramtsevo, 1880 Murder at the Tretiakov MOLLY BRUNSON 94 Elizabeth Kridl Valkenier and the World of Russian Art RONALD MEYER In his review of the "dismal show" of "Russian and curators, undertaken in tandem with archival research, Soviet Painting" mounted at the Metropolitan Museum laid the groundwork for Valkenier's pioneering study. of Art (1977-1978), Hilton Kramer, the lead art critic Fortunately, Valkenier was not a novice researcher in at the New York Times, bemoans the poor quality of the USSR-the gloom of the Cold War atmosphere did the exhibits, but is even more outraged at the museum nothing to facilitate access to archives and scholars. offering nothing to counterbalance the standard Soviet As she writes in her essay "The Totalitarian Model and ideological interpretations: "From neither the catalog Me;' her initial contacts and experiences in the USSR nor the wall labels in the exhibition, moreover, can we date back to a ten-day Intourist trip to Moscow in expect to be told anything but the official Soviet line:'1 1958, from which she brought back the impression that Kramer recommends an antidote to the Met's ideological "Soviet citizens were not conforming to the totalitarian pandering: moder'4 The following year she returned to Russia as a guide for the book section of the first American Fortunately, there is a new book at hand-Elizabeth Exhibit, which reinforced her impressions that ordinary Valkenier's Russian Realist Art (Ardis)-that fits the need citizens, unlike the monolithic mass of true believers for a serious and candid study of the political history of portrayed by Cold War ideologues, had independent Russian art from the 1860s to the present. ... Her work has opinions and hungered for information about the West the great merit of providing us with a detailed account of from which they had been cut off for half a century. the politics and ideology that have dominated so much of When Valkenier returned to Moscow in 1967, it was the art we see in this exhibition .... Hers is by no means the in the capacity of research assistant of Philip Mosely, a last word on the subject, but it is in many respects a useful foreign policy scholar-Valkenier had followed Mosely first word, and it arrives just in time to act as a corrective to from the Council on Foreign Relations, where he held the Met's sunny embrace of this human tragedy. 2 the post of director of studies, to Columbia University, where Mosely had been named director of the European First, it is interesting that rather than choose some Institute.5 Her careful reading as Mosely's assistant of standard history, Kramer promotes a first book by a the literature on Soviet foreign policy in the third world relatively unknown author, published by a fledgling led her to believe that there were "disagreements over independent small press in Michigan with no track record the old orthodoxies" and evolving new interpretations. as a publisher of books on art. But what is more interesting, Her research plan was to spend a month interviewing Elizabeth Kridl Valkenier and which perhaps explains my first point, is that Kramer "Soviet specialists whose arguments [on foreign policy] appreciates Valkenier's "first word;' how she connects represented the 'new thinking' of those days:' With the rise and fall of Russian realist art from the "initial Mosely's introductions she met highly placed Soviet creative phase of Peredvizhnichestvo;' to its "tendentious experts with whom she maintained contact for the rehabilitation'' under Stalin.3 And more important, how next thirty years, which yielded a number of articles Valkenier challenges the prevailing view both in the Soviet and ultimately her second book, The Soviet Union and Union and in the West, as exemplified by the Metropolitan the Third World: An Economic Bind (Praeger, 1983 Museum's show, through her analysis as a historian of the and 1985). Valkenier's work in this field pointed to "nexus between society, politics and arf' the economic difficulties in the ambitious Soviet aid Interviews conducted in the 1970s with both the policies-an argument that diverged from the prevalent conservative and liberal camps of art historians and belief in Moscow's successes in the developing countries. I dean of humanities and deputy pro-rector, shortly after the Questioning received opinion would continue to be Ilya Repin and the World ofRussian Art (Columbia outbreak of World War II, when Polish personnel at the Art History Books Valkenier's modus operandi on her art history research University Press, 1990), which is not simply a biography university were being relieved of their positions by the new trips to the USSR and Russia, funded by the Russian of the foremost Peredvizhnik but also an insightful Russian Realist Art. The State and Society: The Lithuanian Soviet government. Founder of Wilno's Social and Harriman Institutes, IREX, the Pew Foundation, look at the distorting lens of Soviet historiography; Peredvizhniki and Their Tradition (Ann Arbor: Ardis, Democratic Club, Kridl opposed authoritarianism on both and the National Council for Soviet and East European and finally, Valentin Serov: Portraits of Russia's Silver 1977; New York: Columbia University Press, 1989). the left and the right. A photograph from 1936 shows the Research. It is characteristic ofValkenier's approach Age (Northwestern University Press, 2001), a study of Ilya Repin and the World of Russian Art (New York: popular professor presiding over a picnic with a group of that she enlisted both the conservatives, many of whom Repin's best-known pupil set against the background of Columbia University Press, 1990). university students who included Czeslaw Milosz among held influential positions in the Soviet Academy of the transition from realism to Russian modernism and The Wanderers. Masters of 19th-Century Russian Painting, their number.7 Milosz was not a student ofKridl's per se, Arts and arts administrations, and the liberals, who the interplay of art and social history during Russia's exh. cat. (Dallas: University of Texas Press, 1991). but the professor was a steadfast supporter of the young were more likely to be found at universities and on Silver Age. These lines from Valkenier's introduction to Editor and contributor. poet from their early days together in Poland and during museum staffs and were suggesting new approaches her book on Serov might be applied to her art history Valentin Serov. Portraits ofRussia's Silver Age (Evanston, their joint emigration in the United States. Valkenier's most outside of the official framework. She found both groups works as a whole: IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001). recent publication is "Way Back in Wilna ... ;' a memoir eager to influence how she would frame her story. The "Russian Realist Painting. The Peredvizhniki: An ofher acquaintance with Milosz.