Mikhail Vrubel, Demon Seated, 1890, Oil on canvas, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.

Demon Seated (Fig. 1) depicts the figure of the Demon sitting atop a mountain. There is tension in his muscles and interlocked fingers which sharply contrasts with the slumped over body and melancholy expression of his face. He appears passive and introverted yet proud, solitary, and sensitive. He is the antithesis of the feminine, yet possesses feminine attributes in the long hair, soft face, and pouty mouth. His eyes are filled with a longing for love in a cold and alienated world. Vrubel described this Demon as “a spirit uniting in itself masculine and feminine qualities…a spirit, not so much evil as suffering and sorrowing, but in all that a powerful spirit…a majestic spirit”. [1] In his androgyny, the Demon is a perfect fusion of the soul’s earthly and heavenly elements.[2] The evening setting amidst an ethereal landscape that is distant and disengaged assists in the feelings of sadness and solitude.[3] There is the sense of an uneasy equilibrium between the wistful landscape and the forlorn expression that suggests places and events are but a haze to the immortal soul that is condemned.[4]

Demon Seated is the generalized depiction of the soul. The inner focus of the eyes, the intensity of the huddled movement of the body, and the clasped hands all isolate the figure and produce an image of profound introspection. The enlarged flowers fill the whole area to the right and force their way to the foreground. They are visually pitted against the area to the left of the Demon, towards which its face is turned: a void. The planes are complex and not uniform, alternating in shape and direction, creating tensions. The colors suggest movement as they move down to more open, faceted, crystalline forms. The sunset has a menacing glow, suggestive of the fires of hell. The irregularity and abrupt juxtaposition of shapes suggest the technique of mosaics. The elusive spatial balance is enclosed within a shallow space, which may be called proto-Cubist because the boundaries are ambiguous and the volumes contrast and expand, appear and disappear, setting up rhythms. The circular movement, ambiguities, emptiness on the left versus the press of form on the right could act as metaphors for the claustrophobic state of mind of the Demon.[5]

FIg. 2: Mikhail Vrubel, Demon Downcast, 1902, Oil on canvas, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.

The Demon in Demon Downcast (Fig. 2) is altogether a different being. The calmness and reserve that is present in Demon Seated has dramatically altered. There is a prevailing sense of catastrophe in the strange mountainous landscape. He is thrown among jagged mountains, peacock-feathered wings outspread, body twisted and broken; he is crushed both physically and psychologically. Yet, his lips are firmly compressed, nostrils flared, and his eyes stare rigidly ahead, the melancholy replaced by scorn. The juxtaposition of the blue and purple with tan and black gives the scene a subdued yet ominous atmosphere, suggesting a struggle between light and dark, and beauty in death.[6] What is most disconcerting about the image is the contrast of this chaotic fall from grace with the disturbing, windless landscape.

There is a new intensity of despair felt by the Demon in his failure to forge new human bonds and transcend his lack of faith of love. The Demon’s appearance in Demon Downcast is strikingly different from the Demon seen in Demon Seated. There are wings on this demon which have given way to agitated peacock-like feathers; the right arm is folded over his head in a companion gesture to the left arm, expressing a more concentrated tension and grief which mingle with the face which holds an expression of mistrust, horror, and sadness. Ekaterina Gay, Vrubel’s sister-in-law, wrote of Demon Downcast: “There were days when the Demon was very awe-inspiring, then it would take on a facial expression of deep sorrow and a new kind of beauty.”[7]

To understand these demons, one must know how the subject came to be such a fascination to Vrubel. Vrubel’s first major commissions as an artist were for the restorations of St. Kirill’s in Kiev. His participation here would lead to the development of a Byzantine style that would be seen in all of his subsequent work. During his stay in Kiev, Vrubel developed a tendency to drink too much, throw away money, and participated in numerous amorous escapades which led him to disappear without warning. This lack of self-discipline and loose manner of living created unusual patterns of thought and temperament bringing about extravagant behavior. Because of this behavior he committed numerous offenses against societal conventions and had lapses with reality, such as a belief in his father’s death, and a growing frequency of migraines. Despite this, his work never showed signs of it. Also, while in Kiev, he began a lifelong fascination with creating images akin to classic Russian folktales. More importantly, however, Kiev was the place in which Vrubel saw Anton Rubenstein’s opera The Demon for the first time, giving him his initial inspiration for the subject that would be a constant throughout his artistic career.

Fig. 3: Mikhail Vrubel, Tamara Dancing, 1891, Black watercolor on cardboard, Illustration for The Demon by Mikhail Lermontov, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.

As Vrubel began focusing more and more on his art, he decided that he needed to make his own discoveries and find a subject of fundamental scope, eventually turning to Mikhail Lermontov’s epic poem The Demon in 1885. By mid-1885 he had begun his first depiction of the Demon, based on Lermontov’s poem. This first image was destroyed by Vrubel but its influence on later incarnations of the Demon is apparent in its depth of idea and expression.

In May of 1890, Vrubel had begun a new version of the Demon, describing him as “a half-nude, winged, youthful, dejectedly thoughtful figure who seats, hugging his knees, against the background of a sunset and contemplates a flowering meadow from which small branches weighed down by flowers are straining toward it.”[8] This is the Demon he came to believe would make him famous; this would be the Demon of Demon Seated.

Vrubel had many sources of inspiration from which he drew his first ideas concerning the Demon but it was within the realm of literature that Vrubel found what he was seeking. With a deep interest in the literary and philosophical classics, Vrubel found demons in the work of Nikolai Gogol and Aleksandr Pushkin.[9] But above all, Vrubel associated the figure of the Demon with some romantic, transcendental world of love and death, and nothing exemplified this ideal better than Mikhail Lermontov’s epic poem The Demon, first published in 1842.

In 1891, several special jubilee editions of Lermontov’s poems were to be published in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the poet’s death. Vrubel had been approached to provide illustrations for the I. N. Kushnerev edition. For The Demon, he provided twenty-two illustrations done in watercolor and gouache; eleven of them were published.[10] Art critic Vladimir Stasov wrote of Vrubel’s illustrations for Lermontov’s poem: “Vrubel in his Demons has given us the most awful examples of revolting and repulsive decadence.”[11] Although many did not like Vrubel’s illustrations, the special edition is now remembered and celebrated for his artistic contribution. The Demon of Lermontov’s creation was on a quest to “incarnate the spirit of exile,” and this, more than anything else, aided in the development and viewpoint of Vrubel’s Demon.

Fig. 4: Mikhail Vrubel, Rider, 1891, Black watercolor on cardboard, Illustration for The Demon by Mikhail Lermontov, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.

The poem opens with the Demon, a fallen angel, flying amongst the clouds. As he is flying, he sees below the beautiful princess, Tamara, with whom he falls in love (Fig. 3). In an attempt to avoid his lonely fate, he decides to seduce her, but discovers that she is engaged. The Demon is soon torn between his love for Tamara and his own destructive nature. Following his heart, he desperately and deliberately wishes death upon her fiancé (Fig. 4). In mourning, Tamara begins a new life in a convent, where the Demon follows her. At last giving in to his love, they embrace, and she perishes in his arms (Fig. 5). The Demon tearfully watches as an angel carries Tamara’s soul to heaven. In the end, the Demon is left in the lonely, desolate state in which he began (Fig. 6).[12]

He was originally a pure creature, a “happy firstling of creation,” who is now burdened by eternal flight until he sees Tamara dancing. The scene is festive, in celebration of her pending marriage. The Demon sees her and is moved, “his memory traced the joys that he had known above.” He becomes jealous of the groom and selfishly kills him. He pursues Tamara until she finally gives in. Because of this selfishness, Tamara dies. But even in her death, the Demon refuses to admit his role in her demise, choosing, instead, to continue to revolt against the world. Lermontov’s creature represents for the first time, the concept of a Demon as an ordinary human with its selfish passions, uncontrolled appetite, cowardly refusals, and cold absorption in itself.[13] It is this Demon in whom Vrubel found what he had been longing to depict.

Fig. 5: Mikhail Vrubel, Tamara and Demon, 1891, Black watercolor on cardboard, Illustration for The Demon by Mikhail Lermontov, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.

Vrubel’s Demon, however, should be seen as more of a visual, rather than a literal, interpretation of Lermontov’s. Lermontov’s Demon is haughty, arrogant, and proud; his love for Tamara is more of an obsession to possess someone rather than to love someone. Vrubel’s Demon, as seen in Demon Seated, is infused with a symbolism that is “replete with thought and always obscure in its depth” becoming almost godlike, in his final moments, as seen in Demon Downcast.[14] In fact, neither Demon Seated nor Demon Downcast illustrates any passage in Lermontov’s narrative. If literary inspiration is to be seen in Demon Seated it is found in an earlier Lermontov poem of 1829, entitled “My Demon”:

Among the fallen leaves stands his immovable throne.

There, among still winds, he sits dejected and somber.[15]

In this a literary interpretation can be perceived with the “immovable” aspect singled out by Vrubel for expression. You can sense the emptiness and misery felt by the Demon. His body proportions seem out of place with the enclosed landscape around him. His figure seems to be overrunning the boundaries of the canvas, invading the viewer’s space. Yet, through the act of the childlike gesture of holding his knees and looking away from the viewer into the distance, he is psychologically self-contained. The mosaic-like quality of the landscape depiction provides an almost circular movement throughout the canvas from the pressing forms of the flowers on the right to the menacing glow of the sunset on the left. Tears have formed in his eye with one rolling down his cheek. All of this is utilized to convey the Demon’s humanity and his striving to go beyond the limitations of the commonplace.[16] This was the demon that Vrubel saw as misunderstood. Here is a figure, not of darkness, but of light; a benevolent, otherworldly figure who has been cast out from heaven.

As with Demon Seated, Demon Downcast has literary counterpart in Lermontov. According to Aline Isdebsky-Pritchard, Vrubel’s Demon in this work is found in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, a source used by Lermontov for his Demon. Milton’s Satan is described as:

…cast out from Heaven…

…Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky…

…He lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf,

Confounded but immortal. But his doom

Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought

Both of lost happiness and lasting pain

Torments him: round he throws his baleful eyes,

That witnessed huge affliction and dismay,

Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate.[17]

Milton’s imagery seems directly projected onto Vrubel’s canvas. His fate is to struggle within his own spirit, remaining locked within its own battleground. He is hideous, misshapen, and as rigid as stone. He has fallen from a great height, and one can sense and see the power of his collision with the landscape. But his head remains upright, wearing a thorny crown that alludes to Christ’s sufferings, and an expression of deep existential anxiety which still contains great pride and determination.

Fig. 6: Mikhail Vrubel, Demon and Angel with Tamara’s Soul, 1891, Black watercolor, whitewash on paper, Illustration for The Demon by Mikhail Lermontov, The Museum of Russian Art, Erevan, Armenia.

Lermontov’s Demon contained romantically heroic dimensions centering on ideas and emotions having to do with the individual’s capacity for good and evil. His demon was irrational and complex, whose encounter with the Angel only intensifies his destructive urge. Vrubel explained his own vision of the Demon as “generally misunderstood. The demon is confused with the devil and evil spirits…But “the demon” means “the soul,” and it incarnates the eternal struggle of the mutinous human spirit seeking reconciliation of its stormy passions with a knowledge of life, it finds no answer to its doubts either on earth or in heaven.”[18]

The Demon embodies Vrubel’s concept of the soul’s essence as active and disruptive in the “eternal struggle of the mutinous human spirit.” and in creative conflict with the world. The Demon is subjected to passion and torment; he is the victim of events and of his response to them. If the figure of the Demon seems unexpectedly peaceful, it is only in contrast to the inner torments of Lermontov’s hero and to all of Vrubel’s subsequent works on the subject. This relative repose is expressed in the position of the Demon, almost geometric in its stability: a broad-based conical mass, culminating in the top of the head, slowly rises across the center of the canvas, and closes the arms and shoulders within a diamond shape. The body itself is composed of smaller geometric units, whose facets do not represent actual muscular structure, but are, rather their visual equivalents. The substances are neither cloth nor flesh; they are sculptural in essence. Details of the shoulder convey the way in which the body is actually constructed of a mass of independent sculptural units. These units have the consistency of some dark, hard material, and the colors are indefinite tans and greys. The scale of the painting makes this method very evident. Sudden jumps in color value build up the planes which are the units forming open volumes. They seem to prefigure early Cubism, and the total figure has the structural underlying solidity of that style.

The face of the Demon, shown in profile, is pensively sad rather than despairing. Its visible eye is filled with tears, while a large tear rolls down along the nose. Lermontov uses tears in the poem to express the Demon’s momentary freedom from his usual state of alienation and it serves a similar function for Vrubel. It is a measure of the Demon’s humanity. Tears also connote the experience of suffering, which Vrubel welcomed as an integral aspect of life. Beyond representing Lermontov’s solitary outcast and the struggle of the sentient individual soul between good and evil impulses, the Demon is also a concrete force of nature, with its roots in the material universe.

Far from just literary inspiration, Vrubel lived in an era that was rapidly changing. The last decades of the nineteenth century in Russian life and culture were a volatile mix of great expectations and ominous visions. This era produced great and everlasting works of art, poetry, and music that became known as the Russian Silver Age.

The Russian Silver Age, with its connotations of art, dusk, and the reflected brilliance of the moon and stars, is normally applied to the last 25 years of Tsarist culture, 1892-1917.[19] During the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, faith faded and the bearing of another’s burdens sapped initiative and self-sufficiency. Deeply disoriented, people began to grope for short-cuts to lost certainties and for the vulnerable and psychologically unstable, there was the possibility of experimenting with drugs, alcohol, and sexual perversion.[20] Artists of the era wanted to show the isolation of the individual in a world of unique feeling. The Russian Symbolist movement sought to connect “the abyss which lies between man and nature in the contemporary world.”[21] Symbolism is the culmination of these historical processes which have their origin in the cult of beauty through pessimism. The artist’s journey within the self to find stability was sought in an idealization of the past.

This road was to lead back to a new acceptance of the moral imperative: whether as tragic courage, existential choice, or acceptance of the implications of the cross of Christ.[22] But, as the rigid institutions of tsarist Russia were eroding, a new-found freedom began to flourish and a tide of modern art and ideas swept across the country, bridging the void between the exotic past and the modern world which aided in informing and enriching Russia’s modernism, distinguishing it from its counterparts. It acknowledged the new art and science of the West but modified them to local custom so as to produce an eclectic mix of traditions. Thus, Russian Symbolism developed out of several ideas such as the denial of the world of appearances, the search for a more pristine artistic form, the transcending of established social and moral codes, and the emphasis on the inner world.[23]

The Symbolists made every effort to escape the present by looking back to an Arcadian landscape of pristine myth and fable or forward to a utopian synthesis of art, religion, and organic life. It represented an entire world view and a way of life which engendered intense dreams, religious explorations, decorative rhetoric, and various kinds of metaphysical creativity. The Symbolists emphasis on the private experiences and on the work of art as a reflection of the inner world was allied with their desire to produce works that were aesthetically unique as well as containing elements of national character. The quest for a national identity informed their philosophy with an emphasis on the study of nature and the revival of styles from the Middles Ages and Russian Orthodoxy as sources for inspiration. Because of this turn in style and inspiration, Russian Symbolists aspired to transcend the impersonal conventions of sociopolitical reality and of false, mimetic reproduction, so as to reach the spiritual plane of existence.[24] Vrubel’s images of prophets, saints, and demons all express the nervous tension and feverish energy of the Russian Silver Age.[25]

Out of this struggle, several artistic circles formed, each having their own agenda and their own way of putting into expression the world they saw disintegrating in front of them. One such group was the Symbolist members of Mir iskusstva, or the World of Art group. This group of artists sought to leave the social and political alienation of reality for a more subjective, individual, and expressive form of personal feelings and thoughts which were more in tune with Symbolist doctrine.

Founded by industrialist and entrepreneur, Savva Mamontov, the World of Art circle put their attention to artistic craft, the cult of retrospective beauty, and assumed distance from the ills of sociopolitical reality. World of Art’s primary hope was to create a new artistic code through the recognition and rediscovery of bygone cultures.[26]

To the members of Mir iskusstva, a work of art is important not in itself, but as an expression of the personality of the artist. They were more interested in the creative personality than in the end product. They wanted art to be absolutely free of all set tasks and foregone conclusions where every answer was to come from the artist’s own, subjective experience.[27] Many would come to see Vrubel’s work to be the incarnation of an archaic and pure condition and of an elemental cohesion lacking in the imperfect fabric of contemporary society.[28] Vrubel found a home within the Mir iskusstva group but still kept his style very much his own with a tendency toward a world of fantasy and painterly fable, a sort of mystical symbolism.[29]

Because of his inclination to remain individual, Vrubel’s art was often at odds with the age and his visual reality conflicted with other Symbolists. Wishing to portray an emotion or idea rather than a simple scene, his work is evidence of a deep, burning individuality and a multi-faceted symbolism with roots in the classical tradition, yet continuously drawn to the future.[30]

John Bowlt names Vrubel as the most original artist of the Russian Silver Age, whose “fertile imagination produced work of extreme power and originality.” Vrubel approached the act of painting as a constant process of experimentation, returning to his canvases again and again, erasing, repainting, modifying. His tireless restructuring of forms, his release of ornamental energy, and his intense elaboration of the surface prompted critics to speak of the crystalline formations, and “Cubist” faceting of his painting, to which the strangely lapidary flowers in his Demon Seated bear strong testimony.[31]

There is a sense of ethereality and dreaminess which characterizes Vrubel’s work. Vrubel developed a mystical and intuitive view of the Slavic soul giving his work a quasi-religious and mystical idealism in appearance. A proto-modernist, Vrubel sought to harmonize figures within their landscape by using strong ambient moods of color. He revealed in the mosaic-like structures, freer handling and decorative scale of his work, an aspiration towards the analogy of music, in their reliance on mood above content.[32]

Vrubel also understood how the figures of myth and legend had first formed in the popular imagination, emerging from the gnarled shapes of trees, the crouching potency of stone and boulder, and the play of life and air on tossing blossom. Vrubel absorbed and sought to show “Russian nature and human types, our present life, our past, our fantasies, dreams, and faith.”[33] The most important thing was to encapsulate the moment, to convey a mood.

As a symbol, the meaning the Demon took on changed as Vrubel’s interpretation of the world disintegrated. Consequently, the Demon became a psychological portrait which existed naturally in a real and contemporary landscape, giving the viewer a chance to gradually penetrate his mysterious world.[34] Vrubel’s Demon Seated starts out as the personification of the romantic spirit, full of hope and searching for love, beauty, harmony, and truth. He finds it in the love of a woman, but quickly loses it. In the end, he is crushed, disillusioned and cast out into a world which has no place for him. Throughout, Vrubel somehow is able to convey the duality of the age with a strange combination of the sadness and despondency characteristic of Symbolism, as well as a form of intellectual hope and romanticism. Vrubel’s development of the Demon theme demonstrates his technique in exhibiting how the visual, psychological, and philosophical ideas of the time can interact as an expression of the creative process.[35]

The contrast in Demon Seated and Demon Downcast, separated by only twelve years, demonstrates how much can change in a short time. Vrubel had the ability to show a combination of the nervous disquiet of the time with the monumentalism of the past.[36] When Vrubel began painting Demon Seated, modern art in Russia had only just begun to flourish. Social reform, rapid industrialization, and growing resentment for the Tsarist regime are only a few instances that describe this grave, gloomy period of expectation, doubt and despair, which caused the artist to refine man’s individuality, mortality, and solitude, as seen in Demon Seated.[37] Vrubel sought experience and subject matter beyond the norm and explored spiritual mysticism through a deep self-analysis and awareness of the subconscious.[38] Vrubel, as indicated by Bowlt, weighed the spiritual torment of the age against the judgments of the past that had stood the test of time, investigating the concepts of violence, denial, shock and utopian vision.[39] His Demon Downcast represented the tragedy of the intelligentsia, who sought knowledge and freedom, and through this struggle between experience, error, and invention they searched for self-discovery.[40] This Demon reveals the individual soul’s highest aspiration as it struggles to transcend the social pressure of the commonplace.[41] According to Aleksandr Blok, a Symbolist poet and contemporary of Vrubel’s, the Demon became “a symbol of the times…a spirit of revolt against society and an intermediary towards other worlds.”[42]

Just as the Demon of Demon Seated represents Vrubel’s era, so the Demon of Demon Downcast wholly represents the era as well. The left-hand side of the image, though chaotic at first glance, is expressing a sense of calm within the smooth flow of the wings and rocks. This peaceful atmosphere serves to somewhat mask the turbulent chaos of sharp edges and broken lines forming on the right. The resolved yet horrified expression, broken forms of the body and landscape, act as a vision of the end of the old order and the intensifying will to overturn and destroy.[43] Demon Downcast coincided in a time when “art was trying with all its might to illusionize the soul and to wake it from the trifles of the commonplace through powerful imagery.”[44] The resulting image displays the struggle between the infinite and eternal individual. His horrified expression and broken form are visions of the end of the old order and an exacerbated will to overturn and destroy. This Demon represents an archetype: the quest for the universal and tragic in nature with the fall from grace predetermined. His fate is to struggle within his own spirit. He is hideously misshapen and has the rigidity of stone. With the violent, broken, and opposing rhythms of the body and landscape, it is suggested that Vrubel himself had the foreknowledge of an impending apocalyptic crisis.[45]

The Demon of Vrubel’s world was, much like him, spurned by the everyday and left with nothing but to contemplate his own soul.[46] For the destructive passions of Vrubel’s own time, the young, pensive figure of Demon Seated stood as the new spirit of self-restoration. He recognizes his own uniqueness and looks toward the light for renewal. He is a combination of tremendous power and powerlessness. This Demon, as Mikhail Guerman asserts, possesses both “health and strength, and radical pessimism” yet, “an ardent faith in redemption.”[47]

In opposition, the Demon of Demon Downcast is the representation of the social injustice of man, who has set his mind and senses free only to become more acutely aware of the anguish of mortality in the “uncreated, purposeless void of existence.”[48] He is the suppressed dream, unneeded power, and loneliness which Vrubel allows to enter the viewer through the language of painting. With Demon Downcast he was able to convey, in a single motif, the drama of the age and the dilemma of eternity, all while remaining himself and individual.

Believing that artistic activity was more than a reflection on nature, but also an intellectual pursuit, Vrubel became an avid follower of both Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche.[49] Vrubel’s Demon epitomizes Schopenhauer’s Will versus Representation and Nietzsche’s Apollonian versus Dionysian concepts. Both theorists advocated ways to overcome a frustration-filled and necessarily painful human condition through artistic forms of awareness. This awareness manifests itself through the concept of the Dionysian will of instinctual desires and the Apollonian representation of rationality which suggests that somewhere amongst the moral order and sober rationality of culture lies a life force containing the emotive, primordial nature of human beings which culture suppresses. The artist can attempt to bridge that gap between the truth of nature and the myth of culture, thus finding a means to pass through the suffering of life and attain beauty.[50]

Arthur Schopenhauer’s theory of Will and Representation has several key elements that can successfully be applied to Vrubel’s work. The general concept of his theory is that Representation is the world as it appears to the mind. This can also be called the Idea. Will is the world as it exists outside of thought behind the world of appearance.[51]

The world as Will is beyond description because we cannot know anything concrete about it and is, therefore, the underlying transcendental ground of the world as Idea or Representation. Schopenhauer proposes that it is possible at least, non-representationally, to arrive at an understanding of the world as Will. He suggests that we can only experience a transient world of chance appearance individuated by the mind’s innate categories and concepts under the principle of sufficient reason in which a true non-transcendental explanation exists for every aspect of the world as Representation.[52] Therefore, one can go beyond knowledge of transcendental reality through specifying another sense of nonrepresentational knowledge of the thing-in-itself, and by identifying a field of application in which this “knowledge” can function becoming, “not merely the knowing subject, but that we ourselves are also among those realities we require to know, that we ourselves are the thing-in-itself.”[53]

The world in reality, independent of the mind, is known as the thing-in-itself. The thing-in-itself, as Will, is the inner nature of everything and is described as a monstrous blind urging, an un-individuated force and power, or an endless undirected striving. Access to the thing-in-itself is an individual experiential will that we experience in everyday wanting and desiring, and it is particularly in the frustration of our wants and desires that we acquire some idea of the world as Will. Experience of willing discloses the nature of reality as whatever immediately objectifies desire, striving, urging. There is, however, a fine distinction between knowledge in the narrow sense, to which the thing-in-itself is unknowable representationally, and nonrepresentational knowledge that is not acquired by ordinary cognition, but by direct acquaintance with willing as the most direct manifestation of reality in the world of appearance. Will as thing-in-itself is only non-representationally revealed in something Schopenhauer described as much like a mystical experience.[54]

Demon Seated illustrates Schopenhauer’s world of Representation whereas Demon Downcast illustrates the world of Will. Although nature and the figure of the Demon are somewhat fragmented in Demon Seated, the image still represents objects that do exist within the real world of appearance. The figure of the Demon displays a calm reserve, although his strong, muscular body is tense. He appears, physically, to be on the verge of attack, but though he appears tense, his shoulders are slumped over and he sits in a child-like position while the forlorn expression on his face conveys that his tendency for self-destruction is immobilized.[55]

The Demon in this image is representative of the world as Idea or Representation. His body, though fragmented in appearance, is proportionate to an average human being. He is experiencing true sadness as he sits on top of the world, looking as far as he can see yet looking no further than what lies inside him. He is contemplating the world and coming to realize that there is something more to be found; not just the flowers enclosing in upon him to keep him safe, or the fiery sunset behind him which aims to destroy. He must decide if he wants to remain in the safety of where he is or dare to brave new offerings and journey into the unknown. The tear rolling down his cheek could be indicative of the choice he makes which is to roll against the wind and venture out into the void, knowing that there may likely be no point in which he can return to the reflective being he is while sitting there amongst the safety of the landscape.

In contrast, the fall of the Demon in Demon Downcast exposes the main idea of the Will, which is of a striving towards an end that does not exist. He has crashed amongst a strange mountainous landscape, landing in an unnatural position, yet his head remains upright. His eyes are possessed of a different emotion from the eyes in Demon Seated; he has seen how the world really operates and the sadness he once had is now replaced with hatred. His personal journey has led him to witness and experience all the world has to offer, yet the highest offering of love, was cruelly denied. With the loss of this love, he now must roam the earth lonely and desolate, with nothing to do but reflect on his failure to transcend his doomed destiny.

The Demon in this image is representative of the thing-in-itself and he has recognized that through his monstrous, blind urging he has actually become the thing-in-itself: Will. He gained access to Will through his desire for love and his frustrations in not being able to attain and keep that love. He experienced his own mystical experience through his brief encounter with Tamara as she perished in his arms and was taken to heaven by the angel. He has allowed this experience to permeate his being and the new emotion displayed upon his face is indicative of this tragic turn of events. He has allowed rage to possess him which has only caused him to fall further and further from grace. The fall does not bring death, as he wished, but, instead, brings only more suffering with the agonizing realization of his own immortality.[56]

The Demon can gain an understanding of this experience, if he chooses, through two channels: ascetic and moral suffering and self-denial or by aesthetic contemplation. Suffering is evident in both Demon Seated and Demon Downcast, although each is a different form of suffering. The suffering present in Demon Seated is the suffering that reveals itself as personally unacceptable. Through aesthetic contemplation, the Demon is momentarily freed from the representational world and given the chance to realize that life is essentially full of suffering. This observation is what sends the Demon on his quest for a new and different kind of world in which there is alleviation from pain. The journey he ultimately goes on leads him to the form of suffering seen in Demon Downcast. The Demon no longer cares about life, his or any other. Because he no longer desires anything, he is no longer susceptible to suffering however temporary it might be.

It is here that Schopenhauer introduces the ideas of beauty and the sublime. Schopenhauer describes beauty as the natural form of ideas and appears without effort. For him, beauty is defined as the natural form of ideas and appears without effort whereas the sublime is defined by the attitudes and emotional responses of the Will toward the world as Idea and requires a feeling of satisfaction that results only through the struggle and victory of the Will.[57]

Demon Seated demonstrates the idea of beauty. Here are the natural forms of the world, created by nature and untouched by the human hand. While displaying beauty, the image also gives us a representation of the sublime. In true, literal sense, the Demon sits, “the product of awe in contemplation of great distances in space and time,” in appreciation of the vastness of the world in front of him.

Demon Downcast wholly envisions the dynamical sublime with its great and terrifying confrontation with natural forces. Although no longer in awe of the mystery of nature, he is crushed before it threatened with a power that can destroy him at any given moment.

Although both images give a different impression of the sublime, they both ultimately create the same feeling: the threat of annihilation. Both representations of the Demon are of the “unmoved beholder” of the scene in which he lies, aware that he is “helpless against powerful nature” and “abandoned to chance”, knowing that the “slightest touch of these forces can annihilate.”[58]

They both display a different form of the tragic experience, as well. The demon seen in Demon Seated is the representation of the tragedy in which, at the sight of the sublime in nature, he chooses to turn away from the interest of the world and let his intuition take control. The demon of Demon Downcast is the catastrophic tragedy when the demon no longer strives to live but instead turns away from the will to life.

The delineation that humans impose upon things forces an object or event to turn against itself, consume itself, and do violence to itself. This violence sends one on a quest to find peace, and for Vrubel, the only means to do so was through artistic design. Through the act of creating, Vrubel believed that he would come to understand the abstract forms of feeling from everyday circumstances, in which he would then be able to perceive life without the burdens that typically cause suffering. He wanted to believe that he would come out on the other side, that he would, in Schopenhauer’s words, “pass through the fires of hell and experience a dark night of the soul, as his universal self fought against his individuated and physical self” in order to enter the “transcendent consciousness of heavenly tranquility.”[59] This search is seen in Demon Seated and it outcome is apparent in Demon Downcast.

Demon Seated is that vision of a lost soul, a melancholy figure who has withdrawn into an enclosed world wrapped in shadows and guarded by nature.[60] He sits there, staring into the distance, in contemplation of the eternal. The figure in Demon Downcast is no longer in contemplation. He has been cast out, isolated, dematerialized, and emasculated by his tendency to destroy as well as his guilt over his part in Tamara’s demise. He is a crushed, swooning body with tragic eyes; a pure spirit which looms out of the mist, dominant at last.[61] There is a sense of a deeper, more painful reality; an immensity and all-pervasive atmosphere that is intangible and mysterious. This demon embodies Vrubel’s concept of the soul’s essence as active and disruptive in the “eternal struggle of the mutinous human spirit” and in creative conflict with the world.[62]

Human desires which motivate human will far outnumber their momentary satisfactions; man is condemned to suffer and pleasure is merely a suspension of pain; respite from the human condition can only come by the distancing of the self from worldly preoccupations. Images reflect the despair as well as the hopes and aspirations of a generation adrift from a society they despised. A mood of disillusionment with politics, dissatisfaction with materialism, and a search for meaning forced artists to turn their backs on traditional, academic modes of expression and went in search of a new language of the spirit in art.[63]

Nietzsche understands art as the basic transformative impulse known to human experience. He proposed that art itself, as the unacknowledged catalyst of social change, growth, and transfiguration has a redemptive value to it. He states that, with the creation of art, we are actively contributing to the construction of the order and meaning in the world and thereby liberate ourselves from submission to the authority of the eternal and unchanging values of the world. By exposing a lack of values, rejecting their bogus authority, and justifying the order and meaning of objects and events, we see how we transfigure our relations to ourselves and events.[64]

Nietzsche’s ideas center on the concept of the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The origin of tragedy, which this theory envelopes, develops from the outcome of a struggle between two forces: Apollo and Dionysus. Apollo embodies the drive toward distinction, discreteness, and individuality. He moves toward the drawing and respecting of boundaries and limits and teaches an ethic of moderation and self-control. The Apolline artist glorifies individuality by presenting attractive images of people, things, and events. Dionysus, however, embodies the drive towards the transgression of limits, the dissolution of boundaries, the destruction of individuality, and excess.[65]

The Apollonian concept is about cognitive activity and the awareness of general forms. The Dionysian concept is about movement and sexuality, intoxication, and the absence of clear individuation of the self. Nietzsche presents both Apollonian and Dionysian as natural drives within human nature. Apollonian activity is not detached and coolly contemplative, but a response to an urgent human need, namely, the need to demarcate an intrinsically unordered world, making it intelligible for ourselves. All out cognitive activity, including logical reasoning, abstracting, and generalizing tendencies, are profoundly practical and are the ways in which we try to master the world and to make ourselves secure in it. Apollonian activity is thus subtly un-Schopenhauerian, for instead of simply expressing the idealism in Schopenhauer’s account of representation, it now makes the further point that this activity succeeds only through self-deception: having effected an ordering, we convince ourselves that it is really the way the world is. Dionysian activity is a drive demanding satisfaction but is not unintelligent and not devoid of cognitive activity. The Dionysian experience is one of enchantment, charm, and a heightened awareness of freedom, harmony, and unity.[66]

Mikhail Vrubel, Demon Seated, 1890, Oil on canvas, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.

In basic appearance Demon Seated is the Apollonian image. Demon Seated shows a calm, reflective, and cognitive being. Because of the tension seen in the muscle of his body it is clear that he is attempting moderation and self-control; he is not yet on his destructive path. He dreams of what life could be like had he been able to experience and become aware of all the good that life has to offer. He is completely insecure in his life and mind yet appears to be quite content, though slightly sad, as he gazes into the distance. Although it is unknown what he is thinking, one can surmise that he is contemplating his life and trying to figure out where he went wrong; attempting to find some logical explanation for the things he has done; for his actions which have caused pain for others as well as himself. This demon is trying to figure out his place in the world and is unsure where his future lies but, for the moment, he is surrounded by some relief, enveloped in the comforts of nature with the large flowers to the right of the canvas. Yet, even with this semblance of safety, the Dionysian can be seen in this image as well.

The Dionysian aspect of Demon Seated is seen mostly to the left of the canvas as well as in the Demon’s body. As mentioned, there is great tension in his body, which, for the moment, is contained by an Apollonian desire for a belief that there is a reason for the way the world is constructed. Here the demon embodies, in mindset, the self-deception that Nietzsche says is created by the fiction-making of the Apollonian vision. But the tension in his body displays the frustration with such a world and his head turned away from the beauty of the flowers, also hints at what is to come for the Demon. The fury of the sunset behind him, to which he semi faces, foretells the life he will ultimately choose. He is disenchanted with the world of appearance and decides to unveil what we so often hide from ourselves. His destiny is not one of reason or beauty but one of uncontrolled desire.

Demon Downcast, on the other hand, embodies wholeheartedly the Dionysian drive and dissolution of boundaries. The entire image informs the spectator of the final outcome of the journey he began in Demon Seated. Here is a creature that is no longer a reasoning, sane being; he is now at a level of ecstasy that has erased all that was once charming about the Apollonian vision. Visually, the image of his body and the mountainous landscape in which he has been thrown melt into each other and distinctions between the two become difficult to discern. Psychologically, this Demon has destroyed himself. He is the epitome of the destruction of individuality and excess. The Dionysian experience of freedom and enchantment, which enticed him in the beginning, has led to a haphazard existence where harmony and unity no longer co-exist. He attempted the becoming and tried to make himself into a work of art, but as with most Dionysian experiences, he let the Apollonian slip away and was left with nothing but failure, disorientation, and destruction in his wake.

This double essence of the demon, his simultaneously Apollonian and Dionysian nature, could be expressed, in Nietzsche’s word, as “all that exists is just and unjust and is equally justified in both respects.” That is the world the Demon has created for himself; that he must always call his world.[67]

In “Towards a Psychology of the Artist” in Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche states that “for art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological pre-condition is indispensable: intoxication.”[68] Thus, Nietzsche informs us that, in order to create and perceive art, we must follow Dionysus. The destructive, primitive forces that are Dionysus, are also a part of us and the pleasure we take in them is real and not to be denied. These impulses cannot simply be ignored, eliminated, repressed, or fully controlled; they will have their due one way or another and failure to recognize them will eventually give them free rein to express themselves with special force and destructiveness. The primordial unity that is created is like a child wantonly and haphazardly creating shapes and forms, and then destroying them, taking equal pleasure in both parts of the process, in both the creation and the destruction.[69]

As stated, both Demon Seated and Demon Downcast share Dionysian qualities. The Demon of Demon Seated is trying to deny that part of him that is Dionysian. He is doing his best to ignore and repress those desires, but as can be seen, his tears give him away because he already knows that he will fail at this endeavor and that Dionysus will take complete control. Because of his initial failure to recognize these instincts, the Demon of Demon Downcast is that expression of the Dionysian which has been given free rein and he truly is a special force of destructiveness.

Demon Downcast is the Romantic finale: fractured, collapsed, returned, and prostrated before an old belief, before the old god. The Demon here shows us a reflection of the eternal, primal pain yet a luminous hovering in purest bliss and in wide-eyed contemplation, free of all pain. With sublime gesture he shows us that the whole world of agony is needed in order to compel the individual to generate the releasing and redemptive vision. He has become entirely at one with the primordial unity, with its pain and contradiction; nothing but primal pain and the primal echo of it.[70]

In creative activity, we find the source of what is, in truth, wonderful in life and if we can find value and our own meaning in it we can love ourselves and love life. Art is thus the great anti-pessimistic form of life, the great alternative to denial and resignation as well as the great means of making life possible, the great seduction to life, the great stimulant of life: “Art as the redemption of the man of action - of those who not only see the terrifying and questionable character of existence but live it, want to live it, the tragic war-like man, the hero…Art as the redemption of the sufferer - as the way to states in which suffering is willed, transfigured, deified, where suffering is a form of great delight…A highest state of affirmation of existence is conceived from which the highest degree of pain cannot be excluded: the tragic-Dionysian state.”[71]

Both Apollo and Dionysus are present in every human. The tension between both is particularly creative and the combination of both is part of a defense against pessimism and the despair of life. Tragedy consoles us and seduces us to continue to live. Life in the modern world lacks unity, coherence, and meaningfulness; lives and personalities are fragmented and they lack the ability to identify with their society in a natural way. As humans, we enjoy tragedy in order to understand the ritual of self-destruction and gain insight into the human condition. We take pleasure in our demise as well as others because the dissolution of identity is both horrible and pleasurable.[72]

The Apollonian and Dionysian mark their reconciliation in tragedy. Both Apollonian and Dionysian share elements with each other, especially if they are ever to become conjoined. Apollo tries to veil Dionysus with optimism and in the process, creates the tragic. He tries to transform the repulsive thoughts about the terrible and absurd aspects of existence into representations with which it is possible to live. These representations are the sublime and the comical, whereby the terrible is tamed and disgust at absurdity is discharged by artistic means.[73]

Tragedy shows the spectator, for he has “gazed with keen eye into the midst of the fearful, destructive havoc of so-called world history and has seen the cruelty of nature,” that all that “comes in to being must be ready for a sorrowful end” and we are forced to look into “the terrors of individual existence.”[74] Controlled destruction of the tragic hero confirms that individuation is the primary cause of all suffering. The spectator finds pleasure in beauty and the illusion of meaningfulness because they witness the suffering of the tragic figure from an outside point of view. Our inner strength and Dionysian laughter are to be our means of overcoming the tragic.[75]

Demon Seated displays the strong tension between Apollo and Dionysus. This Demon knows that the world is fragmented, represented by the fragmented flowers beside him, and that there is no unity or coherence in modern life. He lacks the ability to identify with his society and has thus turned away from it, both figuratively and literally. The Demon of Demon Seated had found within himself the defiant belief that he could create human beings and destroy the gods, and that his higher wisdom enabled him to do so, for which he is now forced to do penance by suffering eternally. He sits in the serenity of creation in defiance of all catastrophes, and is merely a bright image of clouds and sky reflected in a dark sea of sadness. He is concerned, but not comfortless, as he stands aside for a little while, as the contemplative spirit who is permitted to witness the enormous struggles and transitions of existence.[76] He has discovered the delusion that thought reaches down into the deepest abysses of understanding existence, but for the Demon to even dream of correcting it, he himself at this point must transform into art.

The Demon of Demon Seated is the man of action. He is looking away from the world of safety and looking toward the world of the terrifying. He is questioning the character of existence and is slowly coming to terms with the realization that his entire existence rests on a hidden ground of suffering. He is beginning to come to terms with a decision that he probably feels he had no say in: the decision to live the Dionysian life and become the embodiment of the tragic.

The Demon of Demon Downcast is the sufferer. He is in great pain yet even with all this pain, his head is held upright, defiant and a sinister appearance of delight in his fall can be imagined. The Demon seen here has reached the “tragic-Dionysian state,” taking pleasure in his own demise. His eyes gaze in sadness, confusion, and defiance after what has disappeared, for what they see is like something that has emerged from a pit into golden light, so luxuriantly alive, so immeasurable and full of longing. Tragedy sits in the midst of this, taking delight, in sublime ecstasy, listening to a distant melancholy singing of delusion and woe. This Demon is now one of those beings that have fought the war that, out of necessity, needs tragedy as a restorative power. To achieve the magnificent blend which both fires the spirit and induces a mood of contemplation, he must now remember the enormous power of tragedy in order to stimulate, purify, and discharge his entire life.[77] He is now coming to terms with his sorrowful end as he looks into the terrors of existence.

Vrubel’s Demon as seen in both Demon Seated and Demon Downcast is representative of the world as the release and redemption of god, achieved each and every moment, as the eternally changing, eternally new vision of the most suffering being of all, the being most full of oppositions and contradictions, able to redeem and release itself only in semblance.

The Demon, both in Demon Seated and Demon Downcast is the embodiment of Dionysus and never ceases to be the tragic hero entangled in the net of the individual will. He sees himself as sophisticated and capable of Apollonian artistry, briefly raising himself up once more in Demon Seated, like a wounded hero, and by the time of his final descent in Demon Downcast, all his excess of strength, together with the wise calm of the dying, burns in his eyes with a last and mighty gleam. Here is the demon, intoxicated by Dionysus, who has become the work of art.[78]

The Demon can even be seen as an early prototype of the nihilist, wandering around with no real meaning, purpose, or value in his life. Unconcerned with morality, he rejects God, and attempts to overcome his depression through self-destruction.[79] The Demon is literally torn to pieces in Demon Downcast but through the defiance seen in his eyes, he is determined to overcome this challenge by being reborn again. As he lies, prostrated, against a fragmented landscape, the Demon emerges from his Dionysian intoxication to witness the horror of all he has done. His stare is fixed into the distance where, momentarily, he thinks he might rise out of his destructive state and witness the sublime and tragic as he once did in Demon Seated. This moment is brief, however, and the Demon quickly returns to the absurdity of living a strictly Dionysian existence.

It is evident that Vrubel admired Nietzsche’s cult of the tragic, irrational, disharmonious world, and through his art attempted to find a means to combine Apollo and Dionysus. He was deeply committed to the idea that the world was not stable and permanent but rather constantly changing, unsteady, and problematic. The artistic genius must contemplate ideas and create an art that portrays them in a manner more comprehensible, thereby communicating the vision to those who lack the power to see through and rise above the society in which they live.[80]

Unfortunately, Vrubel did not wholly succeed at creating what Nietzsche described, due in part to not being able to overcome his own personal history. Throughout the 1880′s and 1890′s, there is no denying Vrubel was an isolated figure. By the end of the century, even after several high profile commissions had been received, including the commission to provide illustrations for Kushnerev’s special anniversary edition of Lermontov’s work, people were still unaware of his work.[81] And for the few who did, his work was not well received. All people saw was madness and monstrosity. It was often called naive, incoherent, and savage. His only consolation is that his work was appreciated by a small group of enlightened patrons.[82] Alexandre Benois, a fellow Symbolist and Mir iskusstva member, believed the cause of his lack of success was because he was the definition of a true decadent, seeing reality through a “spiritual prism” which channeled between his outer world and his inner world, where his most devoted memories and attachments lived.[83] But, for the most part, it suddenly appeared as if Vrubel’s theme of failure in relation to the Demon was all too real.

The period before the onset of his illness at the beginning of 1902 was one of intense activity, marked by opposing experiences of growing recognition, vilification, and neglect, all of which Vrubel increasingly reacted to. By the end of 1901, unable to tolerate contradiction, unable to sleep, and talking incessantly, Vrubel became violent, excitable, quarrelsome, and obsessed with affirming his own genius. He developed feelings of religious guilt and atoned for it by lack of food and rest. Between 1903 and 1905, Vrubel’s illness continued to change course, marked by wild mood swings and behavior and the hearing of voices. In May of 1903, his son contracted pulmonary disease and suddenly died. The death of his son caused great torment for him, believing it was punishment for his past transgressions. After March of 1905, he remained permanently hospitalized. Until his vision and coordination completely ceased to function in February of 1906, Vrubel remained creatively active, with only brief periods in which his work suffered. He died in April of 1910. Sadly, his illness gave him the most recognition and praise of his career, with his first one-man show, in Kiev in 1910, in which some 114 objects were shown.[84] Many describe the last decades of the nineteenth century as “Vrubel’s epoch.”

Demon Downcast was the last work on the Demon theme before he was committed to a psychiatric clinic. The Demon of Demon Downcast embodies the dualities of the age; he is heaven and earth, east and west, male and female, nobility and despair, joy and suffering. This Demon is the culmination of a tragic personal journey and the premonition of the imminent universal catastrophe that was to come. He is the ultimate expression of Vrubel’s schizophrenic sense of being and becoming, coinciding with the onset of insanity from which there was no return.[85] With madness increasingly creeping in on him, he was unable to set the work aside, almost as if the creation of the work itself was what kept him from a complete breakdown.[86] By this time the Demon had become associated with the sacred madness of artistic inspiration. Both Vrubel and his Demon are ambiguous and contradictory, consumed by pride and self-loathing; he is the creator and the destroyer; the muse and devoted follower. The Demon personifies the rebellious human spirit in the eternal struggle to reconcile conflicting passions and the search for knowledge but unable to find any answers on earth or in heaven. Vrubel interiorized this spirit, absorbing and assimilating him into his own human fabric.[87] Both experience a moment of revelation with the realization that the world is not one-dimensional and poor but transparent and free. With this realization comes a period of trials which begins when evil forces try to break in and, in the case of Vrubel, prove fatal.[88] He tried to adhere to the idea that an earthly paradise can be momentarily revealed and restored through love, yet those stormy passions can never be fully reconciled with this ideal.[89] Through this recognition and familiarity Vrubel humanizes the Demon. He felt what the Demon felt, alienated from the everyday world around him; a world he felt only caused suffering. He was left with nothing to do but contemplate the enclosed realm of his own soul.

Tortured by visions of divine persecution, hallucinating that strange figures were appearing in his life and work as punishment for past transgressions, he famously changed the way the image looked, even while it was on exhibit. Vrubel’s almost automatic, mechanical process of changing the appearance of Demon Downcast could simply appear to be the artist’s desire to get it perfect or the manifestations of his psychosis. Friends and viewers described him as feverishly altering and re-altering the Demon’s fallen expression, sometimes several times a day. The pose would become stranger, more tortured, more dislocated while the color scheme of the mountainous background became more vibrant and more enchanting. He kept his color palette limited, using shades of blue and purple, adding a decorative quality that further conveyed the spiritual condition, the suffering, and the alienation that Vrubel, himself, felt. There is a wholly human pain within his gaze and his fall only brings him more suffering and a complete loss of identity. The mighty spirit from Demon Seated, who strove to be boundless, is now the figure of Demon Downcast hovering between the sky and the mountain landscape, revolting against the injustices of heavenly and earthly life. His spirit, as well as Vrubel’s, no longer has more veils than his body.[90]

The object that had long been his fascination, that he took pity on, came back to betray him. Lermontov’s Demon haunted Vrubel throughout his life and under the personal strain to depict him perfectly, he went mad, “falling on mountain spurs in a sunset of lilac tinged with blue.”[91] They say the condition of aesthetic creation comes from struggling with fate and ultimately ends in being defeated.[92] This defeat can either lift you to enlightenment or cast you into obscurity. After Vrubel’s death in 1910, Benois described him as “a demon, a beautiful fallen angel, for whom the world was an endless joy and an endless torture.”[93] For many, the eternal fades and passes away. But Vrubel found that amidst the urgent questions of his time and the bloody answers provided by his reality, the demon came to both nourish and destroy, as well as shape his artistic and personal destiny, ultimately giving him his place in art.

Works Cited

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Footnotes

Mikhailov, Nikloai. В Нашем Колхозе. 1930

This paper examines how the evolution of state policy from 1923-1933, toward women and religion was expressed in posters, one of the most important mediums of communicating policy to a society that was still overwhelmingly illiterate at the beginning of Stalin’s cultural revolution in 1928. Furthermore, this paper seeks to use the analysis of the posters to shed light on the historiographical debate about the modernist/traditionalist approaches to understanding Stalinist cultural policies and practices. I argue that the Stalinist portrayal of the construction of Soviet society, which opposed the Leninist deconstruction of traditional society and lends support to the modernist approach to understanding Soviet cultural change from Lenin to Stalin.

I.   The Bolsheviks and Religion

When the Bolsheviks came to power in Russia in 1917, they wanted to enact change in every facet of politics, culture and society. The Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, had wished to build an utopian society in Russia based on Marxist ideology with an industrial economy built upon an educated and atheistc population. To accomplish this, the very foundations of Russia’s traditional society had to be uprooted. The Bolsheviks saw this society as backward in every sense: peasant, agrarian, illiterate, deeply religious, superstitious, and all-indicative of the tsarist legacy of oppression and the conservatism of the Orthodox Church.

Before and after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the Russian Orthodox Church served as the backbone of traditional Russian culture, in art, literature, music and society. Furthermore, the Bolsheviks understood the highly integrated ideological and political relationship between the Church and the tsarist state. The Church had historically been a conservative force in Russia opposed to the Enlightenment and supportive of tsarist policies including the enslavement of the peasantry through serfdom, and the perpetuation of conservative social ideals such as the preservation of the traditional roles of women in the family. However, Russians remained dedicated followers of the Church.

The Church and the tsarist state had been inseparable since Peter the Great who created the Holy Synod, a council consisting of members of the episcopate chosen by Peter, which replaced the Patriarch as the head of the Russian Orthodox Church.[1] Peter effectively made himself and future tsars the head of the Russian Church. This, combined with the Church’s open support of the tsarist Whites during the Russian Civil War (1918-1921), convinced the Bolsheviks that the Church was not simply an ideological enemy; but a physical enemy as well.

The idea of religion being the opiate of the masses was originally formulated by Marx and was further perpetuated by the Bolsheviks in their anti-religious propaganda. The Party believed that religion was used to oppress the people and keep them uneducated and therefore unable to fight against the wrongdoing of the exploitative priests and tsar. To build a Soviet society, the Church and religious belief had to be excised from Russian society completely.

II.   Bolshevik Perceptions of Women and The Russian Orthodox Church in Society

Women and religious belief had a long intertwined history in Russia and this bond had to be broken before the woman of the traditional society could become the Soviet woman.  Women were the nucleus of the traditional Russian family structure while the Church was the pillar of conservative belief and traditional thought. These two elements combined posed a threat to the radical and atheistic Bolsheviks.  Women served as a double-edged sword to the Bolshevik aims to transform traditional Russian society into an industrial and Socialist society. During the early years of Communism, many leading revolutionaries and even leading female Bolsheviks such as Lenin’s wife, Nadezhda Krupskaia, and noted revolutionary Aleksandra Kollontai, shared the view that the Russian peasant woman was a victim to be saved and an enemy to be stopped. As cultural historian Barbara Evans Clements states, “they believed that the woman of the masses was both a conservative who could be an enemy of revolution and a long-suffering victim of oppression who must be liberated by revolution”.[2] Women, thus, would continue to devote themselves to a Church and religion that, according to Bolshevik ideology, condoned and perpetrated their harsh economic and domestic conditions. Women saw religion as a way to ameliorate their problems rather than having caused them. Women were the fundamental basis of the Church in Russian society, often maintaining the religion in the course of maintaining their households, and thus changing the economic situation of women was not enough for the Bolsheviks to turn them into Soviet women.[3] Their entire outlook on life and roles in society had to change and that began with ridding them of their belief in religion.

While many historians have focused on Bolshevik policies towards women and religion from 1917 to 1939, few have focused on the important ways that the Bolsheviks visually depicted their campaign to create an atheist society consisting of liberated women. Historian Peter Kenez denotes the importance of posters in the visual representation of Bolshevik ideals as: “the quintessential form of propaganda: its message can be quickly grasped by the most unsophisticated viewers; its appeal does not depend on rational argument; and it is as capable of advertising a commercial product as of selling a political ideal.”[4]  The benefit of the poster as a message that can be grasped quickly was very important to the Bolsheviks. Up to the mid-1930s Russian society was highly illiterate, particularly outside of urban areas, making it very difficult for the Party to disseminate its message to individuals in the countryside.[5]

During the Leninist era, the Bolsheviks used visual imagery to underscore the role that the Church had in the oppression of women, while during the early Stalinist era (1928-32) the posters were used to depict the new Soviet woman and the positive role atheism played in her liberation from religion and domestic inequality.

To show this was the case, I must lay a foundation of the Bolshevik ideals of cultural change and how those took shape under Lenin and Stalin, and then I must explain the historiographical debate between modernism and traditionalism surrounding the issue of cultural change from Lenin to Stalin. Through my analysis of Soviet anti-religious propaganda, I argue the Stalinist portrayal of the Soviet woman reflects the construction of Soviet society as opposed to the Leninist deconstruction of traditional society.  This lends support to a modernist framework on Soviet cultural change.

III.   Bolshevik Ideals and the Cultural Change under Lenin and Stalin

Lenin argued that “cultural revolution” should be nonmilitant and focused on the development of an educated society that the creation of an industrialized economy would require.[6] Furthermore, Aleksandr Krinitskii, the head of the Central Committee argued that “the proletariat must fight against bourgeois elements which are supported by the remnants and survivals of the influence, traditions and customs of the old society.”[7] For Lenin, culture and education had to be a slow process to be done correctly, to really remove the foundations of tsarist society. Marx did not outline for nor define what Socialist society should look like; rather society would naturally become Socialist after the revolution of the proletariat occurred.[8] Lenin’s cultural revolution started by closing hundreds of churches and by building the foundations of the Soviet welfare state but did not focus on the development of the Soviet citizenry. Lenin’s cultural revolution developed into tearing down of the traditional structures of Russian society. In the case of Russian women, tearing down traditional structures of femininity took the form of the freedom to divorce, to obtain an abortion and the right to vote. Despite the fact that these rights were given to women on paper, the rights were not actually available to most women in the countryside.

Lenin died in 1924, leaving an empty throne with no named heir. A struggle for leadership ensued which saw Stalin rise to lead the USSR and, by 1928, began to introduce his own form of cultural change. Stalin’s idea of cultural revolution contrasted with Lenin’s in that he felt the development of Soviet culture and society should develop simultaneously with industrial development. To Stalin, the USSR did not have the luxury of taking its time to build a Socialist society because it was the first government in history to build a Socialist country. Industrialization had to occur quickly in order for the USSR to compete with the Western nations.  Stalin’s cultural revolution was a veritable assault on traditional forms of Russian culture. It included literacy campaigns, hygiene programs, the building of social welfare programs, and a strengthened attack on religious belief and the Russian Orthodox Church.[9] Furthermore, Stalin’s cultural changes focused on the creation of the new Soviet person rather than a concentration on the negative elements of society that had to be done away with, a difference that will be shown in the posters analyzed in the following section.

In 1934, the Bolsheviks held the “Congress of Victors” as the Seventeenth Bolshevik Party Congress was named. During the Congress Stalin declared that Socialism had been achieved in the Soviet Union and that it was time to consolidate the gains of the revolution. This included addressing the issues that had arisen because of the policies that were enforced during Lenin’s time and the NEP.[10] The most severe of these issues included a falling demographic because of the widespread use of abortion. Thousands of women were abandoned or divorced by men after getting pregnant, and hundreds of thousands of children that had been orphaned and left to a government that had opened many, although not enough, orphanages.[11]

The cultural policies that Stalin pursued from 1934 onward were in the context of the idea of achieving Socialism. The Party argued that women no longer needed to have abortions because being a mother was no longer a financial hardship; women had jobs and could afford to support themselves and their children. Furthermore, it was important for the continuation of the Soviet Union to have children to be the next generation of strong and able workers and Party members. For women, being a mother was no longer a burden that was forced upon her because of her subordinate position in society, instead she was the pillar of the new Soviet society. The future of Soviet society was dependent upon her; if she chose to become a member of Soviet society she was led to believe that she would then have agency and power.  This is not to say that the audience looking upon these posters truly had agency; this is contested amongst Soviet cultural historians.

The differences between Lenin and Stalin in terms of their approach to cultural change and the policies that they enacted have been the subject of the work of many historians resulting in a diverse discourse. The two historical interpretations this paper focuses on can loosely be described as “traditionalists” and “modernists”.

The traditionalist approach is highlighted in historian Nicholas S. Timasheff’s essay “The Family, the School, and the Church: The Pillars of Society Shaken and Reinforced”. He defines the necessary elements of Bolshevik cultural change in Russia as:

“…for those who are eager to endow a nation with a new culture a definite program of action follows: they must loosen the families’ ties they must destroy or at least weaken the Church; and they must transform the school into an accelerator of cultural revolution.”[12]

He argues that the cultural changes enacted during the Stalin era from the mid-1930s to the mid-1940s were a retreat to traditional elements of Russian society; particularly the traditional structures of the family and religion. He bases this argument off a comparison to the advances made in Soviet culture during the early 1920s and during the NEP. The retreat was a reversal of the liberal economic and social policies Lenin enacted during the early stages of the Civil War and during the NEP that followed in 1923. He contends that Stalin’s cultural policies during the mid-1930s to the end of the Second World War increased the emphasis on family ties and slackened the push against religion.  The policies he focuses on include the banning of abortion in 1936 as well as the renewed emphasis on the successes of imperial Russia during World War II in order to bolster the Soviet war effort. Timasheff contends that the retreat is due to the fact that the population was not taking to Socialism and in order to regain the support of the people Stalin embraced traditional culture in the family, education, and religion.[13]

The modernist approach to analyzing Stalin’s cultural change is highlighted by historian David Hoffman in his work, Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity. Hoffman responds directly to Timasheff’s Great Retreat thesis and argues that Stalin’s cultural changes did draw on elements of traditional Russian culture, but they were used to modernize the Russian people and to create the new Soviet person rather than to revert back to the tsarist society. For Hoffman, the traditional aspects of Russian culture, such as the family and the role of women as its pillar, were used to bolster socialism within society rather than to turn away from the socialist values espoused by Lenin. “Stalinist propaganda relied on some traditional institutions and appeals, but as I will demonstrate, it did so for distinctly modern moblization purposes.”[14]  Furthermore, Hoffman explains how the Soviet experiement in modernization was not unique and had many elements such as an emphasis on hygiene, literacy, and social services in order to recover from the hardships that a World War and economic depression had caused in the 1910s to the late 1920s. Hoffman contends that although the Bolsheviks were responding to many of the same problems of modernity that their counterparts in Western Europe were contending with, the Soviet society that developed in the late 1920s and 1930s under Stalin was unique because of the ideological structure that was being used to create society. The role of ideology in the construction of the new Soviet society needs to be stressed because it is the context in which the Bolsheviks evaulated success or failure of their policies.

Widely celebrated Soviet cultural historian Sheila Fitzpatrick adds to this rich discourse in her book, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times, by maintaining that the policies that Stalin enacted during the cultural revolution from 1928-33 and after the Congress of the Victors in 1934 were still based on the premise of building Socialism and consolidating the gains of the cultural revolution. Like Hoffman, she argues that while the renewed emphasis on motherhood and the outlawing of abortion seem like a retreat from the foundational values of the new Soviet society that had been laid during the Lenin era and built upon during the Stalin era, the purpose of these policies was to build a modern Soviet society. “The change of Soviet orientation that it [the achievement of Socialism] celebrates, labeled ‘the Great Retreat’ by an American sociologist, was inaugurated at the beginning of 1935, when the lifting of bread rationing was the occasion for a propaganda campaign the celebrating of the end of privation and the coming of plenty.”[15] The society that Stalin built was still based upon the principles of Leninist Bolshevism: a literate and atheistic society, an industrialized economy and a society that included gender equality.

Matthew Lenoe provides a traditionalist response in his article “In Defense of Timasheff’s Great Retreat.” Lenoe contends that modernists including David Hoffman have misconstrued Timasheff’s argument:”Hoffman oversimplifies Timasheff’s work when he attributes to the latter the view that the Retreat amounted to ‘a conscious abandonment of socialism.”[16] Lenoe argues that Timasheff meant that there was a link between the policies of the late 1930s and 1940s and that these policies were a retreat because they failed to bring the Leninist idea of a communist utopia to fruition and not because they wanted to bring Soviet society back to its traditional Russian form.[17] While making an interesting critique of the work of Hoffman and other modernists, Lenoe still does not contend with the premise that Hoffman and Fitzpatrick put forth. The purpose of Stalin’s cultural revolution was to build the Socialist society that he and Lenin had envisioned and the consolidation of the achievements of Stalin’s cultural revolution took place in the form of his policies from 1934 onward. The goal was a modern Soviet society based upon the Bolshevik ideals and that was what Stalin and the Party believed they achieved.

IV.   Безбожник у Станка (The Godless at the Workbench)

As mentioned in the introduction, posters played an imperative role in the destruction of the traditionalist Russian society and the creation of the new Soviet society. Posters and other sources of visual art were used by the Bolsheviks to depict and communicate the Party’s policies and goals to a society that was highly illiterate until the mid-1930s. Posters serve as an effective barometer of Bolshevik attitudes toward women and religion because they were only produced by approved anti-religious organizations and printed in approved magazines. Furthermore, posters serve as an interesting medium of analysis because they actually depict what Soviet society; women in this case, were to look like. Marxist and Leninist/Bolshevik ideology, does not describe what a Soviet society should look like; they only give characteristics such as atheism and an industrialized society. Posters and visual art made Soviet society and the new Soviet woman tangible. The posters used in this paper are drawn from two of the most popular anti-religious magazines in print during the Lenin and Stalin cultural revolutions.

The Godless at the Workbench was an illustrated-monthly magazine printed from 1923-1932 and edited by Maria Kostelevskaya. The Godless at the Workbench consisted of stories, news, poetry, games, anti-religious testimonies and centerfolds that one could use as posters. It was generally 24 pages long with eight full-color pages of posters and drawings.[18] The journal was one of the two most popular and circulated anti-religious journals during the 20s and 30s, the first being The Godless (Безбожник) edited by Emel’ian Iaroslavskii and created by his League of the Militant Godless.[19]  There is a marked difference between the two journals as The Godless at the Workbench was created because of Kostelevskaya’s belief that The Godless took an approach to religion that was too lenient. She considered the direct threat that religious belief and the Church posed to the building of the Soviet state as a cause for their complete eradication from Society. “She proposed that, in view of the urgent need to foster a socialist culture, the most expedient way to convince a barely literate population was to, once and for all, expose the clergy as corrupted, religious ritual as unwarrantedly costly and sacred arts as propagandistic.”[20] Her more radical approach is seen in the propaganda posters that were included in the monthly publication that focused on a different social issue each month, in order to connect the anti-religious organization with other Soviet cultural causes. Furthermore, The Godless at the Workbench also serves as an interesting source because it stopped printing two years before the “achievement of Socialism.” After this announcement women are no longer depicted in anti-religious posters in either of the most popular anti-religious magazines. I argue that this is due to the fact that the government believed, although it is highly debatable, that the bond between women and the Church had been broken and there was no longer a need to depict any forms of religious belief or the Church with the new Soviet woman.

V.   Posters and Depictions during the Lenin and NEP Era

The posters entitled Autumn and The Living Cross were published in 1925, a year after Lenin’s death and at the height of the New Economic Policy. The Bolsheviks were still in the process of rebuilding the economy after the Civil War, which ended in 1923. The Lenin and NEP era of Soviet history focused primarily on the tearing down of the traditional structures of Russian culture and society: removing the class system, giving freedoms to women, removing the internal passport system and destroying and requisitioning property of the Church in order to decrease the Church’s presence in the everyday lives of Russian citizens. The posters depict women and the Church in negative forms and highlight the Bolsheviks’ perceptions of women: particularly women in the countryside whom they believed were the holders of religious belief.

Autumn was most likely seen by the young urbanites that lived in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the most populated urban centers in Russia at the time of its publishing in 1925. The purpose of the poster was to inform the urbanites of the problem that religion was posing to their counterparts in the countryside. The poster, which is vividly illustrated, includes a few lines of text in Russian that say “In autumn, the peasant harvests the crops. But he doesn’t know that the fields, the forest, the garden and the orchard are infested with enemies, parasites. They steal from him right under his nose.”  The famished male peasant is shown toiling in his fields with his equally famished horse; blinded he is surrounded by ticks, centipedes and locusts. These parasites have infiltrated his fields and are freely eating all the grain he has sown and even the grain that he has already collected and placed into the wagon cart following his horse. If one looks closely at the parasites that are pillaging the livelihood of the poor peasant, one can see they are all well-fed and the ticks in the wagon with the grain are smile and lift their arms out. A priest, in a smock typical of a member of the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church, with his large gold cross hanging from his neck takes a similar form as the well-fed tick. Also, the priest has a rotund stomach and is standing with his hand out and mouth open and the hunch-backed and physically unattractive peasant woman hands him a box full of eggs. The depiction of the clergy as a group of parasites is often used in the anti-religious posters of the mid-1920s as it is in line with the way that the party discussed “class enemies,” those who intentionally posed a danger to Soviet society.[21]

Interesting nuances add to the analysis of gender. While the caption suggests that parasites and enemies were stealing the produce of the peasant man, the audience can see that this is not necessarily the case. While the man is being robbed of his hard-earned goods the smiling peasant woman, in her naivety, is happily giving away the produce her blindfolded husband has worked so hard for. The action of the peasant woman is nuanced with the notions the Bolsheviks had of women in the countryside. The woman is depicted as the archetypical babushka, poor with her ill-fitting clothing and bare feet. Her old and hardened face is wrenched into a somewhat forced smile towards the local priest, the man that exploits her by using his influence and control over her immortal soul for his own personal gain. The woman’s smile is interesting because she presents a happy and welcoming front to the priest but the smile is forced, emphasizing the exploitative nature of the relationship between women and the Church.

Moor, Dmitry. Осень. 1925

One can see that the peasant woman has her eyes open and is willingly giving away her produce while the male peasant is blindfolded, walking through his fields reaping as he is followed by the parasites that have ravaged his crops. A sense of pity can be felt towards the male peasant because the audience sees and understands that he cannot help what has happened to him because he cannot see it; he is blind to it. In another reading, the husband has chosen to be blind and not to cope with the issues that his wife must face alone. Often in traditional households, religion was the realm of the woman; she was responsible for the religious activities of the family. [22] One does not feel pity for the female peasant as she smiles and gives away her eggs. Her eyes are open even though her mind is closed due to religious belief. She believes she is doing her religious duty by feeding the priest. The female can also be read as helping the priest deceive her husband as the priest does not steal, he only takes what is given to him by the peasant woman. I argue that this view can be gleaned from the fact that the text states that the male peasant’s fields are infested with enemies and parasites and this includes the wife who gives away produce she did not toil for.  While the text does not outwardly state this about the wife, it can be inferred from the juxtaposition of the wife, priest and parasites on the same plane within the poster. The priest is seen as the local face of the exploitation caused by religion and the Church in the countryside. He is often depicted in his black smock with a large cross either with his hand out or his mouth open. This goes to show how the clergy is always prepared to take from the peasants that they have duped with their religious dogma. The poster also hints at the Church’s never-ending thirst for and pursuit of material wealth through the exploitation of its followers.

Cheremnykh, M. Животворящий Крест. 1925

The theme of the naïve peasant and exploitative priest is shown in an illustration named The Living Cross by M. Cheremnykh, produced in the same year as Autumn. The Living Cross was published in the Soviet anti-religious satire magazine The Godless Crocodile (Безбожный Крокодил) in 1925. The illustration depicts a peasant woman looking up towards the heavens and showing respect to the cross while she places money into a bucket lodged inside the cross. The bucket has a pipe that leads directly to the hands of the greedy priest standing behind the cross. Once again the peasant woman is depicted as an old baba, a naïve woman giving away her living to a greedy priest in the name of religion. The controlling idea of these types of depiction is the frailty of women, particularly the women of the countryside. Not only are they physically weak but they are mentally weak, repeatedly giving the livelihood of themselves and their husbands to priests that use religious dogma to manipulate them. To me it is implied that the weakness of the woman is the reason why she is so easily manipulated.

The posters illuminate how the Bolsheviks played upon the traditional conceptions of religion and the family, e.g. the woman as the primary espouser of religious values in the home to press upon the urban populace the need to fight religion in the countryside. They also played on the preconceived notions of the Russian urbanite concerning the peasants: they were all uneducated, poor, and therefore they were susceptible to the religious lies of the Church. A Soviet person would not fall for the tricks of the Church because as they were well versed in Marxism and Leninism. Therefore they knew that religion was solely used to manipulate the ideologically weak masses and could easily be defeated by those who were politically enlightened. Autumn and the Living Cross are only samples of the anti-religious posters produced during the Lenin and NEP Era, but do serve as good examples of the trends seen in the posters of this time period.

VI.   Anti-religious Propaganda during Stalin’s “Cultural Revolution”

The 1930s would see a change in the depiction of women in anti-religious posters as the Party’s increased efforts to shape women into members of the proletariat. During Stalin’s cultural revolution which coincided with the First Five-Year Plan from 1928-1932, there was a drive to bring Russian culture as a whole to a more modern stage. This included a literacy drive, an increased emphasis on hygiene, and a reinvigorated push against religion. Anti-religious posters changed focus from the Church as an exploiter of the peasants, particularly women, to a focus on the new Soviet person and the Five Year-Plan.  The posters do not utilize traditional elements of Russian culture such as the baba, or the female as the mother and nucleus of the family. Instead, the posters suggest that the Church is the root of social evils and show the different ways that the new Soviet person fights religion rather than focusing on the greed of the priest. Atheism is portrayed positively, in contrast to the posters of the Lenin period, where religion was shown negatively.

Stalin’s cultural revolution marked the beginning of the change in the roles of women in the new Soviet society. Women were brought into the workforce, were more widely educated, and were educated in Marxist ideology. In the countryside, women joined the proletariat as agricultural workers. The creation of the new Soviet woman was a complete rejection of the cultural values that Timasheff mentions in his thesis: the traditional familial structure, the acceptance of the Church and traditional, non-Marxist forms of education. This meant that women were no longer portrayed as intellectually feeble and physically weak, susceptible to the lies and tricks of the church, but as models of the Soviet woman.

This can be seen in The Working Woman a poster printed in 1931, in the anti-religious magazine The Godless. The audience of The Godless during this era was different from the audience it had during the early 1920s. During Stalin’s cultural revolution the urban audience was becoming increasingly diverse as women and men from the countryside came to the city to find jobs or to escape from the hardship of collectivization. This increase in the urban demographic is important because during and after the Civil War, over half of the workers in the urban areas were either serving in the Red Army or had fled back to the countryside.[23] Stalin’s drive for industrialization and collectivization served to replenish the number of urban workers. Workers who had fled to the countryside were also seen to have possibly reconnected with their peasant roots, including religious belief. Stalin’s cultural revolution saw a renewed and intensified fight against religion.

Klinch, B. Трудящаяся Женщина. 1931

The header of The Working Woman (Трудящаяся Женщина) translates to: “The Working Woman: Into the Battle for Socialism. Into the Battle Against Religion” while the text on the bottom states, “Religion is a tool for the enslavement of the working woman.” [24] The woman in the center is a new Soviet woman archetype; she has her kerchief tied behind her head, in contrast to the peasant women seen earlier with their kerchiefs tied around their necks. A woman that is hard at work must tie her kerchief behind her head for safety reasons; something a backward peasant woman would not know to do or need to do. The Soviet woman is young; she stands tall with good posture and a healthy and calm demeanor at her workbench. The audience can also tell that the young woman is educated as she has her Leninist theory books under her bust of Lenin, on an orderly bookshelf behind her. She also has mathematical tools on her desk such as a compass and protractor; one can infer that the woman is an engineer or technician of some type. In stark contrast to the depiction seen in the posters late 1910s up to the mid-1920s, the new Soviet woman is physically and mentally stronger than her counterpart in the countryside was portrayed earlier.  The text also indicates a change to a primary focus on the woman.

Behind the strong and focused new Soviet woman, one can see the violent and miserable past she left behind. On the right of the woman there is a depiction of a drunken man dragging and beating his wife in the kitchen while their baby crawls away crying. In the corner of their home is an icon of Jesus peering down at the man as he chokes his wife with one had while the other holds a bottle of vodka. Situating the icon directly over the scene of domestic violence gives the audience the idea that the act is condoned by Jesus and therefore by religion. On the left, one can see the priest hiding in the shadows next to a table that is filled with food, watching the violence unfold before him. The church is shown as a tool for the further enslavement of women to domestic housework and unequal marriages. However, rather than emphasizing religion and the Church as exploiting and manipulating naïve women for their own gain, the audience sees the Soviet woman moving beyond the past hardships that women faced before being members of the new Soviet society. Furthermore, the audience can see the positive role that Bolshevist atheist has played in the transformation of the Soviet woman. The Soviet woman is no longer forced to remain at home with her child, keeping house or worst of all, being beaten by her drunken husband.

The achievements of the woman are based upon her being a good Socialist: a hard worker, and a productive member of the collective; a rational rather than religious thinker. “In this classic struggle of the sexes, propaganda stressed that it was the Stalinist state that supported the heroine and ensured her success in every sphere of existence.”[25]  The strong Soviet woman will no longer be manipulated by religion and the priests that try to tell her religious lies; she is mentally strong in her Leninist theoretical background and belief in science.

Mikhailov, Nikloai. В Нашем Колхозе. 1930

The proletariat woman is not the only woman to get a makeover in this new anti-religious propaganda. Coinciding with the creation of the new Soviet industrial woman is the creation of the new Soviet kolkhoznitsa (agricultural woman). She is young, intelligent and strong; she is in no way likened to the baba of the old posters or society. The poster titled “In our Collective Farm” (В Нашем Колхозе) depicts the new agricultural Soviet woman in the typical Communist red, extending her hand to say “No” to the priests and kulaks (wealthy peasants) trying to infiltrate and adulterate her collective farm. The text of the poster states “In our kolkhoz (collective farm) there is no room for priests and kulaks.”  The woman is in a position of physical power and her rejection of the priests and kulaks stands as a metaphor for the new Soviet woman’s rejection of traditional femininity. Like her industrial counterpart in The Working Woman, she has embraced her role as the new Soviet woman and has become an autonomous individual. She is no longer susceptible to the machinations of class enemies and religion. She stands on her own as a protector of herself and her collective farm or workbench.

VII.   Baba and Proletarka Interact

Several of the anti-religious posters feature interaction between the old baba and the proletarka. The older woman is often seen trying to interfere with the work or goals of the working woman. This was a way of showing how the old traditional values of Russian society, embodied by the baba were unacceptable and contrary to the new culture that the Bolsheviks were creating. These posters also play upon the role of the woman as the victim and as a possible enemy by showing the baba trying to counter the good acts of the new Soviet women. The posters were aimed at inspiring the urban woman to go into the countryside and help crush religion amongst the peasantry using the old and frightening peasant woman conniving undermine the work of the anti-religious proletariat woman, as a galvanizing image for poster’s target audience.

Lyushin, Vladimir. Красные и Белые Платочки. 1928

Red Kerchiefs, White Kerchiefs was intended to be viewed by urban workers and those urbanites whose purpose was to push antireligious belief into the countryside. This conclusion can be extrapolated from the fact that it was featured in The Godless at the Workbench in 1928, at the beginning of Stalin’s renewed push against the Church, when anti-religious groups were trying to increase their membership and membership engagement. As historian Daniel Peris states: “during the 1920s and the 1930s, millions upon millions of Soviet citizens were exposed to virulently atheist propaganda on the streets, by the military, in the workplace, and throughout the public sphere.” [26]  The poster shows the clash between the traditional religious culture of Russia with the Soviet culture then beginning to form. The poster shows two sets of women, the older baba and the young proletarki. The room of the babushki is in the style of the peasant room, very cluttered and covered in religious iconography. The baba in the black is holding a small Bible in her hand and one can see the Soviet woman in the red dress making a negative gesture towards the hand holding the Bible away. The proletarka herself she is holding Правда (Pravda-The Truth), the official Bolshevik newspaper, which we can assume has now supplanted traditional religious superstition for the younger generation. These women serve as models for the Soviet women that the government is trying to create through cultural programs and the destruction of the Church and religious belief. As women are better educated and employed as workers their economic situations improve, and their need to depend on religious belief decreases. Thus, religion is, as Marx said, a function of a person’s economic position.

The poster is also marked by its vibrant use of white and red, the colors of the Civil War. The Civil War was marked by brutality of both sides and extreme hardship for the country’s citizens during its the three-year span. Millions of men and women lost their lives due to violence and many starved to death due to famine and crop failure. Needless to say it was a dark time in the lives of many who would be the intended audience of the poster. The use of color serves as a metaphor for the alignment of the Church and religion to the Whites. The babushki in the white kerchiefs are depicted being connected with everything that is anti-Soviet: they are old and weak, religious, and are from the countryside while the Soviet women are depicted as young and able-bodied, urban (as shown in their simple, modern living quarters) and Communist. The color contrast and the connections to the Civil War also depict religious peasant women as betrayers of the Soviets. They are likened to their peasant babushki counterparts seen in Autumn and The Living Cross, the easily exploited and naïve women that will give their last dime to the Church because they are blinded by their religious belief. However the women in the current poster are betrayers because of their support of religion and the Civil war.

If one reads deeper into the nuances of the poster one can also see the connections to another social issue that was a priority of the government during the late twenties, literacy. The baba is holding the Bible in her hand but it is not opened as the Soviet woman holding Pravda has her hand in the paper as if she is using her hand as a bookmark, implying that she has read the paper while the old woman only holds the Bible she cannot read but holds so dear.  The poster is not as overtly anti-religious as other posters featured in The Godless later in 1928 and the 1930s. Rather, the poster uses color and the physical attributes of the women to prove its point that religious belief is not for the new Soviet man and woman, but it is for the old, backward peasant. It is a remnant of the tsarist culture that is incompatible physically and intellectually with Soviet society. The threat that religion poses to Soviet society is the old woman, if they allowed religion to infiltrate and ravage the new Soviet society it too would become old, decrepit, and feeble.

Artist Unknown. Религия-яд. 1930

The final poster we will consider is entitled Religion is Poison was published in 1930 in The Godless.  It serves as one of the few examples of a poster in The Godless which focuses primarily on women. The poster juxtaposes the old and religious baba with the young, school girl who is trying to become educated but the baba is pulling her by her hair to the Church.

This is a relatively blatant way of stating that religious belief is the enemy of the Soviet person and particularly, the Soviet woman. The baba in the poster is rather frightening with her old and worn face, her missing teeth and a large boil on her right cheek. She also has the iconic hump back and kerchief tied under her chin of the illiterate and superstitious baba. Her depiction makes one ask why one would want to be religious when it makes you old, disfigured, and ignorant? The baba’s physical condition is a manifestation of the years of religious exploitation she has experienced. Because of her belief in God and the Church she has spent years toiling and being exploited whereas the young girl that she is dragging to church from the school is young and able-bodied because she is free from the Church and its exploitive powers. This stark difference is a visual metaphor for the Bolshevik belief that women were drawn to religion due to their hard lives as homemakers and toilers in the fields. The women went to religion to relieve the hardships that their economic situation caused them, hard days  and nights spent working, raising children, and dealing with drunken and abusive husbands. The young girl serves as a model for the Soviet girl as she is free from economic exploitation and therefore free from the exploitive powers of the Church. She does not need to depend on religious belief because her economic condition has changed. The new Soviet woman is seeking education and the school to improve her life, and does not need the Church.

The text of the poster is also interesting as it utilizes the message that the Bolsheviks had been using since the Revolution: “Religion is poison” and tells the Soviet people to protect their children. As the cornerstone of the Soviet family, the new Soviet woman must protect her family from religious superstition and to indoctrinate it in atheistic Leninism and Marxism, creating the next generation of Soviets. This role of the new Soviet woman serves as a prime example of Hoffman’s modernist argument that the traditional elements of Russian society were reworked, made Soviet and therefore modern. The role of the woman as the pillar of the family was changed because she was economically independent and her relationship with her family had changed for her benefit. She was no longer “poisoning” the children with religious belief but rather now she was protecting them from priests and their exploitation. The new Soviet woman as a mother was now important and critical to the development of Soviet society.

After 1934, The Godless at the Workbench was brought under the control of The Godless and women were no longer featured in anti-religious posters. The focus of the posters changed from anti-religion to promoting government policy.[27] I posit that this is due to the fact that in 1934, Stalin declared that Socialism had been achieved in the Soviet Union. There was no longer a need to focus on the evils of the Church when religious belief and the Church had been defeated by the cultural revolution. Although from a Western view this seems preposterous, when one uses the ideological framework of the Bolsheviks the decision to stop showcasing the negative role of religion and links to society is logical. Socialism had defeated religion; there was no longer a threat.

VIII.   Conclusions

The creation of the Soviet woman, as part of the construction of Soviet society under Stalin stands in stark contrast to the Leninist deconstruction of traditional society. In Lenin’s time women, religious belief, and the Russian Orthodox Church stood as pillars of the backward Russian society. The Bolsheviks set out to eradicate these when they came to power in 1917. Women and the Church were the cornerstones of conservative belief in Russian society and had a relationship that posed a threat to the Bolsheviks ideologically and socially. Part of the assault on the backwardness of Russian culture was to change the relationship between the Church and women and to sculpt women into the new Soviet citizens that were needed for the USSR to become an industrialized nation. Through anti-religious magazines such as The Godless and The Godless at the Workbench, the Bolsheviks depicted the backwardness of religious belief that they wanted to eradicate as well as models for what the new Soviet woman should be.

The role of women and the Church as depicted by Bolshevik anti-religious propaganda changed throughout the NEP and early Stalin era. In the 1920s women were depicted as naïve and easily exploited babas, which was in line with the early Bolshevik ideas about women and the causes of their strong religious belief. They depicted the baba as physically and mentally weak because of her religious values and faith in the crooked and conniving church. The church and priests are depicted as pestilent and greedy, taking all that they can from the naïve peasant woman while her husband is blinded to her actions. The woman is shown as a possible enemy to Bolshevik culture as well as a victim of the church. There is a paradox in terms of the agency of the female in the early posters. While she is depicted as a victim of the church’s mischievous ways she is also shown taking from her husband and dealing with the church on her own, a clear sign of agency. This contradiction also applies to the key elements of Bolshevik thought on women as victims and enemies.

Although the posters of the Lenin period depict what the new Soviet woman was not to be, it was not until Stalin’s era of cultural change in 1928-32 that we see the creation and depiction of the new Soviet woman as well as the positive role that atheism was to play in the Soviet society. The new Soviet woman is physically strong and able to defend herself and her workbench or collective farm from the intrigues of the backward church and its exploitive priests. We also see the role of the Church change during the Stalin period as the church is no longer represented by the conniving and greedy priest but rather it is shown by the old and backward baba or the drunken and abusive husband as shown in The Working Woman. The church is the embodiment of the social evils and backwardness that the regime is striving to eradicate from Russia. The interaction between the woman and church transformed from the victim and the victimizer to the wrecker and the defender of Socialism either in the form of a worker or a mother as depicted in the text of Religion is Poison. The new Soviet woman has agency as an individual, she is free from the shackles of religious belief which drove her to give away her earnings and food to the clergy and forced her to remain in an oppressive and oftentimes abusive marriage.

The changes in the relationship between the woman and the church as well as the creation of the new Soviet woman in anti-religious posters provide an interesting perspective on the debate surrounding Stalin’s cultural changes. Whereas historians like Timasheff focus on policy and its effects on the population when discussing Stalin’s cultural changes as a retreat; when one looks at the posters, the medium in which the regime showed the people what was to be expected from them, one sees a different outcome. In the posters, relationships between women and the church change, the traditional aspects of Russian society that are unacceptable to the new Soviet society are stigmatized, and those aspects that can be “Sovietized” such as motherhood and work on a farm are depicted as modern and fundamentally different from how those roles were fulfilled during the tsarist period. The traditionalists fail to take into consideration two elements that are shown in these posters: the necessity to cope with problems that arise with modernity as well as Stalin’s announcement that Socialism had been achieved. The Bolsheviks were attempting to build a utopia but not until Stalin’s cultural revolution did that utopia begin to take shape and finally be depicted to the people, paving the way for the creation of the atheist, Soviet woman.

Bibliography

Anderson, Paul. “Out of the kitchen, out of the temple: religion, atheism and women in the Soviet Union”. in Religious Policy in the Soviet Union, ed. Sabrina P. Ramet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Print. 206, 212.

Clements, Barbara Evans. “The Birth of the New Soviet Woman”. in Bolshevik Culture, ed. Gleason, Kenez and Stites. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. Print. 221.

Curtiss, John S. The Russian Church and the Soviet State, 1917-1950. Boston: Little, Brown, 1953. Print.4.

Fitzpatrick. Sheila. “The Civil War as a Formative Experience,” in Bolshevik Culture, ed. Gleason, Kenez and Stites. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. Print. 68.

Fitzpatrick, Sheila. “Cultural Revolution as Class War”. in Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928-1931. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978. Print. 9, 10.

Fitzpatrick, Sheila. Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times, Soviet Russia in the 1930s. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Print. 22, 90,155.

Fitzpatrick, Sheila. The Russian Revolution. Oxford University Press, 2008. Print. 151.

Gerin, Annie. Godless at the Workbench. Toronto: Dunlop Art Gallery, 2004. Print. 33, 34.

Hoffman, David L. Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity, 1917-1941. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003. Print. 2,4,6.

Kenez, Peter. The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet methods of mass mobilization 1917-1929. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Print. 111.

Lapidus, Gail W. Women in Soviet Society. London: University of California Press, 1978. Print. 155.

Lenoe, Matthew. “In Defense of Timasheff’s Great Retreat”. Kritika 5.4 (2004). 721.

Likhachev, Dmitry S. “Religion.” The Cambridge Companion to Modern Russian Culture.Ed. Nicholas Rzhevsky. Cambridge University Press, 1999. Cambridge Collections Online. Cambridge University Press. 49.

Peris, Daniel. Storming the Heavens: The Soviet League of the Militant Godless. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998. Print. 42, 69, 70.

Rabinowitch, Alexander. The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. Print.132.

Suny, Ronald Grigor. The Soviet Experiement: Russia, The USSR, and the Successor States. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. 179.

Timasheff, N.S. “The family, the school, the Church: the pillars of society shaken and re-enforced”. in The Stalinist Dictatorship, ed. Chris Ward. London: Arnold, 1998. Print. 303.

Young, Glennys. Power and the Sacred in Revolutionary Russia: Religious Activists in the Village. University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997. Print. 29.

Poster Sources

Artist Unknown. Религия-яд. 1930. Poster. in Storming the Heavens: The Soviet League of the Militant Godless. By Daniel Peris. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998. Print. 80.

Cheremnykh, M.  Животворящий Крест. 1925. Poster. Dunlop Art Gallery. Godless at the Workbench. By Annie Gerin. Toronto: Dunlop Art Gallery, 2004. Print. 23.

Klinch, B. Трудящаяся Женщина. 1931. Poster. in Power and the Sacred in Revolutionary Russia: Religious Activists in the Village. By Glennys Young. University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997. Print. 120.

Lyushin, Vladimir. Красные и Белые Платочки. 1928. Poster.  Dunlop Art Gallery. Godless at the Workbench.  By Annie Gerin. Toronto: Dunlop Art Gallery, 2004. Print. 19.

Mikhailov, Nikloai. В Нашем Колхозе. 1930. Poster. in Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters under Lenin and Stalin. By Victoria E. Bonnell. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Print. 3.

Moor, Dmitry. Осень. 1925. Poster. Dunlop Art Gallery. Godless at the Workbench. By Annie Gerin. Toronto: Dunlop Art Gallery, 2004. Print. 18.

Footnotes

[1] John S. Curtiss, The Russian Church and the Soviet State, 1917-1950, (Boston: Little, Brown, 1953)4.

May 5 – NY

Russian author, Ludmila Ulitskaya

Join Brooklyn’s Dweck Center for the May installment of their Russian Literary Series, featuring author Ludmila Ulitskaya. Ulitskaya is among the most important Russian authors alive today. She is a critically acclaimed novelist and short-story writer whose works have been translated in all major languages. She is a recipient of the 2001 Simon de Beauvoir Prize and a finalist for the Man Booker Prize. In Russian. RSVP by calling 718-230-2222. Limit two per person.

The Russian Literary Series is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Where: Central Library, Dweck Center
When: May 5, 4:00 PM
Telephone: 718-230-2222

May 5 – MA

Jordanville's Holy Trinity Seminar Choir

Join Boston’s Museum of Russian Icons for a performance of the Holy Trinity Seminary Choir! The Holy Trinity Monastery Orthodox Seminary in Jordanville, NY serves the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) by preparing students for service to the Church. The Holy Trinity Seminary Choir (HTSC), distinct from the Holy Trinity Monastery Choir, will perform a special concert at the Museum of Russian Icons on Saturday, May 5. The seminarians strive to immerse themselves in the rich musical tradition of the monastery and explore other musical traditions. The (HTSC) performs compositions from the Moscow Sydonal School, the Kiev Monastery of the Caves, the Trinity St. Sergius Lavra and the ancient traditions of Georgia and Bulgaria. As part of their education, they visit parishes throughout the (ROCOR) to share the rich tradition of the monastery and seminary.

Advance purchase of tickets recommended; $12 for museum members, $15 for non-members.

Where: Museum of Russian Icons
When: May 5, 3:oo – 4:30 PM
Telephone: 978-598-5000.

May 13 – NY

Vladimir Mirzoev's Boris Godunov

Join Brooklyn’s Dweck Center for the May installment of their Russian film series. Director Vladimir Mirzoev adapts Pushkin’s Boris Godunov and sets it in modern-day Russia, complete with luxury cars, laptops and looming presidential elections looming round the corner. A brilliant and tragic satire on both today’s Russia and the archetypal Russia which existed long before Putin and even Pushkin himself. In Russian only. Drama, Russia, 2011, 128 min.

Where: Central Library, Dweck Center
When: May 5, 2:00 PM
Telephone: 718-230-2222

May 26 – MA

Some of the delicious Russian food you can discover on "From Russia With Love"

Join the Boston’s Museum of Russian Icons for a culinary walking tour entitled “From Russia With Love”.  Ahla Food Tour’s Russian culinary tour takes visitors through Brighton and Brookline.

Where can you find the best Russian borsch, pirozhki, and caviar? What is the Russian way to drink tea and vodka? Discover the answers at our 3-hour culinary adventure while tasting delicious authentic Russian specialties: light fluffy blintzes, delicate Siberian dumplings, imported caviar, mouth-watering desserts, and half-dozen more.

Take a shopping tour at Whole Foods Market; learn how to make traditional Russian dishes and find out the unique Russian ingredients that can spark up your every-day meals. Visit treasured Russian food stores and restaurants: Russian Village, Babushka Deli, and Vernissage; discover “hidden” Russian food in The Fireplace and Athan’s; and enjoy interesting personal stories about their owners. Find the best spots in Washington Square for entertainment, live music, and amazing food.

Tickets: $40 for members, $45 for non-members.

Where: Meeting at Whole Foods – 15 Washington Street, Brighton MA
When: May 26, 2:00-5:00 PM
Phone: 978-598-5000 to register.

Ongoing Exhibitions – MN

One of the images from The Museum of Russian Art's new exhibition

Starting May 13 and running until September 16, the Museum of Russian Art will be showcasing images from the collection of Thomas Werner in their exhibition “Photography from the USSR: Soviet Life, Russian Reality”.

This exhibition presents over fifty photographs from the four final decades of the Soviet era, a period that corresponds with TMORA’s concurrent painting exhibition From Thaw to Meltdown. Drawn from the collection of Thomas Werner, professor and director of the BFA program at New York’s Parsons New School for Design, these black-and-white images show Soviet citizens in social, educational, and familial settings that both conformed to the dictates of the regime and reflected their own versions of reality.

Images of food stores, daycare centers, schools, and construction sites showing citizens at work and leisure provide an insider’s view of the realities of Soviet life under socialism.  The photographs are one of a kind prints made from the original negatives, reflecting a multiplicity of lifestyles in the seemingly uniform environment.  Life under socialism provided extensive material for photographers.  From becoming a young pioneer to bathing in a communal men’s bathhouse, Soviet Life, Russian Reality provokes a dissection of stereotypes in the presentation of Soviet realities.

The exhibition also includes amateur photographs and an intriguing selection of artifacts such as Communist Party membership booklets, Army ration books, and Party certificates and commendations.  Soviet Life, Russian Reality closes September 16.

Where: Museum of Russian Art
Telephone: (612) 821-9045

Portrait of Sergei Diaghilev by Leon Bakst

Sergei Diaghilev, Russian art patron, collector, impresario and director of the famed and controversial Ballets Russes, was born in 1872 to a wealthy and aristocratic family.  During his childhood, he was no stranger to chamber music, soirees and serious conversations about literature and poetry, and as befitted his social status, he was sent to study law in Saint Petersburg at the age of 18.  Soon realizing that he had no real affection for the profession, he found himself introduced to a circle of artists and writers through a cousin who was also living in the city.  He graduated from Saint Petersburg State University in 1896, but found that he would rather follow a career in music, despite being discouraged in his endeavors by famed composer Rimsky-Korasakov. In 1906, he left Russia and began life in Paris where he contributed to the Franco-Russian artistic alliance, and in 1909 he founded the Ballets Russes.

The Ballets Russes went on to revitalize and revolutionize ballet through the integration of a variety of art forms including music and painting. It was comprised of dancers from some of Russia’s most influential and important Imperial theatres, including Saint Petersburg’s Mariinsky and Moscow’s Bolshoi.  The troupe included some of Russia’s most famous dancers, including Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina, Alexandra Danilova and Sergey Lifar. The influence of the Ballets Russes on not only dance, but on fashion, design and the visual arts cannot be understated, as there was a great deal of collaboration between the different spheres of the art world. Indeed, the company was the first to involve professional artists rather than stage decorators. Involvement with the Ballets Russes propelled several Russian visual artists to international fame, and provided them with less-than-traditional outlets for their creativity. Costumes and stage designs were created by several well-known Russian artists, including Leon Bakst, Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova and Alexandre Benois, for whom a wing in Saint Petersburg’s Russian Museum is named.  Several of the artists, including Bakst and Benois, were active in the Mir Isskustva (‘World of Art’) movement, as was Diaghilev himself. Some have even gone so far as to ask, “without Diaghilev’s creative genius, would Picasso, Matisse, Juan Gris, Leger, Marie Laurencin de Chirco, Miro, Andre Derain or Pavel Tchelichev ever have designed for the stage?” The influences of the Ballets Russes on the visual arts contributed to the trends towards both orientalism and the Art Deco movement in the 1910s and 1920s.

Natalia Goncharova's "City Square", backdrop designed for the "Coq 'Dor". c. 1937

Several well-known Russian artists contributed heavily to the set design of the Ballets Russes, and they were in turn influenced by Diaghilev’s set and costume designs, which primarily integrated elements of primitivism, exoticism, cubism, futurism and constructivism.  Natalia Goncharova, who contributed immensely to the set designs of the Ballets Russes, for example, is now considered to be one of the most influential Russian avant-garde painters.  After several years of sculpting and the exploration of symbolism, cubism and futurism in visual arts, Goncharova traveled to Paris in order to complete stage designs for the performance of the Coq D’Or in 1914, but was forced to return to Russia later that year at the outset of World War One.  She later re-joined Diaghilev in Geneva in 1915 to continue her work. The Ballets Russes were to significantly change the way in which she approached art, for it was at this time that she nearly completely abandoned traditional easel painting in favour of set design.

Leon Bakst's costume design for "The Legend of Joseph", 1914

Leon Bakst, another major contributor to the Ballets Russes, was born in Belarus in 1866. He met Alexandre Benois in 1890 in Saint Petersburg, where Bakst had attended the Academy of Art until his expulsion in 1887 for presenting work that, like so many others at the time, was considered by the Academy to be too ‘unconventional’.  While working as an illustrator of children’s books, he became a leading member of the Mir Iskusstva movement, and later worked as an art teacher in Saint Petersburg with such illustrious pupils as a young young Marc Chagall. During the early part of the century, Bakst mainly focused on portraiture, at which time he painted such cultural luminaries as Filipp Malyavin, Andrei Bely and Zinaida Gippius.  Between the years of 1909 and 1921, he collaborated with Diaghilev on the Ballets Russes, where he found employment variously as artistic director, costume designer and set designer.  Although Bakst had largely turned his attentions to theatre design by the beginning of the twentieth century, he continued to work in portraiture, which, combined with his work with the Ballets Russes, would define his career during the late 1910s and early 1920s. He rapidly became the Ballets Russes’ most prolific designer and artist, and his name quickly became inseparable from the group as the theatre work refined and developed his talents.  It was this collaboration that propelled him to international fame, and in 1922, he traveled to New York in order to showcase an exhibition of decorative figures and portraits. Without a doubt, the highlight of this exhibition was a set of mural decorations presented in seven panels that Bakst designed for the grand salon of the Rothschild mansion in London.  The panels “followed in the footsteps of the early masters in using modern portraits, those of the Rothschild family and of London society at large.”  Seven years earlier, after Bakst shot to fame with the success of the Ballets Russes, Rothschild, then unknown to Bakst, approached the artist and commissioned the paintings, with the express instructions that the work remain secret until its completion. By 1922, Bakst had achieved enough international fame that his New York exhibition opened with a prestigious viewing by invitation only, and London’s Victoria and Albert Museum was already purchasing several of his works. Upon arrival in the United States, he received several portrait commissions, including one for the daughter of William K. Vanderbilt.

Alexander Benois' costume sketch for "Armida's Pavillion", 1909.

The third of several influential artists involved in the Ballets Russes is Alexandre Benois, a Russian artist and art director born in Saint Petersburg into a highly successfully artistic family of French ancestry.  Similar to Leon Bakst, Benois was educated at Saint Petersburg State University’s school of law, but was destined to follow his artistic passions.  One of the founding members of the Mir Isskustva movement, Benois attacked the standards of the Peredvezhniki (‘Wanderers’) movement and became quite influential in the world of Russian set design. Benois’ work was exhibited in 1905 at Diaghilev’s Salon d’Automne.  Their collaboration was to last until 1924, when Benois split from the company. Benois’ involvement with the Ballets Russes forever changed his career path, as he largely began to focus his attentions on stage design and décor, and some of his greatest works were produced during his time with the Ballets Russes.  In 1926, faced with the difficult life of an émigré or the increasingly frightening prospect of returning to life in the Soviet Union, Benois chose to pursue theatre work first in France at Paris’ Grand Opera, then at Milan’s La Scala theatre.

The Ballets Russes was far more than a simple ballet company, and Diaghilev was much more than a ballet director.  Rather, the company was a meeting place where all art forms converged in one stunning production.  Diaghilev, himself heavily involved and interested in the visual arts prior to his work with the Ballets Russes, provided an arena where artists could come together and work, and significantly shifted the trajectories of the careers of several leading Russian artists. He shot the artist Leon Bakst to international fame, for his work with the Ballets Russes brought him to the attention of Rothschild and provided him with a significant amount of work with some of the world’s leading families at the time.  The Ballets Russes facilitated the departure of several Russian artists during the tumultuous times of the 1917 Russian Revolution and the nascent Soviet state, and allowed them to continue their work in exile abroad for decades to follow.

Source Material From:

Artnet.com; The Ballets Russes; Encyclopedia Britannica: Alexander Benois, Serge Pavlovich Diaghilev; Encyclopedia of World Biography: Sergei Diaghilev; Russian Ballet History; Russiapedia; Union List of Artist Names; Visual-Arts-Cork.com; Lessing Photo Archive; MoMA; Bertc.com; Wikipedia Images

“Leon Bakst Is Here to Show Paintings: Russian Artist Brings Collection of Decorative Figures and Portraits” in New York Times, 1922.

Oxford Art Online:  Leon Bakst

Lazarev Gallery entrance

The gallery opened in the summer of 2007 and became an instant hit in the St. Petersburg art scene for its “unprecedented, brave approach to exhibitions,” as the website describes. For the month of April, Marina Fedorova’s exhibition of “Non-Random Connections” compliments the reputation of the gallery, exhibiting paintings with sculptures, a sound installation, and some well-planned lighting effects.

Marina Fedorova is a young Russian artist. She graduated from the Stirliz Fine Art School in St. Petersburg when she was 15. She then studied design at N.K. Roerich Art Academy, which is known for its exceptional design alumni. After graduation, she went on to study in the new fashion design department at Mukhina Fine Art Academy, one of the most reputable art academies in the country. After graduating in 2006, her career as an artist took off, including exhibitions in the art fairs Art-Moscow and Art-Paris, as well as recognition in Forbes magazine as “one of the most promising young artists in Russia.”

“Non-Random Connections” is a cinematographic collection of paintings, each appearing to be a paused frame amidst greater physical and emotional movements within a story. Fedorova uses text to create stories for her portraits of women walking, undressing, or looking away from the viewer to a man or the absence of one.  Chunky, broad paint strokes of red, black, and white capture the central focus of the paintings, while the edges often remain unrefined, dripping, or smeared, which creates a sense of incompleteness. The use of red is elemental to each piece as an emotional force, defining the attributes of story within the portraits. The addition of plastic sculptures deepens the atmosphere of the pieces, creating powerful, fantastical extensions of the world within the painting. The use of lighting is also interesting. Directly focused on the paintings, the bright lamps spotlight the images amidst a rather dark gallery, setting the viewer apart in a voyeuristic view. Throughout the gallery, heavy panting and a young, female French singer can be heard from speakers, adding a sensual element to the exhibition.

"When You've Gone Away..."

“When You’ve Gone Away…” encapsulates all of these things and is the first painting one sees in the exhibition. Half the canvas is white, the piece’s title written in black cursive at the center. The rest is a portrait of a girl in a bra, facing away from the viewer to a disheveled bed and the image of a man in a suit walking away, the sway of his hand the only clearly visible part of him. The entire portrait is smeared like an unfocused photograph. In front of the painting hangs a carved, red, plastic heart with a mass of veins extended outward in a root-like circle. The entire piece evokes emotions of longing, isolation, and unbridled love.

"Butterflies"

“Butterflies” is one of the most striking pieces in the exhibition. Fantastical, visceral, and absolutely intimate, the focus of the portrait is on a woman’s bare chest. Her head is thrown back while her two hands pull apart an opening in her chest, releasing a mass of butterflies. In front of the painting hangs a chandelier of red, plastic butterflies, each glowing from inserted LED lights. They reflect onto the painting in a brilliant red that is hard to discern from the painting. Fedorova also used her non-conforming exhibition style to express different ways of seeing. “Painting-Viewer-Artist” is a collection of two paintings situated in front of a mirror. The central painting shows a coffee machine with arms holding a cup of coffee. The second painting shows a person looking at the central painting. All the while, the mirror reflects these images. The real viewer in the Lazarev Gallery enters the painting in this way, forced to grapple with the reality of the painting, for which there does not seem to be a definition of a beginning and an end.

The Lazarev Gallery’s five halls of more than 400 square meters hold a little more than 20 of Marina Fedorova’s works, some more recent than others. After perusing the exhibition, one is left with the desire to simply see more of her works. She is known for her quick style of painting and the ability to sell her pieces, giving her an edge in the art market for exhibitions. She will turn up fairly quickly again in St. Petersburg or Paris, her two main hometowns at the moment, or beyond. In the past six years, she has produced work for 37 exhibitions and festivals. She’s young, busy, and on a bright path to success.  The Lazarev Gallery, with its modern exhibition equipment will certainly surprise the St. Petersburg art scene with another unique exhibition in the near future.

Details: The Lazarev Gallery is located on the 6^th Line of the Vasilievsky Line in St. Petersburg. Please check here for a map to the gallery from the Vasileostrovskaya Metro, which is quite close. The gallery is closed on Mondays. All other days, it is open from 11am- 8pm. Entrance is free of charge! Come as often as you like!

The Knifegrinder - Kazimir Malevich - 1912

The Malevich Society is pleased to announce its grant competition for the year 2012.

The Malevich Society is a not-for-profit organization based in New York dedicated to advancing knowledge about the Russian artist Kazimir Malevich and his work.

In the belief that Malevich was a pioneer of modern art, and should be recognized for his key contributions to the history of Modernism, the Society awards grants to encourage research, writing, and other activities relating to his history and memory.

The Society welcomes applications from scholars of any nationality, and at various stages of their career. Graduate students are welcome to apply to the Society’s grants after completing at least one year of dissertation research. Proposed projects should increase the understanding of Malevich and his work, or augment historical, biographical, or artistic information about Malevich and/or his artistic legacy. The Society also supports translations and the publication of relevant texts.

Application forms and instructions may be requested by telephone at 1-718-980-1805, by e-mail at info@malevichsociety.org, or may be downloaded from the web-site: www.malevichsociety.org.

Deadline: September 30, 2012

The Hairdresser, Larionov (1907)

Michael Larionov was a major force in several Russian artistic movements of the early twentieth century, most notably the Primitivist, the Cubo-Futurist and the Rayonnist movements. His career went through various stages as he explored and overturned new corners of visual expression and the results shook the foundations of Russian art.

Michael Larionov was born near Odessa in 1881 and spent much of his childhood in the country home of his maternal grandfather, Fyodor Petrovsky. He scraped into Moscow College at the age of 16, achieving the last admitted score on the placement test. He was reportedly a problematic student. Although he displayed an avid work ethic in his own studio, he almost never attended the studios at Moscow College and he even managed to get expelled on more than one occasion. In an infamous display of obstinacy, he once hung at least 150 of his own canvasses at a student exhibition and refused to make room for anyone else’s. The stunt resulted in his temporary expulsion from school. Undeterred, he got expelled again for painting a scandalous depiction of a dancer and a gentleman. He was a year later readmitted, behavior and penchant for semi-pornography unchanged.

Years later, Larionov’s attraction to scandal led naturally to his involvement with the Union of Youth. The group was formed in Saint Petersburg in March of 1910, and became known for its extremely radical public discussions and provocative street antics. They numbered among those Futurists who turned their art into something like street theatre, walking around in colorful waistcoats, radishes and spoons in their buttonholes, the men wearing earrings. From 1912 to 1913, they could be frequently seen in Moscow along the Kuznetskii Most and the Petrovka.

Provincial Dandy, Larionov (1907)

During the Symbolist era in Russian art Larionov briefly joined the Blue Rose movement. His work from this time was markedly more suffused with their pale blues and greens and natural, pelagic themes. When he joined the Union of Youth, this Symbolism got turned on its head, converted into an intentionally harsher, blunter version of the ideology, now brought to the streets for mass consumption. Later he began using bright reds and yellows, derived from an interest in the French Nabis. He also took up their “intimiste” credo, painting personal still-lifes and portraits.

While at Moscow College, Larionov met fellow-artist Natalia Goncharova, who was to be his lifetime companion. In 1906 the two exhibited together at Sergei Diaghilev’s Salon d’Automne in Paris, and in 1914, they went again with Diaghilev to Paris, this time for a lifetime career of stage design. During the interim period, Larionov and Goncharova were together involved in the movements arising in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Some of the most important exhibitions for Larionov’s artistic development were the 1909 Golden Fleece exhibitions and the 1912 Jack (or Knave) of Diamonds exhibitions.

The Relaxing Soldier, Larionov (1911)

Most works hung at the Golden Fleece were marked by their similarities in style to the contemporary French artists. During his early career, Larionov was known as “the finest Russian Impressionist” (qtd in Gray 102), but his work was really more heavily influenced by Post-Impressionism. In particular, Larionov’s work reflected traits of Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and the French Nabis Edouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard. Bonnard and Vuillard were perhaps the most influential overall, known for their use of decorative, brightly colorful motifs and intimate subject matter.

By the third installment of the Golden Fleece exhibits, Larionov’s and Goncharova’s works dominated the space, to the almost complete exclusion of the French artists. Primitivism had taken hold, Larionov and Goncharova together turning their attention from France towards Russian folk traditions. The Primitivist style looked back to peasant art forms, luboks and traditional icon painting for their simplified yet powerful construction. Larionov had been called up for nine months of military service in 1908 and the Soldiers series he painted upon his return was already brimming with patriotic feeling. Perhaps by consequence, Larionov’s interpretation of French Cubism and Post-Impressionism at the Golden Fleece exhibits was looser than Goncharova’s. Rather than using blocks of color and playing with light, Larionov played with the complexity of his figures, isolating their bare elements and arranging them in a way to typify rather than personalize. The more literal, obvious marks of French influence began to fade from his repertoire.

Glass, Larionov (1909)

Larionov’s involvement in the Jack of Diamonds exhibitions ultimately led to a rift between the Cubo-Futurists, whom he and Goncharova represented, and the artists of the Munich school. By the time of the second Jack of Diamonds exhibition, Larionov and Goncharova were “so extreme in their nationalist ideas that they had shaken off ‘Munich decadence’ and the ‘cheap Orientalism of the Paris School’” (Gray 122). These dissident Cubo-Futurists splintered into the short-lived Donkey’s Tail group, conceived of as the first purely Russian Russian artistic movement. This and its successor, The Target, were most notable for their connection to a new movement called Rayonnism.

The Rayonnist ideas proposed and executed by Larionov (explored likewise by Goncharova) were pioneering. The theory itself spanned four manifestos. At their heart was a call to do away with objectivity in paintings. Instead of painting empty forms as they seem to appear in nature, Larionov began painting instead the rays emitted by objects. This was an attempt to capture the spaces between viewer and object which were generally missed in visual representation. The rays were meant to connect art to a fourth dimension only intuitively-perceived in our everyday experiences of reality.

Nocturne, Larionov (1913-14)

In order to create the sensation of a fourth dimension and more fully capture the essence of his subject matter, Larionov gave color and texture supreme importance. He reasoned that color and texture are the only real presences on a canvas, and that consequently they must lie at the heart of the painting’s emotional and spiritual impact.  He logically connected the application of paint to the composition of a musical piece, the density of a color, its precise hue and vibrations, adjusting the overall feeling evoked.

In a work entitled Glass (1909) Larionov sought not to depict the image of glass, but its condition and physical composition. With rays, he painted its brittleness, sharpness and sparkling connection to light and sound. In Nocturne (1913-14), Larionov painted the tension between interiors and exteriors with conflicting semi-light and dark rays.

Larionov left Russia with Goncharova in 1914 and turned to theatre design, but his theories had a heavy impact on the coming avant-garde. Rayonnist logic, in particular concerning the fourth dimension, was the jumping off point for many movements in the 1920s. These went on to thoroughly explore the aspects and effects of color, texture and abstract forms.

Source Material From:

The Museum Syndicate, The MoMA, The Guggenheim, The Terminartors, Tate Modern

“Jacks and Tails” by John E. Bowlt in The Journal of the Walters Art Museum, Vol. 60/61 (2002/2003), pp. 15-20.

“The Early Work of Goncharova and Larionov” by Mary Chamot in The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 97, No. 627 (Jun., 1955), pp. 170+172-174.

“Russian ‘Rayism’, the Work and Theory of Mikhail Larionov and Natalya Goncharova 1912- 1914: Ouspensky’s Four-Dimensional Super Race?” 
by Anthony Parton
 in Leonardo, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Autumn, 1983), pp. 298-305.

The entrance to the Pushkinskaya-10 Art Center is tucked inconspicuously in a courtyard in the center of St. Petersburg. From the author’s collection.

One must really have the desire to find the Pushkinskaya-10 Art Center if they are to visit it. Located in an otherwise inconspicuous courtyard off Ligovsky Prospect, it hides tucked behind the bright signs surrounding the Moskovsky railway station in downtown St. Petersburg, just a bit more visible than when its entrance was located around the corner on Pushkinskaya Street. This particular art center has not received much attention from academics or journalists, and the residents of the center do not make it easy for visitors to navigate, either, offering an overwhelming variety of galleries and points of interest to visit. In short, the Pushkinskaya-10 Art Center is not for the faint of heart, yet as an art space, it reveals some of the secrets that were hidden about art during the soviet era, and serves to remind us of the necessity of physical space in the creative process for artists.

Although the Puskinskaya-10 Art Center is a point of interest in St. Petersburg it is not one that is accessible to all, physically or intellectually. In an interview I held with the art center’s co-founder, Sergey Kovalsky, he emphasized that, although the site appears in some guidebooks and site-seeing pamphlets, the space is not entirely public, and is not easily understood by the average tourist.[1] Unlike the works in the endless galleries of the Hermitage or the Russian Museum, the pieces created in secret by unofficial artists require a special understanding of the era and movements to truly grasp their significance. Pushkinskaya-10 simultaneously tells its own story of unofficial art and represents the many nonconformist art movements of the twentieth century, both successful and unsuccessful, that expressed discontent with the soviet system through artistic media. In the years since its establishment at the same time of the Soviet Union’s dissolution, the site has served as a home to artists both young and old, as an archive of “dissident,” “forbidden,” “nonconformist,” and “unofficial” art,[2] and as a tribute to the legacy of unconventional art in twentieth century St. Petersburg. This chapter in Russia’s art history is significant because the art remains controversial, even twenty years after the dissolution of the soviet regime.

Monika Bernotas also created a video documentary based on her research. Watch it above.

One stairwell landing in Pushkinskaya-10 is titled “the wall of idea”: an example of the art space flowing into the public space. From the author’s collection.

Despite the fact that the Soviet Union has long since dissolved, official and unofficial art remain distinguishable and some works are prevented from being displayed publicly.[3] For this reason, the Pushkinskaya-10 Art Center exists as a testament to the emergence of successful sustentation of unofficial art from the Soviet Union to today, by giving aspiring and established artists a space in which to create and share their work with one another and with the public. Further study of this art cooperative allows us to observe how the operations of the center have changed, and understand the connection between Russia’s current art culture and the alternative art culture of the late soviet era.

Russia has a long history of restrictive measures taken to limit artistic production, dating through both the czarist and soviet time periods. Strict limitations were placed on artists, preventing them from creating and displaying works that did not conform to the accepted method, and artists who refused to comply were sentenced to exile and, in some cases, death. The soviet era, in particular, created an uncomfortable environment for artists. In 1932 the soviet leadership adopted socialist realism as the official method of soviet art. Any creative product was subject to the limitations of this method, including plays, films, books, sculpture, and all fine arts. Socialist realism not only sought to glorify the virtues of soviet collective labor, but also, simultaneously denounced the evils of capitalist culture. In literature and cinema, socialist realism manifested itself in stories, for instance, in which a socialist mentor guides a spontaneous youth to recognize the errors of his ways, and glorify the ideals of socialism.[4]

Vera Mukhina’s statue of “the Worker and the Kolkhoz Woman” stands tall in Moscow in the VDNKh neighborhood; proof of socialist realism’s resilience. From the author’s collection.

In visual arts, realism employed techniques that attempted to capture images of pride in the soviet way of life, while actually idealizing the images, and subsequently used them in propaganda and every aspect of illustrated life from children’s stories to cookbooks.[5] All artistic production, notably the many portraits of party leaders like Stalin and Lenin, was commissioned and required to conform to the socialist realist aesthetic method. Additionally, sculptures and monuments in the socialist realist style took up physical space in the cities of the Soviet Union, giving mass and volume to the regime’s doctrine, making soviet socialist realism truly ever-present in the lives of the urban citizens. In this way, the soviet elite attempted to permeate the lives of the citizens with socialist ideology in their physical surroundings, and allowing no space to be private. An example of this is Vera Mukhina’s statue in Moscow, The Worker and the Kolkhoz Woman. The statue, originally constructed for the 1937 Paris World Fair, now towers nearly 200 feet above VDNKh, a popular park and exhibition center in northern Moscow. The statue also became the iconic logo of the major soviet film company, MosFilm, and was shown at the start of the majority of films seen in the Soviet Union. Despite the encompassing nature of socialist realist art, the actual tenets were never documented in a way that made them easy to follow. For that reason, artists were often unclear of their compliance with the rules.

Due to the lack of clarity in the official method, many artists continued to create in their own style, risking becoming targets of official persecution. Fortunately, artists were seldom persecuted for their art alone; rather, art was banned not due it’s content, but because its author had associated with dissidents, had expressed dissent, or had fallen foul of an influential official. Despite these limitations, artists continued to create art of their own, outside the official method. When the implementation of socialist realism began in the early 1930s many artists continued to create in the avant-garde style, disregarding the official method of the Soviet Union. These artists were forced to work on their unofficial art as privately as they could with their own resources while simultaneously paying the bills by working as official book-illustrators or in other occupations.[6]

Working as a book illustrator was a particularly convenient occupation, because it gave the artist access to materials that were not widely available. Those who worked outside of the art industry had difficultly obtaining supplies to create their works if they were not associated with an official art guild. Furthermore, without official recognition, they had no access to space in which to create or display their work. Unless they were associated or connected with such art guilds, they were severely limited in time and resources, and, most importantly, private studio space in which to create. Without space, they would find it difficult to create, let alone hide, the art with which they confronted the state-imposed limitations.

Artists who were not included in official art guilds craved connections with other artists, for the purpose of sharing their work and circumventing the state. For that reason, they established some of the most important unofficial networks in St. Petersburg in the 1970s and 80s, specifically, the Brotherhood of Experimental Exhibitions and the Brotherhood of Experimental Exhibitions, established in 1975 and 1981, respectively, and which later consolidated to form the organization behind Pushkinskaya-10.[7] Such organizations were established outside of the official unions and guilds of soviet artists, meaning that they did not reap any state benefits available to official organizations, and had to conduct their operations as privately as possible. Such secret organizations were not regulated by the state, and, therefore, not tolerated.

The author standing outside the Zimmerli Art Musem at Rutgers University, the home of the Norton Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art. From the author's collection.

Operating in secret and acknowledging the risks at hand, the members of these brotherhoods benefited from networking with their fellow-dissidents and used them as an outlet to share their work in secret apartment exhibitions. It was also through these networks that artists made contact with international art collectors and dealers, whom they incorporated into their unofficial syndicate. One such collector was Norton Dodge, whose collection of nonconformist soviet art can now be seen at the Zimmerli Museum at Rutgers University. His collection was built up over the course of ten visits to the Soviet Union from the 1970s through Perestroika, and includes works by artists, such as Ilya Kabakov, Vitaly Komar, and Alex Melamid, who have, through his efforts, become some of the most widely-recognized and prosperous unofficial Russian artists. Those who were targeted by soviet authorities became recognized in the west not only as artists, but also as dissidents against the soviet regime through these private outlets to the west.

Furthermore, it was out of these unofficial organizations that unofficial exhibitions began to emerge in secret, and then in public. Art served as both a type of therapy and an act of dissent for these artists, whether or not the subjects of their art were explicitly anti-soviet. For example, the art of Boris Koshelokhov, which draws greatly from early 20^th Century Russian avant-garde and fauvism, depicts many natural and neutral themes.[8] Because his art strayed from the tenets of socialist realism, he was tagged as a nonconformist, and the authorities kept a close watch on him.[9] By working as a janitor, keeping his nonconformist art to apparently neutral themes, and maintaining discreet relationships with compatriot artists in the Society for Experimental Exhibitions he was able to avoid arrest. He lives and thrives today in the Art Center at Pushkinskaya-10 and is a well-respected artist of the, ironic, nonconformist brand.

Boris Koshelokov standing next to a fragment of his work “Heilige Suender.” Photograph from 1992. From the website http://boriskoshelokhov.com/works/paintings/

In 1989, at the height of Gorbachev’s Perestroika, the members of these organizations, realizing their need for a space of their own, joined their forces to create the Free Culture Society and moved into the house at Pushkinskaya-10 in Leningrad. In a personal interview, Sergey Kovalsky, the founder of the space, told of the day he recognized the abandoned building at that address as a potential home for all the artists who did not have their own spaces to create, much like the establishment of the SoHo district of New York. Walking with a small group of artist-friends, he described their need for a home, and pointed out the crumbling building as something that would work just as well as any other building; however, its location on Pushkinskaya Street made it particularly ideal, since “Pushkin is [our/Russia’s] everything.”[10] The building had been condemned and was in a queue for remodeling by city. When Kovalsky approached the authorities to say he would take the building as it was, they were obliged to give it to him to avoid the costs of renovation, especially as the soviet state crumbled.

The building, dubbed the Pushkinskaya-10 Art Center, managed by the Free Culture Society, has been operating as an art cooperative since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Aside from apartment and studio spaces for over thirty artists, the center boasts approximately ten museums and galleries, as well as studios for performance art, a shrine to the Beatles (who were influential for all generations of soviet dissidents) two cafés and a record store. The space serves as a creative home for musicians, filmmakers, photographers, and, of course, the painters and sculptors who established it. Now, the artists refer to the Art Center as “an island of communism,” as its operation and maintenance are taken on with a collective attitude. In fact, the artists and residents still consider themselves “nonconformists,” despite the fact that the Soviet Union has long since dissolved and the term as it was once used has lost its meaning. The term was once used to describe dissidence to the soviet state alone; now it expresses their resistance to conforming to the ideals of mainstream cultural values in general. Thus, when the government ceased to be socialist, the artists at Pushkinskaya-10 continued their rebellious streak, some even reverting to socialist values.

Sergey Kovalsky describes the Parallelosphere philosophy with the help of a three dimensional manifestation. Still frame from the author’s interview.

Kovalsky, the center’s co-founder, has a unique view of the world, describing it as a “Parallelosphere.” The concept, although difficult to understand at first, makes a certain degree of sense, geometrically and philosophically speaking. While we, as human beings, live on the sphere of the earth, we consistently find parallels between our creator, ourselves, and that which we create. His goal is to expand the Parallelosphere to include all of mankind through cultural parallelism throughout the world, which is, in essence, the mission of Pushkinskaya-10.[11]

One of the many unique things about the center is the varied integration of public and private spaces together. While each resident artist has his own space to use for living and creating, the exhibition space spills out into shared areas, including hallways, stairwells, elevators, walls and ceilings. Visitors are welcome to participate in the creation by adding to graffitied areas while, in most cases, respecting that which has already been created. Some residents of St. Petersburg, who come to visit the center, say that they like the idea of the space particularly because of its accessibility.[12]

The banners from Kurt Flekenstein’s installment remain in the courtyard at the Pushkinskaya-10 Art Center proclaiming that “Freedom is Space for the Spirit.” From the author’s collection.

The art center has been constantly working towards several goals ever since its establishment; one of the most important being to integrate Russian contemporary art to the new world culture.[13] To do this, the art center brings in foreign exhibitions, and displays work of their own abroad. One such collection brought to the center was that of a German artist, Kurt Flekenstein, whose exhibition featured an installation that describes the center’s operation: “Freedom is Space for the Spirit.” A banner with this slogan now hangs in one of the courtyards in the Art Center. The quote, which has blended into the backdrop of the courtyard for many of the residents, still has some resilience. Kovalsky relates to the quotation, and, in an interview, told me that without space in which to act, the spirit can do nothing, and that freedom has potential in all spaces.[14] Once the artists could do what they liked with in space, they had the freedom to open up to the world and create beyond their previous limitations.

Along with bringing foreign artists to Russia, the art center’s residents look for opportunities to share their creations outside of their own space in a way that was difficult during the soviet era. Of course, before the 1990s, their only public outlet had been in small apartment exhibitions or abroad with the help of foreign collectors and artists, like aforementioned Norton Dodge. In the post-soviet era, the artists associated with the Free Culture Society share their work in public exhibitions in Russia, where they were previously restricted from displaying. One exhibition of note, called “St. Petersburg Free Culture in Museums of Russia,” made a 2011 tour of the cities of Russia, before arriving home to St. Petersburg in July of that year. Both during the soviet era, and in the years since nonconformist artists who would become the founders of Pushkinskaya-10 wanted to exhibit their work in the Peter and Paul Fortress, but were thwarted by the authorities. After years of planning and bargaining with authorities this travelling exhibition has made its final stop in the Peter and Paul Fortress’s Nevsky Gate Gallery, bringing its journey full circle, both around the country, and in time.[15]

Yuli Rybakov’s public display of dissent on the walls of the Peter and Paul Fortress in 1976 has become a myth of creation for the residents of Pushkinskaya-10. Photographed from a photo on display at the Pushkinskaya-10 art center.

The significance of such an exhibition, taking place in the cradle of St. Petersburg, was not unintentional. For the artists of the Society of Free Culture, finally displaying their work in this space shows St. Petersburg’s, and Russia’s, acceptance of the work they did illegally during the soviet reign. The nonconformist art movement began in 1976 when one of the underground artists, Yuli Rybakov, painted on the walls of the fortress: “You may crucify freedom, but the human soul knows no shackles.” Rybakov was convicted and sentenced to six years of prison for his artistic and political performance. The Pushkinskaya-10 art community views Rybakov’s artistic act as one of the stories of the origin of their movement. Thus, the exhibition inside the fortress, where  Rybakov’s and other artists’ works are displayed, has a special significance for the art center community. Although the artists are still considered obscure and limited in many of their exhibitions, there is no question of their gaining significance in the larger scope of the history of art in Russia today.

Komar and Melamid’s “The Origin of Socialist Realism” (1982) depicts Stalin’s inspiration by a muse to impose socialist realism as law. The painting now belongs in the Norton Dodge Collection at the Zimmerli Museum of Art at Rutgers University. From the website http://komarandmelamid.org/chronology.html

Russia’s capital, Moscow, always had an aggressive and assertive artistic community during the soviet era, where authorities often broke up exhibitions they held in apartments and public squares. Conversely, the St. Petersburg artistic community was more discreet and structured, leaving much of their work to be discovered only now, in the period after the soviet reign.[16] As attention on the nonconformist art movement grows, the future of the Pushkinskaya-10 Art Center remains to be seen. The resident artist population is aging, and the funds to support the institution are running low. The Society of Free Culture, which runs the Art Center’s space, puts a great deal of effort into maintaining their stance that art should be free. For this reason, the art center functions almost entirely on donations and grants, while admission to the museums and galleries remain free of charge, despite the fact that maintaining such an institution in downtown St. Petersburg is costly.

Furthermore, keeping in mind the lofty cultural confidence of St. Petersburg, Russia’s “cultural capital,” new galleries and projects are constantly appearing, supporting artists in their endeavors to create. The Novyi Muzey,[17] located on Vasilievsky Island, boasts a collection of avant-garde art, ranging from the early 20^th century to the present, giving a brief overview of Russia’s avant-garde history in a noticeably less confusing exhibition space. Additionally, a few blocks down Ligovsky Prospect from the Pushkinskaya-10 Art Center, the Loft Project Etagi[18] is establishing a similar project, targeting a younger population and emphasizing its accessibility, and even offers meeting halls, a hostel, and rentable exhibition space. Pushkinskaya-10 was established as a space for artists to live and create, but has become an exhibition of their era. Competing with young, organized, and technologically-savvy institutions with similar areas of interest, the question now is whether or not the Pushkinskaya-10 Art Center will be able to survive in the future of Russian art.

Some of the resident artists are reluctant to answer this question when asked. For example, Boris Koshelokhov says that he lives and creates only “here and now.”[19] The time and space in which he creates is entirely transient, and it is difficult for him to consider the future. This is also evident in his creative process, and his ability to churn out several paintings in a day. His fear of the future is manifested in his insistence on living entirely in the present. Fortunately, his art generates enough revenue to sustain him in his small hovel of an apartment, which smells of coffee, turpentine and cigarettes.

Boris Koshelokhov lives “hic et nunc” or “here and now”; thinking rarely and reluctantly about the fate of his home. Still frame from the author’s interview.

Aleksandr Bashirov, a filmmaker and actor whose film company, Deboshirfilm,[20] has its headquarters in Pushkinskaya-10 has a much different outlook. He described his first visit to the space as visiting a garbage pile. Distressed over the disorganization and less-than-healthy lifestyle of the resident artists, he seems to think that without proper care, the art center will return to its original state – a trashed abandoned building. Unfortunately, he offers little constructive feedback as to how this fate can be prevented. He was particularly troubled by the theft of a television, which he placed in a public restroom down the hall, which destroyed his dream of a “kino-toilet.” As punishment, he threatened to take a stick and hit his delinquent neighbors over the head for being no more than lazy artists.

Still others, like Valentina Kirichenko, the Art Center’s International Programming Director, are loftily optimistic, saying that Pushkinskaya-10 offers much more than other galleries. She describes the center’s unique quality of the creative space being shared with the public, particularly with exhibitions and studios transcending space to flow into the hallways, unrestricted by walls. Armed with a computer and a small budget for print marketing, the art center seems to find the people who are interested in their mission, particularly the younger population, as it begins to play a larger role in the operations of the art center. Older generations, who are reluctant to embrace the legacy of nonconformist art, are quickly fading out of the picture, and it is up to the youth to carry mantle of this historic art movement, she says.[21] It would seem that although the younger generation are becoming increasingly active in forming their own spaces, they risk forgetting their history, so to speak.

Almost any Russian could state that “Pushkin is our everything,” even the nonconformist residents of Pushkinskaya-10, who took an abandoned building on his street for their home. From the author’s collection

To get to Pushkinskaya-10, one must know the way, in both a literal and figurative sense. Across Ligovsky Prospect from the Moskovsky Railway Station, the entrance to the art center can be found through the courtyard to house number 53. However, finding the physical space will not help you to access the nuances of the lost era of art. The artists who reside there risked their lives to create during the soviet era, and continue to resist conformity, to create, and to live. By adopting this space as their own, they have created an unofficial cooperative island, on which the memory of unofficial art lives on. Pushkinskaya-10 stands and, with love, creativity, and perseverance, will continue to stand as a testament to the courage of nonconformist artists during the soviet Era. The Art Center as a space, and the unofficial art movements which it represents, reminds us that people, to create, need freedom, and freedom means having space in which to create.

Works Cited

Alparova, I.G. Drugoe iskusstvo. (Other Art) Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia galereia, 1991.

Baer, Brian James. “Other Russias: Homosexuality and the Crisis of Post-Soviet Identity.” 2009. Palgrave Macmillan. New York, NY.

Baigell, Matthew and Renee. Soviet Dissident Artists: Interviews After Perestroika. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995..

Bashirov, Aleksandr. Personal Interview. 20 July 2011.

Clark, Katerina. The Soviet Novel: History As Ritual. Third Edition Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.

Grigoryev, Apollon. “ Взгляд на русскую литературу со смерти Пушкина.” (A View of Russian Literature Since Pushkin’s Death) 1859. <http://az.lib.ru/g/grigorxew_a_a/text_0510.shtm> Accessed 1 August, 2011.

Kirichenko, Valentina. Personal Interview. 6 July 2011, 11 July 2011

Koshelokhov, Boris. Personal Interview. 6 July 2011

Kovalsky, Sergey. Personal Interview. 5 July 2011, 11 July 2011

Translated by Kirichenko, Valentina. “Apartment Exhibitions of Underground of Russian Avant-Garde Art,” “Chronicle of Unofficial Art in Leningrad,” “From Self-Expression to Self-Realization: The Free Culture Society,” “The Parallelosphere of the Art Center ‘Pushkinskaya-10.’” 2009. Pushkinskaya-10. St. Petersburg. <http://en.p-10.ru/texts/>

Kovalsky, Sergey, Evgeny Orlov, and Yuri Ribakov. Art Center “Pushkinskaya-10” – Parallelosphere. 1989-2009. St. Petersburg: Pushkinskaya-10 Art League. 2010.

Lindey, Christine. Art in the Cold War: From Vladivostok to Kalamazoo, 1945-1962. New York: New Amsterdam Books, 1990.

Neumaier, Diane. Beyond Memory: Soviet Nonconformist Photography and Photo-Related Works of Art. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004.

Rosenfeld, Alla and Norton T. Dodge (editors). From Gulag to Glastnost: Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995.

Ross, David A., Tacoma Art Museum, Mass.) Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, and Des Moines Art Center. Between Spring and Summer: Soviet Conceptual Art in the Era of Late Communism. 1st MIT Press ed. Tacoma, Wash. : Boston, Mass. : Cambridge, Mass.: Tacoma Art Museum, 1990.

Shekhter, Tatyana. “The Non-Official Art of St. Petersburg (Leningrad).” <http://en.p-10.ru/texts/shekhter/>

Schlatter, N. Elizabeth., et al. Prostranstvo Svobody: Kvartirnye Vystavki V Leningrade, 1964-1986 = The Space of Freedom : Apartment Exhibitions in Leningrad, 1964-1986. Richmond, VA: Seattle, WA: University of Richmond Museums, 2006.

Sudnik, Nikolai. Personal Interview. 20 July 2011

Sokolova, Natalya. Personal Interview. 18 July 2011

The "Napoleonic Egg", created by Faberge in 1912 as a gift from Tsar Nicholas II to his mother, the Dowager Empress Maria Fyodorovna

Here are some events happening in the month of April in the USA.  Enjoy!

April 1 – DC

Faberge Egg Family Festival

Celebrate spring’s arrival in Russian style at Hillwood Estate! Enjoy festive folk music and storytelling, meet historic character Tsar Nicholas II, and take part in a centuries-old egg-rolling game. Step into Faberge’s Workshop to decorate your own Faberge-inspired egg.

Tickets $15, 12 seniors, $10 members and college students, $5 children 6-18

Where: Hillwood House Musuem
When: April 1, 1-5
Telephone: 202-686.5807

April 14 and 19 – Boston

The Kremlin

Join the Museum of Russian Icons for an interactive lecture and the opportunity to create your own piece of art!

In conjunction with the special exhibition Maps: Pathways to Russia, Traditional Russian artist and lecturer Marina Forbes brings to life the images and stories of Moscow Kremlin, transporting listeners back to Old Russia in the age of Ivan the Great, Peter the Great, and Catherine the Great. Marina’s interactive presentation is beautifully illustrated with
carefully selected pieces of Russian art, revealing fascinating details of everyday Russian life at the time.

The discussion features a remarkable 17th century map of the Moscow Kremlin, chosen from the exhibition.

Enjoy a fascinating story for the whole family and then create your own
unique piece of art in an interactive hands-on workshop using different painting techniques and acrylic paints on your choice of predesigned surfaces (gessoed boards, textured paper, or ceramic tiles) inspired by beautiful Kremlin scenery.

Workshop fee: Adults (ages 18+), $12, Members; $15, nonmembers
Youth (ages 6 through 17) $8, Members; $10, nonmembers
Advance registration recommended, call (978) 598-5000.

Workshop fees are non-refundable.The costs for the pre-designed painting surfaces range from $12 to $35, payable directly to the instructor on the day of the course via cash or check.

Where: Museum of Russian Icons
When: April 14, 10-1 and April 19 12:30-3:30
Telephone: (978) 598-5000.

April 14 – NY

Join Brooklyn’s Dweck Center for their April installment of the ongoing Russian literary series.

Psoy Korolenko, scholar, critic and Slavist.

Pavel Lion is a respected scholar, Slavist and critic, but he is better known as Psoy Korolenko. Psoy performs his own and others’ songs, accompanying himself on keyboard. A “post-modernist jester”, he critiques culture while also imparting new energy and meaning to it. In Russian. RSVP by calling 718-230-2222. Limit two per person.

Where: Dweck Center
When: April 14, 4 PM
Telephone: 718-230-2222

April 19 – NY

Join the Dweck Center for the April installment of the ongoing Russian film series!

This year marks 80th birthday of Leonid Gurevich, one of the greatest Russian documentary script writers and film teachers. He was known among generations of documentary filmmakers as a “Guru”. Family members, friends and former students get together to celebrate legacy of the great film master. The fragments of the films by Gurevich and by his famous students will highlight the event. In Russian. RSVP by calling 718-230-2222. Limit two per person.

Where: Dweck Center
When: April 19, 6:30 PM
Telephone: 718-230-2222

April 21 – Boston

Join Boston’s Museum of Russian Icons for their symposium entitled “A Comprehensive Review of Historic Russian Cartography” with renowned scholars Valerie Kivelson and Kelly O’Neill.

Two renowned scholars share their expertise on the subject of Russian cartography in this program organized in conjunction with the special exhibition MAPS: Pathways to Russia. The lecture topics are “Mapping the Holy Russia: Cartography and Icons in Early Modern Russia” with Valerie Kivelson and Arthur F. Thurnau, and “Mighty Stream So Deep and Wide’: Rivers, Maps, and the Idea of a Russian Empire” with Kelly O’Neill.

Where: Museum of Russian Icons
When: April 21, 3-5 PM
Telephone: (978) 598-5000.
Tickets: $15 for members, $20 for non-members.

April 24- DC

Join Hillwood Estate and Museum for a book signing and lecture on Napoleon and Russia.

Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 is one of the most famous stories in European history. Nevertheless much of the story as usually told is untrue. Outside Russia 1812 is usually told just from Napoleon’s point of view and without regard for Russian sources. In Russia the story is distorted by nationalist myths. Leo Tolstoy (author of War and Peace) was a great novelist but also a key myth-maker as regards Russia’s defeat of Napoleon. In his interpretation, governments and generals count for little and Napoleon is defeated by the elemental patriotism of the Russian people. In reality, the tsarist government planned and executed an intelligent grand strategy which exploited Russia’s strengths and Napoleon’s weaknesses. Join visiting scholar Dominic Lieven, who used never-before-seen material from the Russian archives, to delve deeper into this riveting history. Lieven will sign copies of Russia Against Napoleon: The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace following the lecture.

Dominic Lieven is a research professor at Cambridge (Senior Research Fellow: Trinity College). He was a professor of history at the London School of Economics from 1978-2011. His last book, Russia Against Napoleon: The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace, won the Wolfson History Prize and also the Prix de la Fondation Napoleon. Three of his direct ancestors were generals in the Battle of Leipzig. He lives partly in Britain and partly in Japan.

Where: Hillwood Estate and Museum
When: April 24, 7-8:30 PM
Telephone: 202-686.5807
Tickets: $20, $10 for members, $7 for college students

April 29 – NY

Luba Poliak

Join Brooklyn’s Dweck Center for Luba Poliak’s performance of classical music!

Born in Siberia, Poliak was eleven years old when she first appeared with the Novosibirsk Philharmonic Orchestra. She will perform a piano recital featuring Prokofiev’s Sonata No.8 in B flat major, Op.84 and Schumann’s Sonata No.2 in G minor, Op.22.

Where: Dweck Center
When: April 29, 4PM
Telephone: 718-230-2222

Portrait of Graham Ratgauz, 1964, Oleg Vassiliev.

Ongoing Exhibitions: MN

Join Minneapolis’ Museum of Russian Art for an ongoing exhibition of the work of Oleg Vassiliev. Exhibit ongoing until May 6.

The Art of Oleg Vassiliev surveys the career of one of the most important unofficial Soviet artists.  Full of personal memories, his masterful works are an energetic meditation on human memory, forgetting, and a return to one’s home.

A graduate of the Surikov Art Institute, Oleg Vassiliev  actively participated in the non-conformist art scene of Soviet Moscow from the 1950s through the 1980s. Vassiliev’s art is rooted in the rich tradition of the Russian Realist style and the early Soviet avant-garde.

His works on paper include his House with the Mezzanine series, inspired by Anton Chekhov’s story and building on the achievements of post-revolutionary constructivist art. The House with the Mezzanine print series unfolds a wondrously poetic and visually striking journey that makes tangible the pace of history. To read Anton Chekhov’s story click here.

Also featured in the Lower Gallery are his drawings, collages and some of his book illustrations done in the 1960s and 1970s together with his friend Erik Bulatov.  One of the lenders to this exhibition is the New York-based Kolodzei Art Foundation whose remarkable collection chronicles four decades of Russian and Soviet nonconformist art from the post-Stalinist era to the present.  Other pieces come from noted Vassiliev collector Neil Rector as well as from the artist and his family.

Born in Moscow in 1931, Vassiliev is one of the most important artists to emerge from the Soviet underground art scene. His artistic vision opposed the ideologies of the State-endorsed Socialist Realism combining constructivist approaches of the 1920s with the Russian realism of the 19^th century. Vassiliev was influenced by the leading Soviet graphic artist Vladimir Favorsky (1886-1964). Together with his friends, well-known non-conformists Ilya Kabakov and Eric Bulatov, Oleg Vassiliev supported himself working as a book illustrator, while also creating his marvelous works in the seclusion of his studio.  Like many of his generation of underground artists, Vassiliev left Russia after the end of the cold war, moving to New York City in 1990. He now resides in Minnesota.

Vassiliev graduated from V.I. Surikov State Art Institute in Moscow, where he specialized in graphics.  Vassiliev’s work is broadly recognized for its unique place in Russian art and can be found in the collections of the State Tretyakov Gallery, The State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg; The State Center of Contemporary Art, Moscow; The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow; Denver Art Museum, Colorado; Duke University Museum of Art,  Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland; and the Norsk-Russisk Kultursenter Galleri, Norway

Where: The Museum of Russian Art
Telephone: (612) 821-9045

from "Self-Will of Lines" Federova

Unassuming at first, the Borey Art Center has a lot to offer: 4 galleries, a bookstore, a video library, a café, as well as a few studios and a publishing house. Just inside the entrance is a small store with ceramic figurines for purchase, mainly cats. To the left of this store is the small gallery, where Irina Federova is exhibiting “Self-Will of Lines,” a graphic collection of drawings based on different themes from Alice in Wonderland to Greek myths. Working under the pseudonym “Amnephis,” she has spent the last 13 years creating about 2,500 graphic pieces that reflect on history, literature, and her personal life. . Her drawings are done with simple ink and watercolor, but her skill is refined. Using ornamental design, she combines humans with botanical and geometrical shapes to form a sense of metamorphosis or transcendence of reality in every portrait. In her artist statement for the exhibition she describes her work as a “way of reflecting on reality” and “a spiritual quest.” There is a bit of the fantastical to every piece and the whimsical movement created by the fluid strokes leads the eye all around the portraits as if on a quest of their own.

from "St. Petersburg Visions" Mendagaliev

The café and video library can be found through two low-bearing doorways from the small gallery. If you go back towards the entrance and to the right of the small store, there is something that looks like a cavernous tunnel that leads to the large gallery. It has been ten years since the last time Gafur Mendagaliev exhibited works in the Borey Art Center. Seventy pieces are on display for “St. Petersburg Visions.” Each painting’s theme centers on the urban landscape of St. Petersburg from the city’s recognizable Sphinx, located on the Neva River, to the Peter and Paul Fortress to St. Isaac’s Cathedral. An avant-garde artist of Leningrad, Mendagaliev’s style is naïve. Vibrant colors and thick, heavy strokes form simple scenes that feel more symbolic than real.In each painting, there are repeated motifs: a table, a chimera, women, a bird, a fish. There appears to be a story begging to be told about the city he has lived in for so long, and, perhaps, a painful one. In the paintings, faces of people look in different directions, they pull from each other, guiding the viewer’s eyes into a chaos as the sphinx overlooks it all with a sense of doom. Then, there are portraits of chimeras and demons stalking individuals on the metro, women tormented next to a table or underwater beneath a fish in flight. They have a sinister tone to them. Fantastical, but simple, Mendagaliev’s works linger in the mind and resurface in the memory of St. Petersburg as a city.

Irina Federova and Gafur Mendagaliev both strive to push past the limits of reality in their art in different styles that reflect the diversity of the avant-garde style. Reoccurring themes and motifs reveal their desire to explore the depth of their ideas to its core. They both extensively practice their craft and it shows in the bulk of their production. Open to the public and free of charge, the Borey Art Center has a lot to offer for the month of March and beyond. The art is thought-provoking and profound in its capacity to surprise the viewer. On the way out, grab a drink from the cozy café or check out one of the interesting self-published titles in the center’s bookstore. Most of all, just be sure to explore this St. Petersburg treasure.

Details: The Borey Art Center is open Tuesday-Saturday from 12pm-8pm. Free of charge! Please see website for contact information and a map.