A Concise History of Russian Art

World of Art

by Tamara Talbot Rice

This expert survey provides a complete picture of the remarkable variety and magnificent wealth of the numerous forms in which art has expressed itself in Russia.

Tamara Talbot Rice, the greatest english authority on Russian art, has set out to cover the entire subject from its beginnings in tenth-century Kiev, the Byzantine-influenced cradle of Russian culture, to the post-revolutionary period, and death of the great patron, Diagilhev. Mrs Talbot Rice discusses sculpture, metalwork, jewellery, ceramics and folk-art - all of which make important contributions to the great cultural tradition of Russia.

Particular note must be made of the plates in this book since many of the photographs have been specially obtained from Russia and are reproduced here for the first time.

251 plates, 62 in colour.

Genres: Art, History, Nonfiction, Art History, Sociology, Russia

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Tamara Talbot Rice was a Russian then English art historian, writing on Byzantine, Russian and Central Asian art. Talbot Rice was born Elena Abelson, to Louisa Elizabeth Vilenkin and Israel Boris Abelevich Abelson, the latter a businessman and member of the Czar's financial administration, a privileged family which fled Russia in 1917. Married David Talbot Rice and worked with him during the late 1920s and 30s.

She began to publish after the second world war writing on Russian Art and Russian history as well as on the art and history of the Scythians, Seljuks, and Byzantines.

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

Survey history that runs through from Kievan Rus' to the 1920s, actually that concept seems weird to me now - the assumption that the art within a certain geographical boundary is a natural unit of comprehension.

The second thing to strike me was it was originally sold for eighteen shillings (ninety pence in new money), but I paid an inflationary three pounds fifty for it, thirdly the author's basic assumptions are nationalistic: the Kievan Hagia Sophia's accord with its setting is the earliest example of the irresistible effect which the Russian environment and Russian taste exercised over the foreign architects and artists who found employment throughout the centuries. regardless of their origins, even the fully formed artists produced from the start works which were so strongly imbued with the Russian spirit that they differ completely from everything that these artists had created in their native lands before going to Russia. This is as true of Kiev's Hagia Sophia as of Moscow's Kremlin or Leningrad's Winter Palace (pp18-19) which is easier to write (and believe) than to prove (pp102-103) she has a list of things she says that Russian monasteries provided, but which Byzantine ones didn't (in her opinion): school, medical centre, charitable institution, refuge from the law, workshops, chroniclers, all of which one would have found in your typical Benedictine establishment of the time, this is typical of her, she doesn't bring much awareness of context to this project . The last thing to strike me was that she had left lots of good stuff out.


At one point she asks the reader to consider The battle between the men of Novgorod and the men of Suzdal with The Battle of San Romano by Uccello. Hmm, ok... Well the men of Novgorod is making an explicit point about the power of art and is explicitly religious (God or his saint gives victory to the pious), it comes from an icon tradition and the artist was stretching that tradition, by leaving nothing to chance and setting out the story in comic book fashion (other icons, do tell, for instance the story of the life of a saint but might do so in a series of inset pictures surrounding the central depiction of the saint), the style is unsophisticated. The Uccello is making an implicit demonstration of the power of art through the dramatic composition and power of the figures, the artist also relies on the viewer reading the story for themselves: so we see the captain of the Florentine army has a jolly turban on rather than the more reliable helmet, we infer that although the Sienesse made an unexpected attack, the Florentines, jumping on their horses countered attacked and beat them. I'm not sure quite what is gained or illumined by such a comparison between two works coming out of different traditions, one had might as well compare apples and oranges.

The author is not simply resistant but ignores the rather natural at least for me interpretation that Russian art in its earliest period was part of the art of the Orthodox world, I wonder a little how her husband treated the East Slav lands in his book Art of the Byzantine era which I'll get round to reading and reviewing at some point in the future, since a copy of it lives by me on a shelf, in as far as I recall in fairly reasonable and sociable company for her everybody who sets foot on Russian soil and Russia and Russians are for her eternal constants becomes Russian at least in spirit and other wishy washy stuff. She is generally wishy washy, talking freely of Novogorodian (more sombre style) and Muscovite (more sombre colour palate) styles of icon painting when one might feel given the difficulties of dating and attribution and that we know virtually nothing beyond a few names that one can't even have have a controversy or debate, and since technically icons were meant to be true to their originals, and it was asserted occasionally that the saint was the painter - the monk executing the work in theory just a tool like the brush, although in fact regional distinctions in style or choice of subject do seem to have emerged over time. In short if one wants to learn more about Russian icon painting I would advise the reader to look for something else, I don't know what,even Tarkovsky's fantasia "Andrei Rublev would at least give you more of a feel for the churches and Kremlins in their landscape than the choice of illustrations here. Because of the bizarre choice of illustrations means the distinctions that she does make in regional styles are not demonstrated.
Rublev and Theophanes the Greek are mentioned and had a couple of black and white close ups of bits of icons attributed to them shown. I'm not sure if the author is best celebrated or excoriated for not showing in colour the whole of Rublev's Old Testament Trinity, though I was pleased that she mentioned Simon Ushakov.

Curiously in church architecture there seem to be motifs in the exterior decoration that are not noticeable in icon work, but given the complete absence of comparison made to architecture in the rest of the Orthodox world. In the few bits and pieces of secular furnishing and decorations she is happy to attribute design elements to Turkish or central Asian influence and indeed in the medieval period there were some far reaching contacts, a man by name of Afansy Nikitin travelled from Tver to the Arabian Sea and wrote about it, this I remember because in his honour kindly people brewed a tasty beer sold under his name in curious shaped bottles finding it required constant expeditions of discovery, mostly to the station kiosks in Saint Petersburg ,where most of the cities commercial life seemed to take place, unless you wanted to buy cut flowers in which case Sennnaya Ploshad was the place to go and while I was a student in Russia (circa 1994/5) it was astonishingly difficult to come across decent beer in Russia the most amusing of which I get by walking across the Trinity Bridge, in Gorky Park there was a stall where a couple of guys would fill a jam jar with beer - the head on which would last for about three seconds, I'd down that it was about as strong as a new born baby mind you they had no butter worthy of the name neither, how's that for misery biggest country in the world and hardly any beer or butter worth speaking of presumably entering Russia either through wandering artisans or through perishable things like fabrics - it is only in other fields that the possibility of non-Russian influence is for her impossible. Indeed when she gets round to the architecture of the Petrine and post Post - Petrine era ie from 1700 onwards she asserts the importance of Russian influence on the various fancy European architects brought in at no doubt some cost by a succession of Emperor and Empresses 18th century Russia was a great age of Empresses even as she points out that Cameron for instance spoke no Russian. I wondered quite why the Imperial person bothered to charge their agents and Ambassadors to buy in foreign talent just to have that expert person defer, in her unevidenced opinion, to the stylistic views of their foremen or chief carpenters or senior hod carriers. Anyhow back in the real world this section is mostly a forest of names of architects and palaces of which the best to see (in my opinion) is Orangienbaum /Lomonosv (there's a joke about that one Russian tells another 'did you know that Lomonsov was Jewish?' ' how so?' 'Well he used to be called Orangienbaum' ) this is because the Germans in 1941-44 were essentially lazy in northern Russia (which I know may not be the impression the books give... but) and hard by the palace there was a shore battery to defend the approaches by sea to Leningrad and on account of that and perhaps the exchange of a few angry shots, it was during the war undamaged and unoccupied by German soldiers and not over restored after the war by the Russians it has a slightly musty atmosphere as though only in the previous summer gallant bewigged gentlemen were paying court to gowned ladies in the grounds, exchanging love letters, squeezing hands and exchanging kisses in the shadows of the glass houses, and that at any moment a clatter of carriages might signal the return of a party of servants to give the place a lick of paint and some new panes of glass here and there before Catherine II and her court would arrive.

And I thought this would be a quick little review, the last chapter deals with more recent painting. Basically you are better off reading the Russian experiment in Art as an introduction on this, while Rice name checks Repin and co. she has used up by this stage her allotment of colour plates. Nor has she anything interesting to say to justify lumping together everything from the Kievian Hagia Sophia to Chagall, despite a black and white illustration of Petrov-Vodkin'sPetrograd 1918 which is virtually begging for the author to allude to the heritage of religious painting, and a conscious use of it. There are a couple of mentions of Lybok of which more in another review, once I have read the rather well illustrated book I have about them.

In brief: Idiosyncratically illustrated. An indifferent introduction to the subject, given the scope the coverage of any particular facet is a bit sparse. Perhaps not enough of a sense of the influences on different artists.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 3 out of 5]

Heavy on the concise and light on the art. The first thousand years are just fine: the sections on the architecture of early Rus', mostly religious, but that's cool, and the figurative art, mostly religious, but that's cool, are great. There's too little focus on people like Rublev, one of my personal faves, but that's okay. Theophanes gets some pages, Chorny, too. The whole icon section is pretty neat. Early Petersburg gets a good deal of space, and the awful portraiture period, too, but the entire work falls flat when it suddenly ends around 1900, just when Russia came to the fore as one of the most interesting and lively source of awesome art. Even Repin, Ge, and Vereshchagin are barely mentioned, but as for the Futurists, Constructivists, Vorticists, and PostFormacululGenitalivism--forget it. You get nothing. I'm not sure why Rice ended the book just when it was getting to the good bits. No matter, there are better histories of Russian art out there.

[Illiterate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rice suggests Russian art arises from Byzantium’s and Europe’s impact on a national “spirit” (folk traditions?). Ends in 1917.

[Cecelia]

read it for a class