"In the Russian Tradition" - Exhibit Review #1

I was in Moscow the first and only time in the winter of 1974 (see article entitled "Russia - 1974", coming soon to your favorite blog). Among the many places I went in Moscow was the Tretyakov Gallery, a large art museum about which I had no prior knowledge. I remember that the Tretyakov was in a part of the city rather distant that most other tourist sites, that the building was large and imposing, but that I was not overly impressed. For the Tretyakov was not only a Russian art museum, it was a museum of Russian art. This distinguished it from museums like the Hermitage, with its super-world class impressionist collection. The Tretyakov, as my memory has it, meant large canvases, outdoor scenes, and social realism. I walked quickly through that part of the museum that I took any time to explore, and was just as happy to leave.

The Smithsonian International Gallery at the Ripley Center (OK, bloggers, how many of you have heard of that one?) is finishing this weekend staging a three month exhibit called "In the Russian Tradition - a Historic [should it have been "an historic"?] Collection of 20th Century Russian Paintings". The paintings all came from the Tretyakov and from a rather new museum in Minneapolis, The Museum of Modern Art.

I had learned of the existence of the exhibit when I took a Smithsonian Resident Associates class at the Ripley Center recently, and wanted to get back to see it more closely before it closed on March 20. So, at lunch time, a metro'd to the Smithsonian stop to take a quick look at the paintings.

It was quite an exhibit. Although I did not count the paintings, I would guess that there were forty to fifty of them and, yes, most of them were quite large. And to say that they were all examples of 20th century Russian art was not quite correct; a more accurate description would have been "A Century of Russian Art: 1880-1980".

I thought that they did vary in quality, although the high quality paintings outdid those which I felt somewhat inferior. The styles were quite varied, more than I would have assumed. And many of them used extraordinary colors, and in particular numerous shades of bright and deep red.

I don't think that I had heard of any of the artists. Whether any have paintings in American museums (other than those from Minneapolis, which appeared to largely be on loan from private American collections), I do not know.

But here is a sampling of what I considered the highlights.

The oldest paintings seemed to be two portraits by Ilya Repin. One of V. V. Stason, described as an art critic, a man in his fifties, with clear skin, intelligent looking eyes and a full beared, dressed in conservative business attire, painted from mid-chest up. The other of L. Merci d'Arjanto, described as a pianist, lounging on a chaise, in a fluffy white dress, her reddish hair in a short, mature style. Both were, what I would call classic portraits. They could have as easily been French, as Russian. They were painted around 1880.

They were followed by two paintings from just after the turn of the century. One, also a portrait, by Valentin Serov, was a full length portrait of a young boy, maybe six or seven, whose rosy cheeks and round face and curly brown hair clearly portrayed his individual personality. According to the accompanying notes, the subject's mother thought it wonderful.

The other, by Filipp Malyanin, was described as one of a number of paintings of Russian village types, which apparently provide a glimpse of life in these small communities at this time, which is difficult to find elsewhere. This portrait, called Village Girl, shows a full length portrait of a young woman, dressed in a full length skirt and long sleeve blouse, but with deep reds and an impressionistic background that almost makes it look Spanish.

Nikolai Fechin's portrait of his wife is more of a late impressionistic piece, painted in 1901. This is the first time this portrait has ever been shown, as he and his wife separated shortly after it was completed, and he defaced the painting by putting large bars over her face. The painting survived somehow, and was cleaned and touched up, to show it as it was originally meant to be.

Around the same time, the flagship of the show, a very large canvass called Bathing of the Red Horse by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, was painted. A very large red-brown horse being ridden by a nude young man (perhaps a teenager) with a few other horses and similar riders in a pool of water behind. A striking painting of striking simplicity and color, meant apparently to demonstrate the coming troubles as the new century was getting its start.

Yes, there was social realism amongst those paintings dated after the death of Lenin. Logging on the Vetluga River, again with reds predominating, shows a young woman working on the river, her head in a blue scarf, painted in 1964 by Eduard G. Bragovski. A striking still life called Soviet Canned Food, showing filled cans and jars (oh, the bounty of it all), painted in 1939 by Boris Yakovlev. Potato Picking by Zinaida Kovaleska.

But there was also classicism, a la Picasso in Russian bathhouse, a grouping of nude women in a classical and not quite cubist style by Zinaida Serebryakova. And a more formal classicism, of a young man and his pregnant wife by Dimitri Zhilinski.

And there was cubism, in the form of Tower Gate, New Jersualem, a melage of Russian style buildings part realist and part cubist, painted by Aristarkh Lentulov in 1917, and a still life by Vasili Rozhdestuensko, which could have been a Braque, but with green tones like Cezanne.

There were the snow scenes, and the nature scenes, the dancer, and the urban scapes, including Igor Popov's Our Courtyard, an updated version of a Jan Steen painting of Dutch city life, Vladimir Stozharov's Novgorod, Yaroslav Monastery, a 1972 painting of a style found in the American southwest, with shape dominating the single colored buildings, with grass or ground in front, and a blue sky behind (here with fleecy clouds). And a bright painting of an urban monastery in suburban Moscow, with yellows predominating.

The show was extremely enjoyable, well laid out, although the rooms were kept dark with focus on individual paintings in an attempt (sometimes successful) to avoid glare off the, often, heavy oils on the paintings.

There was a catalog, and it showed each of the paintings and gave each a full page treatment. but, as is the case too often with these catalogs, the colors and resolution cannot compare with the originals, so that, except as an aide to memory, they sure don't bring you the real thing. Their danger is that, if you look at the catalog too long, the paintings as represented there will probably take over from the originals in your mind.

This show does not seem to be travelling, and it is too late to see it now. My only suggestion is: next time you are in Moscow, go to the Tretyakov. In 2005, it sure looks a lot better than it seemed to me 30 years ago.