Since last week, I have been in San Francisco, California, on the mission of applying from my Russian visa. So far, all is well and it should be ready by next week. In the interim, I have had the chance to discover the little corner of Russia that lives here in the City.
Dolls and ephemera of Russia.
By chance, I discovered a small but well kept institute of Russian-Americans here, where you can visit the free and open to the public Museum of Russian Culture. With an intimate atmosphere and quiet hospitality, the space reminded me very much of the apartment museums of Saint Petersburg, the gallery is a wonderful discovery and escape from the American streets into a little corner of Russia. The museum features a well honed mixture of arts, crafts, history and local culture.
Inscription with peacocks.
Perhaps the most amazing thing in the museum is an original White Army flag, authentically stained with blood of the counter revolutionaries, hanging discreetly in a corner amongst other textiles. Having a guide point out such details is what makes the expert set of eyes so useful when visiting small and detail-packed museums.
Tolstoy and historical documents.
The gallery has its own semi-official tumblr blog Zolotoivek, which focuses on the Golden Years of Russian history, 1880-1940. I was lucky enough to have a personal tour of the museum from the blogs curator, who warmly and with informative passion showed me through the detailed cases and wall hangings that consist of the museum's collections. Since the 1970s, the place remains largely unchanged, and even includes a small private library of Russian books.
View of the Museum.
Overall, I highly recommend any passer-bys, visitors and locals of the Bay Area to visit the Cultural Center. Since it relies only on volunteer work, any donations are highly appreciated. I personally love that such museums like this even continue to exist, fostering community and adding to the rich "salad bowl" of the United States that make the country so rich for discovering the pockets of immigrants that add to the vibrancy of the nation as a whole.
After some cursory research into quilting in Russia, I have discovered that the new logo and branding identity for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic games will be comprised of a medely of geometric patterns based on traditional Russian quilt designs! Credit to this small but mighty American quilting blog:
The Olympics organizing committee wanted a special symbol to illustrate both the diversity and unity of Russia. So the 16 folk images within the patterns represent Russia’s different nations and cultures.
Based on the press conference, the designs were “created from the motifs of ornaments of the most famous Russian national crafts. Here we can see Uftyuzhskaya painting and Vologda lace, Gzhel and Zhostovo painting, Kubachi patterns and Pavlov Posad shawls, Mezenskaya painting and Khokhloma, Yakutsk patterns and Ivanovo chintz.”
Unveiling the Logo for Sochi 2014
The logo is fresh and colorful, much more colorful than traditional Winter Olympics designs, which tend towards the monochromatic and understated. What's exceptional about this logo is the cultural specific link, as well as a sporting event giving the visual arts and crafts a place in their halls! The pattern will be applied all over Russia, including usage on trains and in other public spaces. I am sure the Russian Quilters Association, based in Saint Petersburg, must be proud.
Various variations of the banners.
More news on this topic to come, as we get closer and closer to 2014!
Thanks to a recent reshowing on BBC America, I have now watched this fantastic documentary by Andrew Graham-Dixon, an excellent guide with a refreshingly open and international view of art history. Aptly named The Art of Russia, the program is diced into three components: Into the Forest: beginning with early roots in Russia's Kievian history, secluded from Western culture until its influential opening to the West by Peter the Great.
The second part, Roads to Revolution, examines the sweep of European modernism in art across Russia, as well as the 19th Century movement led by Tolstoy to rediscover Russia's roots in the forests where its genuine soul and people dwell. Political unrest and ever growing estrangement between the ruling classes and ruled create a unique divide in styles, one gazing outwardly to Western elegance and excess, and other inwardly towards internal struggle and harsh reality of daily life within the country. Most noteworthy is the Russian interpretation of the Arts & Crafts movement, led by Lev Tolstoy and Ilya Repin, which was not a retaliation against the industrialization of craft, but instead a politically motivated movement to go back to the naturalism and naivety of the land, Mother Russia, herself.
Smashing the Mould, as the eponymous third part is named, bulldozes straight on into the Bolshevik revolution and the events that followed, showing the casualties it claimed in history as well as in the progress of art in Russia. Icons and Orthodoxy are replaced by a rigid propaganda and worship of the State's idealistic and ruthless vision of total Communism. The skeletons of an era long past are dug up, and a look towards what lies head is examined. And what exactly does lie ahead? That is exactly what I wonder as well. He touches on the notion of uncertainty and searching for a new voice. A good point, however, it is not one that is unique to contemporary Russia.
Overall, this documentary is an excellent introduction into the vast and diverse realm of Russian art. It shows us so much within such a brief period of time, and running at nearly three hours total, it seems to fly by, telling the great story of Russia's pictorial development with rapid excitement and passion. Graham-Dixon's tastes sometimes tinge the atmosphere, with his obvious disapporoval of Tsar Nicholas II's taste and his gushing, unabashed adorement of Rodchenko's posters, yet overall the piece is very informative in showing us the tip of the gargantuan iceberg is that is Russia's rich art history. Highly recommended, especially since he was granted access to places that the average tourist might never get to see! The above are clips, to see the entirety of the documentary, catch it over here at Doku Watch.
The last few weeks have been busy, and at long last I have finally finished my photography / portfolio website, pavlinaya.net. The good news is, in April I am expected to begin Russian courses at the ProBa Language Centre in Saint Petersburg! I will undertake the work/study program, a unique exchange program which offers intensive Russian language for English instructor from a native speaker (such as myself). At the moment, I have all plane tickets booked and am awaiting my official invitation letter so that I might apply for the visa. It will be my second visit to Russia and I am looking forward to intensive study once again. I had initially planned to take courses here in the U.S. but due to lack of enrollment, they were cancelled. Thankfully I discovered this program which will be much better, and instead of moving to a larger city in the U.S. temporarily just for the sake of a Russian course, I thought, why not just return to the country itself?
I learned the German language mostly through social interaction in my work as an au-pair, coupled with intermittent courses at the local Volkhochschule in Vienna. What helped me most greatly was having penpals with whom to write on a nearly daily basis. I found writing out my thoughts in a foreign language helped me to rapidly increased my understand for linguistic structure and daily use.
Speaking of penpals, today I have received in the post a lovely gift from one of my dear Russian friends in Saint Petersburg. During my visit in December, I noticed a beautiful handmade ring that she was wearing featuring the famous animated hedgehog from Hedgehog in the Fog / Ёжик в тумане, Yuriy Norshteyn's wonderful Soviet-era animated creation of a Russian fairytale. I was so impressed by the little ring, my friend decided that I must also have one. We went searching all over the city, from handmade boutique to boutique looking for it, but alas they were all sold out! So then she promised to send me one as soon as she could find one. Thankfully the package arrived today and now I own one of the cameo-style rings! I am grateful that we didn't find it because our search lead me to discover many boutiques and the Handmade Bazar in the city, which luckily was happening during my short two week stay.
She also sent me some wonderful chocolates! вкусный! I hope that as I learned German previously with my penpal's help, having such wonderful native speakers as friends will aid me greatly to learn the language. Now I just await to apply for my visa before I am off again to Russia. I've been researching more and more about Russian crafts and hope to update very soon with more articles on my findings, as well as my experiences.
It is without a doubt that one of greatest new art forms of the 20th Century was cinema, the moving picture. This is a well agreed upon fact among cinema enthusiasts and art historians alike. One area that remains a small moving blip on the cultural academic radar is that of Animation, cartoons, or the drawn / animated film. Its near ubiquitous presence has almost pervaded any kind of deeper academic study in a broader sense; while film and cinema have branched out to become their own unique foci of academic inquiry, animation remains an in-between, under explored topic which lives in the limbo of pop culture and high art, much like the topic of folk art itself.
When delving into the notion of animation-as-art, it is nearly impossible to miss the great impact the Eastern Europe, former Soviet states and Russia have had upon its development and innovation towards a higher form of art above mere 'cartoon'. There are perhaps many reasons for this development, rooted both in tradition and political atmosphere of the time. It opens many questions and lines of inquiry, namely the ever persistent debate between "art" and "pop culture" and the essence of what exactly makes the work worthy or good. In the Western world, animation is often looped in with cinema studies, but in reality, the art of animation takes its elements from drawing, sculpture and even music and dance, based upon rhythm and moment being one of its key elements.
In Russia, animation has remained a fruitful experimental ground, ever producing and reinventing itself with new techniques, and often breaking away from the typical lighthearted subject matter of Western cartoons into a more philosophical and self-reflexive exploratory narrative. I am curious to learn more about the history of animation in Russia, and how exactly they first perceived this art form, and how it was received. Is it similar to the screaming, horrified, fleeing audiences of the Western world's Gertie the Dinosaur (1914)? This historical question is one that begs to be answered.
One thing which is obvious is that one of the undisputed pioneers of animation was the eccentric Russian-born Polish nobleman, Владисла́в Алекса́ндрович Старе́вич - Władysław Starewicz. Often cited as the inventor of "stop motion" puppet animation, even Starewicz's earliest cartoons seemed to address more complex story lines and began to draw upon fairytales and the fantastical as their inspiration, but unlike the early animations of the West, Starewicz's technique has a lifelike quality that is not draw merely from the fact that he used puppets and three dimensional objects alone, but that his observation and understanding of motion and time are, to this day, incredibly lifelike and subtle. We see this even in one of his earliest works, The Insect's Christmas -«Стрекоза и муравей» (1913).
Although the subject matter appears childish and fanciful upon first glance, the elegance and lifelike quality of the insects is clearly not one meant to entertain in a superficial, comical way. Unlike the early cartoons of the United States and the Western world, Starewicz seems to strive to use the medium to bring a dignity and almost a deepness of soul to the creatures he so adores; the insects are seen not as entertaining jesters for a peering audience, rather the film has an almost documentarian feel, as if he filmed a secret life of these animals that we never knew existed, and the film does not seem surreal, but rather quite realistic and intimate, like a view into the habit and customs of an intelligent and civilized race.
In contrast, Gertie seems somehow bumbling, and what's more important, serving completely to break the "fourth wall", using animation not as a tool to create a new world, but as a device to exploit the novelty of the medium. In it's day, this worked brilliantly. The audience of Gertie was astounded and disturbed by this new and strange moving image, that seemed almost nightmarish and surreal to them. Whereas, the audience of Insect's Christmas, perhaps watched with an awe of a more delightful kind, and it is not the shocking and novel factor that one notices in this work, but the delicate talent and exquisite craftsmanship of the artist Starewicz. We might consider Starewicz to be among the Gutenberg of invention: not only did he innovate a groundbreaking new concept, he also produced some of the best work in the history of the media: a benchmark of quality yet to be surpassed, and a standard of craft that remains an educational foundation for the craftsmen of this art to this day.
Thus concludes my first exploration of this topic. More to follow soon!
At a small thrift shop over the weekend I discovered a small Russian Khokhloma lacquer (Хохломская роспись) spoon for sale. It was a great find. I am curious to know more about it's exact origins. As you can see in the photo, there is a small paper description wrapped around the handle. I cannot transcribe it exactly because the paper wraps around itself, obscuring some of the lettering.
The spoon rests on an American traditional quilt made by my grandmother in the 1970s. It is interesting to see the two styles contrasted against one another.
Today on January 7th is the day the Orthodox calendar celebrates Christmas. I read a small, informative post on the SRAS facebook page about the differences between how the West celebrates the holiday, and how it is celebrated in the East. There is the Middle West or Proper West, that is to say Europe, and the far West, the New World, that is to say, North America and Canada.
The Romans (from which modern Catholic and Protestant traditions are deslcended) actually celebrated Christmas on January 6th up until the year 354, when the Bishop of Rome changed it. Some say this change was made according to scholarship made available at the time, others say that the day was moved to appease northern pagans who celebrated the birth of a sun god on the 25th of December.
Christmas in Russia is recognized as an official holiday and a day off. However, it generally doesn't involve gift-giving (which is a major part of celebrations of the New Year in Russia). Most Russians who celebrate Orthodox Christmas do so by having a family dinner and/or attending the liturgy. Thus, the holiday in Russia is almost purely religious/family in orientation, without the heavy commercialization it has in the West.
In Europe, Christmas is certainly less commercialized than in the United States, yet the religious element does seem to be played down to a minimum and is celebrated more generally as a holiday for everyone, which includes time off. I am curious as to when the commercialization of Christmas began. It is well know that the traditions of the Christmas tree, and the relocation of the holiday to the 25th of December are rooted in pre-Christian pagan European beliefs.
Perhaps the most famous story of the popular notion of Christmas in the anglophone world today is Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. In 1971, the famous Canadian animator Richard Williams and his team brought the work to life in a wonderful and painstakingly animated short of the eponymous tale. Its craftsmanship resembles Russian and Eastern European style, but the original intent was to capture the look of 19th Century book illustrations of the Victorian Era. Animation is a theme I wish to further explore on this blog, as it is a curious art form, falling between popular art, craft and the high art of cinema.
