Russian storm coming

I grew up with this picture. I have always looked at it as a symbol of peace, strength, plenty and safety of my Motherland.

I have never - never until very very recently noticed the two little swallows skimming the ground right at the bottom centre of this big painting (3.5 feet by 6 feet). Any Russian would tell you what swallows skimming the ground mean: a storm is coming. It's not just granny's tales — it is a natural phenomenon. Birds can tell weather, and old folk knew how to tell weather by watching birds.

Shishkin, Rye, 1878, o/c, 104 cm x 1887 cm

It doesn't puzzle me why President Putin (or his advisers) chose this picture as a background to a photo of him. Because few people notice the worried little swallows, a little detail in the big picture. Most look at the great pines and the sea of ripe rye, and think - what a beautiful, rich and strong world.

Storm? What storm?

Check this previous article:
Putin's Pines

Bronzed nudes

This is a beautiful example of a patinated bronze nude. Marble is often thought of as the material for nude sculpture. However bronze is often more expressive. Look how the patina diffuses soft winter sunlight giving life to the sculpture.

The French republican 'monumental propaganda' paradoxically employed many compositional features of Christianity. The naked young woman, presumably Marianne, the symbol of France, veneratingly raises her arms towards - who? the God Almighty?

Full picture in next post.

A Perfect Woman

Zinaida Serebryakova, 1909
Self-Portrait (Morning, brushing)

This picture should be on the bed-side table of every feminist...

Serebryakova, a junior member of the World of Art (Mir Iskusstva) Russian artistic grouping of the fin de siècle, was the first woman artist to gain world fame and recognition. Never before, and, arguably, never after a painting expressed so forcefully the feminine normality, the joy of being here and the full acceptance and enjoyment of one's own sexuality.

This one picture, first exhibited in 1910 with paintings of other contemporary Russian modernists, killed any remaining influence of decadent generation of the two preceding decades, and established a new healthy life outlook, which even today is not fully comprehended.

Coco Chanel
Somerset Maugham
D H Lawrence

Yes, Prime Minister, and Putin's Pines in the Rye

 

Jim, the Prime Minister, was struggling with his first television address. His advisers told him to use Stravinsky's music and put an abstract painting in the background if he had little to say...

I remembered this when I saw a photo of Russia's President Putin, sitting pensively with a painting dear to every Russian heart, 'The Rye' by Ivan Shishkin behind him on his right, and the Presidential Standard on his left.

It is fascinating to see how an old landscape could still be used as a sophisticated
tool of political propaganda. While the Literary Gazette ("Литературная газета"), a shadow of
what it was in the 60-s and 70-s, provided no text for the photo, placing it alongside an analysis of the results of a presidential election) the message is
transparent.

Shishkin ('The Rye', 1878, oil on canvas, 187 cm x 107 cm) was one of the best landscape artist of the 19th Century. To Russian painters art has been often a means
of expressing their political and ethical views. Shishkin's landscapes shine with powerful patriotism, an unequivocal belief in the strength of the country and the people. And generations of Russians, like myself, grew up associating Shishkin's art with exactly that. The endless sea of golden rye ready for happy harvest and the mighty pine trees standing like sentries guarding it, with a farm track winding through the plentiful fields, leading somewhere, where there is peace and everything is clear and safe, — this is, supposedly, the subtle symbol of Putin's presidency, that his team, his own Sir Humphrey, are trying to
convey.

There is also, I think, a secondary, less obvious, allusion to the military, specifically
the naval might, that the President is trying to associate himself with: the mighty pines in a Northern Russian woodland, in another famous painting by Shishkin, 'The Mast Forest', are shown as the building material for the navy. Over the years the two paintings have blended into one unified image.