Picturing Russia : Explorations in Visual Culture

by Edited by Valerie A. Kivelson and Joan Neuberger

• ISBN13: 9780300164213
• ISBN10: 0300164211
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2010-04-06
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

What can Russian images and objectsa tsar's crown, a provincial watercolor album, the Soviet Pioneer Palacetell us about the Russian people and their culture? This wide-ranging book is the first to explore the visual culture of Russia over the entire span of Russian history, from ancient Kiev to contemporary, post-Soviet society. Illustrated with more than one hundred diverse and fascinating images, the book examines the ways that Russians have represented themselves visually, understood their visual environment, and used visual images in social and political contexts. Expert contributors discuss images and objects from all over the Russian/Soviet empire, including consumer goods, architectural monuments, religious icons, portraits, news and art photography, popular prints, films, folk art, and more. Each of the concise and accessible essays in the volume offers a fresh interpretation of Russian cultural history. Putting visuality itself in focus as never before,Picturing Russiaadds an entirely new dimension to the study of Russian literature, history, art, and culture. The book enriches our understanding of visual documents and shows the variety of ways they serve as far more than mere illustration.

Author Biography

Valerie A. Kivelson is professor, Department of History, University of Michigan. She lives in Ann Arbor, MI. Joan Neuberger is professor, Department of History, University of Texas at Austin. She lives in Austin.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xvii
Seeing into Being: An Introduction	p. 1
Dirty Old Books	p. 12
Visualizing and Illustrating Early Rus Housing	p. 17
The Crosier of St. Stefan of Perm	p. 21
Sixteenth-Century Muscovite Cavalrymen	p. 28
Blessed Is the Host of the Heavenly Tsar: An Icon from the Dormition Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin	p. 33
The Cap of Monomakh	p. 38
Church of the Intercession on the Moat / St. Basil's Cathedral	p. 42
Mapping Serfdom: Peasant Dwellings on Seventeenth-Century Litigation Maps	p. 47
From Tsar to Emperor: Portraits of Aleksei and Peter I	p. 51
The Russian Round Table: Aleksei Zubov's Depiction of the Marriage of His Royal Highness, Peter the First, Autocrat of All the Russias	p. 57
An Icon of Female Authority: The St. Catherine Image of 1721	p. 63
Conspicuous Consumption at the Court of Catherine the Great: Count Zakhar Chernyshev's Snuffbox	p. 67
Moving Pictures: The Optics of Serfdom on the Russian Estate	p. 71
Neither Nobles nor Peasants: Plain Painting and the Emergence of the Merchant Estate	p. 76
Circles on a Square: The Heart of St. Petersburg Culture in the Early Nineteenth Century	p. 81
Alexander Ivanov's Appearance of Christ to the People	p. 86
Lubki of Emancipation	p. 90
Folk Art and Social Ritual	p. 96
Personal and Imperial: Fyodor Vasiliev's In the Crimean Mountains	p. 100
Shop Signs, Monuments, Souvenirs: Views of the Empire in Everyday Life	p. 104
The Storming of Kars	p. 109
A. O. Karelin and Provincial Bourgeois Photography	p. 113
European Fashion in Russia	p. 119
The Savior on the Waters Church War Memorial in St. Petersburg	p. 124
Workers in Suits: Performing the Self	p. 128
Visualizing Masculinity: The Male Sex That Was Not One in Fin-de-Siècle Russia	p. 133
Pictographs of Power: The 500-Ruble Note of 1912	p. 139
Visualizing 1917	p. 142
Looking at Tatlin's Stove	p. 148
Soviet Images of Jehovah in the 1920s	p. 152
National Types	p. 157
Envisioning Empire: Veils and Visual Revolution in Soviet Central Asia	p. 162
The Visual Economy of Forced Labor: Alexander Rodchenko and the White Sea-Baltic Canal	p. 168
The Cinematic Pastoral of the 1930s	p. 175
Portrait of Lenin: Carpets and National Culture in Soviet Turkmenistan	p. 181
The Moscow Metro	p. 185
The Soviet Spectacle: The All-Union Agricultural Exhibitions	p. 189
Motherland Calling? National Symbols and the Mobilization for War	p. 196
Visual Dialectics: Murderous Laughter in Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible	p. 201
Soviet Jewish Photographers Confront World War II and the Holocaust	p. 207
The Morning of Our Motherland: Fyodor Shurpin's Portrait of Stalin	p. 214
The Pioneer Palace in the Lenin Hills	p. 218
Mikhail Romm's Ordinary Fascism	p. 224
Solaris and the White, White Screen	p. 230
After Malevich—Variations on the Return to the Black Square	p. 233
Imagining Soviet Rock: Akvarium's Triangle	p. 239
Keeping the Ancient Piety: Old Believers and Contemporary Society	p. 243
Viktor Vasnetsov's Bogatyrs: Mythic Heroes and Sacrosanct Borders Go to Market	p. 248
Landscape and Vision at the White Sea-Baltic Canal	p. 254
Chronology of Russian History	p. 259
Selected Bibliography	p. 263
List of Contributors	p. 271
Illustration Credits	p. 273
Index	p. 277
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