Fwd: [SEELANGS] Vereshchagin on the Auction Block

[Evgeny Steiner]

Just for the record it makes sense to recall that Vereshchagin was not a
peredvizhnik and didn't esteem them too high. And as for the Peredvizhniki
vis-a-vis the Academy of Arts or Art Nouveau and the Avant-garde, I dare
mention my recent articles:
“The Battle for ‘The People’s Cause’ or for the Market Case?” // *Cahiers du
Monde Russe*, 50:4, 2009; pp. 627-646
   http://www.cairn.info/resume.php?ID_ARTICLE=CMR_504_0627
“Pursuing Independence: Kramskoi and the Itinerants Vs. the Academy of Arts”
// *Russian Review* (Lawrence, KA, USA), #70, 2011, pp. 252-271;
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9434.2011.00610.x/abstract

The gist of both: very close to the academic painting and as far as it could
be from anything avant-garde.

Regards,

Evgeny Steiner

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: helena goscilo <goscilo at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 8:35 PM
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Vereshchagin on the Auction Block
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu


Indeed, the peredvizhniki (Wanderers or Itinerants) were the guard against
the 'avants'--i.e., the avant-garde. "Dve bol'shie raznitsy," as one says in
Odessa and in situations where one wishes to be precise and draw meaningful
distinctions. For anyone reluctant to be transported back to the Soviet era,
with its privileging of representational/naturalistic aesthetics, I'd
recommend
Elizabeth Valkenier's* **
Russian Realist Art. The State and Society: The Peredvizhniki and their
Tradition*. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989.

And I join Michael Makin's position on this startling development re the
Vereshchagin paintings.

Helena Goscilo

On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 2:23 PM, Lewis B. Sckolnick <info at rectorpress.com
>wrote:

> With regard to what came before them the peredvizhniki (Wanders) certainly
> were the avant-guard of their day in Russia. The term avant-guard is never
> time limited nor does it have any special application to a  given group or
> country.
>
> An excellent book on the Wanderers is /Russian Genre Painting/, A. Leonov,
> Moscow, 1961
>
> Lewis
>
>
>
>  I am very grateful to Margaret Samu for drawing attention to this piece
of
>> news, which I am sure I would have missed without her post.
>>
>> Her comments below the line on the curator's blog post are among several
>> very impressive responses to the announcement of this decision (others,
>> IMHO, include what is currently the last response, by "Daniil", in
defence
>> of the sale).  But she identifies very precisely what is surely the most
>> troubling aspect of the curator's announcement -- his apparent almost
total
>> ignorance of the history of the visual arts in 19th/early C20th Russia.
 If,
>> as his blog seems to suggest, the _peredvizhniki_ and other similar
artists
>> were avant-gardists (in the sense that most of us would understand that
>> term), then I will have to restrict further my occasional teaching forays
>> into the Russian visual arts, on the grounds that my understanding of the
>> area does not even reach the amateur level I claim...
>>
>> Margaret also makes one very cogent objection to the sale that has
>> absolutely nothing to do with the essentially local issue of defending
the
>> current holdings of the Brooklyn Museum.  She writes that the painting
>>  "will almost certainly disappear into the collection of a private
>> individual--possibly in Russia, which has not yet established a strong
>> tradition of collectors lending and exhibiting works in museums. If the
goal
>> was to give the work exposure and make it available for study, the
Brooklyn
>> Museum should have offered it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which
>> already holds Vereshchagins and does exhibit its 19th-century Russian
>> paintings in the permanent collection."
>>
>> I'd like to hear the curator's response to that...
>>
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>
> --
> Lewis B. Sckolnick
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--
Helena Goscilo
Professor and Chair
Dept. of Slavic & EE Langs. and Cultures at OSU
1775 College Road
Columbus, OH 43210
Tel:  (614) 292-6733



Motto:
"It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book."
Friedrich Nietzsche

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