Framing Russian art : from early icons to Malevich PDF
Preview Framing Russian art : from early icons to Malevich
FR AMING RUSSIAN ART From Early Icons to Malevich oleg tarasov framing russian art Framing Russian Art From Early Icons to Malevich Oleg Tarasov Translated by Robin Milner-Gulland and Antony Wood With an Editorial Preface by Robin Milner-Gulland reaktion books Published by Reaktion Books Ltd 33Great SuttonStreet London ec1v 0dx, uk www.reaktionbooks.co.uk This book was first published in 2007by Progress-Traditsiya as Rama i obraz. Ritorika obramleniya v russkom iskusstve. © Progress-Traditsiya, 2007 English language translationcopyright © Reaktion Books 2011 All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. Printed and bound in China by C&C Offset Printing Co., Ltd British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Tarasov, O. IU. (Oleg IUrevich) Framing Russian art : from early icons to Malevich. 1. Picture frames and framing. 2.Picture frames and framing –History. 3. Picture perception. 4.Art appreciation. 5. Icons –Russia (Federation) 6. Art, Russian. 7. Art, European. I. Title 701.1-dc22 isbn978 1 86189 762 6 Contents Editorial Preface 7 Introduction: The Rhetoric of Framing in Russian Art 11 part one:Frame and Image 1 Symbolic Unity 27 Ark and Niche 27– In the Mirror of Perspective 36– Rhetoric and the New Icon 46– Frame as World 70 2 From the Middle Ages to Romanticism 105 Abramtsevo: Window into a Russian World 105– Idea and Feeling 114 – The Boundary of Paradise 124– Icon Case and Picture Frame 148 – The Museum 176 part two: Playing with Space 3 The Lustre of Power 207 The Palace: Frame, Picture and History 207– The Rhetoric of Title 227 4 Between Industry and Art 261 Display 261– The Painting as Photographic Exposure 282– Artist, Frame-maker and Client 300– The Quest for Concord 317– The Avant-garde: Overcoming the Frame 331– The Antiquary and Dismantlement 353 Conclusion 369 Abbreviations 377 References 379 Bibliography 395 Acknowledgements 409 Index 411 editorial preface ‘Framing’ may seem a minor aspect of art history and the artistic experience. It is indeed peripheral: literally so, since it concerns boundaries, edges, without which the central object or area of attention would have no defined existence. Hence, as this book makes abundantly clear, framing is in fact a major, integral aspect of the art object and of aesthetics generally. The frame lets us know where we are in contemplating, appreciating or using the art object; furthermore, it adds elements without which the object and its meanings would be incomplete – all the more powerfully, if subliminally, because we may well not be immediately conscious of them. The frame of a work of pictorial art is (normally) a palpable and familiar object. The framing of sculptures, architectural elements and whole buildings may be less obvious, and of course seldom involves a separate, detachable object like a picture frame, yet is of just as great significance. In this book Oleg Tarasov is certainly concerned with physical, visible frames and how they act on our perceptions; but he is equally at home in discussing the semiotic frame that ‘renders it [the visual image] distinctive within its surrounding space’, the setting, from prayer-house to private collection to museum, within which images are required and appreciated. Thence it is a natural step to the ‘conceptual frame’, locating the image within a distinctive web of ideas and beliefs. This may seem to be simply what we are used to calling ‘context’, and indeed may well overlap with the latter; but the ‘conceptual frame’ is a more tightly drawn notion, of structural significance for the art object, no mere penumbra of circumstances that accompanied the accident of its emergence. Of course, framing is not a characteristic of the visual arts alone. Stories, poems, plays, musical works may not be physical objects in the way that pictures or statues are, yet they are just as subject to the human urge – even need – for framing. We all know narratives that frame other narratives (e.g. The Decameron, 7 ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, Heart of Darkness), but subtler and more convoluted framings are to be found in, and between, all the arts. In a Russian context, imagine the pictures of the deceased Viktor Gartman (who happens to make a brief but surprising appearance in Tarasov’s text), each framed physi- cally and also semiotically within an exhibition space, around which his friend Musorgsky perambulates before double-framing them individually and collectively in a musical composition, with its own verbal frame, before it is ‘re-framed’ by Ravel and others who orchestrate and re-present the piano original. Or take Tolstoy’s short story ‘The Kreutzer Sonata’, a framed narrative that, as its title implies, frames an implicit musical work, the whole subsequently re-framed, for new polemic purposes, as a string quartet by the composer Janáček (and, as has happened recently, capable of being framed again as drama – by its nature an obviously ‘framing’ medium). Many volumes would be needed to explore these ramifications extensively (and we have not even touched upon the framing potential of, for example, translation, titles of works, dedications and authorial signatures). Oleg Tarasov wisely keeps to visual art – the visual art of one country, through 1,000years – as his central focus of attention, but continually points out how art is framed by concepts that are expressed verbally, and indeed by the ‘rhetorical’ (i.e. persua- sive) written word itself; he also touches upon the role of Russian religious art as a component of what is essentially an enveloping Gesamtkunstwerk,a totaliz- ing aesthetic experience. He draws of course on a great many examples, but it would not be wrong to say that at the heart of the project realized in this book stand three great, complex artistic ‘organisms’, multiple in both their significances and their component parts: the huge (now dismantled) seventeenth-century ‘Icono stasis of Grigoriy Shumayev’; the church ensemble and paintings of Abramtsevo; and the grand series of ‘war pictures’ by the late nineteenth- century painter Vereshchagin. Thorough and perceptive analysis shows how each of these ambitious, complex ensembles is framed by intensely experienced ideological signs in the spirit of its times. And just as in his previous book, Icon and Devotion, there is referential breadth of vision that moves easily beyond the circumscribed experience of one country’s culture into that of European (even world) culture, illuminating how closely the Russian cultural experience impinges on that of post-Renaissance, particularly Baroque, Europe as a whole. The details of the materials used in this book, and the conclusions Tarasov draws from them, are set out in his Introduction and Conclusion; it would be 8
The list of books you might like
